Spring Clean-up

Until the weather turned nasty yesterday we've been taking advantage of the sunshine and trying to get our house, yard and garage cleaned up.

And yes, munchking has been a big help. He even has his own little lawn mower and follows daddy all over the yard with it.

On an unrelated note, they came and hauled off my old car yesterday. We decided that for the money it would be better just to buy a different car than put a whole new engine in my Sebring. It was a little bit sad. We've had that car since we bought it brand new 8 years ago and we never had a single problem with it. (Until last September of course when something ripped the oil pan off while we were cruising down I-15.) Still I suppose after 170,000 miles it had served it's purpose well enough. We were fortunate to have some good luck in the car hunt thanks to my sister Skye moving to Hawaii last winter. We were able to buy their Jeep Grand Cherokee, so at least we have a vehicle that runs and it's still in good condition. I never wanted an SUV of any type, in fact I've been adamant that it would be the last car I'd own. Another chapter in life I guess.

Happy Mother's Day to Me!

Before...

(No I don't still have Christmas Decorations up, this was taken a couple of years ago. The light fixture is what's important here.)

After...
So much more light in our dining room and no outdated fixture! It's a win-win!

Going so well I'm almost Nervous!

So I've been a little out of touch the last few weeks and I apologize. We've just been as busy as ever around here. We spent last weekend in Salt Lake. I was supposed to run the 1/2 marathon on Saturday, but since I wasn't cleared to start training again until the week of, the doctor thought it would be better if I just skipped it. Sadly there's now a 3rd unused race number added to my collection. Oh well, better safe than sorry, right?

Anyway we had a fun weekend in the city anyway. I got to spend some time with people I love, so that was fun. I only wish it could have been longer.

The most important thing though was that Travis got to come home so we picked him up from the airport on Monday. Gideon is quite excited to have his daddy home and has pretty much been his little shadow ever since he stepped off the plane.

But the title of this post refers to our experience of Tuesday. We had the opportunity on Tuesday afternoon to meet with B. and her father. It was great to get to visit with them for a while. All things considered she seems to be doing well. In fact, at the risk of sounding condescending, she seems to have gained a level of maturity in the last two years that she didn't have previously. She's actually got a plan of what she wants to do with her life that goes beyond the birth of this second child. I think that's part of what was lacking previously, she didn't have a plan, so after Gideon she was just sort of drifting through life.

But I won't bore you with all of those details. Suffice it to say we had a great chat with them and they seemed to enjoy seeing Gideon although he slept on my lap through almost the entire visit and only woke up for about the last 10 minutes. B. seems to be doing great and although I know it's not easy for her, she seems pretty determined that this is what she wants, so that, of course, makes us feel very good about the situation.

It was a positive visit and I feel that things are progressing quite nicely. In fact that's why I'm a little nervous. Things seem to be going so well that I'm afraid it's almost too good to be true. But we'll just keep praying that things continue in this same vein.

And that's the update for now. She'll find out the gender of the baby at her appointment next week, so that news is forthcoming and we're very excited to hear from her at that time. Until then, enjoy the picture of the world's cutest birth mother, with the world's cutest boy.

this is the current job site in Guam.

I would say its out in the middle of no were, but we are on an island. Jungle surrounds the entire job site.

The bottom side of a floating roof.

All of the stuff that is rusted, brown, is what we have been replacing.

In Case You Hadn't Heard

So last night just about at bedtime, Gideon had a run in with the coffee table & the coffee table won. He sliced his chin open, bit his lip and displaced some teeth. Needless to say there was much blood and much screaming. We didn't go to the doctor last night because we were able to get the bleeding stopped everywhere and none of his teeth seemed lose, but this morning when he woke his bed sheets were covered in little pools of blood. His teeth and gums continued to bleed throughout the day, so I finally called a dentist to ask if there was anything they could do. The dentist, of course, wanted us to come in so he could be checked out.

For as active as he is normally and as sore as his mouth is now, munchkin did surprisingly well at the dentist. Long story short he does have some displaced teeth, and according to the dentist, they probably won't go back in on their own. However, due to the amount of bruising and swelling in his gums and lip tissue they can't even do anything about it right now. In fact, they can't even ascertain whether or not there are any fractures or damage to the permanent teeth until the swelling goes down. So the dentist sent me home and said to come back for a follow up. He gave me instructions to watch for any signs of infection or absesses and then he scared me to death by throwing around some stuff about potential oral surgery (ON MY TWO YEAR OLD!?!?!?!?!?)

Anyway it's been a very long day. The teeth and gums will continue to bleed and be very, very, very sore for a few days (looks like munchkin will be living on yogurt & oatmeal for a while.) I'm definitely getting a second opinion before we resort to any kind of surgery, but I think I'll wait a couple of weeks for the swelling to go down so that they can actually tell me if anything has been fractured or seriously injured. My big concerns right now are obviously for his future development, growth and any possible effects this could have on his speech. In retrospect the chin gash probably could have used stitches or at least super glue or something. It's not really bleeding anymore but it hasn't closed back up either. Oh well, I guess he'll just have a cool scar there. As my baby brother likes to say "Chicks dig scars." His whole face from the cheekbones down is quite swollen and will be for a while I guess. But there are worse things. At least he's okay.

Because he was such a good patient at the dentist, he was rewarded with a milkshake. (Fortunately he shared with mom!) Now I just desperately need both of us to get a good night's rest, because there was very little sleep in this house last night. The good news is that with the help of a little bit of baby motrin, Gideon went down at his normal bedtime (8:15-ish) and he appears to be sleeping soundly. Fingers crossed we'll make it through the night. (He cries out every time he rolls over or touches his face.) Anyway I feel like I'm babbling and making very little sense at the moment so I'm headed to bed myself. Good night!

Guam 2010

this preying mantis was about 5inches long, my roommate was afraid of it,because it kept staring John down.

jungle by the beach

Cornish game hens, not losing any weight over here this time.

So it's still a work in progress

Several of you have asked to see pictures of the quilt I've been working on lately. As most of you know this is only the 2nd quilt I've ever made (incidentally it's for the same person who recieved the first quilt and for the same reason.) Doing this project has reminded me why I don't quilt.

Of course it probably would have turned out better if I'd actualy followed a pattern or something. But I didn't. I just got hit with inspiration one day when I saw this pink super girl fabric that I thought was fantastic. So I bought six different coordinating pink & black fabrics, cut them into 3 inch squares and devised a pattern I thought was cute. This is how it looked before I sewed it together when I was just working out the pattern & the strips.

In theory this is going to be a good blanket to cuddle up with. Either on the couch or long car trip or something. I want to do a really soft fabric, like a minky on the back (probably in black) so that it can be a go anywhere blanket.

And this is how it looks now that the top is all put together. Pathetic, right? It's so crooked and off center. The top right hand side is especially bad.

Well this will probably be the las quilt I ever do, so perhaps it won't be so bad. I just need my mom to get home so she can fix it for me.

And yes, he was a big help!

Some of you may remember that our television broke in May of last year. (If you don't remember go back in my blog archives and you can see the whole story.) Anyway we've been living with what I termed the "redneck" setup for nearly a year now. We've wanted a new TV, but something always seemed to come up that was a bigger priority.

Well I finally went and bought a new TV last week. Tonight our dear friend, Chester, came over to get it hooked up to the surround sound and everything. (Because while my father-in-law and I managed to get it set up, getting it hooked up to everything was really beyond our area of expertise.) Anyway Gideon was a big help running around with his little plastic tools, trying to do everything Chester did.

Then he decided that he could be an even bigger help, by wrestling Chester during the process. Chester was a really good sport about it, but daddy definitely needs to get home soon because Gideon needs someone to wrestle with him. I'm tired of being so bruised!

It may look a lot like Christmas....

...But we're going to pretend it's Easter instead!

We colored our egg on Friday night. Gideon quickly learned that it was much easier to stick your whole hand in the dye to get an egg out rather than trying to use that flimsy little wire dipper thing.

But his very favorite part was putting stickers on the eggs. He absolutely loved that!

And of course, the Easter Bunny came and visited us! He was very good, although he only left one basket for both mommy and Gideon. H probably knew we were good at sharing anyway.

And no, we haven't had breakfast yet, but Gideon decided he'd better test the chocolate.

Cool shades dude!

WOW! The Easter Bunny came to Nana's house too!!!!

He even hid our eggs!

What a good egg finder the munchkin turned out to be. (Okay maybe he had a little help from Grandpa, but still.)

And what do you do once you've found on the eggs and your basket is once again empty?

Use it as a hat of course!

Grandpa had to take the truck over to Boise for the week to work, so Gideon got to go for a little drive around the block. He LOVED it!

And that was pretty much our entire Easter. Hope yours was good!

GO BULLDOGS!!!!

Okay it's no secret that my team bombed out this year and didn't even come close to making the tournament. Given their absence I had picked Syracuse to win it all. But I really wasn't all that hurt when Butler defeated them. Actually I've grown quite fond of the Bulldogs and am thrilled to see them make it to the national title game.

A couple of little known facts, my grandma Peggy went to Butler way back in the day. Actually it was during WWII when most college athletics were suspended because most of the boys were fighting. Butler's campus was being used by the Army Air Corps for training and lodging some of their men. (Grandma said that made all of her sorority functions fun because there were plenty of "fly boys" to take to dances and things.) Butler was actually my second choice school. I made like 3 trips up there during my senior year. I really liked it a lot. The only down side that I could see was that it was way too close to home. (If I'd known my family would move to Idaho during the middle of my freshman year, I might have reconsidered and stayed a little bit closer to Shiloh who stayed in Brazil to finish high school. In hindsight, I almost wish that's what I had done. But that's a different story. And anyway I have dear friends from App. St. that I'm so glad to still have in my life.)

The only thing that could make today better would be if West Virginia were to beat Duke and end up in the final. Then again, it's me, so you know I've been cheering for every team who's gone against Duke in this tournament so far. That's not likely to change any time soon. Either way, I'm cheering for Butler on Monday night! GO BULLDOGS!!!!!

It was oddly quiet...

...And for once that wasn't a bad thing!

Munchkin got a gift card for a free ice cream cone from Reed's Dairy for his birthday, so this afternoon we went and got it! That's a big cone for such a little boy! (But don't worry, he shared with mom.)

What's the difference between Christmas & Easter?

Apparently there isn't one. At least as far as the weather is concerned.

This ought to make all those egg hunts a bit more challenging.

PS - I'm still waiting on my global warming that Al Gore has promised me!