Christmas in the ER

This year for the first time, we did Christmas Eve present opening at my mom's house. It was a very nice morning with the family and after several days of Cranky Dietrich, Happy Dietrich woke up to join us!

He loved the goldfish he found in his stocking! MMMM...goldfish for breakfast!
We got my brother Paul this awesome hat and beard that my talented friend Sara made. It is pretty funny, but also warm and practical...haha!
Uncle Paul got Dietrich a big truck he thinks it is so fun. He runs the cars around saying "wee,wee,wee!!!"
Then we came back to Spokane and got ready for Christmas Eve church service.

Here we are having Christmas dinner with the cousins at Bryce's parent's house. Grandma Jane bought the table and chairs that made a perfect kids table!
Then we had a little accident. Dietrich sort of kind of fell off the couch and tripped on Bryce's feet...or something. We aren't really sure what he did but afterward he really cried. I thought it was because it was so late and he was just really tired. So we cuddled for the rest of the evening. I tried to put him down a few times and he would just cry, but again, I figured he was just tired and cranky. When we woke up at home on Christmas morning however, he got out of bed excited for breakfast, limped/tripped to the door and then leaned on it crying. This is when I realized he had actually hurt himself somehow. So we ate our yummy cinnamon rolls, opened a few quick presents and then headed to Sacred Heart Emergency Room.
We spent 2.5 hours there, which really seemed pretty good for the ER. Fortunately, they have a pediatric emergency room so we were only in with the kids, not everyone who comes into the ER. We had a nice room where Dietrich and I snuggled on the bed and watched a Christmas Story while we waited. Dietrich had to have x-rays of his leg, which was the most difficult part since I couldn't stay with him due to baby number 2. So I stood in the hall and listened to him scream because he wanted his MAMA!! The results came back and the Dr. said "when you see an x-ray, you do NOT want to see a little circle on it. What do you see on this x-ray?" "A circle." That's right, our little boy has a small fracture in his ankle area. So they splinted him up:

And we were finally on our way. This is Dietrich's second small fracture in less than 6 months. The Dr. said that his bone density looks good and that sometimes these things just happen. I am hoping that when we see the orthopedic specialist this week we can rule out any other bone issues that could be causing his little bones to fracture. Hopefully it is just bad luck and this will be it! I do not want to spend any more Christmas's in the ER! A few hours later we finally made it to Bryce's parent's to open presents and celebrate the day.

Bryce received these "special" gloves for his upcoming diaper changes:
Thought I should share a picture of Bryce in his beautiful "smoking jacket." It used to be my Dad's, I sort of love it, even though it looks like he is a homeless man...

New tools for Dietrich! It was a strange Christmas, spending so much of it at the Dr. and then spending the rest of the day worrying about Dietrich. But we got to spend it with all of our family and that is always wonderful! Currently, Dietrich is practicing his crawling skills again, and hopefully he will be healed up and running around again before no time!

Smelly

You know how a smell can just bring back so many memories! Like every time I wash my hands with bath and body works peppermint soap I think there should be cookies in the oven. I just received one of those e-mails where you are supposed to answer some questions and pass it on, I'm not so good at the passing on part, but I enjoy answering the questions. One of the questions was name your 4 favorite smells. I listed my favorites and then realized I wanted to talk about them, so here you go! :)

1. Babies just out of the bath. They smell so fresh and clean and delicious, you just want to eat them. On Wednesday's my mother-in-law comes over to play with Dietrich while I do whatever I want, and she always gives him a bath. That's my favorite, he smells all fresh and clean and is so cuddly in his jammies and somebody else made him that way. This thought brought me back to when he was a brand new baby and somebody holding him said "I just love how brand new babies smell!" It was then that I realized I hadn't yet smelled my baby, I had the worst cold of my life (I am not kidding, worst every) the day he was born, I couldn't smell anything for at least a week after that. I wanted to cry because I didn't know what my baby smelled like!

2. Anything baking. I mean how couldn't you love that smell? Something delicious in the oven which will be ready for my consumption soon, awesome.

3. The woods on a really hot summer day. This is such a hard smell to describe because I'm sure it's different in different "types" of woods. It's one of those smells that just hits you all of the sudden when you are traipsing through the woods. Sometimes it's while heading down to the lake while camping, or while riding a horse out in the woods, while out hiking, or even while mowing the lawn (but only at my mom's house, we don't get that smell at our house). It just always brings me back to time on my horse on lazy summer days. The smell was even there in the woods when I worked in Montana, it's a very relaxing smell to me.

4. Fresh paint. This one might be a little weird because it's not so much that I think the paint smells good, I just really love how a room "feels" right after it's been painted, and the smell is part of that. Something has been accomplished and that just always feels really good.

So there is my rather random post for the day, maybe it will make you think of your favorite smells and the memories that go with them.

Oh Christmas Tree!

If you know me, you know that I am a country girl, not a red-neck, OH NO, that is something entirely different, just a country girl. So when I grew up and moved to the "city" it would probably come as no surprise to you, that I was SHOCKED to learn that people BUY Christmas trees. BUY them?! Where?! Clearly, my family went way the heck out in the woods to get a tree. I'm pretty sure there are no good Christmas trees until you have driven way too far up a scary logging road covered in snow. Now that I have grown up, I will admit that I have purchased two trees in my life, one when I was in college from some cute little Boy Scouts and one when I first moved to Spokane and clearly couldn't get to my mom's for a hiking through the snow adventure! I also learned that not only do people BUY trees, but some people BUY FAKE trees. Whoa. That is some crazy stuff people. So although my husband grew up with a fake tree, due mainly to his sister's allergies (can't Bekah go live with Grandma and Grandpa?) he indulges me with the hunt for the perfect REAL tree.

Dietrich thought it was pretty awesome...

Warming up in the truck
That is a lot of trees people!
So as always, we hiked through the snow, separated from Mom and Steve, waited for them by the road, found trees for 5 families, drove on a slippery mountain road, drove over TWO trees to get off of slippery mountain road, and in the end lost one tree. But our massive tree survived the trip and made it home to take up our entire living room (thanks mom). She had to have some pretty serious trimming along the backside to fit up against the window but she is looking pretty good. And as always smells delicious. It only took two days to decorate this year, which is pretty good considering my 5 month pregnant body is a little slower and not as balanced to be going up and down the ladder to decorate our 12 foot tree. But it's done, now to finish the rest of the decorating and maybe you'll get to see some finished product pictures!

Montana Visit

The first weekend in November we loaded up and headed to Helena for a quick visit. We hadn't seen Shawna and Bob and little Abigail since September and since the roads get pretty nasty between here and there during the winter we usually don't do any winter visits, November is about as late as it gets. We haven't road tripped with Dietrich since last March so I was a little worried about how the 5 hour drive would go. He slept about an hour both ways and did AWESOME! Only one little fit on the way home because he didn't want back in the car seat, but other than that he did great!

Reading some bedtime stories with Shawna and Abigail, too bad Dietrich refused to sleep unless we were in the bed with him, which means he didn't sleep much while we were there!
Naked babies! Shawna and Bob have a wood stove in the living room, so the kiddos were plenty warm enough to play in their diapers. Dietrich really wanted Abigail to do some more serious playing, but she is just crawling so she's not quite ready for the running and climbing that Dietrich likes so much.


It was a great although quick trip to see everyone. We probably won't get to see them again until May since Shawna is busy finishing up her RN schooling, so these babies will have grown a lot by then! And Abigail will be ONE by then, and Dietrich TWO, and we will have another baby! Holy cow time flies!

Half way to Baby

Last time around I posted pictures of my pregnant belly on facebook for my faraway friends to see. Everyone was always so kind, "you look great" "so cute" you know the usual nice things you would say when forced to view someone's growing belly. Then at the very end when I was enormous and decided I could no longer post pictures of myself because, well, I was enormous, this super skinny also pregnant girl I knew from high school wrote to me and said "you need to post another picture of your belly!" In a previous week she commented on my picture with a "do you know how big the baby is?" Yes I wanted to slap her. It is not fair that you do not look pregnant when you are 6 months along, pregnancy is for eating. I should also mention that she had a 6 lb baby, not a 9 lb 2 ouncer like I did. So the point of this long story is that I will post my pictures here for my sweet friends who are not using my pictures to make themselves feel good about the fact that they don't eat.

8 weeks

13 weeks

16 weeks

19 weeks

Today marks half way to baby! I am 20 weeks along and feeling baby moving all the time. I can't believe how fast time is flying with this little one!

Random happenings

Here are a few random photos from whats been happening around our house. Bryce got on the roof over the weekend to get the Christmas lights up. Last year we did it over Thanksgiving weekend in the middle of a snowstorm. It was very scary and Bryce is not a huge fan of putting up the lights anyway, so this year he got it done early (along with many of our neighbors I have noticed). Don't worry, we won't turn them on until after Thanksgiving :)

A few weeks ago I finished making this bag, it was a fun and quick project, I think I will be making more in the future!
This is the beginning of the kids play room in the basement. We got the beds moved around a few weeks ago, Dietrich is down there playing right now, it's kind of nice to have a space to keep the bigger toys that used to be stored in the basement living room.
And this is terribly exciting, I bought a new rug! The one that was here before was pretty disgusting so I threw it out a few months ago, recently with the wet and mud there have been a lot of wet, muddy footprints running through the basement so I finally picked out a new rug (at Ross for $9.99!) to hopefully keep the dirt in one place (mostly).
So there is my random posting for Monday, now off to do some laundry!

Baby Ring

A few weeks ago I was reading an article in Real Simple about objects. Several different writers wrote about some "thing" that was especially important to them and why. Of course every item was sentimental and had some meaning behind it, although few had any real monetary value. I knew right then exactly what my object would be if I was asked to write about something like that. Then today I read this blog about a woman's special post-marriage engagement ring and what it meant to her. How it is a symbol of the very difficult times her and her husband have been through, again I thought about my special object, also a piece of jewelry, and decided that I would like to write about it too.

I have a baby ring, when I was little I remember that my mom kept it in a ring box in her dresser drawer. I used to wear it on special occasions, like Christmas or for pictures, until of course it stopped fitting. I loved when I got to wear it because I knew it was really special. Somewhere around high school my mom let me have it and I put it on a chain...

I remember her telling me the story of the ring, how when I was born my Dad ran out to the store to buy me a ring so that he could be the "first man to buy me a diamond." I wore the ring around my neck all the time. During college my friends and I went to an event called Search, it's a spiritual/religious event. Everyone was asked to bring an object that was special to them to talk about. I brought my ring and when I told the story of how my Dad wanted to be the first man to buy me a diamond I made half the girls in the room cry. When I wear it people always ask me about it. I remember as a little girl thinking it was so special that I had this diamond, and it must be worth a lot of money! The diamond is so tiny you can hardly see it, mom said it probably cost around $100. I check it all the time to make sure the diamond is still there but sometimes I think it could have fallen out and I would never know.

When my Dad died in an accident 6 years ago I was afraid to ever take it off. I wore it all the time, and then the chain broke. It took a while to find a new chain that I liked, and that was strong enough I could wear it all the time again. On my wedding day I wore a little pearl bracelet with the ring on it, it was the most important piece of jewelry that I wore that day. I of course would be devastated if I ever lost my beautiful engagement and wedding ring, which are also so special to me, but I know I could replace them. I could never replace the ring my Dad bought me when I was just a baby.

Trick-or-Treat!

Thursday was the Halloween party at mommy and me, Dietrich agreed to wear his costume for a few minutes at home, but then cried when I asked if I could take his picture:

Once we got to mommy and me there was a major meltdown over being asked to wear the costume for the photographer and even after I told him he didn't have to he continued to throw a fit. So we left early and he took a 4 hour nap! Guess he was too tired to be an alligator. So I really had no expectations that he would wear his costume for Halloween, and really at this age he doesn't care...but we asked him if he wanted to go for a walk last night and as we headed out the door I put the costume on him. He totally went for it! These pictures are all on the go, I didn't want to ruin it by asking him to stop for a nice picture:


We went to the neighbors house where he got a piece of candy and then they invited us in. Dietrich got to play with a super fun ball table that belongs to their grandkids which was way better than candy anyway, so I think for him Halloween was a success!

Pumpkins

A couple of weeks ago Bryce's sister Sarah, husband David, and kids came to visit. We decided it would be a fun weekend to go to Green Bluff and pick out pumpkins. Here is Dietrich and me picking out a little pumpkin in the busy pumpkin patch.

I think he is wondering where everybody went...
Taking a ride in the wagon...
Checking out the sweet old horses that pull the hay ride.
Here we are on the hay ride, it was a beautiful day!


We had a great time at the pumpkin patch and enjoying the fall festivities at the farm. It was a busy day with lots of people but it was such great weather! Later on we celebrated my niece Arielle's 4th birthday and carved our awesome pumpkins.

One bed down.

We currently have two guest rooms, which may seem a bit excessive but has come in handy MANY times. However, now that baby number two is on the way and the kids will have to share a room (because there is only our room and the kids room on the upper-level) I want to turn one of the rooms in the basement into a playroom/space for all of the kids stuff. We will put a futon or hide-a-bed in there because we don't want to lose our extra bed, but we have a queen size bed we will be getting rid of. Last night Bryce's Dad asked him about the bed.

Bryce: Dad says there is a homeless couple from the Church that are getting an apartment, they could use a bed and Dad knew we were planning on getting rid of that one eventually.

Me: yeah, but we weren't really planning on doing that until January. Although we don't have any plans for a bunch of guests between now and then. I just don't really want to rearrange everything right now.

Bryce: I told Dad we weren't planning on it until January.

Me: but we do have 3 beds and a crib, and they don't have a bed, it seems a little greedy. And the reason I don't want to do it right now is because I don't feel like doing the work, and that's pretty selfish. Greedy and selfish, I feel awesome.

Bryce: clearly you are going to hell.

Me: they can have the bed.

Three years

On October 18th Bryce and I celebrated out 3rd anniversary. It is amazing how much has happened in three years. We bought a house, Bryce got a new job, we had a baby, and now we are having another one!

This is how a couple celebrates their third anniversary when the budget doesn't allow for a night out. It's okay though, we went out last month to a nice restaurant (with a gift card, whoo-hoo) and then out for dessert for my birthday/our anniversary/celebrating baby number 2.

I made us some yummy shrimp fettuccine, fancy salad with feta cheese and set the table all pretty to make it feel like a special occasion. It was just as good as restaurant food and much less expensive. Plus Dietrich got to join us for the celebration, although he was not really impressed by the shrimp...

Applesauce

A few weeks ago our Mommy and Me group met up at Green Bluff to pick apples. Dietrich was super helpful, he even picked a few apples himself!

He loved "putting" the apples in the box, which was often throwing. But since the plan was applesauce I wasn't too concerned about bruising.

And then Dietrich bruised his head. He tripped and landed on the corner of the wagon. He was not a happy camper after that...
Here are all the apples washed and ready to go.
Cooking away...
And the final product! This is twice as many as I was able to make last year, and only one jar didn't seal, but we eat applesauce pretty quickly around here so no worries.
My mother-in-law convinced me to keep the skins on and use a sieve to remove them after they were cooked, so much faster, plus it makes it a pretty pink color! Delicious! I think we have already gone through nearly 4 jars, it won't last the winter that's for sure!