We Made It!

 

... and now that we are on-line at home, I can tell you all about it!  I hope our delay in checking in doesn't mean that we have lost any new followers who may have tried to look in on us.


We crossed into Indiana in the early hours of Saturday, May 28.  We stayed at my mother-in-law's for a few days to relax, catch our breath, and wait for our rent house to be available.  On June 1st, we came up to South Bend and moved into this house.

We seem to be settling in fine and have some fun things to look forward to on our summer schedule.  For now I will leave it at that, but I will be sure to add more pictures and details of events in the coming days and weeks.

Birthday Girl

Today is Alexa's birthday; she is seven now. All of my children's birthdays are special and sentimental in their own right. The birth of our first child where everything about it was a first; the last one because we knew it would be the last and they were twins. But, Alexa's is the most emotional of all of them.

She came five weeks early with no signs prior to my water breaking at the doctor's office while waiting to meet him for the first time. (We had just moved to our new town two weeks before.) I think my appointment was about this time 10-10:30 AM on a Wednesday. Rob had come along to help with Robbie and to meet the new guy too. We'd had to wait a long time, and Rob was about ready to give up and go back to work (at his new job) because he had a meeting he shouldn't miss. However before he left, my water broke and things started moving more quickly from there. Even though a lot happened fast in the few hours between waiting in that exam room to the time Alexa was actually delivered, I remember everything very clearly. And, that isn't even the emotional part!

During her second Apgar check, the nurses found Alexa's heart rate was racing and nothing they tried over the next hour or two was fixing it. A helicopter was called in and she was flown to Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis who had a pediatric cardiologist on staff and a NICU equipped for such issues. Within 24 hours, they had her in good shape with just the use of medication. On Saturday morning, we got to take her home. We continued to give her medication until she was eight months old with cardiologist check-ups every two or three months. There has never been any indication of additional troubles; for that we are extremely thankful!

I only got to hold her once for a couple of minutes -about two hours AFTER she was born- before she was flown to the other hospital. We did baptize her before she left; a pastor from the local Lutheran church whom I had just met earlier that day while waiting to deliver came and baptized her while she was already in her special crib box to be transported. The nurse from the helicopter was there for that and prayed with us, and I remember thinking how special that was. I was released from the hospital on Friday morning (way too early for c-section delivery) so I could go to St. Louis, so on Friday afternoon (two days after she was born), I got to hold her again and nurse her for the first time. Like I said, they kept her one more day, taught us how to give her medicine, gave us a stethoscope, told us things to watch for, and sent us on our way.

Whew- it's been seven years, but I remember those moments like they happened yesterday.

Happy Birthday, Alexa!

Caption Contest

If we had enough readers (which won't happen until I actually start writing regularly), I would be tempted to hold a contest to see who could come up with the best caption for this photo--

Seeing that we don't have many readers and I don't have time to monitor a contest or send out a prize, I will just share my thoughts. The picture is our dog, Birdie, "sunning" in the backyard. I am not quite sure if she is trying to even out her tan or practicing her road kill pose for her doggy drama group that meets later today.

Another Birthday?

How can it be that four years have passed since we brought two itty bitty babies home? Okay, so they weren't that itty bitty all things considered, but compared to this ...

they were just little peanuts!

Cole has been waiting for his birthday since October, and we have officially been counting down for three weeks using a calendar on the refrigerator, so they were both pretty excited. Gifts were randomly showing up in the mail along with the ones we had purchased and were piling up ready to be opened, and Grandma Kroll brought more over with her so they were definitely ready to celebrate Saturday afternoon when we FINALLY finished lunch and let the festivities begin!

Happy 4th Birthday, my Cuddle Bug and Cuddle Bear!

First Time

For the first time EVER, we had all four of our kids in different places for a while. That may not sound significant, and it probably isn't, but it was a big enough deal that I was conscious of it happening.

With the twins being our youngest, they tend to be together most of the time. There have been several times they have been in separate places, but most often they are with one of the other kids, or the other kids are together at school or a church event while Rachel and Cole are doing different things between Rob and I or between my mom and I. Boy and girl events sometimes take place as well (The girls are much more likely to want to go to the grocery store with me than the boys when given a chance to stay home with Rob. Imagine that!?)

Today, Robbie had a baseball meeting for parents and players (Rob took him), I was coaching Alexa's basketball game, Rachel had a birthday party (girls' only - it was a princess deal...polish, make-up, dress-up, the whole deal), and Cole went to Grandma's so he could have fun too. With some juggling of dropping off and picking up the younger ones, all outtings were a success and we all ended up back at home four hours after the first vanload left.

It was the first of many such days, I'm sure, and would probably be forgotten except I have recorded it here. =)

Bedtime Tales

Cole (our youngest) is the best sleeper EVER! We read a book, sing a song, say a prayer, he takes one deep breath, and he is out. This is true for about 355 days out of the year. That leaves about ten days each year that we get surprised.

This past Monday night was one of those nights. He told me he was thinking about bad dreams. I don't really know if he knows what this means. Do three -almost four- year olds conceptualize the idea of dreaming? I am not sure. He did wake up Monday morning a little tearful which is unlike him, so I guess he could have had a bad dream and was remembering it as he tried to fall asleep that night. Who knows?!

Anyway, I digress from the point of this post.

One of the (what turned out to be) many times he came out from his room, he said "Rachel's face is different". My take on this is he isn't used to seeing her face in the dark with the nightlight and the shadows are making her look funny.

I explain this briefly and encourage him to go bed and try to go to sleep.

As the shadows were not the problem, he continued to try to relate to me what the trouble really was. He couldn't seem to come up with the word smell apparently, because he made a loud, exaggerated sniffing noise and said again, "Rachel's face is different".

I clarify that her face smells different which he confirms. In my own mind I am laughing that he apparently has been smelling her face instead of falling asleep like normal. I do proceed to the bedroom and notice there is a distinct fruity smell in the air. It is coming from her bed. It turns out she had put some fruity chapstick on when she went to the bathroom.

On a future trip into the room, I noticed that the smell is still REALLY strong. It turns out she had not only put some on, but she had smuggled it into her bed. She had it up too far, it got all smashed in the lid, and it was all messy and very fragrant!

I removed the chapstick from the bed. I assured Cole the problem was taken care of. He, unfortunately, didn't fall asleep until after 9:30 that night.

Our Hotel

Here are a few pics of our accomodations in San Antonio.

This is from level 3 looking down towards the lobby.


This is the lobby with players who are waiting for the buses to load for practice.


This is our living area (and Robbie playing Wii).


This is the kids' room complete with their pillowcases on the pillows, their blankets, and animals. It almost looks homey, eh? We try anyway. A week is a long time in a hotel room even when it is nice and spacious.

We are staying at the Marriott Rivercenter downtown. You can see the Alamo Bowl from our hotel room, and we have been told it will be faster to walk than drive there on game day. Our hotel is also connected to a mall which we ventured into today for the first time so I could get a soda. (So far everyplace we have been is a Pepsi place, and I am a Coke girl.) We can also walk out our hotel doors to the Riverwalk area. It is very pretty, but seems significantly cooler there tucked away from the sun and with a cool breeze off the water.

So far, we haven't done much adventuring other than the bowl sponsored activities going to Sea World and Knibbe Ranch yesterday (which I will post on in the near future). The problem is I have hard time convincing my children there are other fun things to do in San Antonio when I have to compete with this player/children's hospitality room in our hotel.

Our Christmas Card

First of all, let me say that our Christmas cards were not distributed completely this year because our computer crashed and died just before I did address labels. So, the only people who received cards are those who are in my "old-fashioned" address book or whose card to us happened to arrive while I still had our extra cards, stamps, etc. out so that I was promptly able to send off a card to you using what you had sent to us. So if you know us and did not receive a card from us, unfortunately you (or at least your most current address) is not in my address book. (Hint- you should send it to me)

Anyway, whether you received a card or not, below are pictures included in our card (a little bit bigger and in color) for better viewing. Enjoy!

A tree of favorites . . . favorite shoes that is--



Some of our favorite ornaments from our actual Christmas tree--

Merry Christmas

from us to you!



We woke up this morning with no tree, no snow, and without the comfort of our home, but we enjoyed Christmas morning together which is better than all of the rest of that combined. The kids each had presents for each other and did an amazing job of finding just the right thing - no exchanges necessary here, thank you.

Heading South for the Winter

. . . at least for a week.

We are in San Antonio, TX for the Alamo Bowl. We arrived yesterday after a van, plane, and bus ride to our hotel -the Marriot, Rivercenter- and have been having a good time ever since. The kids have played in our hotel room, played in the player/kid hospitality room, eaten in the staff/family hospitality room, taken a walk on the river walk, slept, and visited the training room that is set up in our hotel. I got to tag along for all of it, and they also tagged along with me to walk to Walgreen's to buy some food.

Today is Christmas Eve, and we are supposed to be heading to Sea World. It is supposed to rain today, so we will see if how that turns out. Drizzle- no worries. Down pour- doesn't sound like much fun. I will try to report back in.

We are looking forward to enjoying our family vacation - OSU Football style.