Earthquake

By now, everyone has heard of the earthquake in China. Words cannot express how saddened we are by the devastation.

Here are a few resources we've found that may be of interest:

NPR news blog:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/chengdu/

Map of Orphanages affected (Elise's orphanage is located to the southeast of the area, outside of the areas affected):

Half the Sky:

http://www.halfthesky.org/

We also heard from a friend of ours who returned to China on Sunday. He is from Sichuan. His family is safe but he mentions that many people are now homeless and/or have lost loved ones. Such a terrible tradegy.

Happy Birthday Princess Elise!

My baby turns 6 years old today! Happy birthday sweatheart!


She celebrated last weekend with my family. She opened presents from us this morning, along with the presents that had arrived in the mail. She's bringing treats in to share with her class friends today. And her friend birthday party is next week so she's really streeetttcccching out the celebration! :)

Her favorite gift so far? Daddy got her a gift certificate to have her nails done again! :)

We love you, Elise, and are so blessed to be your parents!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms and future moms out there. Perry and I are both blessed to have wonderful moms so Happy Mother's Day to both of our moms.

Mother's Day used to be a very difficult day for me back before we had kids (but wanted kids). So, those of you on that long road to motherhood, celebrate your strength in enduring the long journey.

So how are we celebrating? We've all been feel under the weather for about 2 weeks and the weather is just nasty today, so we're skipping church and spending some much needed family time inside. We'll head over to my Mom's to for a Mother's Day/April/May birthday combo celebration (it hasn't quite dawned on Elise that SHE will be receiving gifts today).

My wonderful hubby got me this romantic gift! Before you rag on him, this is what I asked him to get for me :) We have a BIG yard with 6 acres of woods behind us and a 5 acre horse pasture in front of us so bugs can be an annoying problem. I love my new bug zapper, honey! Maybe we'll enjoy a few more romantic evenings outside without me slapping myself silly to get the bugs away.

Girly Girl

Let me start this post by saying that Elise told me that I could post the pictures on the blog. The kids specify nowadays when I take a picture if it's a picture allowed on the blog or not. Gotta love these days of technology. :)

Elise's 6th birthday is this week. She's ALL GIRL. A total girly-girl. Which just amazes me since I'm so NOT a girly-girl.

I took her to have her nails done today.

Now I have to stop and confess something here. I've had a few manicures and pedicures over the years. I've always had them done at spa-like places (some as gifts, some as my treat to myself). I enjoy them, don't get me wrong. But they've always cost $50+ for one or the other. Just not something I'm willing to do very often (come on, they are toes!)

My secretary enlightened me this week. There are nail places (not spas) that do only nails for very reasonable costs! Who knew?!? I feel like I'm just crawling out from under the rocsk! One such place is right next to my favorite grocery store (duh!).

So, I decided to venture into this world and took Elise today to have her nails done. My friend Sandra had taken her daughter recently and that got me thinking that Elise might like the experience.

SHE LOVED IT!



Another little girl came in right after us, so this must be a regular market. Elise picked out the colors and the lady just did the flowers (which Elise loves).

Why do I think we'll be stopping at this joint more often?!?

And my girly-girl has purdy nails for her birthday this week (certainly prettier than I could have done at home!)

Screeeeecchhh...change of plans!

Elise is the kind of kid who starts planning her May birthday party in January of every year. She decides the theme, activities, guests, food, the works. This year, she had been planning an Arts and Crafts party...which is just perfect for her right now. She loves nothing more than to do arts and crafts for hours on end.

Every year, I try and convince the kids to have their birthday parties somewhere OTHER than at the house. There are host of venues around here that host wonderful parties! Nope, they've always wanted their parties at home. And me, feeling like I have to create these wonderful memories of childhood, break my back putting on these creative and engaging parties for the kids. And every year, I have some other mother telling how insane I am to do it at my hosue right as she's dropping off her sweetiepie and making a run for it before feeling compelled to stay and help. :)

We've done a Princess Tea Party, butterflies and fairies, Dora (those would be Elise's parties) and Thomas the Train, Pirates, Star Wars, Boot Camp (those would be some of Carson's parties). Quite frankly, I'm partied out. No fresh ideas. No excess energy to spend entertaining a dozen children in addition to my own.

Carson's last party was, quite frankly, my best yet. We hired guy from a local reptile store come and show the boys reptiles for 1.5 hours. They got to hold gigantic snakes, feel lizards, see scorpians, the works. I fed 'em cake and sent them on their way. It was beautiful!

So, I just haven't gotten into the groove for Elise's party. Just couldn't get excited about YET ANOTHER party at the house. I'd even made some inquiries around the university to see if I could hire someone artsy to come and do it for me (don't mock me, I hired a drill sargent for the Boot Camp party and it was $$ well spent!)

Well, the planets must have aligned just for me. Elise went to a gymnastics party at our local Y a few weeks ago and walked out saying, "Mommy, can I have my party here instead?!?"

I was in shock and quickly went to the info desk to book her party! Hurrah!

The only creative juices I have to squeeze out for this shindig are the invites. (Can't quite give up doing ANYTHING!) And since Elise loves, loves, loves her crafts, I figured this was the perfect activity for us to do together.

Now, the only thing I have to do is fill loot bags and show up. How wonderful is that?!?

Road trip and strep

We headed up to Chicago for a quick weekend trip. Most of Perry's family lives there and my brother and family live in the 'burbs.


The was the only touristy picture we got in (Carson with his Aunt Renee and Aunt Evelyn). As you can tell, the weather was pretty crappy. I was expecting a nice warm weekend and grabbed sweatshirts for everyone at the last minute (neurotic, I thought!) We ended up wearing our sweatshirts all weekend. Perry's sister, Renee, was in town from Seattle and it was nice to catch up with her.



Here we are "talking" to Jennifer via Skype. Jen is doing a semester abroad in Germany. Elise thought it was pretty funny to see and hear Jen talk over the computer! (And I have to admit, that technology is amazing...they get to talk with Jen daily!)

We also got in a quick visit with my brother and sister-in-law. They just bought a house in Batavia (the 'burbs) that is beautiful! We brought up some more gently used toys, including this wagon.

Go faster, Carson!

Tee hee...I always want to giggle when I think of my brother as a father. He'll forever be a goofy 13 year old in my mind (even though he is QUICKLY going to have more grey hair than I do!)!

Oh, the strep part....I woke up in the hotel on Sunday morning feeling like I'd been run over by a truck. There is nothing worse than waking up sick and NOT being in your own house. :( I bailed on the family activities for that morning. Not sure how it went...when I asked Perry, his comment was "Fine, when the kids weren't acting up." When I asked the kids, "Fine, when Dad wasn't being mean." Hmmm...maybe it was better I stayed in bed.

I tried the Walgreens clinic this time. I went yesterday when we got back in town (had I been thinking clearly, I would have tried going to one in Chicago to get some drugs in my system earlier!) They had already closed last night so I hit them at 8:00 this morning. By 8:30, I had tested positive for step and collected my z-pack. All before my regular doctor's office even opened at 9:00! Sweet. The kids keep wanting to look at my throat...it's like a train wreck...nasty but you just can't keep from staring.

So...for all those folks we saw this weekend, if your throat starts to tickle, you might want to make a beeline to your doctor. So sorry!!!!

Thank you

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and kind words. Losing Sneakers really hit us hard. I can now look at her picture without crying. We knew her days were becoming more numbered, but I never expected it to happen so quickly and I wasn't prepared for how hard it would hit us all, especially the kids. I am grateful that Carson and I ended up coming home early that day so she wasn't alone at the end. We buried her in a corner in the backyard and had a little funeral for her, which seemed to help the kids. She really was the perfect dog, always gentle, always excited to see folks, very social and loving. She will be missed daily. Poor Molly (our other dog) is all out of sorts not knowing what to do without Sneakers.

Carson has always wanted to be a vet and I wasn't sure if the experience might sway him in a new direction. He was very interested in the process and watched the vet carefully. I asked him today about his feelings about becoming a vet and he's still pretty determined. I was so glad the experience hadn't dulled that interest.

In other family news...Carson has poison ivy. He went mushroom hunting (I know, we sound like total hicks but it's really big down here and he'd never gone before!) with a friend and apparently encountered some poison ivy. It's all over his face, which looks just horrible.

He also did what all boys will do in the woods...pee.

Yeah, he's got the poison ivy there as well.

Bummer for him.