Freezer Full

I have to share with you my newest accomplishment, because it is so not like me!

I love going to those "prepare and freeze" dinner places. However, the cost is somewhat high (although at times it is completely worth it!) and sometimes hard to deal with food allergies. So I decided to try it myself.

Saving dinner (click on "freezer meals" ) has a new menu mailer called .... dum de dum...."Mega Menu Mailer". Lame-o brain-o name, but but is great little cook books that you can download. All the shopping lists are made out and instructions are laid out for you so it makes it oh so easy. Last week I bought and prepared 18 main dishes and stuck them in the freezer. They are ready to defrost and throw in the oven. It has made meal time so much easier and faster. I highly recommend this. Also if you haven't picked up her cook book, Saving Dinner, I really like that as well. Great recipes and the shopping lists and menu planning are already done. No casseroles here, lots of fresh meats and veggies. Makes it very easy for us to accomodate to no dairy.

Good News/Bad News

Oops! In my earlier post I said there was several rounds (plural) of good news, but I only mentioned one. Seems as we have lots of health related news around here:

Good News: We took Micah to a pediatric opthamologist (eye md) because he would squint one eye when doing close-up work. Turns out we caught this very early and it hasn't progressed to amblyopia (lazy eye ) quite yet. He has estropia which is where the eyes muscles don't work together, so one eye turns inward. At first the doctor said he might need surgery, but after dialating his eyes, he said his problem could be corrected with glasses alone. We are off to Costco to get Micah glasses tonight. Bifocals, no less!

Bad News: After another round of blood tests for food allergies, the doctor doesn't think he will outgrow his food allergy. His numbers are unchanged after 2 years. 85% of children outgrow milk allergies, but 15% do not. I guess he is that 15%. This was kind of depressing for me to think about. BUT if this is the worst health issue I have to deal with for him, then I am very thankful!!!

Help on Vanishing Point

Those of you who are trying to play the vanishing point game; here is a site with help on the puzzles. If you want to check out, you only have until Saturday!

www.vanishingpointwiki.com

Have fun!

Good News

We have several rounds of good news around here.

I don't need shoulder surgery; at least it is not immediate! I injured my shoulder when I was 8 months prego with Joel by falling down the stairs and catching myself with an outstretched hand. I did that so I wouldn't fall on my belly. Baby was fine, but I dislocated my shoulder. It popped back in on its own. However, if I moved my arm in a certain way it would dislocate again. But with newborn baby and my mom's health, my shoulder was quite low on the list. In November Aaron convinced me to see a doctor after it popped out again.

After an MRI, turns out I tore the cartilege that keeps your shoulder in the socket. Doctor thinks that physical therapy to build up the muscles should work very well for me. (I have loose joints, apparently.)

Interesting blog I found

I found this blog after clicking through different links on some posts. Here is the original post I read.

This is the blog I found. It is a blog of a homeless man in Nashville. He writes it at the library, lest you think he has a computer. I think it is very interesting to see the story of a homeless person and read their perspective.

pictures!

Daphne and Dave with us in Vegas

Playing in the Snow

Micah and Dadddy sledding down the cul de sac. See that mass of snow/tree branches in the background? Yes, that still was the tree that fell down (before Christmas). They finally cleaned that up last week.

I highly recommend visiting the Ross on the strip. I found these brown cords for... can you see it? $2.99. The original price tag says $54.00. It is across the street from Circus Circus.

Vegas, Baby!

So I'm sure by now that I've lost all my readers (there are sooo many!). Here is a recap of where we've been.

Aaron's mom was nice enough to stay an extra week to watch the kiddos so that I could join Aaron at CES in Las Vegas. I was able to go Friday-Tuesday (after Tuesday). It was so nice to be able to relax and not do dishes or clean up after anyone except myself. We were able to stay at the Venetian which was a VERY nice hotel! All the rooms are suites, and the size of the room rivals the size of our first apartment.

We went to two shows: Tony and Tina's Wedding and The Beatles' Love. At Tony and Tina's wedding it was like you were really at a wedding complete with scantily clad stepmother and drunk priest. It was a improv show, so the characters interacted with us as if we were the guests at the wedding. It was alot of fun. The Beatles show was a Cirque du Soleil show. It had some great imagery to accompany the digitally remastered songs.

Aaron was very busy working, but it was nice for me to meet the people that he works with and to see first hand the project he has been working on for so long. He has been working on a viral marketing campaign for Windows Vista which launches the end of this month. It is an online puzzle game you can see at www.vanishingpointgame.com. It has some Myst-like puzzles. The grand prize is a trip to space! The kick-off to the game was during CES at the Bellagio fountain show. They "took over" the fountain show and used it to display clues to the puzzles. In fact every week since then there have been real-world events that have clues to the puzzles you solve online. Here is a link to the fountain show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4DYmsqq8ug It cuts out the beginning of the fountain show which looks like the normal show set to the song "This Kiss". If you go here you can see the rest of the events that have happened this month. Click on one of the puzzle boxes, then click on the button that says "puzzle box (1, 2, 3, 4) unlocked". There is one event left, next week which is the finale in Seattle.

It is so great to see what Aaron has been working on for the past year come to fruition. Its been getting some press. Yesterday Aaron went to the fox studio for an interview for the Sunday talk show. [Aaron's boss did the interview] The company that is providing the trip to space is called Rocketplane. Aaron researched and found this company which is acutually out of Oklahoma City. It is so awesome to see Aaron's hard work be shown and appreciated which doesn't happen very often.

While we were in Vegas, I unexpectantly was able to see Daphne and Dave! So fun to see them!So nice to see old friends. There is nothing better than being able to pick with old friends just like you had seen them yesterday!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Grandma should get "Grandma of the year award". Joel was coming off an ear infection and Micah came down with one while we were gone. Aching ear and dramatic 4 year old does not bode well even when mom is home. I guess he cried at the top of his lungs for 3 hours "I want my mama!". She said they got their prescription filled VERY fast!

The DAY after Grandma leaves,would you know it, I come down with THE WORST case of food poisoning. It was my own fault,which makes it worse, I ate something I knew I shouldn't . NOT FUN! Then a snow storm hits keeping us at home for the most part since Aaron took the 4WD to work. We have just been slammed with bad weather this year! The snow stuck around for more than a week. Our streets had a few inches of ice on them. It was fun at first, but cabin fever definitely set in.

So, here we are. My month in a nutshell.

Christmas Cards

Now that Christmas is over, what do you do with all your cards and pictures that you received in the mail?

I think I might try what a friend in California does with her cards. Each week (I'm not sure how often), the kids pick out a card and they pray for that family. Maybe write that family a short note letting them know that they were prayed for that week. I thought it was a good idea to use all those pretty cards that you receive and a good way to remember to pray for your friends and family!

What do you do with your cards?

Where We've Been

Merry Christmas!!

I wanted to share with you some pictures from the Big Storm.

This is a view of the trees that fell across the street from our house. They fell in EXACTLY the right spot! The trees are probably 80 feet tall. They fell right in the street and stopped at our mailboxes. As you can see from the picture they fell with the barrel right in between.

This is a picture of a tree that fell on our power line and snapped the power pole in half. Close to this 2 trees fell on a house. (In the background). The trees stayed just like this for 5 days! There were so many trees down and powerlines that the utility couldn't get to all of them. They were too busy rebuilding the power grid from scratch. Down the street from us 2 house got hit with trees. In our immediate neighborhood, 4 houses were hit!

This is a picture from our landing. Down the stairs is the woodstove. Up the stairs are our bedrooms. We blocked off the rest of the house with the sheet to direct the heat upstairs. We had another blanket that hung from where I took the picture. That trick worked pretty well. The family room/kitchen was a toasty 46 degrees, but our bedroom got up to 54 or 55.

This is our make-shift refrigerator. We kept things in a cooler outside where it was around 37-41.

This is a picture of our house. As you can see the tree stopped right at the edge of our driveway. We know that God was certainly protecting our house. During the night of the storm, 100 foot trees looked like spaghetti! It was very scary. We have 2 huge cedar trees right by the boys bedrooms that did not even lose any big limbs.

Here is a picture of the trees from our driveway, just so you can see how long they are. This pict doesn't even get the whole tree in it!

Micah was very nervous when the power was out. He does not adjust easily to change and this was a big change! He was very excited when the power came back on! I became so accustomed to flashlights that when the power did come back on, when I walked into a dark room I would reach for a flashlight instead of flipping the light switch! I'm so glad that much of our house runs on gas! We have a gas hot water heater, so we had hot water. We have a gas stove so we could cook on the cook top by lighting it with a match. We have a gas furnace, but it needs electricity to get started and to blow the hot air around.

We spent Friday night at my Dad's house but unfortunatly Joel did not sleep well in the pack n play. (He would not go to sleep until midnight then woke at 6 am!) We were nice and warm, but Joel loves his own bed. So we came back home for church obligations on Sat and decided just to stay at our house Sat night. Sunday, our church remained opened all afternoon and night for people to spend the night. We stayed there for the afternoon and evening then went home to sleep. Monday we were able to borrow a generator to run space heaters and Tuesday Aaron wired the furnace to the generator. I cannot tell you how excited I was to hear a furnace blowing. Words do not describe.

It really was not too bad at night b/c you could get warm under the blankets. I filled water bottles with hot water and put them in the kids beds. I used hand warmers and put them in Joel's sleep sack. Joel slept great! Micah would sleep with us to keep warm. Thank goodness for a king size bed!

Having the power out has made me think and reflect on the conveniences we have become accustomed to. Its a whole new world when you wake up and your first thought is "Ohhh, I need to go chop wood and start the fire." We have it so easy! I am so grateful for all the inventions that make our life so much easier. All of our "servants" as a friend once called them: the dishwasher, the fridge, the washer, the dryer, the furnace." It also made me think about those who are homeless and must deal with the cold every single night. We had to make due for 5 days and we thought that was bad!

Needless to say, some Christmas events got the axe, so to speak. No Christmas cards, no gingerbread for the neighbors. I'm thinking of sending out New Year's cards, so maybe you'll get a card from us yet. Maybe I'll start a new tradition and send out Valentines cards instead.

WE HAVE POWER!!!

Hooray! Micah and I did the happy dance as we finally got the power back at 8:30 pm today. He had to turn on every light switch just to make sure. He was so excited that he had trouble going to sleep. =)

I feel as though a week of my life was taken.

So this makes a total of 5 days without power. We're buying a generator for next time.

update

So....no power yet. At the very earliest maybe Tuesday. But they think it won't be until Tuesday until they have an estimate as to when the power will be up! The main grid line to our area is down, the transformer is blown and the neighborhood lines are all down. We're heading down to my Dad's house.

Oh yeah, isn't Christmas coming soon??

Blown Away

Just wanted to let you know that we are still alive and kicking up here. We migrated down to my Dad's house in Puyallup because he has power and more importantly, heat.

In case you haven't heard, there are about 1 million people without power here. 80% of our city has no power. We had a major wind store with gusts up to 100 mph. About 12:15 last night we were woken by the carbon monoxide detector. Since it is hard wired b/c of power surges it was going off. Fortunately the kids didn't wake up and Aaron disconnected it. About 30 min later we heard a huge crack and a loud boom. Our entire house shook. It was very scary. Since we were already up... Aaron ventured outside to see what happened. Two trees about 75 feet tall across the street fell towards our house. That's when we decided to move down to the basement. I looked outside and 100 foot trees looked like spaghetti. Very scary. =( Then we saw a bright orange glow over the city. Then a power surge, loud boom, no power. Lights flickered that were turned off. Crazy!

There were about 4-5 trees that fell on houses just within 1/2 mile of our house! Countless trees are blocking streets --still--there are so many that the city could not get to them today. Downed power lines everywhere!

I took lots of picts that I will post when the power comes up... which could be 5-7 days!! I think we might have power tomorrow,though. I hope.

Snacks, anyone?

I was just thinking about food habits. When you travel somewhere to visit friends or family, what are the foods that you MUST have? For example, we must have crackers and fruit. We snack on them continuously. We would probably make a special trip the store to buy them if we had to. Another example: when certain family comes to visit I always get: 1) natural peanut butter 2) real maple syrup 3) ritz crackers 4)real butter 5) diet rite 6) hot chocolate. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those items, we just don't normally have them around. Just thought it interesting to see what other's snacks are. When some friends came to visit I felt so bad because we didn't have their snacks they like to eat. They really really like dairy products and we have close to none in the house. Is it reasonable to assume that one would have cheese in the fridge as a staple?? Now, if you don't have coffee in the house, I'd just assume you were insane. ;) (ahem.. Susan.. cough, cough)

So what are your "cannot live without foods?" If you are staying at someone's house, what would you go to the store to get?

Non Sequitor

I love non-sequitors from 4 year olds. They know just enough language to be dangerous. They can also explain what they really meant, so you know, yes, truly what they said makes absolutely no sense. Rather than just thinking they make no sense like you do with 2 year olds.

"Mom, I'm nervous."
With concerned mommy voice: "Why are you nervous honey?"
"I'm nervous because you took away my cars. That makes me nervous."
"Ohhhh, you mean you are sad."
"Yes, I am sad, I want my cars back."

Whatever!

Or this is my favorite:
"Micah, do you want the red or blue one?"
"Well, usually when I'm at home, well actually one time I put it in there and then usually in the car and...."

Happy Birthday!!!

Micah turned 4 today! Can you believe it? Yikes, I still think of him as "my baby". I guess he'll always be my baby.

Today we had all his friends over for a cowboy party. I will post some pictures tomorrow when I have more energy. Right now I am exhausted.

Monday Morning

Well its Monday, so time for a little football smack.

This one is for Karen:
The Hawks beat the Broncos! (thanks to our kicker...)

Oklahoma beat Nebraska to win the Big 12. As Aaron said if Oregon hadn't stolen won the game, then Oklahoma would be playing for the National Championship.

USC lost, always a good thing.

And finally, the Cowboys won too. (again, thanks to the kicker...)

So all is right in football land at our house.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging...

Repentance

I feel as though I must repent. I have said that transitioning from 1-2 was easier than 0-1. Now, it was definitely an easier transition in the beginning, but now that I have a 4 year old (in 1 week!) and 14 month old, why did I think ever having 1 child was hard???? Joel is also in the fun stage throwing things off the high chair. Don't want it? Down it goes. I wish we had a dog.

Whoever invented the saying "Terrible Two's" , obviously did not have an older child who was 3. For me its defintely been "terrible 3 1/2's" The 2's were a breeze. Well, on the bright side his birthday is coming up and I have noticed major milestones achieved after his birthdays.

I read in a magazine once that one child was an accessory. Two children makes it a lifestyle. Soooooo true! If I only have 1 I feel as though I have none! If I had 3 children and had to take them out in public, I think I would lose my mind!! (Not to mention that we'd probably have 3 boys !)

Enough gripes for today. Oh, wait 2 more things: did I mentiong teething and absent spouse were also fuel for this angst?

Rodent Attack

Can someone please tell me the connection between kids books, Christmas and mice? We checked out 5 Christmas books from the library and 3 of them have mice in them. Seriously, what is the deal with Christmas and mice?

They make is sound so cute... "Mortimer scurried around the Christmas tree picking up sweet morsels of cookies and candies". ( paraphrase) While reading this, I'm picturing a real mouse around my Christmas tree and I think I would be screaming not pondering Christmas joy.

Christmas Music

Since today is December 1st, I thought I would let you know about www.christmasstream.com where you can listen to Christmas music all day, all the time via the internet. Best part is there are very little commercials!

Christmas is coming!

So, I realize that the last picture was kind of lame. I thought you'd be able to see the snow coming down, but it didn't turn out too well. After it did come down I took some more photos.

Watch out, Dad! There was just enough snow to scrape together to make snowballs.

Joel wasn't too sure about this cold white stuff.
Although there wasn't much snow at our house, it was very cold! The high on Tuesday was 28 on our thermometer.

We got the Christmas decorations. It was so adorable to watch Micah play with the Little People Nativity Set.

Here is a close-up. He had the donkey carrying Mary who was carrying Baby Jesus.

We also made cookies this week!

Look what happens when I'm on the phone for just a minute!