Birthday Festivities ala Hospital Style

Apparently John's body figured out how many coughs it takes to land himself in the hospital due to lack of oxygen. John's pneumonia continued getting worse, so he was admitted to the hospital last Friday. The docs got him all patched up with breathing treatments, iv medication, and of course, lots of oxygen. He is home now trying not to overdue it. This is of course a very difficult task for him. He informed me that he has been lying around for two weeks too long, so he's incredibly bored.

The only glitch in John's hospital stay was my birthday landed smack dab on one of the days he was stuck in the dreaded place, so we made the best of the situation with a lovely visit sans kids in the visitor's lounge overlooking the lake. Blessed Quiet - now that is what I'm talking about as a lovely birthday present.

Counting Coughs

How many times can you cough before your body says it's time to stop coughing? We are still counting as John has been coughing up his lungs for 11 days now. It started out as a cold last week, then turned into pneumonia. Yuck. The poor guy can't get any sleep at night because he spends the entire time coughing. The antibiotics the doctor put him on seem to be helping the fever, but as for the coughs, still no improvement.

In the meantime while taking care of sick hubby, I made massive amounts of frozen strawberry jam. A year's supply. At least I have a year's supply of something. It will taste good with all the wheat we have lying around if ever we need it.

Sending Birthday Wishes Your Way Dad

It's my dad's Birthday Today!! He would have been 59.

We decided to celebrate by sending him some special wishes.

We had to act fast because I bought the balloons last night
and by this morning they were sinking rapidly.

Here they go...

Oops. Several balloons got caught in our tree.

Heaven Bound Balloons

I decided I wanted to start a tradition on my dad's birthday celebrating his life. Someone told me that it's okay to celebrate with tears, so that is what we did. I think this will be a fun way for my kids to remember grandpa and be able to send their love too.

It sounds like the rest of my family had similar ideas. My dad loved eating pancakes, especially blueberry ones. So Shannon made pancakes for breakfast this morning to celebrate his birthday.

My brother planted a rose bush and some blueberries in memory of my dad as well. Christy and her family are making a cake.

My mom and dad loved spending time together on the Oregon Coast beach, so mom and my brother went down to the beach house to celebrate this weekend of my dad's birth and life with us.

I think the goal was the same for all of us; we wanted to make this a happy day filled with celebration. Goal accomplished. Except for the fact that my brother called on speaker phone so I could hear the waves. Remember I've told you how much I love the beach. Sigh. He even sent a picture to my phone. I love the beach. Can't wait to be on the beach again.

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Here's some other fun pictures from the last couple of days. It has occurred to me on more than one occasion that I haven't taken any pictures of Megan for quite some time. So, I pulled out the camera the other day to get some fun shots. Thought I'd share with you. ...and of course remind you all of how cute and adorable she is. (I know, I know...all babies are cute...don't you just want to pinch their little cheekies?)




Alicia also had her Choral Collection concert.
Here she is looking all glamorous.

(it was not my idea for the makeup - it was recommended by the concert people to help their faces stand out on the light I guess. I'm not really a fan of make-up on 7-year-olds)

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! No...it's Super...wait, a Kite.

The girls have been flying kites on every windy day possible for the last couple of weeks. As usual, one of the kite's landed in the neighbor's tree - Kimberly's kite. The kite has been up in the tree for 4 days. Kimberly's plan of attack:

Day One: Attempted to retrieve the kite with a small step ladder. No such luck.

I felt bad for her, so while at the store buying Natalie's birthday present (yes, the night before her birthday - this is what my life is like these days), I bought 3 new kites for a buck a piece.

Day Two: A windy day. Reminded me three times before she left for school if I could keep checking on the kite to see if the wind had knocked it down. I reminded her of the new kite I bought her. She said thank you, but was still determined to get her kite down.

Day Three: Taped two rather longish sticks together to try and reach the kite. I think a bunch of string was involved too. Still couldn't reach kite.

Day Four: Took a chair and stool outside to use with the long sticks to try and reach the kite. Almost got the kite down. Came inside and drew up some plans for Day Five.


I think we have an engineer in the making.

Birthday Wishes

Natalie is now three. Time to get back on the bandwagon and start re-potty training her. That is, after John and I can kick these nasty colds we inherited a few days ago.

Spring Break - The Good, The Bad and the Yummy.

The Good: I survived. Actually better than I thought I would. I think I may be getting the hang of four kids.

The Bad: I'm starting to run out of milk and Megan won't take a bottle. Not so good. Enter power pumping, some herbs to help increase my milk supply, and more table foods to help Megan get enough to eat. She now eats applesauce AND sweet potatoes. We're on a roll! (still no rice cereal, but who can blame her?)

The Yummy: One of the things we did to keep busy last week was visit the chocolate factory. Yummmm....

Spring Break?

Seriously. I mean, really?? Six inches of snow during SPRING break?

I had all of the girls winter clothes packed away in the basement, snow gear buried in a back corner downstairs, and the sleds tucked nicely into a crevice never to be seen or heard from again until after the leaves fall off of the trees (leaves of which have yet to appear on said trees as they have just started budding - that is until they got covered with snow today).

Other than the nasty white stuff that appeared, spring break seems to be going smoothly so far.

On another note, much rejoicing occurred at our house two days ago when after 6 weeks of fruitless attempts at feeding Megan rice cereal, I fed her applesauce, and WA-LA!! Since she is only one week shy of 6 months old, we tried a different approach, and apparently rice cereal isn't her thing, but applesauce sure is. Now if we could just get her to drink out of a bottle. That ever-present battle is sure to be around for awhile longer if she follows her sisters' footsteps.

Say Hello to John's New Bird

Meet Reia (pronounced Raya),
John's 14-year-old Peregrine Falcon.

Yes, she is a female.
John just can't escape the x chromosomes.

Reia is the Greek Mother of the Gods, and Goddess of fertility and motherhood. Since Reia was originally part of a breeding education program up near Seattle, we thought the name was very fitting.

The poor gal had to be shipped via airplane, so she was a little ruffled up when she arrived.

John was like a little boy impatient for Christmas to arrive while waiting for his bird. He has wanted to do falconry and own specifically a peregrine falcon since he was a young boy. The falconry association recently changed the rules allowing him to have one, so of course the instant the rule changes were in place, he was on the internet making arrangements for this gal to join us.


The bird will be a little different from John's other birds. Since she has spent most of her life in captivity doing her breeding thing, she cannot be released into the wild, so she will be with us for awhile (that is if we can keep her from flying off - hehe). Peregrines live for about 20 to 30 years, so she could be around for some time.

She even has that glare we women are so good at.