G'pa

My grandpa is in the hospital in Iowa City. He's been there since last Wednesday. He has pnemonia(sp?), a blood infection and who knows what else. He was taken my ambulance from Legacy Garden (Memory care place...aka his "big house") to Mercy Hospital. Linda has been staying with him there making sure he is getting the best possible care. She is too sweet. I do get e-mails that talk about her eating ice cream, nachos, etc. So I do have to say she knows how to do it right! I attached a picture of them. My grandpa has been very entertained with Linda's computer and pictures. Linda is also learning how to take digital pictures and send them over e-mail!

Today my dad shot a dear with my grandpa's gun. My grandpa thought that was so neat he got tears in his eyes (is what I'm told). It's so neat to see that even though his memory is not so with it that there are still things from his past that he remembers. He hunted for a lot of years, with my Uncle Lars so who knows what kind of memories it brought up.

Jack and I are heading over next weekend to visit Susie and Aunt Carol who are coming down from Duluth. We all hope and pray that g'pa will be back in his "big house" by then!

Croup anyone?

It all started with what we thought was some more 1-year molars coming in...boy, were we wrong! On Halloween night we didn't hardly sleep at all and Jack was making this awful noise each time he woke up (which was often) and it was like he couldn't take in a full breath. Lovely, I know. I took Thursday off and I was at school at 6:30 that morning writing lesson plans for the sub, oh the joys of missing a day of school. Jack and I headed to the pediatrician at 9:00, and we didn't have to get checked out for very long when she heard him cough and labeled it Croup. For those of you wondering what you do for that....no medication! :) The things we were told to do was go outside in the middle of the night in the cold air to break the "stridor" or tight breathing. We could also turn on the shower and let it run for 10 minutes and fog up the bathroom. It never quite came to either of those, but it did require Steve and Jack sleeping sitting up on the couch for a few nights. Saylor and I had to hold down the fort upstairs and slept in our bed. It is definitely not any fun to see your kid get so sick and cough, and cough and then start to cry because it hurt so bad and look at you with the look of why did you do this to me? It broke our hearts to see Jack like that. All he wanted to do was sit with us and be carried around the house. He usually NEVER wants to be held or carried. I did manage to take some cute pictures of sick Jack. He wouldn't eat anything so the doctor told us to let him eat whatever he wants....cereal, toddler Cheetos and more cereal! He thought it was more fun to eat right off the table and not his tray, notice how he put his feet on the table.

On Saturday afternoon the youth group came and raked our yard. It was a huge blessing! They thought it was fun to put Jack in the pile of leaves. He had his own rake and was copying what they were doing.

Oh yes, we did make it our trick-or-treating with our friends. We went to a couple houses of people we knew so the moms could eat the candy!

Pumpkin Time!

We were going to head to the pumpkin patch today, but we decided after all the running around we've done that it might be best for all of us to just stay home for a day. Since Halloween is in a few days we decided to head out and get some pumpkins at Earl May, for 99 cents! What a deal! Jack thought he needed to try to pick up the biggest one he could find. Notice my feet behind him so he won't fall over on the jagged rocks! We came home and tried to take some other pictures since it was so sunny and nice outside.

Steve planted a tree that my Aunt Linda and Uncle Gary brought down from Lake Vermilion. The really neat thing about this tree is that my Uncle Lars (who passed away 2 1/2 years ago) was the one who planted the tree by the lake at Timbuktu. They had to take it out for some other planting projects, and now it's planted in our back yard in Iowa. My Uncle Lars was a really special person in my life growing up and taught me a lot about life. I'm so grateful to have the tree in my yard to go along with my many precious memories of him. Here is a picture of Jack by the tree.

Fall Retreat

Hello!

We made it through Fall Retreat! It was a lot of fun and the weather was amazing! I think on Saturday it was 73 degrees and sunny. Who could ask for anything more? Except I did forget to carry around the camera to take pictures of Jack eating dirt, sticks and all that exciting stuff. He loved to be around Eowyn. Josh, Liz, and Eowyn came down from Minnesota and Josh led music for the youth which was really fun. It was fun to see them and spend time with the 3 of them, the next time we see them we'll get to hold a new baby.

Jack got a new hat and mittens from LL Bean (free shipping, gotta love that!). We had a hard time finding a hat that latched under his chin. Since he has such an ear fettish we wanted to have some control of making his hat stay on. At least until he figures out how to take it off. He loves wearing mittens and clapping. I'm not sure how the 2 relate, but who knows? We did get some cute pictures in the kitchen, since it hasn't been cold enough to wear them outside.

The other excitement is that April and Jesse got engaged! YIPEE! Jack was doing a happy dance for Auntie April. We better get our dancing shoes out and dusted off. :) It's so neat to have such a great friend (a sister at heart) get engaged.

swimming lessons

Jack and I have been taking Parent/Tot swim class at the Y for the past 8 weeks. It's been a lot of fun to be with other young kids and meet their parents. Jack has loved it (we're actually signing up for the next session). The water picture is actually from the first day of class, which I know is kind of blurry.

The weather has finally cooled off enough here, so we've had to get out our fleece jackets and hats. This is a picture of Jack and I getting ready to leave for swimming class and the hat he has on he actually had the same hat when he was little. This one came in a bag of free clothes! Too fun!

We're heading to Fall Retreat with the youth group this weekend, which will be interesting. The kids are so excited that Baby Jack is coming! Someday he's going to get mad at them for calling him a baby!

I hope everyone is having a great week. It's been raining here a lot! I'm ready to see a little bit of sunshine. I'm jealous of my teacher friends in Minnesota who have MEA! Lucky!

Happy Birthday!

So today I turned 29....now I am SO old! It was a good day, enjoyed by lots of brownies that were brought by my teaching partners. :) I also was blessed to go out for supper with Steve, Jack and part of the Boland family. We went to El Portal, my favorite mexican restaurant. Steve surpised me with tickets to the Rockette's Christmas Show in Des Moines in December. He even planned out a babysitter! Impressive, huh? Jack gave me some Silpada jewelry, that was one of those things I bought and said it was To: Mom, From: Jack!

We have been busy enjoying the cool weather. We actually had to turn the heat on yesterday. Last weekend it was so hot (90 degrees) that we had the air conditioning on. Iowa weather I guess.

Tomorrow we head to Iowa City to visit my grandpa at his "vacation home" (aka Legacy Gardens, a memory care place). He says it's the biggest home he's ever lived in. So it's entertaining to go and visit and everyone there talks about baby Jack, even the workers are excited for him to come. G'pa is very content in his home as long as we don't tell him he's in Iowa. :)

The best treat about the weekend is that Linda is going to watch Jack for the day on Saturday so Steve and I can enjoy some time together. We plan on heading to Chipotle, since it's the first one that's opened in Iowa.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Long (& Fun) Week!

Sorry it's been so long since the last post....last week I had school conferences which took up 3 of the evenings, and when I finally got home I crashed. I did try to convince Steve to let me wake Jack up since I hadn't seen him all day, but he wouldn't hear of it!

This past weekend Steve, Jack and I headed to Des Moines to get Jack's 1 year pictures taken. That was a little harder since he wanted to walk out and play with the kids in the waiting area or walk and get the soccer ball that was a prop. We did leave with a few pictures in hand, it's always so hard to decide. We go to a place called Portrait Innovations, which is so nice because you go back and pick up the pictures in an hour! So here's a picture of Jack and Steve walking around the lake area by the Jordan Creek Mall.

On Saturday I headed to Minneapolis (ALONE!!) to meet up with April, Trisha and Erin. We had a girls weekend! It was so much fun to be able to shop for many hours at the Mall of America, go out to eat at the Olive Garden, enjoy some giggles in our hotel room all to wake up the next morning to head to Ikea. We then followed that up with some Chipotle before heading our separate ways. It was a well needed break! Steve and Jack survived just fine at home! I was glad to see them when I got back.

Jack also got his first "haircut", it was beginning to look a little shaggy! He did okay sitting in the chair but he was glad to be done.

This weekend is a low key weekend, so hopefully we can get caught up with things around the house.