Just a few things that made me laugh...

The twins are talking a lot now and so I hear the funniest things sometimes! Thought I would share a few while I still remember them:

LG's favorite movies: "Snow Wipe" and "Sleeping Booty"
LB's favorite movie: "Gumbo"
LB is pretending to be a 'vampirate' and bit LG on the hand this morning.
The vacuum cleaner was on the stairs with the cord going down and LB said "I need to climb the mountain" and tried to rappel down the cord... Fortunately he had a light hold and didn't bring the vacuum down too!
LG on food: "Abocados make me happy, Mommy!" "I like peas in my mouth!"
and LG will start a conversation with anyone, usually about her hair... because she likes 'blowing' hair which means long.

That's about all I can remember right now; they keep me laughing so I'm sure there's more to come!

Thankful for...

so many things. Here's a little list of my 'thanks' for this year:

-Thankful that my husband is safely home at the head of our table this year
-Thankful for all the husbands and daddies who are not able to be home with their families this year.
-Thankful for good friends to spend the holiday with and hope that next year maybe we'll both have a husband at home!
-Thankful that my mom was such an awesome cook
-Thankful that my children are enjoying their piano lessons
-Thankful for techonology that allows us to keep up with family and friends in this far apart world
-Thankful for my little twins who are learning so fast and so much and even thankful for the messes sometimes because I know they won't last and I'll miss this time soon enough
-Thankful for my big boy who does so much to help and is such a good brother to his siblings
-Thankful for my big girl who is smart and wise beyond her years
-Thankful that we are all healthy
-Thankful for good health care and doctors
-Thankful for my family even though I miss them so!
-Thankful for my friends who have become family
-Thankful for the love of my husband
-Thankful for the love of God, his mercies and blessings and his Son, my salvation.

F is for... football, fall, fun, friends, family and food!

Wow, it's been a while since I've written anything here! Facebook is probably to blame as it's so nice to keep in touch with everyone that way. Anyway, we've had a busy fall and the first flakes of snow just fell this morning so winter is here! BB had a great first season of Pop Warner football as his team was undefeated. He played right tackle (#28) all this season and is looking forward to trying something new next year. He would rather be able to tackle someone instead of "just blocking!" It was exciting for us to watch him play but also a little sad for me as he's growing up so fast.

It was a beautiful fall here and we went for a little drive one Sunday in October while John was at home sick just to look at the beautiful colors and then stopped at the Burrville Cider Mill for some fresh apple cider doughnuts and cider and then playing at Thompson Park at the great playground they have there. Tried to have a picnic also, but it was just too blustery.

We've all been having fun with new friends and old. BG is excited to be a part of the local Nutcracker production this year mainly because her friend is in it and she gets to kick her leg over a mouse's head in her part as a soldier. She plays two boy parts but isn't too upset about not getting to wear a fancy dress and she even wears jeans a few times a week now! LG on the other hand is turning into a pink monster. I took her and LB shopping with me the other day and told them we were getting jeans for BB and LB and she said "and I want a skirt!" and was very put out that I wasn't considering getting her something fancy to wear. She's so cute with her reasoning, it's hard not to give in to her every request! She woke up from her nap in the car yesterday and said "I'm happy, Mommy!" BB is happy that some of his friends from our old street live closer to us on our new street so he gets to play with them more often. And I'm happy to have known a couple of friends long enough now that we can tell each others' stories to other people. I think it's sweet when a friend finishes your story with a sense of pride in what you've accomplished or a struggle you've gone through.


Halloween was a lot of fun this year with the little kids getting into it. LG said for a month out that she was going to be a 'black cat' and LB kept changing his mind until settling on a pirate. BB was a scarecrow and I have blisters on my fingers from the hot glue! Who knew it would be that difficult? BG decided to be a witch since LG was a black cat. It was fun to watch the little kids trying to understand trick or treating. LB really got into and ran between each house and told everyone 'I'm a pirate' while LG took her time looking at people and asking when are we trick or treating and when we told her we ARE trick or treating she laughed and said 'OHHH!' Several times last week LB put his pirate hat on and said he was going out to get some candy... and I'm glad it's mostly gone! When I picked them up at pre-school on Tuesday, his teacher said "LB was in rare form today." Apparantly he flooded the bathroom when he was in there washing his hands and wasn't very responsive to usual commands. Have some more candy...



In other food news, I've been trying some different things to cut down our grocery costs. I finally got a good waffle iron and I love it. Even took a picture of it with a stack of waffles ready to go in the freezer! No more Eggo's here. I just make extra batter whenever we have waffles and freeze the rest. I also made a bunch of meals using my new cookbook called "Fix it, Freeze it, Feast" based on recipes using warehouse club portions. So I've got a bunch of burritos and a couple of lasagnas, cheeseburger pie, pasta sauce, and chicken cordon bleu in the freezer. That, along with the case of pizza dough balls, and we've been eating well and fewer groceries needed and less fast food too! Oh, and this apple pie was so yummy I just had to take a picture of that too!

Since my last post on here I also had my body scan done for the thyroid cancer and it came back negative for any thyroid or cancer tissue left in my neck or elsewhere in my body! I won't need another scan for a year and then I won't have to withdraw from my Synthroid as I've had to for the last two scans. Yay for that! I need my energy and focus! I'm also finally in the therapeutic range for the Coumadin which means I don't have to have my finger pricked every week but now once a month. I was scheduled on 1 Dec for my next visit with my doctor and their office called me yesterday afternoon to reschedule because my doctor passed away suddenly on Tuesday. So sad for his family and all of his patients. He hadn't been my doctor for long, but I saw more of him in the last few months than any other doctor previously and I will greatly miss him and I thank him for saving my life this summer!

That about sums up the last couple of months here. That was nice to actually write a paragraph or two instead of a one line 'update,' maybe I'll do it again sometime soon!

I got a little teary eyed...

the first few plays of the game today! I wasn't expecting watching BB play football for the first time to be such an emotional experience. He just looked so big (he's one of the biggest on his team) and serious and focused and not at all like my little blond clown that he was a few short years ago when he first played soccer. I do think J is right that football is unlike any other sport. There are just so many different things going on at once that require everyone to do their job correctly for the whole team to succeed and I must say that our team was very successful today! Our coaches deserve a lot of credit as it's not easy teaching 32 7-9 year olds, many like BB whom have never played before, and getting them to work together. Anyway, after the initial emotional overload, it was a great day watching them play all the other teams in the league who they will meet on the field in the coming weeks. Thankfully, it was overcast for most of the day or we would have been pretty miserable watching with the other three munchkins. The part I don't really appreciate is the long drawn out closing ceremony when everyone is tired and ready to go home...

Other than football every evening, we've been enjoying the warm summer weather! Finally enough sunshine for me although the humidity the last couple of days has kept a lot of people indoors! The littles had their pre-school classes out at the pond/park this week so we spent a little bit of time out there and watched LB be a big stinker to his teachers. He was not happy coming out of the water and let them know it! He's been very independent lately and gave us a scare when we told him to go get in the bath with BG and LG and he went to the other bathroom and started his own instead. He did do it correctly and the water temp was fine, but still scary. He has also made a couple of little 'pools' in the back yard with the hose and his hands and will play out there for hours with his guys and sticks and rocks and he has to take his clothes off too! I just put sunscreen on him before he's dressed... Luckily, we're not too concerned about how the back yard looks right now with half of it needing to be reseeded anyway.

We also did a lot of running around last week getting kids registered for a new school, picking up school supplies and clothes and back and forth to a couple of doctors for me. It was nice to be able to do that now without having to pick J up for lunch or drop him off in the morning since we found a car for him! We've had just one car for a about 6 years, but J's been gone for over half of that so it didn't make sense for us to have a car sit in the driveway, but now with kids activities and all the appointments I need to get to it's been pretty inconvenient running back and forth... Anyway, we found a 97 Pontiac Grand Prix at the right price that runs pretty good even if it has a bit of rust. Hard to find a used vehicle around here that doesn't have rust!

I did get to see a pulmonoligist this week and a checkup with my new primary care manager. The lung doc is fairly certain the hormones (bc pills) were the cause of the blood clot in my leg back in May, which broke off in small pieces and moved to my lungs. His prognosis is I will be on Warfarin for at least six months, re-evaluate then and after I'm off I'll have some specialized bloodwork done to see if I have some other clotting disorder. Still a lot of swelling in my right leg probably due to some damage to the blood vessel or a valve. The compression stocking is helping as long as I put it on first thing in the morning before it starts swelling. And I am feeling tons better although still not much stamina. I got the go ahead to start exercising again so looking forward to at least walking! Guess I won't be running a half-marathon later this fall as we planned on... I was lamenting that I haven't been able to run this whole summer when the weather's been nice and soon enough it will be snowing and I really don't enjoy cold weather running. Thankfully, since I'm still alive, I'll look forward to it next year! And we live right down the street from the gym with free childcare now, so no excuses this winter!

There was another post-wide yardsale yesterday and we managed to get rid of a few things. A couple of things I'm going to put on Craigslist and the rest is going to the Urban Mission. Slowly getting the house put together although not much done last week with my new-found two car freedom! I did paint a couple of walls in the house recently and looking to do a bit more this week so we can get the pictures littering the dining room up on the wall. I'll post pictures when it's all done, hopefully before Christmas... I do love painted walls though! Makes the house more 'ours' I always think. And I always like visiting everyone else's houses on the street. Even though we all have the same floorplans, our houses are always as individual as we are and I love seeing the differences. So, invite me in!

Oh, yeah, the twins turned three on the 7th! Can't believe how big they are and how much they're talking and acting like such big kids. We just had a little family party and they blew out the candles on their cake, well mostly LG blew and LB tried... Anyway, here's a few pics from the last couple of weeks.

Summertime...

and it's about time to update this! I've got a bunch of pictures to go with also so they'll do some of the talking... We started the summer with BB turning 8 years old and a backyard birthday party before we moved from our other neighborhood and before a bunch of friends moved on also. Then both BB and BG played soccer and they both enjoyed it for the first few games and then BG lost interest... We ended up missing the last couple of games because one or both of them was sick and then we moved and it was too much to do. I'm a terrible soccer mom... and I hate bringing snack too! Anyway, on to moving into our brand new house and trying to get everything unpacked before we headed to Ocean City, NJ for a week at the beach. Not everything got done, but we had a great time at the beach or the shore as it's called here on the East coast. We got to spend some time with the Adams side of the family, playing with cousins and fishing with Pop-pop and J and I even got a night out in Atlantic City while the kids stayed at Aunt Vicky's (or as LG says, Aunt Wicky). We had a great time in our rented house which was about a block from the beach and the start of the boardwalk. The weather was wonderful, the ocean just cold enough and the food was fabulous. Cheesesteaks and pizza and fresh donuts in the morning. We had a great deli and ice cream shop just around the corner. Yes, I gained a couple of pounds back... Anyway, it was the perfect relaxing vacation without a lot of demands to go see and do stuff and just what we needed to spend some time together just being.

It seems the past few years it wouldn't be summertime in our house if I didn't spend at least a few days in the hospital... I had time to reflect on that as I was laying in the hospital the last 5 days with blood clots in my lungs and leg. Not really my idea of a great vacation but here's how it went down: the end of May I was having issues with allergies/sinus infections and I also had an unexplained cramp in my leg, so I went to my Dr and told her about it and that I was also periodically coughing up blood with the mucus. So she prescribed an antibiotic for the sinus infection and sent me for an ultrasound on my leg to rule out a blood clot which came back negative for a blood clot. Shortly after I finished my antibiotics I started walking again and was having a hard time breathing when I exercised. Then we moved and I was still having difficulty breathing during exertion and thought it was just because of allergy stuff still going on. We went on vacation and when we got back the drainage in my throat was worse again and I was coughing blood still so I went back to the Dr and saw the Nurse Practitioner who prescribed me some more allergy medicine and told me the shortness of breath and blood was from the mucus buildup at the top of my windpipe. About a week later (last Wed) I was hanging some flowerpots and I got down from the chair and moved it and all the sudden I couldn't breath. I made it in the house and BB got J and I was on the floor almost passed out but recovered pretty quickly. Scared me, but we still were thinking it's allergy related or maybe I was developing asthma from that. So the next day I was really tired and weak and my leg started hurting that evening and by the next morning I had a painful knot in my leg and decided it was time to go to the ER! So, turns out I had a blood clot in my leg and a whole bunch of little ones in both my lungs. They started me on blood thinners (heperin) and coumadin and kept me there until today when the levels of coumadin in my blood reached the 'right' levels. So there's my drama for the summer. Really, I would love to skip it this year...

J did a great job keeping the kids happy the last few days and the kids did a great job not giving daddy too hard a time! When they picked me up today, both LB and LG said they wanted to go to the doctor with mommy, so it's going to be tough getting out of their sight anytime soon! And it was great listening to BB describe life with daddy: "you have to do this and this and this before you can play outside!" Anyway, the next couple of weeks will be busy with daily blood tests for a while and switching to a new primary care manager because I'm a bit distressed that my doctors didn't recognize the signs of a potentially life threatening condition. Anyway, thanking God for his constant mercy and blessings towards me and my family and also thankful for the wonderful friends and family I've been blessed with.

15 Years Ago Today

I wed the love of my life! I would post a picture, but I can't find my camera cables in the mess of unpacking... Anyway, I'm happy to say that God has been good to us the last 15 years with many blessings and brought us through many trials and I can't wait to see what the next 15 years and beyond holds in store for us!

The new house has been inaugurated

with mud, blood, and Jack Daniels all over the floor... We've been a bit busy this past week since being offered a house in the new construction on post. We're almost done at the old house getting it cleaned out and I will say that ALL writing instruments will be in a locked box with 'Arms Room' security procedures for children who would like to color on designated paper! There are some areas that the magic eraser wasn't so magical on and will just get a layer of primer with the other two walls I need to do since I painted them a nice green last year... This is the first time we've been in a situation where we didn't have one house done before moving into the next house so it's been a little bit frustrating not being able to get unpacked and situated like I want to right away. J has been great with moving the furniture around (multiple times in some cases) and keeping things organized and clean so we can find things as they are needed and also watching the littles while I get stuff done at the other house. He even got them to nap yesterday! Probably more for his peace of mind then for them, but they did nap! Anyway, the mud mentioned above is from the yard that is quickly sprouting grass but still very muddy. BB and BG decided to run in the sprinkler last night and tried to sneak in to clean up. J caught them before they got on the carpeted stairway and made them clean up in the bathroom downstairs where they left much evidence and got in trouble again when I saw the mess! The blood is from LBs knees all skinned up and J's hands and feet from moving furniture. And the Jack Daniels is from LB pulling the (small) bag of alcohol off the table and breaking the bottle of JD and bottle of Rum. The dining room has lost the 'new house' smell and now smells like a distillery! Overall, the move has gone well. J and I have been working together really well in a somewhat stressful situation but I don't think we'll volunteer to move ourselves again anytime soon. When we retire, we're going to have to find someplace we never want to leave...