Summer into Fall

I think I should just give up on blogging.  I can't keep up with anything, let alone a blog that no one really reads anyway.  Just in case I still have a loyal reader or 2, here is my update...

Cole had ear surgery #2 in August.  This was the hardest one yet.  This time he knew exactly what to expect and he did not want to experience it.  He held it together until the nurse anesthetist came in to take him back.  Then the tears came for him and just try not to cry when your kid does for something like that.  He handled it like a champ though.  There was no regrowth, so they rebuilt his ear.  It was a much shorter surgery this time.  He's had his follow up and goes for a hearing test in October.  I think he hears better, but I don't know that we are without-a-hearing-aid better.

Tate is loving year 2 of preschool.  He has made a great buddy, named G.  G just so happens to be the little brother of his good friend C, from 3s preschool.  I find that funny.  He and G get into a bit of trouble, but nothing major, mostly talking and not listening.

Tate-preschool, Cole-1st grade

Shelby is as busy as ever.  She is constantly on the go.  She never walks, always runs or climbs.  She still doesn't have a lot of words, or teeth.  She says night and hot along with mom and dad.

Cheese!

I am coaching cross country again.  This is my 3rd season.  So far my top 2 returning runners have been out with a concussion or appendicitis.  We have enough girls for a team this year, which is great.

Pat finished up our heifer shed, and today we moved steers into the old heifer yard.  So now they are done with building projects for the year!  Our silage is chopped and they should start on earlage this week.

Cole and I ran in a road race last week.  It was a fundraiser for our local pet rescue.  We ran about 2.5 miles.  He only walked a few times, and for just a few steps each time.  He talked the whole race!  It was a blast and I am so proud of him.

 That's all for now!

The County Fair, Part 2

Pat hated showing cattle growing up.  Well, he didn't hate the showing part, it was all the prep work.  It takes a lot of work to get an animal show ready.  Kids spend months walking their animal and working with it.  Then there is clipping, cleaning, brushing, pampering, etc.  It's a ton of work.  We decided that if our kids want to show, great.  If they don't, that's fine too, but they do need to try it.

Since I am new at showing animals, I didn't want to bring one to the fair this year.  I didn't know what was going on and I wanted to get a feel for it before I was thrown into it.  I registered Cole for the dairy show, but wasn't sure if he'd participate.  His good friend's cousin, C, was going to let us use one of her calves, so I decided he'd try it this year.  All we had to do was show up.  The show was on Thursday.  On Wednesday, I dropped Cole off to work with C and Renae.  He was nervous.  I felt bad leaving him there, but knew he'd be in good hands.  Sure enough, when I went to pick him up, he and his buddy were scooping poop and having a great time.  While I was gone, Cole and C were interviewed for the paper while they were out walking Renae.

On Thursday we showed up for the show, minus the white pants, which apparently is a thing for showing dairy that my husband informed me of 30 minutes prior to show.  Probably a good thing, I would have spent months searching for white pants in a boys 6, had I known.  The show went fine.  There were 5 cloverbuds that participated.

Talking with the judge

They walked the animals in the arena (parents were in control), talked with the judge, lined the animals up, and walked them back out.  All of the calves were very well behaved and the judge was great.  

It was a good experience for Cole, but the best part was the prep work.  As much time as we spent at the fair, and it felt like a lot, not once did I run into a group of kids sitting together texting on their phones.  In fact, I only saw one kid on a cell phone the entire time, and he was talking on it.  Instead, they spent their time talking to each other, playing games, running around the fair, and helping each other with their animals.  These are the kids I want him to look up to.  These are the kids that know the value of hard work, are good leaders, and good role models.  These are the reasons I hope he sticks with showing cattle.

The County Fair, Part 1

We enrolled Cole in 4-H this year.  He was a Cloverbud, which is essentially learning years.  They can take whatever they want to the fair, perfect or not and get a participation ribbon.  Cole brought 3 projects.  He brought some cucumbers, which he was pretty "meh" about.  I made him put together a photo book about our trip up north and actually made him hand write captions for the photos, cuz I'm mean like that.  He did fairly well about talking to the judge with the book, once he got into it.  His favorite project was this:

Farmall 450 tractor hood

He refinished the tractor hood with very little help.  He is very proud of it.  He got a lot of comments about it the day we brought it in too.

He also showed 2 calves.  This is Renae, we borrowed her from a friend so we wouldn't have to keep an animal at the fair all week.

He also brought his calf, Rocket, for the Cloverbud pet show.  He was the only Cloverbud to participate, but he worked hard to get Rocket ready for the fair.  It was good for him to put the work in himself and see what it takes to get an animal ready.

Tate got to bring a couple of projects too and help bring Rocket into the arena.  They had a lot of fun, but it was an incredibly busy week.  If the fair wasn't enough, they also had VBS at church this last week.

My sister mentioned that she thought we weren't going to have Cole show an animal.  Stay tuned for my response!  :)

North Shore Vacation

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Shutterfly photo books are the new way to preserve your memories. Create your own today.

Instead of actually blogging about our vacation, I'll just post our photo book, cuz I'm lazy like that.  Enjoy!

The Last 4.5 Months in Bullets

So I've been busy...

• In early March, I broke my arm doing chores.  I broke the neck of the ball of my humorous, basically right below my shoulder.  I didn't need surgery, but was put in an immobilizer sling.  Essentially, I had fabric wrapped around my waist and my wrist and elbow velcroed to it.  I wore that for about 6 weeks.  I slept on the recliner for 3 weeks.  I do not recommend the experience nor care to repeat it.

• A few days after I broke my arm, my sister and 6 kids (3 of hers and 3 friends) traveled up for spring break.

• It was actually nice to have her help.  The kids played well together and had a blast playing outside in the hay, despite the cold, rainy weather.  They even got the snowmobiles out before they left.  We even managed to go sledding, which was a horrible idea.  Poor Tate came home looking like this:

• Just before Easter, I started a long term sub position.  It was a mostly good experience.  I had some pretty good classes and one horrible class.  So horrible that most other teachers would see my class list and go "oh, well there are a couple of good kids in there."  It was the longest 42 minutes of my day.
• Shelby turned 1 on Good Friday.  She wasn't walking then, but is now.  The only time she is still is when she is sleeping.  She's also a climber.  I caught her one morning trying to scale the refrigerator.  She is constantly busy, but she's happy. 

• The end of April brought my dad's retirement celebration.  The whole family was there.  It was a great day.  My mom had a fabulous day and we saw many friends that we haven't seen in years.

• Tate graduated from the school readiness program.  He will get to do it all over again next year too!  He had a good year.  He made lots of friends and learned a lot.  

• Cole finished up Kindergarten in May.  He had a great year.  He is reading well and did great in all the subjects.  It was fun to see all the writing he's done throughout the year and to see how far he's come. He had a fantastic class and teacher.  I'm sad he has to move on, but I think he'll have a couple of good friends in his class next year too.  

• In June, Cole turned 7!  SEVEN!  Where does the time go!?!  He's been busy working all summer.  He spent about 20 hours picking rock and he's always ready to help Dad or Grandpa do whatever it is that they are doing.  He's trying to get enough money for a $100 bill.  What is he going to spend it on?  He doesn't know, he just wants to be rich :-)

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• The summer has been busy with swimming lessons, t-ball, running club, soccer camp, summer camp,  trips to my parents', trip to my sister's, strawberry harvesting, landscaping, and remodeling.  July is a bit of a break.  We have lots going on, but most of it involves me staying home and that's OK.  Stay tuned, I might update before Christmas :-)

Ear Surgery #1

I have about 30 minutes before the kids get off the bus.  I should probably be folding the gobbs of laundry, but instead I will enlighten you all on ear cysts instead.

Cole had his surgery about 2 1/2 weeks ago.  It went well.  It did not go as they had hoped.  They hoped for one large mass that could easily be scooped out.  What they got was a large mass that had grown into all the nooks and crannies in his ear.  It took a full 4 hours to remove it.

He was a little nervous this time.  Thankfully, we had just gotten an ipad so Bad Piggies was a great way to keep his mind off of it.  He was the second surgery of the morning so he went back around 8:30/8:45 and they came to get us at about 12:45.  The doctor gave us lots of info, but I didn't retain much of it as my thought was "when can I see him?"

The cyst did not erode any of the bones, which was good, but they did have to remove at least one of the ear bones (I believe it was the incus).  They also had to cut around his ear lobe and go in through the bone behind his ear.  That incision is where he had the most pain.  It still looks painful, but as long as you don't jab a clippers into it, he doesn't complain.  Yes, that was a brilliant mommy moment.

He had to wear a cuff for 2 days, then a cotton ball in his ear for a week.  He slept on the couch for a full day before he felt ready to get up and move around.  He was very dizzy when we brought him home.  By Saturday evening he was up and moving and by Sunday he was his normal self.  He went back to school the following Monday.

The first smile after surgery.

He sees the ENT in a couple of weeks and will have to have a second surgery sometime this summer.  The second surgery will be to remove any regrowth and rebuild his ear.  Cole claims he can hear better now, but I'm not sure if that's actually true.  Hopefully when it's all said and done that will be true!

Creating Awareness

Guess what?  It's that time of year again!  Yep, passive breast cancer awareness status month!  Whoo hoo!  Aren't you excited?  I thought we all learned our lesson with the faux pregnancy statuses, but apparently, it's back.  Yes, it's something different this time, but really?  When you fake leaving the country for months, how does that raise awareness again?  I'm just not getting the connection.  So you want breast cancer awareness, let me introduce you to my fraternity mate, Maryn.

Maryn is in her late 20s, married, and has 2 small children.  She is preparing to say goodbye to them any day now.  She fought the good fight.  She never gave up.  She always has positive thoughts, prayers to God, and thankfulness for each day she wakes up.  Her strength and courage amazes me.  This disease may claim her body, but not her spirit.  If you want to create awareness of breast cancer, share her story and the stories of thousands of women whose families are robbed of wife, mother, sister, daughter, niece, cousin, and friend.

The Final Frontier

Cole has been bring home lots of books about space lately.  Unfortunately, most of the books he brings home are horribly outdated.  I don't mean just 9 planets outdated.  These books talk about what the future of space travel might be like in the 1980s.  Yeah, that outdated.  It's kind of funny.  At least they are so old they don't talk about the Challenger.  I don't think I have the heart to tell him some people died trying to go into space.  This week's book was actually fairly recent.  It was all about Mars and mentioned only 8 planets.  This morning he was up before 7 building a Mars Rover with his Legos.

Time Wasters

We bought an iPad this week.  Apparently, I didn't have enough things to waste my time with.  It has been great motivation for the boys.  "If you are late for the bus, no iPad" or "no iPad until your chores and homework are done."  I wonder how long that will last.  We don't have a lot on it, so if you know of any must have apps, let me know!

My other time waster has been Downton Abbey.  Thanks K!  I'm still on season 1.  I don't watch a lot of TV, so it's hard to find the time to watch it, but it is good.  I watched 2 episodes yesterday before the boys came home from school.

I've also started volunteering in Tate's classroom.  I've been going in for about an hour during center time.  It's fun.  Tate loves having me come and I'm sure that won't last forever.

We've also been spending lots of time at the doctor, but thankfully none of the kids are sick.  Shelby had her 9 month check.  She's a little thing.  I think she weighed in at about 15 pounds.  That doesn't stop her.  She's crawling, pulling herself up, and cruising.

Cole has also been busy at the doctor.  He had his pre-op this week, his post-op next week, followed by surgery next Friday.

Pat and I are taking off next week for a few days.  He'll attend exciting meetings about grain elevators and marketing, and I'll go shopping.

Oh, and I applied for a job.  I interview on Thursday.  It's a long term sub job.  I'm not sure that I want it, but I'm not sure that I don't want it either.  Guess we'll see what happens.

Merry Christmas to Me

I got a steam juicer for Christmas.  What I really wanted is this:



but they are really expensive.  You can buy a kit for the wood part pretty easily and cheaply, but it's the grinder and the press that are going to cost you, a lot.

So the steam juicer will work just fine :)

I bought some apples the other day to try apple juice first.  I bought red delicious, but the juice had about as much flavor as the apples, very little. Next time I'd try a better apple, or a combination.  I also tried orange juice.  One word: Gross!  It was like drinking orange peel.  Yesterday I made beef broth.  We get beef short ribs with our beef, but they are always tough and not terribly meaty.  I've tried tons of different ways of cooking them, but always with the same results.  I ended up with 3 cups of beef broth and very tender, juicy, shredded beef.  That was definitely a win.  Up next: pears!

Christmas Recap

Huh, it's January already.

We had a good Christmas.  My parents came out on the 23rd and stayed until Christmas Day.  The boys had their Sunday School Program on Christmas Eve.  Yes, we still do that.  We are a small country church that doesn't like change :).  I'm glad they haven't changed that.  We had 38 kids participate this year.  Four years ago we barely had 20.

Christmas Eve

The kids claimed to have gotten everything they wanted.  I try not to go overboard with the kids.  They have grandparents and aunts, so they get tons of gifts.  This year Cole got a Lego remote control train, extra tracks, books, and pjs.  Tate got a Playmobil knights castle and a couple of smaller sets to go with it, a book, and pjs.  Then, of course, little things in their stockings, wind up toys, splat balls, hexbugs, and candy. Cole also got his very own notebook, stapler, and tape dispenser!  

Pat and I decided to buy a new TV for Christmas/anniversary and not buy anything else.  Then we found this right before Christmas:

We have one snowmobile, but with the boys old enough to ride along, 2 would be nice.  I've wanted a ski-doo since high school, but they aren't easy to find.  I'm not sure if that is because no one is selling them or they don't run anymore, but we finally found one close by.  So I got a new snowmobile for Christmas!  We took the boys for a ride last week.  We met Pat's parents for lunch and by that time, Tate was done.  So on the way home, I got to ride, sans kid.  I flew over a drift, then another and managed to crack and take a chunk out of my windshield.  I'm fine, but mad.  I can't believe I broke my pretty new sled!

On a side note, Cole's next surgery is scheduled for the 25th.  The CT scan showed that his ear bones are in tact, which is wonderful news.