A couple of Ainsley's punchlines

Two funny things Ainsley said this weekend:

We were out to dinner at Red Robin (overstimulating restaurant, lovely because kids can be loud and no one can hear them over the other noise) and they had this advertisement in the middle of the table that was shaped to be like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Andrew explains to the kids what the real Leaning Tower of Pisa is and tells them about when he walked up the stairs inside of the building. He then tells them how engineers are trying to keep it from continuing to lean more because if they don't eventually it's center of gravity will be too far off and it will fall over. Ainsley pipes up with, "The news people will love it when that happens."

My parents were here this weekend and when ever they leave it is TRAUMATIC for the kids. Camden screamed, and screamed, and screamed when they left. As Ainsley and Hudson were telling them goodbye and Camden was freaking out Ainsley says, "This is going to take me years of therapy to get over."

No drama around here.

Mouth Jewelry

As if poor Ainsley didn't have enough trauma to her little mouth lately (tonsillectomy) she got braces this week. She loves how they look, but is not enjoying the way they feel. Fortunately, the attention at school for having braces might make up for the pain.

Kindergarten!

It was a very long week and a half after Ainsley started for Hudson to wait to start Kindergarten. Finally on Tuesday he got to go to his "gradual entry" day and yesterday was his first official day and now we are on the every day schedule. He is in afternoon so waiting all morning is a bit long too, but I like only getting one ready in the morning. (and I'm also going to enjoy the next 8 weeks before I have the baby of the afternoons with both big kids in school and Camden taking a nap!) Here he is before school:

Camden needed to be in a picture too (he is doing "potty school"- happily that has been really easy. Talk about a blessing for me!)

How cute is he?! He had a great day and loved his teacher. A funny coincidence is that both A & H have student teachers in their class, and both of the student teachers at one point had Andrew for a teacher at Barlow! Small world.

Here he is in his classroom:

Here he is coming off the bus THE FIRST DAY! Riding the bus home with Ainsley is the part of school he has been anticipating the most. So cute!

Third Grade

Today we sent Ainsley off to third grade. When I picked her up after school I could tell before she even said a word that she was not happy. As we were walking across the parking lot she said her day was horrible and she would tell me about it in the car. I responded with, "I'm sorry it wasn't great, but I'm glad your done for the day because I missed you." She then said, "Well, you'll never have to miss me again because I'm never going back."

Don't worry, she is going back. Happily Ainsley didn't just learn school work today. We had the opportunity to process the difference between expectations and reality. By the time she went to bed tonight we were to the point that she was willing to go back, had determined that her teacher might actually be nice, and she has flowers ready to take to her in the morning. Who knew you needed the skills of a hostage negotiator to parent?

A watched pot may never boil...

...but watched cookies do bake.

Double the pleasure, double the fun... right?

A resounding no. Two kids getting their tonsils out was more like double the misery, double the pain. It sounded like such a good idea...they both need it done, so just do it at the same time, right?

How did it go? Not. Fun. In fact, notfunnotfunnotfunnotfun.

But now, 8 days later, we are getting close to back to normal. I have had repeated requests for a blog post, similar to when I posted about Hudson's tubes. The thing is, I haven't slept through the night since the night before, I've been playing nurse to two uncomfortable children, and I'm 7 months pregnant. On top of that the tubes were a few hour event, this has been a week plus event, so it is just not going to happen.

The best I can do is tell you that Ainsley is doing well. She wouldn't talk from Saturday to Wednesday, (that was a strange event) and still complains that her throat hurts. But for the most part she is fine. Hudson is not so okay still. His adenoids evidently caused some damage when they came out so his little sinus system is a swollen mess which has led to labored breathing, hurting ears, and a sinus headache that makes his sore throat the least of his concerns. The biggest of my concerns is that he is having a really hard time sleeping, and so I am too.

And while I am not up to a blow by blow account of the ordeal, I will answer the other question I keep getting, "Why did they both need them out?" Evidently our genetic make-up has created children with insanely ginormous tonsils and adenoids. All three of our kids (well- the three that we can hear sleeping currently- good chance little yet-to-be named in-utero baby is currently growing giant worthless parts as well) snore. I was told by our primary care doctor, "snoring isn't something that we treat, especially with a surgery like a tonsillectomy." Our kids have been for the most part pretty healthy, and have never had strept throat or any bad throat issues. But after Hudson started for the first time getting all the ear infections last fall I started noticing even louder snoring and that his voice really started taking on a nasal quality. So me and my medical degree decided that since Andrew and I had both had ours taken out, mine because they were so big, I needed to investigate if our kids needed theirs out. In fact, my actual words were, "I'm going to just start taking them to ENT's until someone can solve this problem."

Well, the first (very nice) doctor we went to I sat down across from with Hudson and explained that I thought he had big tonsils, he snored, and I thought he needed his tonsils out. Before looking at Hudson the doctor started into a very rehearsed speech about how they just don't do tonsillectomies very often any more, and really never unless there is lots of documented evidence of multiple infections. But he would take a look. Hudson opened his mouth and although I have the ability to exaggerate, I'm not here, the doctor says loudly, "WOW! These are real whoppers!" I'm pretty sure whoppers is a medical term. Anyway- he goes on to determine that his sinus and ears are a mess because his adenoids also are huge and the doctor says he is actually worried that his tonsils even pose a choking hazard for him. He immediately explains that he thinks that there is no doubt that he really needs to have them removed. Score one for my medical degree. I then go on to explain that my daughter and other son are in a similar situation, and this man who started out saying basically there was no way he was taking out tonsils, actually set up Ainsley to have hers out at the same time, even though he hadn't seen her yet. He agreed to see her and confirm that she needed them removed, but said he wouldn't even look at Camden because he wouldn't ever do the surgery on a child under 3. (at that crazy time I thought doing all three at the time would be a good idea- haha!)

Anyway- I brought in Ainsley and there was no question she needed hers out as well. I took Camden with me to this appointment, even though he had said there was no chance with him. I asked him to just check his to see when and if he wanted me to bring him back. Again, not exaggerating, the doctor looks in Camden's mouth and says, "these are the biggest tonsils I have ever seen on a two-year-old in my entire career. He actually said he would take them out at the same time as the other kids, but there wasn't time in the hospital schedule to take all three of them (thank you Lord for sparing me that nightmare). So whenever it is convenient for us we will have Camden's out.

I'm considering waiting until after he gets married so his wife can take care of him. Let's just say that I made the right decision in not choosing nursing as a career. I don't have the patience.

There you go, I planned on a two or three sentence "not fun, but were okay" post and ended up with this little disertation. Overall we are very blessed to have this over with and no big complications. Thanks for asking... (oh you didn't, sorry!)

Our kids: the little High School Students

Every family has a different culture based on what the family is involved in right? Our kids have lots of experience hanging out with High School kids. Going to "Daddy's School" is always one of their favorite things to do. Most kids are probably pretty overwhelmed with the big, crowded halls that await them as freshman. Because of our families "culture" I'm guessing this is not going to be all that strange to our kids.

These were a couple of pictures of our kids with "big kids" that I thought were fun.

This one is at the tennis party- Hudson looks so happy to be included with all the boys in the hot tub.

Ainsley was happy to get to be in the middle of the pool game they were playing.

This picture is from a BBQ we had at our house to say goodbye to some of the kids from Andrew's Bible Study group that are leaving for college. Our kids end up attached to these kids because every Tuesday morning a sleepy, but committed group of kids show up at our house for breakfast and Bible Study. It is a toss up for our kids what they like better, the attention they get from the High School kids, or the fact that some of these mornings I serve sugar cereal for breakfast. Both are big treats!

We feel really blessed that our kids have the opportunity to be surrounded by such great examples, and it makes for a good supply of babysitters!

It would be best if I just posted that I was taking the summer off!

Yes, I has been what, 6 weeks? Sorry little blog. The sun has been out. I do have tons and tons of pictures and adventures to share, but it seems silly now. However, I will make an effort to do a few posts with a random assortment of pictures and adventures so at least the summer of 2009 (I accidentally just typed 2007- wow, I have issues) will not be completely missing from this little history of our family. So here we go:


One big part of our summer was a trip to Wallowa Lake with my family. Tennille and Nathan came from Minnesota (they are so great to spend a month of their summer with us every year) and we all met there. The kids got a "camping" experience (the big kids stayed in my parents trailer with them, Camden stayed with us it a great cabin that my parents rented for us and Tennille and Nathan.)

While there we took a gondola up the mountain, like WAY up. The kids loved it. At the top the chipmunks were VERY friendly, and would eat right out of the kids hands. Of course Camden would eat one, then feed one, eat one... you get the idea. Good news is despite my concern no one came down with any weird illnesses.





We had the full experience of the Wallows by taking the kids to the Chief Joseph Days rodeo. The kids were amazed at the trained buffalo show, and couldn't believe that people would be able to stay on bucking animals like that. The two best moments were during the calf roping when every time a calf would get roped Camden would be very concerned and yell, "HE'S STUCK!!!" over and over. My mom was holding him and it was hilarious. That was followed by the Mutton Busters, the little girls that try and ride sheep. Ainsley was amazed because all the contestants were younger than her. We ask her if she would try and it was a definite no, that is until the end when she heard the prize. The 7 year old girl who won got $75. That prompted Ainsley to say, "well, maybe I would actually try riding a sheep." That's my girl. Anything to make a dollar.


And yes, this last picture is a car in the lake. And no, it is not photo shopped in. My parents friends have a car that actually drives on land, and then right down into the water. The looks we got from people as you just drive down the boat ramp and right into the water were priceless. This was a ride the kids won't soon forget.


My favorite story from the week at the lake sadly doesn't have a picture to go with it. We had just been down at the campground and Hudson and Zech (our nephew, same age as Hudson) were playing some game of jail. Nathan leaned over to Andrew at one point and said, "when do you think it will be that the two of them will really get in trouble together?" Well, not 30 minutes later Nathan was up at the cabin with the little kids sleeping, and Hudson and Zech were playing outside the cabin together. Have I mentioned how tame the deer are at Wallowa Lake? They will let you touch them (unless you have a mother that is worried about diseases, see above chipmunk story). So Nathan is inside and he hears the boys coming in the back door with a very suspicious laugh, he gets up and goes into the kitchen just in time to see the boys with pretzel sticks in their hands luring a deer into the kitchen. I'm not sure what their plan was once they got the deer inside, but they were having a great time. Nathan shooed the deer back outside and instructed the kids deer were not allowed inside the cabin. Only minutes later Nathan's peaceful afternoon was interrupted again by the sound of someone yelling pretty loud, an adult. He looked out the window to see a guy stopped along the road yelling at the boys. Nathan raced outside to find out that the boys had filled empty bubble containers with rocks and they were shaking these little noise makers they had created at the deer and were chasing the frightened deer, very quickly down the hill and out into the road (the kids weren't going out into the road, but the deer did) so this poor guy almost hit the deer that were frantically running from our little darlings. Good news, the deer didn't make it in the cabin far enough or long enough to do any damage, and no ones car was totaled by our kids chasing deer in the road. So, we escaped the kids getting in "really big trouble" that day.

A rose by any other name...

Ainsley and Hudson are both going to VBS this week at Abundant Life. They have loved it (although there is an Ainsley story from the 1st and 2nd nights that when I have time I will write down for my other blog). I confirmed tonight another example of something that Hudson and I have in common. This year at preschool it took him a really long time to learn the other boys names, and aside from 1 or 2 he never knew any of the girls names. Like me, Hudson just has a hard time remembering peoples names. I was suspicious last night, and confirmed tonight, that he is just calling any boy he plays with "Jackson" or "Connor." We originally thought Jackson from church was going to go to this VBS and Conner was his best friend at pre-school. So rather than learning the kids actual names, he is just calling them the two names that come to mind easily. I guess that works when you are 5. I think I'm just going to pick a name to start calling people who I can't remember. Will that be a social problem?

Catch-Up

I know, I know... everyone is busy. But I promise, we have been really busy, which is my excuse for why I haven't blogged anything despite 35, or maybe 350, possible blogging entries. So for the two of you who may still check my blog despite the lack of entries, here is why there has been nothing new for quite some time:

• We sold fireworks. Some people go on vacation with their friends. We run a business with ours. There is no family better to hang out with in a parking lot for hours at a time, stress out over fire marshall visits, worry about slumping sales, be happy that we are not selling in Vancouver this year, and generally be hot and dirty with than the Strandbergs. Any money we have made or will ever make is not going to be enough to balence out the fact that our children are now OBSESSED with fireworks and for the rest of their lives will spend way to much money on them. The highlight of the year for us really was that Ainsley spending hours there with us, by choice. She actually got quite good at running the adding machine, counting back change, and memorized tons of prices. Overall, even if we made no money, she improved her math skills by at least 1/2 a grade in 10 days and loved every minute of it. While I'm happy for people to buy fireworks from me if they are going to buy them anyway- I have to admit (and please forget I said this by next summer if you buy fireworks from me) I just don't get it- go light some dollar bills on fire. (and this is where Eric tells me to stop saying that.)
  
• For Ainsley's 8th birthday, Andrew's parents gave her a trip to Seattle on the train with them by herself. (awkward sentence, sorry-not going to fix it). She took that trip in June and had a spectacular time. Hopefully soon I will upload pictures of her trip, she had an amazing time and so did Jim and Arlene. They said that it was so fun to see something through the eyes of an 8-year-old. I need to remember that!
• We have been keeping the medical community in business. We finished fireworks on Sunday, then Monday morning we took all three kids to the doctor for shots (good mom points that I'm not waiting until the week before school to get them caught up! Some post in the past that I'm not going to spend the time linking to records a time when everyone was way behind. We were behind this time also... but at least I got it done!) Of course with our kids there is a story to go with the shot adventure. Hudson and Camden always "shoot" each other and everyone else by yelling "fire!"with play guns, or you know ANYTHING because anything can become a gun if you are a boy. For Camden this has evolved into yelling "fire!" when he is yelling and really mad at something or someone. "Fire" has become the worst word he knows. This has continually evolved into yelling "Your Fired!" at me or anyone else when he is mad. My response is often, "great, I don't like this job right now anyway." He is not a little Donald Trump wanna-be, he doesn't know it has anything to do with an actual job. However, our poor nurse doesn't know this, because of course as she was giving him the shot, you guessed it, he yelled, "YOU'R FIRED!"
• We moved right along from the shots to at 1:30 taking Andrew to have back surgery. He has struggled for 5 months with a back problem that is a re-occurrence of back problems from last year. After trying physical therapy, steroid shots, and rest, nothing has fixed it. So the next step was surgery. It was a 3 hour surgery and when the doctor came out he said that he would have never gotten better. A bump, like a knuckle, had developed on his disk. There was a nerve that was fusing itself right on that bump and that was causing the pain in his back, hip, and down his leg. They chizzled off (ewee-yuck!) the bump and cleaned out the disk. He should fully recover. You never know how God is going to answer prayer because we have been praying the other treatments would have fixed the problem, or make it tolerable so he could avoid surgery. However, if one of them would have worked it would have masked the pain and without fixing it there would have been long term nerve damage. So we feel so blessed he has had the surgery and is now on the other side. He is recovering well, although month 6, 7, and 8 of your pregnancy is not exactly when you would choose to have your husband not able to lift anything over 15 pounds (of course ruling out all of our children and all of the bags that we will be taking when we travel different places this summer) but we will make it!

Okay- I'm tired of writing- and if you have read this your tired of reading and really should get busy doing whatever it is your avoiding right now. Hopefully at some point soon I'll get pictures off my camera and do a better post. Until then this will have to do.