A couple more days

I had another good weekend. Everything seems to be improving little by little, except for some areas of numbness on different areas of my body. Along with my healing, I'm praying for restored feeling. I also find myself becoming tired more often...needing to nap during the day.

It was a COLD weekend here. We're talking below zero temps, and negative 20 with the windchill. One of my neighbors shoveled my driveway...I said he was an angel, but another neighbor was more precise when calling him Sainted!

I'm happy to say that I have no appointments until Friday of this week. I have some relatives coming into town so food shopping is on my "to do" list.....along with all my other last-minute Christmas things I need to do.



My littlest "MONSTER" wearing black fangs and some kid legwarmers that another breast cancer survivor sent me.

30 minute conversation = double the clean-up time

I should have known that sitting on our screened-in porch, watching a torrential downpour while sipping some wine and having a nice conversation with my husband, uninterrupted, while the kids played in the basement, would not occur without a price.



In case you can't tell, in addition to everything else being toppled over, Ella dumped out 4 containers of foam stickers...totalling a couple THOUSAND tiny pieces of foam scattered all over the floor.

Swirling Emotions

I ended my boys' night by telling them that I was so upset by their not listening to me that I wasn't going to tuck them in and they were going to have to just say prayers by themselves. How mature of me. And then as Max came down asking me if I still loved him, over and over again, after assuring him that I did, I then sternly sent him back up to his room. No mom awards here tonight.

Then I was going to write in my blog all the things that led up to very poor attitude tonight to justify my anger. But reallly, is there there any appropriate excuse for not praying with your kids? .... Guilt...Guilt...Guilt.

And then I also thought of those 50 families just North of me who are homeless today...whose houses were flattened by the tornado on Sunday. I thought of the little 2 year old toddler who was killed, and all those who are injured. And I realized that I really have NO reason to be crabby.

I have my home; I have my family; I have my life. Now I better get upstairs and pray with my whiny 3 year old.

Springtime in Minnesota

Beautiful Yellow Daffodils sprouting from the ground?

NO...these were cut flowers donated to patients at the cancer center.

Lovely pink roses blooming in my garden?

Of course not! Sara gave me these for my birthday.

Snow, snow and more snow?

Most definitely!

When will it end? Not this week, more snow in the forecast for Thursday!

A good day.

It reached 50 degrees today.

The kids were outside.

Cameron rode his bike.

I was finally able to break up the block of ice that had accumulated on the sidewalk at the bottom of our driveway because I hadn't shoveled adequately all winter.

50 degrees.

Praise God.

It was wonderful!

Cabin Fever

My kids are going crazy, certifiably.

Yesteday, Cameron ran laps through the first level of our house. From the kitchen, to the foyer, past the front door and stairs, through the living room, into the dining room and back to the kitchen.

He counted his laps out loud.

100 times.

This snow has got to go.

January in Minnesota

It was -17 degrees this morning. -35 with the windchill.

Global warming? Bring it on. Please!

Hot Hot Hot

We're in Panama City Beach for a few days.

It's HOT!

How hot is it?

Today it was in the mid 90s, with a heat index of 107....very humid!

Tomorrow it's supposed to be record high temperatures.

When I walk outside from the air conditioning into the heat, my glasses fog up immediately.

But we've managed to keep pretty cool in at the various beaches and pools.

Party for Ogres

The weather report said sunny in the morning with developing isolated thunder storms by the afternoon, with a chance of severe storms. I kept telling myself that it was NOT going to rain. It was too hot and sunny all morning for a cloud to creep into the sky. I refused, no matter how many times I checked the Yahoo weather forecast, I refused to believe it was going to rain. I organized everything outside. I filled up the water balloons. I hid the scavenger hunt clues. I refused to cancel the inflatable wizard castle. It just was not going to rain. Not during Max’s birthday party. Those developing clouds were going to pass over. That grey blur in the distance was just an illusion. It was not going to rain.

It rained……HARD!

But that’s not all that went awry.

Before the guests even arrived, the Inflatable castle, that I spent way too much money for, flipped over, because the guy didn’t stake it down and a gust of wind caused it to topple. The company was supposed to send someone to fix it, but they were taking too long. A neighbor and my husband were able to get it up and running again….until the lightening started.

My husband was in charge of the grilling. However, he was on-call, and had had so many deliveries this week, including more today. He managed to come home for about an hour to get some of the hot dogs and hamburgers grilled, in the downpour. Except this was the first time he had ever used our brand new gas grill (we’ve always had charcoal), and he underestimated the power of the flame. The hotdogs were perfect, but the burgers were charred. Then he got paged again, and we were left broiling the remaining burgers in the oven.

The rain did seem to let up a bit, so I decided to go ahead and inflate the castle again. However, while some kids were jumping around in it, the thing just cut off, collapsing a few of the kids inside. We managed to get all the kids out safely, but the rain started again, so that was the end of the castle.

So for almost the entire party, we had about 20 ogres wandering around the house, along with their parents. I improvised with some of the games to convert them for indoor. And all my adult friends who came were very helpful in keeping the kids in line when trying to play the games, open gifts, have dinner and cake, clean-up etc.

I’m sure the kids had a lot of fun, but personally, I was very disappointed. I had spent a lot of time and energy planning this party, and I even made a schedule for exactly when everything was supposed to be happening. But because we had to move it all inside, it just seemed hectic and out of control to me.

But Max did participate in some of the games, (even though he kept telling me all week that he didn’t want to do any of them). And even though he kept screaming to everyone that it wasn’t his birthday and Sara had to trap him from running away while everyone sang, Max did blow out the candles on his cake. My friend Angela made some delicious gluten/dairy free Shrek cookies for the people with food allergies. And the Shrek “ears” were a huge hit!

But next year, I think we’ll skip the big “at home” party and find an alternate, indoor location.

At least it's not supposed to rain.

My husband has a conference in San Diego, so we're heading there for a few days.

When I checked weatherchannel.com on Monday to confirm for me that the temperature in Southern California was going to be much warmer than the temperature in Minnesota...like at least 80 degrees...nice beach weather....I was incredibly disappointed...with forcast in the lower 60s there!

Now, each time I go on the computer, I think really sunny thoughts when I check the weather, believing that if I do this, the temperature will go up a degree or two.

And so far, it has worked!

Maybe, just maybe, we'll at least reach mid 7os..closer to Minnesota temperatures...by the time we actually get there.

No matter what the temperature, we'll still have fun. I mean come on....look at this kid. How can it not be fun with him to entertain us?

We're okay.

On the rare occassion that I go away for the weekend, I feel guilty leaving my husband with all the kids. However, I don't believe he feels the same.

Take for instance yesterday morning....he called not to see how I was doing..not to see how it was going with the kids...not to see if how I was coping....

...but rather, knowing how freezing it is in Minnesota, he called to inform me that he was walking around Panama City Beach...without a coat.

That's just cruel.