Asthma + Baking fail

This ragweed season is killing me. Literally! My asthma is so bad that I’m doing nebulizer treatments through the day and on steroids. Yuck. They make me paranoid, YOU talking to me? (Ha ha)  So I can’t get out and do a whole lot which is so ironic because the weather is gorgeous, just unfortunate that the ragweed and lovely early fall weather go hand in hand. I’m sooo ready for the ragweed to be done already. Honestly how much is there and when will it be done?

So to cheer myself up I tried out a new recipe. I don’t necessarily want to say whose recipe it was, because I love her so (in a blog crush sort of way)  Sigh. I am certain it is my fault or a climate difference or something.

So I tried to make these pretzels. It wasn’t hard, the bread machine did the dough and then I pulled it out, let it rise and attempted to form pretzels. But the dough was waay too springy. I couldn’t get the rolls thin enough they kept rising up on me. So when I made them they were puffy and coiled. Coiled..Brown and tan loops. And they were heavy – and I only used 1/2 whole wheat flour (recipe called for all whole wheat) 8 cups of flour for 12 pretzels, yeah, they were heavy. I tried to eat one, it was not good. I tried soaking it in butter and kosher salt.   It looked marginally better. OK, not really. Honestly it looked a lot like big dog poo poo. But shiny and salty. I tasted it, it was horrific, do you remember as a kid ever making salt dough to play with or make ornaments with and of course the grownups told you not to eat it, but it looked so much like cookie dough so you just had to have a bite…well that is how these tasted. Not good.

Oh how I mourn those 8 cups of flour and that stick of butter and those two and a half cups of milk – that was a lot of groceries to literally dump in the trash. I was too sad to even take a picture.  I am determined to try again to make my own soft pretzels, the kids love the ones from the mall and I’ll be darned if I’ll give up. I will just have to keep at it.

Bella at Old McDonalds Farm

We are at that stage where sometimes one kid gets invited to a party and not the other, it is just how it goes. On this particular Saturday a few weekends back Bella was invited to Old McDonald's Farm.  Of course it was awesome.

First we went around and fed all the animals. I told Bella to sit by the rabbit, she thought I told her to sit on the rabbit. Oops.

Waiting her turn to ride. There was no line, so we got to ride twice.

 

I love how she is standing here with her hands on her hips – look how dirty she was (and this was only the beginning!0

  

She learned quickly to keep her hand flat when feeding the animals.  Notice how at this point, she WAS wearing socks….

One of my favorites, looking w-a-y up at the emu or whatever it is.

 

Whenever we go to a birthday party Bella always likes to sit right next to the birthday person.  Bella is a front and center kind of girl.

The party was right next to the sand pile. The sand pile that ate Bella’s socks.  I’m just grateful she didn’t bury her shoes too!

Goodies from the piñata!

Is there a way to photo shop out dirt?????

Shaun & Toad Are Friends

Everyday at work I go walking my co-worker.  On Tuesday we were out for our walk and happened upon this little guy.  He was stuck in a round hole in the top of a manhole cover in the sidewalk in front of our bank building.  This hole was a bit larger than a quarter, and a bit smaller than this toad.

Naturally we couldn't just leave him like that so we went in and got a cup of water, a soup spoon and some napkins and tried to push him in or pull him out.  He did not budge. I worried that I was hurting his little arms when I was pulling, you can see from the picture that his arm already seemed to be somewhat atrophied.  When I poured water on him, he swallowed and opened his eyes and he was just so sad.

We tried to call building maintenence to see if they could pry open the manhole but they were busy on the roof, probably with more important things. By this time my coworkers decided that there really wasn't anything else that could be done.  So we all went back in.

I sat at my desk, and I couldn't concentrate on my work. I just kept thinking about this poor little guy. Then I got an idea. I grabbed some supplies and went back down. At first I thought he had passed on, he wasn't moving, his eyes were closed. But when I poured more water on him he swallowed and opened his eye. I took out a stick of butter that I keep up at the office for toast and I buttered up the edges of the hole. Then I locked my fingers around the wide part of his jar and I shimmied him. I shimmied and then I could see he had come out some. So then I just kept doing this until I had him all the way out to his hip joints. At that point, I dind't know what to do because of course I had no idea how to make him flex his legs so that he would go skinny enough to come out. I looked at him and he tilted his head and looked back at me. "Frog, (I know it's  a toad, but I call them all frogs) I said "Frog, I've done my part, now you have to do yours" and I tell you that frog kicked his legs out and I gave a tug and out he finally popped.

As you can see here, he was OK! he favored one leg but hopped off. I did rinse the butter off him since they absorb through their skin. I don't know, I hope he is fine. If not at least he can pass on out in the open and not stuck.  

Pretty much everyone thought I was nuts to keep trying. They all said I needed to just let it go. But I couldn't just leave a living creature like that. I'm so glad I went back down and tried again!

Kids

Bella wants to be a fairy ballerina for Halloween. This is a costume that can pretty much be done with things we already have. All I need is a pink leotard because the only one she has now is black. Jacob wants to be Buzz Lightyear. I ordered a Buzz Costume, new with tags, off eBay for $25. Since the same one is $49 at the Disney store I thought that was a good deal. We are going to try out the costumes up at church this Friday night where they are doing Family Movie Night plus wearing costumes and getting Goody bags.


Last night Jacob's loose tooth started bothering him and bleeding everywhere. He could only eat yogurt for dinner. I tried to pull the tooth but he was crying and very upset from all the blood pouring out so I just let it be. This morning Will barely tugged and got it out. It's easier if it comes out at home. One of his previous teeth came out at school and got lost, the tooth fairy came anyway, but it bothered Jacob that it was lost. It bothered Will too, he keeps things like that.

This is the 5th tooth to come out. So far he has lost both his upper and lower central incisors. The one this morning is his upper lateral incisor on the right. This is the first tooth where we couldn't see his adult tooth coming right in behind it. I think it's neat to see the kid's dental x-rays with the rows of adult teeth sitting up there waiting their turn. It's weird to think that they have those big old teeth in there all that time.

Last weekend we had two major dramatic events. We thought they would be huge and dramatic for the kids but actually it ended up just being things that upset Will and I - the kids were fine.

The first one has to do with FFPS soccer. FFPS soccer rules says that since the coaches are volunteers, they get to pick the time and day of practices. Our coach picked Sundays to hold practice. I called him to see if it was up for discussion but he explained that he works Monday through Friday out of town and Sunday was the only day he could do it. Will and I talked it over and made the decision that we would withdraw Jacob this season because we opt to keep Sundays for family and church. We did not want to set a precedent for secular extracurricular activities being on Sundays. I thought, Jacob won't get it when he's only 6, or even when he's 16 or 26, but by 36 maybe he will look back and understand why his Mom and Dad chose this.

"Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son..." Genesis 20:8-11

"Choose you this day whom ye will serve..." Joshua 24:15 Sometimes doing the right thing is hard.

We looked into some other activities for Jacob. A while back the children went to a stranger danger presentation up at KUMC and I was very impressed with the instructor, Kevin Henderson who is also the owner, chief instructor and 6th degree black belt at a local martial arts academy. Jacob seemed very receptive to trying martial arts so maybe we will do that.

The other drama we had is that Will sucked up Bella's fairy tent with the vacuum cleaner. I'm not sure yet if I can fix it or not as many of the major seams have been ripped out and I don't have a sewing machine. I don't know if I can fix it by hand because it is such fine gauge silk type material and really should be serged to look right and for the seams to be strong. Will told Bellaabout it very gently, expecting her to be really upset, telling her we would for sure either fix it or replace it. She just said "Oh, could I have a pink one instead?"

Annual Check ups…

 

What a difference a year makes…Officially, in the last year Bella has grown from 31” to 35” in height and from 25 pounds to 26.2 pounds. Hmmm, I have weighed her often at home at a solid 28.5 on several occasions, so I’m not sure what this 26 pounds is all about. (Isn’t it funny how when it’s MY weight that seems light at the doctor’s I love it and think, oh they must have a super accurate scale, but when it is Bella I think Oh that can’t be right???)

It’s funny that although her metrics haven’t changed much, the way she looks and moves is totally different, she is definitely a little girl now and not a baby.  Although she is at 10% for height and weight, her chart shows that she is on a perfect curve so we aren’t worried.  The only vaccination either child had to have today was for flu, and that one was nasal and not an injection so they were happy and it was an easy check up.

I don’t have pictures from Jacob’s 5 yr old checkup. I am thinking that maybe his Daddy took him?

 

I tried to get him to pose with his stats on the paper like we did for Bella. In case it is hard to read – he is 47.2 inches tall and 47 pounds. Remember last month in Vegas when he was too short to ride the kiddie coaster? Well if we went now he could ride it (a full inch in just a few weeks – man!)  Jacob is at 77% for height and 60% for weight. You all know me, I don’t worry too much about stats but I am glad they are both healthy and doing fine.

Jacob actually hit an important key critical childhood milestone while we were waiting for the doctor – he learned to play Uno! I personally love to play Uno and sadly Will does not, so I’ve waited many years to have someone to play Uno with!