Things that Go Boom

Yesterday afternoon I heard a very, very loud bang.  I was downstairs preparing lasagna and the kids were watching TV.  I almost told them, "No," when they asked to watch it, but I was so glad I said yes.  When I opened my front door, I found that a van had struck my neighbor's house.

I called 911 as I stood on my stoop and made my way over to give details.  The airbags went off.  Three women, 4 children.  The most visible injury was a little gal, maybe 4 or 5 with a large gash in her leg.  It wasn't bleeding badly, but it was very deep--like I'd never seen that part of a person except in a textbook deep.

It seemed to take forever for help to arrive.  The driver was in a panic and stayed on the phone almost the entire time.  She told me that she couldn't get her van to stop.  I really don't know how long it was that we waited.  I took long enough to run home and check the kids (completely engrossed in the TV) and grab a bandage (the long kind I bought for Kate's incision) for the little gal and try to comfort the two children who were in the middle row--the itty bitties in the back were still in their carseats and scared, but looked okay.  Once the fire department arrived I left, so as not to be in the way.  The driver called her husband, I presume, who arrived with a car load of people, plus there was the family from the house that was hit, so I wanted to give them room to work.


Only one ambulance arrived, but two more were sent eventually.  After everything settled down and the only person left was a police officer waiting for a tow truck, I went to check on my neighbor, who had been in shock during the whole affair.  When we chatted, she told me that she thought there had been a bomb because of how hard her house shook.  The vases in her room upstairs had broken, but she was thankful it hadn't been the day before, when her son had been outside riding his skateboard.  Her front steps are demolished, but hopefully that can be fixed for her soon.


It was such a random thing.  I was grateful I could be there and also grateful that as far as I could tell, everyone's injuries were very treatable.  And so very grateful that no one's children were playing outside.

In case you ever wondered...

coffee can and will explode in the microwave.

I had read a recipe calling for strong coffee. We had regular coffee, so I reasoned that I could drive off some of the water and have the strong coffee required for my little recipe.

I am a reasonable person, so I heated the coffee for a couple of minutes and then stopped, so it wouldn't boil over. I came back twenty or thirty minutes later to heat it again. After one minute and eight seconds the coffee went boom and the microwave stopped (on it's own), flashing :52 at me.

I scrubbed out the microwave around the measuring cup until it had a chance to cool. Then I moved it and scrubbed some more. The inside was sparkling clean, but the big question was, "Will the microwave work after having exploding coffee in it?"

The answer is a thankful yes. I guess I'll forego the coffee milkshake. Or at least think of a better way to make 'strong coffee.'

Peaceful Walk

The other night we set off on a little walk around our neighborhood. We've done a few walks lately and Nate has been able to make them too. As we started up that first hill, it struck me that for the first time in almost exactly six years we were walking without a stroller (or carrier of some sort) these days. We were enjoying the slightly cooler than normal temperatures and the slight breeze, the time out of the house and the low glow from the setting sun.

After only a half mile, Nate gave out. He's been making it nearly a mile under his own steam, with Justin and I volleying him back and forth the rest of the way. Then, at the very furthest point from the house, Justin feels his blood sugar start to plummet. I take the little fellow and we're encouraging the girls to hurry every little chance they get. I was considering knocking on a door and offering to buy them a case of whatever soda they could let us have.

It was not the most peaceful walk we've ever taken, but we made it back. We learned our lesson: the baby is not all grown up yet and we need to take glucose tablets on our walks, even just 15 minutes after dinner.

Step 793 of 1000

Hi. my name is Kristy and I have a problem.

See, this was supposed to be a simple cross town move. The kind where you load a few plastic totes up the night before and just unload them the next day when you run to the new house for something, like carpet cleaning or scrubbing some baseboards, or just looking at the new space. I sat on my hands just fine throughout May (lets just pretend that I forgot that it didn't have 60 days in the month this year). Now though, I'm itching to get moving.

So I'm boxing.


It's all free except the tape, since we kept all of our boxes. And we are going to have a bit less time to move, since we didn't close on Friday and we won't be closing on Wednesday. Now I'm rationalizing it. Ack!

Well, If you need me the packing tape and I have a standing date these days!

Of Course...

I've been under the weather. All three kiddos had low grade fevers last night, so we stayed home from church. I was starting to feeling icky yesterday, so I put together chicken noodle soup last night so I wouldn't have to cook tonight. Perfect, or so I thought.

I put the soup on the back burner on low after lunch. Then I went and took a nap, played with the baby, and did basically nothing. Then I went to check on our soup. The burner evidently wasn't working. That particular burner had given us trouble a couple of times, but had been working fine. But at that point the soup had been sitting out for more than 2 hours. We had to toss it.

Such is life...

Real Mail

I got mail!!! When I made my way to the mailbox yesterday, yes in my flip flops, there were several things out there. Statements from our insurance company, a notice from when I had Gabby's speech evaluation done that they were going to contact my insurance company, ubber exciting stuff. But there in the pile was a real addressed letter.

I love those, don't you? They often come unexpectedly and they are so very fun to get. If I had looked more closely before I opened it, I would have been even more excited. I knew the stamps were different and there were two, but I still didn't put it together until I opened the envelope.

Can you see the card?

There are little Danish flags all over it!

When I was a senior in high school, my family hosted an exchange student from Denmark. We loved her so much. My sister and I had a wonderful time running around with her. We learned to say things like "Is boutique" for ice cream shop, "Hjælpe mig!" (Help me!) and "Glædelig jul" for Merry Christmas. She learned that you don't borrow a bathroom, you ask to use it. At the end of her trip her whole family came to stay with us for a couple of weeks, so we got to meet her parents and younger sister too.

Our Danish sister had a baby this past year, so I sent her some baby blankets for her little boy and I received this thank you card. I couldn't have been happier!

Parentisms

As Kate was trying to shake a salt shaker at her sister, "Don't a-salt your sister."

My Iron

I nearly forgot my little promise! So here's the reason why I'm so sentimental over this silly old iron.

My husband and I were married when I was at the ripe old age of twenty. As most couples do, we made a registry and this was one of the items on our list. I received an iron identical to this one at one of my showers. However, when we got back from our honeymoon to Cumberland Falls I opened this one from an old school mate. I was so surprised that he had purchase me a gift, that I had to hang on to that one for some reason, so I returned the first one I received, chuckling to myself that he couldn't read a registry, thus the duplicate.

That was in June. In September, he died. He was in a car accident on his way back to college. When I went to the visitation, on a rather cool evening for September, I spoke to his mom about the iron. It turns out that he had sent her to choose something for me, being a 20 year old man and not knowing what to buy. She laughed as she remembered bringing it home and him looked at the registry and noticing it was a duplicate.

I always think of him and of his mother's laughter when I iron. So much so that when my husband needed to iron on some wood veneer, I made him buy another iron, so I would keep mine safe from the glue that might have ruined it. And truth be told, some day when I replace that old iron, I'm sure that anytime I iron, I'll still remember that fellow.

Ahoy!

So I'm probably to only person on the planet who had to tell her little girls that they had to wait until after church this morning to celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day.

It is a big deal at our house for some reason.


The girls are wearing patches and there have been a lot of hearty, "Arrg!"'s exchanged. Kate dubbed herself "Walker the Plank," and Gabby took the name "Braid Beard" from a set of books.


Even the baby has been involved wearing his pirate creeper.

So have a happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

(Oh, and I did cut the girls' hair last night, so if it seems a few inches shorter, its because it is!)

What if...

As I was completing the most glamorous task of humankind scrubbing the floors the other day, I was contemplating a totally random question...if I had a whole week all to myself what would I do? My family is all gone doing something without me and the normal restraints of finances, practicality, and people being able to say, "no," don't apply. Seeing as I haven't had five minutes without a member of my immediately family in the building with me since we left Kansas a couple of months ago (yes, really--I've searched my mind, but there hasn't been a time yet--there was once it was just me and Justin for a couple of hours (for a school function), but other than that it's also included at least one child), I guess it's one of those things that crosses a person's mind.

This is one of those cases of dream big or go home (or stay home, since I am at home?). So, what would I do? Sleep in past 5:00, certainly, but that's not too big, at least not for normal people (though it's been 9 months since that happened here). Hmmm...sing on Broadway. How much fun would that be?! I love to sing, but SAHMdom doesn't call for much past the difficulty of "Twinkle, Twinkle". I'm not Broadway quality by any stretch, but I loved to sing in choirs and in high school musicals. I've sang in a few praise bands for churches and had maybe a dozen solos at churches over the years. It was fun to lose yourself in the music and pretend to be someone else. I wouldn't get any great views, but maybe I could keep from getting booed of the stage. I never got cast as anything big, but when I was teaching the school's choir director asked if I had been cast as Sandy (in my H.S.'s production of Grease) when he was accompanying me for a talent show, so maybe I'm not too horrible.

Now, I don't want to run off to New York or anything, but it sure is fun to think of while I'm scrubbing the kitchen floor! And while I've not sang in public since Kate was born, maybe I'll take it up again some day--you know in all that free time I have. Well, off I go to sing another round of "The Arky Song," after all I have the best audience in the world right here.

New 'Do

It's gone. My long hair is officially gone...again. Every couple of years I go and have it cut much shorter. I've been measuring it for awhile now. It finally got to where I had the 10" that I was willing to part with. (Yes, I ended that sentence with a preposition, but it sounds silly and presumtious the other way.)

I headed off to the hairdresser with my hair tie and a plastic bag in hand. 10", plastic bag? I had the gal hack the pony tail off. Then we bagged it up. She washed what was left of my hair and then neatened it up. I'll be sending the hair off to Locks of Love.

I like my hair long, Justin likes my hair short, so I've done this before. Last time it was over a foot--and I nearly cried. This time it wasn't so traumatic.

I didn't take a before picture, since it was a last minute decision--everyone was behaving and Justin thought he could handle the munchkins for awhile, so I took off lickity split before someone melted down or he came to his senses, so this is from last Sunday at the zoo with the girlies.

Here are some after's

FYI, if you decide to donate, Fantastic Sam's offers half off of your hair cut if you're donating it.

Just a Touch of 'Business'

I'm being spammed on my comments. I'm deleting what I catch, so hopefully no one will come across them. To that end, I've enabled moderation for comments on my older posts. I'm not trying to be difficult, but I don't want to be the source of a bunch of junk either. Hopefully I won't have to enable moderation for the newer posts, but we'll see how it goes. Comment away and I'll clear your comments as soon as I can.

On a side note, can I say how tasteless it is to spam someone's birth story? And their two year old's birthday? The comments don't even make sense for the most part--there are a bunch of boxes and then some random letters. Of course, there is one word that can be made out--this is the internet after all.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog.

Bumbo Seat (Alternate Title: Poop Happens)

When we got all of our baby paraphernalia when Kate was born, I'd never heard of a Bumbo seat. When Gabby was new they were around, but we didn't bother getting one. This time, however, a friend lent us hers.

They allow the baby to sit up before they have to full trunk strength to do so without some help.

While Nate can sit unassisted for short periods of time,

(See)

it works great to allow him to sit awhile and watch me as I work around the kitchen.

(Too Cute!)

There is only one problem with this set up. For some reason Nate has decided this is a potty chair! I suppose it's the way that he's sitting pushing on his little tummy because he has a diaper blow out nearly every time I put him in it--three times on Sunday!!! Thankfully it's an easy to clean surface.

I promise I will disinfect it very well before I return it!

Too bad he's not ready to be potty trained, 'cause this would be a piece of cake! At least he's my only one in diapers these days--congrats to Miss Gabby for being day time potty trained!

Trains

I think I might just hate trains. I know that they are an excellent use of resources. They are efficient. They are cost effective. They annoy me.

I live in a railroad town. There are tracks pretty much every where I go. I either have to go under, over or across them to get anywhere. My house is literally between two sets of tracks. Did you know that when a train comes to a crossing there is a distinct whistle pattern? The engineer isn't randomly blowing; they actually all do it the same way--except some do it until they run out of air and some of the 'whistles' are off key. And of course those that mess it up and make you wonder if they had some Irish coffee. A crossing is Long, Long, Short, Long. I really felt like I'd figured something out the day I caught on to that one (at 60 trains a day it took less than week). That's annoying, especially at three AM (Why can't it be Short, Short, Long, Short?), but necessary.

But my real gripe is the way they stop traffic. I understand that for trains to get from point A to point B we have to stop and let them through. I however, don't understand why I was stopped by THREE trains in an effort to drop off the girls last night--less than 3 miles away. There was less than a minute between two of the trains (going in opposite directions--one train was headed south at 26 miles per hour. The other train was headed north at 22 MPH. If the each left a 4:45 from their stations 35 miles apart, when would the come to annoy me?...oh yeah, not what we were talking about.). We all had to sit through two slow moving trains (the first train was on a different set of tracks) back to back. I just want there to be a gap of 5-10 minutes that the trains have to delay before blocking a major artery of the city.

And to stop waking me up at night. Oh, never mind--that was Nate.

Compassion Donation @ Bring the Rain

Angie Smith from Bring the Rain is donating 25 cents per comment to Compassion International (Compassion is a wonderful ministry to children in need.) for Haiti. She's counting tonight, so if you'd like to head over there and leave a comment, please do! You can also read about her beautiful family there as well.

Just Call Me Grace

We're finally getting some relief from the frigid temperatures we've had here since just before Christmas. I even saw a spot of pavement on our road today, instead of the ice we've had for three weeks!

This means the mountain of snow that has been piled in front of our garage is starting to melt--yay. Once that's gone the garage can be rearranged--some of our Christmas things have been haphazardly stashed out there due to the cold and the lack of easy accessibility to their rightful locations.

All this is wonderful.

Yesterday I carried Gabby to the van because she insisted on wearing a dress for MOPS. She never does this, but it wasn't a big deal. She was wearing dress shoes instead of boots and the girls have been kicking the snow as they walk to and from the van, so I thought it best to take her out first rather than letting her walk. As we were walking, I was paying no attention to our cleared driveway. The problem was that it was, in fact, no longer cleared. The melted snow had refrozen over night and formed a nice little sheet of ice, which I discovered as my hip hit the pavement.

I didn't drop Gabby and I was fine. "Mama fell down in da snow. Mama all wet!"

I was so thankful that she wore dress shoes, so I didn't have them all three at once. God is gracious--giving my two year old a desire for a dress, even when I'm not graceful!

You've Got to Be Kidding...Right?

Some times you've just got to laugh...

Last night we set up the bouncy seat in our room for Nate to sleep in. He still couldn't breathe well that way, so I sat up with him in my chair in the living room. I made a short trip back to bed, trying both laying him down in his Moses basket and sitting him in the bouncy seat again. Neither way worked. I don't think I slept more than a 45 minute stretch all night.

The girls both woke up with the cold. Then while the girls were up, the little boy who couldn't sleep laying down, remember that? He laid down and took a nap.

I called and asked Justin to come home a little early so I could get a nap. I went up to bed, where I could hear the neighbor kids arguing. A couple of minutes later I heard heavy equipment coming down the street. The water main that was repaired last winter and this summer, evidently needs more work. So while I try to sleep they dig up our front yard.

After dinner a workman came to the door and asked if we had water. The water in the sink was running, so I answered yes and he began to walk off. So I asked, "Will we have water?" He told me they weren't turning it off right now. I pursued it further telling him we have three very small children and water is a necessity. Finally he admitted it would likely be off later. He did say that they would get us water if it became necessary. We filled a pitcher and put a spare jug (from this summer's water being off) in the fridge.

It is frustrating that they failed to complete the work correctly the two previous times they attempted this. It's hard to have three sick children in the house (please, oh please let this be the cause of some of Kate's behavior). But sometimes you just have to laugh. At least it's not Old Faithful in the bathroom again!

Brrr.

Life has gotten cold here in Kansas...like it was 4 (degrees Fahrenheit--look Justin I included the proper units) outside--right next to the house--this morning.

Yesterday morning we had to leave the house fairly early. I got everyone fed, dressed, hair fixed, winter coats, mittens, hats, and baby blankets ready. We made our way the the van...where I found I couldn't open the doors to the back. Neither of them would budge. It seems that the rain from Monday mixed with the plummeting temperatures yielded doors that were frozen shut. In the mean time, Kate threw snow at Gabby, Gabby fell, and Nate woke up.

So I take my now crying children back to the house. I go back out to start the van. I have recently been made aware that it is illegal to leave your started car to warm in Kansas, so I'm back and forth between the children and the van. I ran upstairs to get my hair dryer, just to find that our extension cords are being used on Christmas lights.

I did eventually pry the doors open and we were able to leave. I have also found that the roads here are not cleared like I'm used to, so I took it rather slow. Other people seemed impatient when we were behind a salt truck, but I didn't mind him clearing my path at all. Thankfully my parents always taught me to get every where early, so we made it right on time, even with our delays.

The girls, of course didn't see our weather as much of an inconvenience. They were just excited about the very first snow of this season.

Never mind it took as long to get dressed in all the warm clothes I made them put on than the length of time I let them play!



They got to be in the snow.



And, of course to throw some of it!



The Little Man, was not so impressed by the cold weather clothes I've made him wear this week.

Okay, so maybe I over reacted...

Someone knocks on my door this afternoon wearing a cable company logo garb. I told him I wasn't interested and closed the door. For the record, we used to have their service for our Internet and their services was...lacking (see here). He waits a good minute, and then he knocked again.

He tells me he wants access to my back yard. I asked for proof of who he worked for. He didn't have a truck parked on the street, and really, how hard is it to get a shirt with a logo on it? Then he told me my name (which is printed in the phone book). He showed me an ID badge, but he was making my life difficult and badges like he was wearing would also be easy to fake. I ask for a phone number to confirm him. He hemmed and hawed, but finally gave me the number.

Admittedly, I probably should have taken him at his word, but I didn't. When the woman answered the phone I asked if she could confirm that she had sent someone to my home. She cheerfully answered yes she had. The problem I had with this answer--she didn't ask who was at my door, who I was, or where I lived! I told her that her answer didn't mean much to me, seeing as she hadn't gotten any information from me.

I spoke to her supervisor, who did actually confirm the person worked for them. He thanked me for being a concerned citizen. No one got in my backyard, by the way. I was told in the future I would be notified prior to anyone attempting to gain access to my yard.

I did the "right things," but I still felt silly. Such is life I suppose.

Time Change

I think the time changing twice a year is Ben Franklin's idea of a never ending practical joke on parents. It takes a week (or more) to reset your child's internal clock so you stop hearing things from your two year old (whom you recently got sleeping to a reasonable hour) like, "Up! Downstairs, chair, play!" And from your four year old like, "My alarm clock must be asleep," as she point to her sunny window.