The Alpaca Ranch

Two visits

2011-04-27T10:21:00.001-04:00

A couple weeks ago Grandma Ruth was in town to visit for a few days. We went to visit Great-Grandma Sprengeler for an afternoon. The weather turned out to be beautiful and the children had a fun afternoon with a grandma, great-grandma, and great-aunt Becky.

Puddles. The BEST part.

Moosie is still learning to smile on command.

Happy Easter

2011-04-24T14:53:00.001-04:00

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Happy Easter from our family to yours! Luke was ready for his afternoon nap by the time we took this picture, as you can see. It's the thought that counts.

Luke is 1

2011-03-31T07:36:00.007-04:00

The number of changes we have undergone as a family over the past year is almost unimaginable. One year ago this month we lived in a house (which we owned) in a town 750 miles from where I sit this morning. I was working full-time at a hospital pharmacy, while Sarah was a full-time mom. Most of our extended family lived within a 2 1/2 hour drive from our home. And our little family was just the four of us: Mama, Papa, Julia, and Mary.

Sarah and I have gotten in the habit of saving our kitchen calendars. It gives us something to use to cue memories (both good and bad!) and also can make us laugh quite frequently. Although March seems like the longest and most tedious month of the year, the page for March in last year's calendar is filled with more things than probably any other three months. One of us was taking Omnicef for the first 2 weeks of the month. A wedding reception. Some friends visiting from out of town. Multiple overnight ER shifts for Sarah. "Did You Match" day (coincidentally on the Ides of March), followed by Residency Scramble, and then actual Match Day three days later. On March 31 I see an entry that says "List house by this day (meet w/Julie before".

And last, but certainly most life-changing and important, on March 26: "DUE DATE. Ed comes to stay."

Fast-forward to today. "Ed," in the person of Luke, is now 1. Can you believe it? Chattering, crawling, munching fuzzballs off the floor, and providing comic relief, he has become an adorable blond attention-stealer. He's one change we wouldn't exchange for anything.

Sarah invited over a couple families from church who have children the same age as ours for Moosie's birthday.

Mmmm...waxy.

Is it OK if I eat this?

Happy Sunday

2011-03-13T19:07:00.004-04:00

Sisters, sisters...there were never such devoted sisters!

Today Julia and I went on a shopping marathon...2 1/2 hours, five stores....phew! Everyone at work is getting very coupon-happy, and we wanted to try our hand at getting some deals. We clipped coupons and made lists....and despite my best efforts, my grocery bill was STILL $100. I don't know how I have such talent...my grocery bill is almost ALWAYS $100. I can go to the Kroger with an enormous list or just to pick up "milk and eggs," and the cashier always asks me for a Ben Franklin. Anybody else out there have that problem?

Julia was a shopping champion. She held coupons and didn't run away to play with toys. I didn't catch her opening all the musical cards in the Hallmark section and she didn't "taste" all the grapes. By the time we made it to Target, she was pointing out Clearance sighs. She was so good for me that I rewarded her with a fairy wand and some boinger-oingers with stars. I love that my kids are young enough that a 50 cent gift from target is enough to make their day!

I had to post this picture. Mary looks beyond enthusiastic about her new wand and matching jammies. Life is good.

Lutheran Schools Week

2011-03-08T09:35:00.003-05:00

It's Lutheran Schools Week! The kids get to wear something special to school each day this week. Today is "career day." We have here Nurse Mary and Chef Julia. I knew there was a reason we kept that Grill Team chef hat.

Spring fever, kicking in.

2011-03-03T11:28:00.008-05:00

Right around the end of February/beginning of March everyone at our house starts to go a little bit nuts. We do our best to keep the kids busy, playing outside in the snow or over at friends' houses or chucking them in the basement to play when our toes start to curl. I can't put a number on the times we've headed shopping more just to get out and about than to buy anything that we actually needed. I'm hoping that that doesn't mean we now own a bunch of random crap that has no function...
Sarah happened to be off this past Saturday (yay!). Her cure for the Fever for the day was to roll out a bunch of sugar cookies and have the girls help her decorate them. For good measure the children selected all the spring-oriented cookie cutters they could find (ducks, tulips, bunnies, etc); unfortunately for me these cookie cutters happened also to be of the "mini" variety - as in bite-sized. I say unfortunately because Sarah makes a mean sugar cookie, and making them tiny only increases my ability and propensity to gobble them by the dozen. I'm pretty sure that I ate almost two dozen before they were even cooled.
It's a good thing I'm not on a diet.

Let's get started.

Mary enjoys her role as taste-tester.

"I think I hab do sdeeze..."
"COVER YOUR MOUTH!!!"

Jules trying out her artistic talents on a cookie-canvas. It's nice how, as the kids get older, messes during activities like this tend to be smaller.

And one final shot of the cookies, a.k.a. my nemesis.

Yesterday's post...

2011-02-20T18:52:00.000-05:00

...was a little premature. Because this is what our yard looks like tonight.

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It was fifty degrees!!!

2011-02-19T14:55:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, it was FIFTY (yes, five-oh) degrees here in Ypsilanti. (Ip-suh-lan-tee) and we took advantage of it! We walked Luke around the neighborhood and greeted the new green grass as it peeked out from under the snow. Living in Michigan has its perks: winter is literally cut in HALF. It feels like we went straight from November to March. It went from fall, to the "brown crunchy stage" to SNOW, snow, and more SNOW, and now it's melting. So far it's been all of the fun parts of winter without being cold! I don't think we even made it below zero. So our fifty degree day in February was met with welcoming arms and we attempted to replenish the stores of vitamin D.

Mike was our photographer. I love this one!

Almost all the snow is gone.

OK, so the pics are a bit out of order. Not sure why. Also not sure why this text is suddenly underlined. I am such a computer guru...shoulda made a career out of it!

Hi everybody!

A little Christmas decorating

2010-12-12T22:28:00.010-05:00

This post is a leeeetle belated - my apologies. I started this post back at the front end of December, put it away, and now it's February! Isn't it unfortunate how the holidays, designed to give people family time and relaxation, usually end up having the opposite effect and sending us into a tailspin of busy-ness and tiredness? I end up doing a whole bunch of things that I think need to get done while neglecting the things that should be enjoyed. Just an observation.

A little post-script here: I see the post before this one was at Halloween-time...yup, it's been a while. I'm trying to keep up, honest.

At any rate. About Thanksgiving-time one usually starts thinking about getting the tree up, so it was off to the tree nursery we went. This year we invested in what is called a "noble fir" - a very beautiful and well-proportioned tree, but with weak branches that tend to bend when laden with heavy ornaments (note to self: look for something else next year). We got out the boxes of Christmas decorations and the girls had a blast digging through all the boxes for stuff they hadn't seen for a year. Moosie helped himself to some homemade dough ornaments (mmm...salty) and sat on the floor to watch.

For your viewing pleasure:

Mary surveys her work.

Julia, playing with the plastic Fisher-Price nativity we finally broke down and bought this year, after the little ceramic Mary on our good one got her hand broken off for the fifth (sixth? seventh?) time!

Said Mary is huddling in fear somewhere in here. What's that you say? Snow? What's that stuff?

My wife extends her campaign to torture our long-suffering Simon.

Moosie can't get enough of that box!

Moose-snacks...er...I mean, dough ornaments.

Trying out my artistic talents here...

The finished tree.

First snow

2010-12-01T13:04:00.002-05:00

...and Miss J insists she needs to be out in it. In boots and snowpants.

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Chaos ensues

2010-11-10T16:52:00.017-05:00

This week my crazy wife decided to take advantage of some of the post-Halloween sales. Clearance crap, I have found, is kind of like a fight brewing in a bar: I'm drawn to it, because I want to see what's going on, yet in truth I want nothing to do with it (and I definitely don't want it in my house). While we did score some sweet Halloween decorations and costumes for next year on the cheap, Sarah grabbed a couple things that I generally try to avoid at all costs.

The first was some new dress-up clothes for the girls. Now, as a rule I hate dress-up clothes. When they're pulled out if the box I invariably spend the morning playing "Can you put this on me?" and mending the bumped heads brought on by the tiny, plastic, lethal high-heeled shoes the girls like to wear. (Clomp-clomp-clomp-clomp-THUD. "Waaaahhhhhh!") But whatever. If a new dress or two will occupy them for a morning, fine. I'm all for it.

The other thing to hit our cart was a haunted-house style gingerbread house kit, complete with assorted small candies and frosting packets to decorate it. Those things make me shudder, for two reasons. Number one: by the time you actually purchase the thing, get it home, unwrap it, build it, and eat it, the cookies are so ancient that they resemble concrete slabs (which I suppose is appropriate, since they're being used for building materials and all). The second reason is the potential for mess-making. Or more correctly stated,

MESS-MAKING!!!

Two preschoolers + gooey frosting + thousands of tiny sprinkles = one enormous mess that I have to clean up.

I made Sarah supervise the building activity as my revenge.

Multiple plates of tiny mess-making particles, or as some people call them, decorations.

And here we go!

First taste of frosting. It's all downhill from here, folks. Avert your eyes.

Luke, oblivious to the impending carnage, plays with the toy of the day (TotD): cookie cutters!

I can't watch!

Mary surveys her creation...

...and revels in the deliciousness of black frosting.

The amazing duck-billed cat Sarah made of fondant.

Epilogue: Luke watching Papa weep as the mess is made.

It's Halloween again

2010-11-01T11:20:00.012-04:00

As has become our tradition, Grandma Beth came to visit over the Halloween weekend. This generally means lots of homemade bread and soup, getting things done in the yard, and trick-or-treating. There are LOTS of leaves down on our street (I think everyone is waiting until they're all done to rake) so the girls had some fun with those too. It was an interesting Halloween, getting to know a whole new neighborhood and wondering what the weather was going to do. Turns out trick-or-treating felt a lot like good old St Cloud - cool enough to need jackets but not so much that we wished we'd stayed home.
I'm short on clever things to say this time around, so we'll let the photos speak for themselves. I went a little overboard this time...

It's carving time.

Mary does not like to get dirty.

Unless it involves eating, of course.

Along with the neighbor kids, we had quite the hodgepodge of costumes.

Moosie was a vampire, complete with bloody drool.

This one cracks me up.

And they're off!

And of course there was time for the inevitable sink-bath from Grandma.

Coconut cake!!

2010-10-21T10:50:00.009-04:00

There are so many things I have learned since becoming a stay-at-home dad in June. One of the hardest lessons for me has been that, no matter how much I want to or no matter how hard I try, I am not going to be a perfect homemaker. There are a few things that I am just not going to be able to master. Cleaning I can do, and do well. But grocery shopping? No intuition whatsoever. I am a fair hand at parenting. Cooking, however, is something that is better left in more capable hands (AKA Sarah, who is the most amazing cook in the world; she can make a three-course meal with a toothpick and some ketchup).
Time and work constraints being what they are, my family is unfortunately subjected quite often to my (lack of) cooking skills. Once in a great while I will hit the nail on the head and pull off a tasty dessert or breakfast...like yesterday. When I found the most amazing cake recipe EVER. Coincidentally one of Sarah's friends from residency came for dinner so it was an opportune time for me to test it out.
Needless to say I had three small "helpers" for the execution of this endeavor. Photos of the project are below, and a link to the recipe is here. Try it - it's incredible.

The lovely Miss Mary...

...Luke, squealer extraordinaire...

...and Julia, the comic relief.

Mmmmm...buttermilk!

Taking a break from the action to play "house" under the hall bench.

One of the most important side effects of making a coconut cake, besides the 35,000 calories, is having some extra delicious toasted coconut to snack on later.

Of course, no cake is complete without beaters to lick off afterward!

And P.S.: I would have posted a photo of the finished product, but, uh, we ate it already.

Acrobatics

2010-10-20T12:44:00.000-04:00

Mary would like everyone to see just how silly she can be when she is hungry.

("I stand on my head!")
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First Haircut!

2010-10-16T20:23:00.009-04:00

Last weekend, while we were in church, some well-meaning lady came over to us and said, "what a beautiful family you have!!! Three daughters! They are beautiful. And you must have so much pink at home!"

"Thank you. We do have a lot of pink at home. But our youngest is a boy."

"Oh! Sorry, I assumed he was a girl with all of that beautiful blonde hair."

....

It's time. From the minute I first saw Luke when they held him up over the sterile blue drape during my c-section, I have loved his hair. I never thought I'd have a blue-eyed blonde kiddo. Julia and Mary had hair at birth, but they got dark mohawk-style hair that started to look like male-pattern baldness by three months and were completely bald by six months. Luke's mop just grew to epic proportions, kind of like the rest of him. So his Mama just didn't want to cut his hair. I won't let Mike grow his over his ears, but I had a beautiful son with.....I hate to admit it....but.........a Mullet. Long and flowing in the back. And only in the back. And after that comment, I knew it was time. And just yesterday, a coupon from Great Clips arrived. So today's mission was set in stone. Operation Haircut commenced.

Before the 'do. Isn't he just so cute? Mullet and all?

Profile view.

Mullet Baby to the REscue!

Our stylist said that six months is the youngest client she's ever had. Her co-workers agreed. Luke is now the reigning champion in the category of "Youngest Baby to Need a Haircut" at the Ypsilanti Great Clips.

Here is Handsome, trying to snack on his apron. Mmmmm.....hairs

By the end, he was getting a little impatient. Luckily, Mama had a tootsie roll in her purse to share.

Finished product! Isn't he so handsome!!!!

Back in the saddle......

2010-10-16T19:40:00.003-04:00

Last week, I got a facebook message from Auntie Jenny (Eichten.) It said, "I miss you blog. Has the Alpaca Ranch been sold off to some "Agri-Conglomerate?"

Ha ha ha.

And how sad! I started this thing after Julia was born, mainly for family and friends to keep track of us. We are busy folks, and so are all of you....and we've let our Ranch go for a few months. And it couldn't have been at a worse time. We moved 1000 miles away from The Motherland, and now we have become slackers. Our Alpacas need shaving. We're gonna try.

...mama won't sell the farm!

:)

First day of swimming lessons

2010-07-12T10:04:00.001-04:00

Look out world - here I come!

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More gardening

2010-06-30T22:31:00.008-04:00

Our new place in Michigan came with a whhoooollle bunch of stuff. I'm thinking that most of it is from the girls that lived here before us, stuff that they were too lazy to move with them. There's a bulletin board now hanging on our kitchen wall that previously languished in the basement. There are enough discarded blinds and window hardware in the basement to sink an ocean liner. And we should have left our gardening tools in Duluth, too. Plus I think we could open our own paint store.

Rummaging around in the garage, I came across a medium-sized box chock full of seeds of all types. Cool! There were tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, marigolds, delphinium, zinnia...and then I checked the package dating...and it was 2005. Shoot.

Well, being as I'm in a gardening mood this week, and our nice weather is persisting (plus I needed a good excuse to avoid unpacking) I decided that we would occupy our morning today by planting those seeds. Even if they don't grow, I thought, the girls will learn something and have fun doing it. Added bonus: it gives us a daily activity for the next two weeks. "Okay, now it's time to water the seeds! ....No, it's Mary's turn to use the sprayer...stop, you're getting it everywhere! MARY! Don't spray your sister! Jules...wait...not the dog!!"

Awesome.

Below are the steps for planting six-year-old seeds.

1. Find a workspace. Messy is OK. Eat a snack before, so you don't get too hungry while planting.

2. Choose your seeds.

(Simon is choosing to nap/supervise.)

Julia displays her selection.

3. Fill your planter with dirt.

4. Carefully spread seeds in the planter, then cover. Julia demonstrates this step, while Mary calls for Dominos.

Mary takes her turn.

5. Fight over who gets to use the watering can first. Water the seeds well, then place in a sunny spot.

And here's the finished product. Hope we get more than 3 seeds that sprout...

And a picture of the Moose, to finish it off. (He didn't get to help - it was naptime.)

This morning's project

2010-06-29T15:20:00.011-04:00

I find that when I have coffee right away in the morning, I make big plans. One cup, and ziiiing! I've written myself a to-do list with about twelve projects on it. Feels pretty good, actually, like I can do anything I set my mind to. Unfortunately, few of these ideas come to fruition. Perhaps this is because my list generally contains such items as "Organize all books on all the bookshelves" or "Unpack 15 boxes." These sort of things would probably be difficult for a person on speed with no children to distract them to accomplish, let alone an inexperienced stay-at-home dad with three high-maintenance ratlings.

As I made this morning's list, one project revealed itself as a perfect fit for my day. It has cooled off considerably here, so the outdoors was breezy and pleasant. I had two little girls and a dog who needed some fresh air, and the sun was shining. What better thing to tackle than a little gardening?

Our brand-new enormous backyard has a number of beds in it. They are mostly dedicated to shady-type plants and groundcover. There is one little plot, however, in the middle of the yard, in full sun, that would make an excellent garden. Our landlord has given us permission to landscape as we see fit, so we have decided to transplant the perennials out of that area and plant a little herb garden and some tomatoes. I decided I was going to get some of the daylilies that were taking up space out of the way.

Our lovely herb garden, surrounded by perennials and random groundcover plants.

One of the other plants in the plot. This stuff is everywhere!

Below, my lovely helpers, Mary and Julia. (Jules is excited...can you tell?)

Daylilies extracted. Initializing transplantation sequence.

The ratlings got bored and decided a victory dance was in order.

Miss Mary, showing some tummy and probably whining, by the look on her face.

DUNNNN!!!!!

The girls got distracted by some books, so I was left to finish by myself.

And here's the tree that Grandpa and Grandma planted while they were here. It's some kind of pine tree - I can't tell them apart very well, so I don't know what kind. Grandma Beth is probably groaning as she reads this.

Mary, who knows something that you don't know!

Sarah's new hydrangea. ("I can't believe we're living in a Zone 5!!")

And a pretty trumpet-vine that was living here when we moved in.

From Memorial Day...the last Hurrah as Minnesotans

2010-06-29T07:24:00.007-04:00

2010-06-28T21:34:00.004-04:00

This was the photo Mike posted to Facebook today. He called the girls downstairs for lunch and here's what he got. Julia also insisted that "Mary" is no longer her sister's name....instead she is to be called, "Skunky."

I should buy stock in the JCP photo department!

2010-06-26T19:05:00.003-04:00

Here's the latest pics of the kids. I wasn't impressed with our photographer today...but I'll peg that up to my being too picky since we had such wonderful picture-taking ladies when we lived in Duluth. At least she managed to get one with all of them looking at the camera.

She wanted to know if I had ever considered the JC Penney portrait club. There must be some sort of commission when they suck you in...regardless of the gimmicks, we could chair the JC Penney portrait club. We have taken so many pictures of our kids there over the years that I should have invested before we had Julia.

At any rate, here are the pictures from this morning. We are so blessed to have three cute and healthy kids. They were rewarded with a trip to the mall playground (YES, our mall in Ann Arbor has a playground!!!!) And a piece of a cinnabon. I was afraid to look up the nutritional value of a cinnabon....I bet the calorie count is in the thousands.....

Grandma Mitzi

2010-06-23T20:40:00.004-04:00

Well, we're in Michigan, now. The packing is done. The last few boxes were labeled, 'random crap' (thanks for the help, Jessi...). The truck came, the men picked up our stuff, they smoked a bunch, and then they finished the job. They drove it out here and met us a week ago today. More men came and put the boxes in our house. And for the last week, we've been unpacking like fiends. There is cardboard everywhere and I have been wearing pajama pants because the seventeen boxes in my room have yet to be unpacked, and only one or two contains clothing that fits me in this glorious post-partum perioid.

Moving is the second least-fun thing I have ever done. The least fun I've ever had?

Hands down, missing Grandma Mitzi's funeral.

I knew that moving out here would mean fewer trips to Minnesota and I would have to make the most of my family time during the three or four weeks I have off. But I didn't anticipate needing to come back home less than a week after I left. Turns out that Grandma passed away last Friday and the funeral is tomorrow...and I can't get out of tomorrow's day of orientation because it's all the stuff on Labor and Delivery. Sad. I hope everything goes well and I miss you, family! Grandma, I know you would understand. You'd probably yell at me someday if I skipped an important day of orientation and spent $500 to come home for your funeral. Yes...I'm pretty sure you'da yelled. Good thing you taught me well!

Love you and miss you, Grandma Mitzi!

I'll see you on the other side.

New jammies!

2010-06-11T22:51:00.001-04:00

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Memorial Day Weekend Part One

2010-06-06T04:41:00.009-04:00

This picture should be entitled, "So you think YOU'RE having a rough day?"

It's a picture of a crayfish whose arm got stuck between the beams of the dock. That means he probably met a very ill fate. Or he is swimming around in the lake like a pirate with only one arm. Arrrrr. Ahoy Maytee. I'm the dreaded pirate Oneclaw.
Here's the first round of photos from Memorial Day Weekend 2010. Phew. With all of this packing, there hasn't been much time to do anything else, especially blog and organize photos. My dreams are filled with visions of stuffing little objects around the big ones into boxes and then finding the roll of packing tape. What happened to the Sharpie marker, Honey?

I know, it's absolutely riveting.

The truck comes to pick up the contents of our house on Thursday morning. That's tomorrow. Oh my we have a lot more to do before the end is in sight. Good thing we ran out of boxes to fit all of the beer. It may be old, but if it's cold, it just doesn't matter.

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful."

Mary

Mom and Dad's "Critter Cabin" where we stayed

Psymuhn kept watch while we were swimming

Luke's new favorite book is "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" ooooooooh..

Gramps and Gram took us to Embers for a big family dinner. What fun!

Gramma Beth gave Luke his first try of ice cream. Let's just say it was a "blast."

Grandpa and Grandma at the lake

2010-06-04T20:32:00.003-04:00

Grandpa Roger and Grandma Mitzi at the lake last weekend. We love you guys!

New Camera!

2010-05-31T12:52:00.002-04:00

Hey friends!

We finally broke down and did it: we bought a new camera. I just about chucked the old one out the window on the day of Annie's wedding...I put brand new batteries in it, took TWELVE pictures. Yes, twelve. And then it died. Of course, by the time it died, we were at the church already, so I missed a LOT of good photo opportunities. (Although I must admit, I probably wouldn't have taken very many because I was busy wrangling three kiddos all day, two of them in white dresses.)

So, I went online and bought a Canon Rebel. It's a digital SLR camera. Don't ask me what that means. I wanted a camera that took a picture the instant you pressed the button. I hated waiting for our old camera to think for a second or two before it actually took the picture. By the time the camera would click, the Kodak moment was gone. Well, our new camera takes pictures the instant you press the button. Yay!

I guess it has a LOT more to it than that. I am now a student of photography, I guess. Mike is, too. We are having fun thinking about physics and how it relates to shutter speed, aperture size, and light. Wheee!

I also think that turning my husband into a photography nerd will help us take more pictures and post them up here. We need to do that since we are moving to Ann Arbor in ten days. Let the chaos begin!

bathtime!

2010-05-24T00:27:00.003-04:00

Time for a bath! Today marked the first time we had three kids in our bathtub at once. As we were washing them up, I remembered one of my duties as a parent that I had been neglecting: take nudie pics of them in the tub while they will still let me. ;) So here are a few. Luke got lots of "help" washing up his hair. He was a bit flustered by the ordeal.
Mary likes the bath foam. Isn't she photogenic?
Luke stared at the obnoxious one.
I swear, I didn't give him a perm! Luke's beautiful hair makes tight blonde curls when it is wet. What a handsome boy!!!

Annie gets married!

2010-05-21T23:53:00.008-04:00

Hi everybody! Well, it happened. My favorite, baby, and only sister said her vows a week ago tonight and married a wonderful guy. I couldn't be happier for them. The wedding was wonderful. I cried during the vows. Annie cried during the vows. It seemed like many guests were tearful as well. While we were standing up by the altar, I grabbed my two kleenexes that I'd packed for tear-dabbing (damn the mascara)...one for me, one for Annie. As I gave away my kleenex, I heard some whimpering from behind me. I glanced toward the two other bridesmaids, who were smiling happily. Where was the loud, wet sobbing coming from? I turned around...sure enough, it was non other than Bobby. I grudgingly shared my kleenex. He didn't give it back.

The only disappointing part of Annie's wedding day was the fact that my camera died a few pictures into the day. With new batteries inside. I just about chucked the piece of crap out the window. There will be more on this story in another post. In the meantime, please enjoy these photos of the happy couple that I found while rummaging through facebook. I love facebook.

I am bummed that I don't have many pics of Julia and Mary from the day. They were super cute. They were a fantastic pair of flower girls and, despite being rather naughty during the service, got good reviews from the rest of the guests. I guess flower girls are supposed to be the comic relief during the wedding anyways.

By the way, the above photo is NOT from the wedding. It's my darling sister in an 80's cocktail dress...another lovely picture from facebook. :)

Here's the wedding party at the reception.
Annie and friend/former roomie Michelle. Thanks Michelle for taking pictures on this most lovely day!
Annie and Mark posing for pics outside
Mark's family singing, "honey" to Annie during the reception.
Mark nibbling Annie's garter off.
The electric slide. I danced most of it, but gave up for a chat with Annie at the end. Annie had put this on her "do not play" list, but it came up anyways. I was glad to dance it. I dont' care if it's repetitive, doo doo. It's FUN. and good exercise. You, of all people, should know that!
Mark, HONEY.
The happy couple.
This is a random photo of my my family at Christmastime in 1986. Annie is two, bobby is about 6 months. I think I just turend seven...and that would make Jason about twelve.
The bridal party
Stupid blurry picture! this would have been a nice one.
Annie and the flower girls...aka Julia and Mary. The had so much fun!!!
Random picture of Annie from years ago. She has a burrito in her hands and has wrapped it in what looks to be Bungee Cords. Weird woman.
Flowers!

Uh, Mom, I think I forgot my veil. Could you call dad and have him pick it up? I'm sort of getting married today.

DICK! HELP.
Bride with her Bare Minerals Make-up. ahhh.
Hair, Boom, and coffee. Nice combo!
Here we are!
Happy couple again. Nice shot.
Peek!
Blue steel, the look from zoolander. This girl has her game face on!
Happy couple, with Mark trying on what looks to be a rather fashionable pair of jeans. Or they might not be...I am about as good at fashion as I am at deep sea treasure hunting. Which is pretty lousy.
To conclude, don't forget that Annie wears cocktail dresses from the 80's

*In Public
*Without drinking first
*and Looks Good in them!

Happy Wedding, Annie and Mark!

sNO!!!!w

2010-05-07T17:01:00.001-04:00

Is this May, or November??!?

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Beeby Loot!

2010-05-05T15:30:00.003-04:00

Beeby Loot! aka "Baby Luke," according to Mary. We are so blessed with such a wonderful, darling, good-natured little boy and couldn't be happier. I'm not even being sarcastic...he's a great addition to our family. These pics are from two weeks ago. The other little baby in the pictures is the little lady that he's betrothed to....baby Ameila Anne Linde, the daughter of our dear friends, Dan and Jessi. He is ten days and a few pounds her senior. These pics are from their first "date." :)

HI World!

Luke's hair gets all cute and curly after a bath. He hasn't lost any of his mop. It's blonde and long and curly...and it's staying that way! Yay!

Hey baby!

Happy Birthday, Julia!

2010-05-05T15:12:00.004-04:00

I can't believe it! Our little girl is FOUR! Julia turned 4 on April 24th. We celebrated with a princess cake (aka Mama played "cake boss!"), Dan, Jessi, and Mia. Julia's requested menu for dinner? Chili with crackers, and mini corn dogs. oookay, then.

Barbie and her "cake knickers."

Princess jammies and a princess dolly set! Our house is getting pinker and pinker...

Dan and Jessi helped with the present opening. What fun!

I couldn't resist posting this picture. Barbie is showing her dark side...

Selling the house!

2010-04-13T13:48:00.004-04:00

We're selling our house! Boy is it a lot of work to get your house ready to show. Remind me to hire somebody to do it next time. The goodwill in Duluth is very happy with us right now. :)

Click on the link above to see the virtual tour if you're interested in seeing what a clean house looks like. Obviously, the kiddos weren't around when we took the pictures...

2010-04-05T01:03:00.001-04:00

I have curly hair after my bath!!!

A few pics from "before Baby Ed."

2010-04-03T15:10:00.003-04:00

NOW I know why I felt so darn big. I WAS.
Little did we know that that outfit would actually be too small to fit. At least we picked a blue one!
I don't know why this posted sideways. The girls and I spent a weekend at the lake before "Ed" was born...one last hurrah. It was wet, but we had a great time anyways. Plenty of puddles to splash in!

Wet dog. Can't you just smell him from where you are sitting?
Puddles!

Luke's Photo Shoot.

2010-04-02T23:39:00.005-04:00

I am hereby taking the right to brag. He's such a beautiful baby! The c-section and pregnancy were worth it. Now if I could just wear jeans again.... :)

101 uses for a garden hose

2010-03-31T19:15:00.006-04:00

Hi all-

Where to start? Hmm...camera is downstairs, I'll get some more pics of baby Luke up tonight. We are totally enamored with him....he's a wonderful addition to our family and I want to brag.

But first, I want to share something else with you. Until today, Mike and I have been working toward the goal of getting our house on the market for viewing next week. That means it needs to be 1. Uncluttered, and 2. Pretty. Both of which it is most certainly not. ONe of the things we need to do to make it pretty is to "touch-up" paint the front. We had saved some paint from when we painted the thing five years ago...in the garage. Apparently, latex paint doesn't tolerate freezing very well...and it turned into a nice sedimentary rock in the bottom of the bucket. So, Mike went off to the paint store and bought some in a "matching color" (ie. the code on the bucket matched.) Unfortunately, when he painted over the spots, the color was obviously different than the original.

So, it was another trip to the paint store. Mike loaded up the van with the paint to be returned. Since I haven't slept much in the last week, I was thrilled that I finally got to lie down for a nap at around 3:30. I had to make the most of my time: Luke was down for a nap after nursing for 90 minutes straight. I left the breakfast dishes undone and raced upstairs. I was just getting comfortable when someone lifted the pillow off of my head and woke me up. Husband looked terrified and flabbergasted and baffled at the same time. Uh-oh.

"Woman, can you come downstairs??? I need your help."

"What did you do, honey?"

"Um,.....I spilled some paint in the car."

"Well, get a rag and a squirt bottle."

"Um....I need you to come. I um,....I spilled a GALLON of paint in the car. How do I clean it out?"

.....

that was the end of my nap.

I spent the next two hours of the afternoon with the garden hose in hand, spraying gallons and gallons of water into our minivan. After the initial shock, awe, and horror subsided, I realized the potential joy of my new project. It was actually very, very fun. Especially since Mike is the kind of person who gets irritated when he sees a dog hair in the car or catches me feeding chicken nuggets to the kids while they're in their carseats. The irony of the whole thing is quite amusing. I stood there blasting the inside of the car with the hose on as high as it would go. And paint was splattered everywhere...and there were painty rivers flowing down the carpet and round the plastic doorway cover things....and down into the crevices..... Eventually the rivers joined together in a huge painty lake next to the sliding door that overflowed into the alley below. After a couple of hours, the rivers went from khaki-colored to clear, and the van looked like it had simply gone through the car wash with all of the windows open.

Mike, I hope you forgot to read this post. And I am happy to announce that your van, albeit a bit saturated at present, is cleaner than it has ever been. Good thing the exterior of our house is a similar color as the interior of our minivan. !!

Naptime

2010-03-31T11:51:00.001-04:00

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Here he is...

2010-03-27T20:41:00.001-04:00

Luke Michael Roger Sprengeler
Born 11:15 pm March 26th
11 lbs, 5.6 oz, 22.3"

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Still waiting...

2010-03-26T13:54:00.001-04:00

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.....

2010-03-25T22:07:00.003-04:00

Thanks for all of the well-wishes, everybody! "Ed" is happily swimming around in his or her amniotic fluid...but not for long. Induction is set for tomorrow. Pray that it goes well! We'll keep you posted.

...and the verdict is in!

2010-03-18T14:57:00.002-04:00

Hey all!

After a long-anticipated announcement today, we now know where we will be moving! I have been accepted into the Ob Gyn training program at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan! We are excited about the turn of events, although moving out of Minnesota will be a big challenge for us....we are both homebodys. And we have The Grandkids. However, the program and the community we will be moving into are both fantastic and I think we'll fit right in.

More info to come....

PS: Grandmas: we will only be 20 minutes from the DTW airport....we'll be there to pick you up as soon as you land. :)

PPS: Baby "Ed" is still in the cooker. We are due a week from tomorrow, induction is set for Friday the 26th is he or she isn't born by then. That gives me a week to pack up some stuff so we can get ready to sell the house! Our goal is to have the first showings on Holy Saturday. That leaves us with not much time and a LOT of cleaning to do!!!

PPPS: Just in case you were wondering...nope...we're not bored. We have enough going on to keep us "occupied." ;-)

Glacier

2010-03-06T18:11:00.001-05:00

No, this isn't some glacier in Norway, or a panoramic of the Grand Canyon. It's the ice in the alley behind our house. That's a good six inches you're lookin at, folks. It's been a good year for the ice, apparently. Thank God it's finally melting.

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STAY-cation

2010-03-04T22:23:00.006-05:00

On Monday evening, the four of us moseyed over to the waterpark hotel in town (the "edge") for some family time. It was fantastic. A cheap Monday night rate, lots and lots of swimming, pizza by the poolside, and a hotel room that was TWO rooms....so the kiddos could sleep on one half and Mama and Papa could watch endless South Park and Scrubs without worrying about little ears. What a great time.

Mary and Papa tried out the kiddie waterslide. Mary got a mouth and nosefull of water...and she grinned anyways!

Here's Mary's other favorite attraction: washing her hands. We don't have a sink at home where she can lay on the counter and put her hands in the water. She LOVED that sink. Almost as much as the pool.

If you can see it, please notice the digital clock on the back of Mary's chair. Mama and Papa were so eager to have some time alone that we put the kiddos to bed at 7:30 without a snack. Bad move, parents. At first, we simply heard giggles from their room. This turned into whines, and eventually into all-out wailing. After trying to get them to sleep for two hours, we waved the White Flag of Parenting and let them into our room. Then we enforced their victory by giving them chips and cookies.

Julia and Mary: 1

Mama and Papa: 0

Late-nite snack of victory.

Here are more waterpark pics. If you look carefully above Julia, you can see an orange cone. That thing held about five gallons of water and it dumped sporadically. Julia was terrified of it. Once she got up the stairs, life was good. You can see her crouching in terror.

Juila was terrified of the orange cone, but the waterslide was FUN! She even mustered up the courage to go down by herself. She did not, however, have enough patience to hold still for a picture of her face so this is all you get.

Mary loved to stroll through the water. We couldn't let her walk alone or she would trip and go under. Despite her efforts to drown, she never did show any sign of fear.

Four weeks and counting!

2010-02-24T23:55:00.002-05:00

Stressed. That's me. Since Mike has already gone to bed and is too tired to listen to me rant (worked a ten hour shift today starting at 6am, then handbells, church, and choir, baths, two sick kiddos, and has to be at work at 6am again tomorrow!!) I decided to rant to my friends in cyberspace via the blog. Sorry I haven't posted recently. Our laptop computer broke, and I rarely get time to sit at the desktop in our bedroom because there are two little ones who love to empty out the contents of my jewelry box if I devote any moment of my attention to the computer.....

I will be finished with 36 weeks' worth of gestating come Saturday. That means there's four weeks til my due date. Also means I have four weeks (or less!) to get my act together before another baby comes. Oh my. I realized today how much work we have ahead of us.

When Julia was born, we had the nursery all painted, clothes neatly folded in the drawers, boxes and boxes of diapers and wipes ready, blankets neatly folded under the freshly painted changing table, and a big box of brand new infant supplies from all of the baby showers I had.

When Mary was born, it was more of the same: neat piles of baby stuff, all ready to go, as good as done. Only thing different was there was less new stuff and I didn't bother buying newborn diapers. And we even booked a grandma to be at our house starting three days before my due date to watch Julia, just in case.

We have none of that ready for poor baby "Ed." (Reminder: Ed's gender is unknown. The girls call my belly "Ed," and the name has stuck. We pity poor Ed when she comes out a girl!) ANYWAYS, we have very little ready for baby Ed's arrival. Jenny's parents gave us a dresser, which is still sitting dusty in the basement, and we still have to buy the contact paper to go in the drawers. I have no idea where the baby clothes even are (in a tupperware somewhere, I assume...) and I haven't even BOUGHT DIAPERS yet! If Ed were to drop by unannounced tomorrow, we would be up a creek without a paddle. I would have to send Husband to Target with a list and a credit card whilst I birthed our baby. And I guess Julia and Mary would have to go with him, since we haven't made a plan for their care during the delivery, either. Better to have them destroy a toy display at Tar-jhay than witness the "miracle of birth." I should really call our babysitter.

To add more complication to the situation, we have a LOT of things up in the air right now: Match day is when I find out about if and where I will be resuming residency come this summer. That will dictate where we move to come end of May/early June. That also means we have to sell our house, which also should get done soon...but I guess it will have to wait until after "Ed" is born, given that we don't even know IF we're moving until Match day rolls around...which is March 18th. Reminder: Ed is DUE on the 26th, but I will probably get induced earlier given that "Ed" is off the charts in size (was 20 inches long at my 30 week ultrasound...which is quite large.) So, if I get induced, I'll probably be in labor on Match Day. Oh the glory! I'll have to get our laptop fixed soon so I can log onto the internet and find out where we'll be spending the next few years...between pushes, of course.

To make things even more exciting/crazy/ohmygoodLord, we don't know the sex of the baby, we don't know when the heck we're going to be able to have the baptism (Annie, our chosen Godmother, can't get any days off), and we have no idea how we are going to pack and move the contents of our entire house to some undisclosed location hundreds of miles away while taking care of an almost 4-year-old, an almost 2-year-old, and a brand new infant!

I think I might need prozac. Or speed. Or meth...or something. Caffeine can only take this woman so far. Perhaps I should invest in an espresso machine. I doubt I"ll be able to leave the house to hit Starbuck's or Caribou after Ed makes his or her gender and personality known to the world. I'd better start sleeping now. Gotta store it up.

Baby Ed, at 30 weeks

2010-01-19T15:30:00.004-05:00

Modern technology never ceases to amaze me.

Yesterday, I remember being annoyed because my iphone's internet connection wasn't fast enough for me download a pizza place menu so I could to call in a take-out order from the interstate. I stopped and thought of how silly it was for me to be annoyed. I have this little box-shaped phone thing in my hand that can surf the world wide web from almost anywhere. I can get up to date news from around the world, and I can upload (or would that be "download?") pdf files of pizza restaurants from miles away, order a pizza, and pay for it...all from my phone. It seems rather peculiar that I can walk into a place I've never been and see folks whom I've never talked to...and have them know exactly what kind of pizza I want and to have made it ahead of time. whoa. Sci fi movie? Not anymore.

This morning, I wasn't exactly sure how to find the babysitter's house to bring Mary to, so I typed the address into the thing and within two seconds, it showed me exactly where I was, and where I needed to turn to get where I was going. Again, no futility here. Had it been a few years ago, I would have done the Sarah thing...drive around until I finally discovered Crescent View Avenue. Because of technology, Julia got to preschool and Mary to the babysitter, and thus I made it to my appointment...on TIME!

This morning, I went in for an ultrasound at the OB's office. They were able to get an amazingly clear picture of our baby's face using SOUND WAVES. It was incredible. They can put an ultrasound probe on my belly and bounce some inaudible sound waves off of the baby through my anterior abdominal wall and then a computer takes the data and....zap! A picture of "Ed." More amazingly, the tech was able to copy the images to a disk within seconds so I could put it on my home computer and post them to the internet. In less than two hours, we have digital images of Baby's face plastered all over the blog.

And now, may I present the latest "pics" of baby number three, gender still TBA. He or she was swimming happily and posed for a few pictures.

PS: Baby is rather large (measured at 33 week size on 30+5 weeks...) so there will be another ultrasound around 38 weeks. More pics to come! And boy am I glad I'm seeing OB...they aren't afraid to induce you at 39 weeks if they think the baby is big. Halleluiah!!!!!!!!!

Many things

2010-01-07T21:12:00.002-05:00

Hi fam and friends,

I thought of a new year's resolution today. I am going to quit feeling guilty for violating any or all of my self-imposed deadlines that don't mean much in the grand scheme of things. I hope you know what I mean. (I wish I could include things like, " wash the dishes" or "bathe the children..." but I must admit that good hygeine does matter in the grand scheme of things.)

The first thing on the actual list is being the mom that blogs every cute moment of her childrens' lives in order that it might be saved in an e-archive and simultaneously warm the hearts of blog-viewers everywhere. Eau Contrare. (I KNOW I spelled that wrong. Here's to not feeling guilty for refusing to call Mike and ask him the correct spelling.) I have friends that do keep blogs like that. It's amazing. They take beautifully candid photos and post them every day. They also change the color scheme/background of their blog to match the color scheme in the photos. My blog background is white. This is already a set-up for failure, since it is a RARE day when my kiddos are still in white by the time I find the batteries for the camera and snap a picture. By the time I get organized enough for a candid snapshot, the white is now eau de ketchup or eau de fingerpaints or eau-de-violaceous-diaper-explosion-cause-I-fed-Mary-too-many-blueberries.

So there's my New Year's resolution. I also plan on embarking on a new residency and making myself into a more patient mom and a successful ER doctor (my new temporary employment until I hopefully embark on a career as an obstetrician.)

Here are some entertaining bits that happened over Christmas:

Julia and Mary got what they wished for....and prayed for....and God granted them seven times seven more than their wishes. Yes, it's true...our house has been invaded by Barbie and her herem. I do believe we have gone from one to fifty of them over the course of one week of Holiday. I lost count. I also lose my patience every time I step barefoot on one of their shoes and the tiny high heel tries to puncture the bottom of my foot. @%#@*&!!!!!

Annie and I took Julia and Mary to see an exhibit of Sue, the T-rex, in St. Cloud. It's a replica of the most well-preserved T-rex skeleton in the world. We spent a LONG TIME explaining the skeleton to Julia, talking about everything from herbivores and carnivores to death and dying and why everything eventually will leave behind a skeleton and a pile of dust. She was intrigued. I *thought* she was listening to us. The tour guide even took a liking to her and made the remark that Julia should consider a career in science. I was so proud....... I thought Julia was going to be able to lecture everyone at preschool about meeting this archeological masterpiece. And then as we were leaving, I told the girls to say goodbye to Sue. Mary called,

"Bye bye Soooooooo."

Cute. But then the aspiring archeologist child yells,

"Buh-bye Alligator!"

So much for my budding scientist.

Last Sunday my mom and I took the kids to church at the hospital because their mass is at 1030...not 9:00 like the other churches we go to. We sat up in the balcony. The sanctuary was filled to the brim, with patients, their relatives, a few nuns, and lots of hospital employees in scrubs. The balcony was rather empty, so I let the kids wander a bit and look over the edge. Julia was outright naughty. She loves to yell SHHHHHHHHHHHH....which comes out VERY LOUDLY and is heard by all. During the Gospel reading, Mary spotted the nativity scene at the front of the church and started bleeting, "JESUS!" She was SO excited! She found Jesus! She was not going to keep quiet about it either, even with her sister SHSHSHHHHHHHHing her louder and louder by the minute. When we went by for communion, she got a closer look at the creche. I saw a look of terror in her eyes, and she began to yell, "JESUS!!! OWIE!!!! HOT!!! HOT!!!" As I tried to quiet her down, I glanced at the nativity again to see what she was yelling at. Sure enough, somebody had placed a little tea light candle about 2 inches from Jesus little hand. Mary, who had become a bit too famliar with candle flames over the holidays, was voicing her concern for Jesus' hand. She didnt' want him to get burned, too. How thoughtful!

The Mount Olive Christmas Pageant

2009-12-22T00:03:00.004-05:00

Last Sunday, our church put on a little Christmas pageant after mass. It was one of those productions where everybody heads downstairs to the "fellowship hall" after church is over and munches a variety of Lutheran goodies...while the kids re-enact the Nativity. This always proves to be an amusing event for everyone. I knew that going in. However, I said a little prayer during church that the "amusing" part of the event would not be brought on by my children. (Julia, after all, was playing an angel! That's a good omen, right?) Unfortunately, I was interrupted mid-petition by a hungry 18 month old, wanting to munch the rest of her banana. I never finished my prayer. I should have.

The pageant started with the a prayer. When Pastor was finished, he said, "I have been told that we need to get things rolling. Some of the little angels are getting a little antsy."

Seconds later, there were kids marching in, two by two, to "Away in a Manger." It was cute. They had costumes...some camels, a sheep, a cow, a thing with horns (reindeer? Goat? Bull? ) Mary, Joseph, shepherds, three wise men, and a few little girls wearing the white "altar boy" outfits with halos on their heads...aka angels. Everyone looked picture-perfect. Except where was Julia? She was supposed to be in the crowd of angels. Did I miss her? She is the shortest one here....

Wait. A few seconds after I noticed my missing daughter, she came rushing in, holding the hand of the "director," being coerced to walk up to the stage. Instead of the neatly combed blonde hair in pigtails that her papa had prepared that morning, Julia's hair was a voluminous rat's nest. Somewhere in it was a tinsel halo, tangled among the sticky strands of blonde with remnants of the five packages of gummi bears she had probably been eating before the show...to keep her busy, of course. When she saw the stage, she broke out in a full run, eager to get the show going.

The first few minutes went well. Julia stood as still as, well, an angel...while they read a few verses from Luke's gospel. The handbells played. The kids stood up again when the bells were done and resumed their roles. Except by this time, the novelty of the situation was clearly over. Julia started getting antsy. She sat, she stood, she spun around in circles on her butt. After the novelty of *that* was over, she walked away from her crowd of angels and stood right in front of Mary. (Not our Mary, but the girl who was playing the actual Mary, standing next to Joseph and the baby Jesus.) Mary, who was being played by a shy, very well-behaved ten-year-old, suddenly was shuffling on her feet like she was stumbling. What was Julia doing? Was I imagining this?

No. I was not imagining it. Julia was carefully scooting Mary backward toward the back of the stage. She wanted Mary's spot. My eyes grew big in horror as I rememberd something Julia had said during rehearsal:

"Mommy, I am sick of being an angel. This is boring. I want to be Mary!"

Oh dear. She was trying to live out her aspirations by eliminating her competition. Julia was trying to knock Mary, the mother of Jesus, right of the stage!

I remembered that prayer that I never finished.

Thankfully, Mary had to leave her post and read a few lines at the lone microphone across the room. When she moved away from her spot, Julia stood there and grinned like she had won the prize. The manger was HERS! Also fortunately, if you haven't noticed, Julia gets bored with things rather quickly. Soon after she had achieved her prestigious position, she grew tired of standing next tp Joseph and simply jumped off of the back of the stage herself.

At this point, Mary, our Mary...not the girl playing the Blessed Mother... decided to take matters into her own hands. Mary notices everything....even when her sister ditches the Christmas play off the back of stage. Over the hush of the nativity, she shouted, "DOOOO-UH, DOOOO-UH!" (Translation: JULIA, JULIA) Mary was no longer content munching on christmas cookies. She wanted to get up there and be part of the show. Mike tried to stop her initially, but I told him to just let her go up there. Perhaps she could talk some sense in to our little "angel."

This proved to be a very good idea. Not because Mary saved the day, but because Papa was now free to collect The Three-Year-Old and put her back in her place onstage before she knocked down the ten foot high wooden star display that probably weighed about thirty pounds. We saw the stars began to quiver...and before I had the chance to sic Mike on Julia, he was already backstage, steadying the heavy star tower....and probably preventing a call to 911 on a Sunday morning and some horrifying nativity bloodshed...

....

Although hesitant at first, Mary approached the stage and climbed right up. No costume and in a bright red dress, she took center stage and tried to act like she knew what was going on. When it came time to sing, Mary smiled. I could read her mind. "I know how to sing! I do that at home all the time!" She "sang" with the christmas carols, loudly and clearly, just like we do in the car: "Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum." Now THAT was cute. People went "ohhhh cute!" Mary glowed. She continued "Bum Bum Bum-ing" a little bit after the songs were over. She actually lasted about half of the pageant up there.

Meanwhile, her sister was able to remain on stage, now fascinated by a bale of straw. Phew. There was plenty of straw there for Julia to pick at over a period of ten minutes. Except for some additional flopping around onstage and obligatory showing of the crotch (why do little girls ALWAYS find it necessary to lift up their dresses in public?) We were in the clear. At the end of the pageant, Julia ran off the stage and crashed right into a pole. It's naptime!

Well, I guess all's well that ends well. And this ended well. The people of Mount Olive got their Christmas pageant. They witnessed beauty, cuteness, hilarity, a bit of danger, and even some nudity. All in all a good show. Next year, I bring the video camera.

Fun is in the eye of the beholder

2009-12-15T00:19:00.004-05:00

Today I was in the kitchen making soup and homemade bread. Julia loves to help out, and since the bread was now in the oven, she wanted to do something else. I was about to ask her to stir the soup when the phone rang. It was the electrician, with a follow-up call. (He came over yesterday to replace a bad outlet upstairs....one day it was fine, the next day it was black and stinky.....) Anyways the electrician told me I needed to unplug any and all of my space heaters for fear that our house would burn down. I must have sounded rather distraught at the mere thought of losing my beloved Heat Machine, because both the electrician and Julia caught on to the note of helplessness in my voice. The electrician told me he wanted to rewire our house and put a special circuit in just for space heaters. While he was waiting to hear my response, Julia, who was still in "help mommy" mode, shouts proudly:

"MAMA! I PUT THE BOOZE ON THE DINING ROOM TABLE FOR SUPPER TONIGHT!"

oh dear.

The electrician laughs. "Been a long day, honey?" He says. I turned beet-red. Not only does he know that I am an idiot when it comes to anything with current, he now thinks that I am PREGNANT booze hound! I got him off the phone by telling him there was someone at the door. Oh dear. I should have said that the liquor store was closing soon and I needed to make a Beer Run before six o'clock rolls around. I might need to find a new electrician.

And I need to tell Mike to stop leaving the Captain Morgan out in plain sight. Miss Julia knows what it is, and she also thinks that it goes right between the 1% and the butter on the dining room table.

We've been busy.

2009-12-02T23:40:00.007-05:00

Oops. Sorry it's been a month since I posted to this beloved blog. There are many excuses I can think of. And some of them are legitimate, while some are of the "there is no excuse for that" variety. I really am sorry...but before I spend the next few days expounding on many of the details as to why I decided I was too busy to post anything up here, I would like to introduce you to somebody:

"Ed"

(sex unknown. nickname courtesy of your older sisters)

ETA: 3.26.10

(alien-baby picture) actually, the little circle is the lens of the eye

Actually, I think he or she looks kinda like a pirate. Ahoy maytee!

Helloooooo out there!

Good excuse, huh?

Halloween 2009

2009-11-05T17:04:00.010-05:00

Happy Halloween!
This year, our Halloween Package Deal included one stinky, kneiving, exuberant skunk, a puffy, zealous, nerd-eating marshmallow, and a patient, industrious, SUPER grandma. We sure had a fun time.

Friday night, we went to "Malloween." Yup...the mall shops put on a trick-or-treating event for the kids in town. I had NO IDEA how popular it was. Mike was working, so Mom and I piled the kiddos in the van and took off. As we were driving away, my neighbor, who has twins, laughed and told us we were nuts to go to the mall. Why? I thought. It's warm in there, and we can practice trick-or-treating.

WHOA. It was UBER-CROWDED. Like cheese curd line, state-fair crowded! There were literally thousands of people there, ushering little goblins, witches, faries, and mysteriously-clad kiddos from one store to another to get free dum dums. (I noticed a blatant absence of chocolate. It was one of those deals where "trick or treat" gets you either a tiny tootsie roll, a piece of gum, or if you're lucky, a sucker...)

The kids were great. Mary stayed in the stroller after her first piece of candy...a dum dum...her favorite...and Julia walked because, frankly, she didn't fit in the stroller in her marshmallow suit.

My skunk and marshmallow, ready for action!

Little miss skunk waits in line for her first piece of glory. The big white blob next door is Miss Marshmallow.

The girls lasted about 30 minutes of Mall O Ween. Then, miss Marshmallow was overheating and we moved on to supper at a mall restaurant.

An evil grin: I stole mommy's wallet!!!! Ha!

ANOTHER evil grin: I am the comander of this ship! Ha!

Julia is in heaven....Grandma Beth actually put money into the ride. Mommy NEVER does that. The girls didn't even know that the mall spaceship moved. Now they do. Crap. I will never carry quarters again.

Home, after a bath, reading stories with g-ma. mary is evilly grinning again. This time, I don't know what she's up to.

Halloween! Papa was master-carver. I harvested pumpkin seeds. Julia helped. Mary "helped."

Julia was grumpy because the pumpkin was making her itchy. She started chucking pumpkin guts around the kitchen and got a stern look from mommy. That's when grandma took the picture. This is the stern look that I got in return for the one I gave.

Evil vampire teeth!

Thar she blows! Julia in her SMarshmallow suit. This year, we asked her what she wanted to be for halloween. We offered typical things: a princess, tinkerbell, a fairy, a witch, etc. Nope. Without question, she wanted to be a "smarshmallow." All righty, then. Papa went to the fabric store and bought out their white fleece and six bags of polyester fiber fill. Let's just say she didn't get cold that night.

A picture with grandma!

My skunk. Notice the dum dum in her hand. She spent the entire evening eating suckers. Mary was actually able to carry her candy bag AND eat a sucker at the same time! What skill!

Family picture. That's the rest of us there behind that marshmallow-child.

Ready for action!

Aidan and Sawyer, our neighbor's twin boys. They were our first trick-or-treaters.

Trick or treat!!!

Hacking

2009-11-05T13:42:00.002-05:00

I was a neurotic mother this fall season. I was on a mission: the kids will NOT get this H1N1 flu. I made everyone wash their hands. A LOT. I pulled J out of daycare. We avoided the playplace at McDonald's. I used the anti-bacterial cart wipes at the grocery store. We ate vegetables. I bought five bottles of hand sanitizer and put them all over the house, in the cars, and even at church.

Well, so far, my mission has been successful....sort of. Right now, the kids are perfectly healthy, probably eating candy, and waiting to take their prophylactic doses of Tamiflu. Why the tamiflu? Because their MOTHER is at home, sick with the flu. And pneumonia. I even have an x-ray to prove it. Drat.

It started last week with a little wheezing for three days. I have asthma, so I blamed that. Except that I was puffing on my inhalers like a drug addict. One night, I had a fever and a few chillls. That was it. The next day, though, my lungs grew angry. Breathing is not something to be taken for granted. I started taking steroids for the wheezing, and soon it turned to hacking. When I called Mom yesterday (in the middle of her clinic) asking for antibiotics (I had a sinking feeling that something was growing down in my chest because I could hear it rattling in there), she ordered me to go to the ER. I called her from the ER and said I had pneunomia. Little did I know that she had already dropped EVERYTHING at work and drove up here with Dad, picked up the kids, and told me to go to bed.

My mother loves me.

Thanks, Mom. And thanks, Dad. I hope the kids aren't driving you too crazy and you are getting something done today. Don't forget: television is a wonderful invention....

PS: YES, I have halloween pics of our brood...and they will get uploaded eventually. Now, it is naptime. See ya.

Happy Reformation Day

2009-10-26T00:00:00.002-04:00

To all my lutheran friends out there: Happy Reformation Day. Yes, today is the anniversary of the day that Martin Luther took a hammer and nails down to the cathedral in Nuremberg and pounded his opinion right into the church door. What a guy. He didn't bother to take the 95 Theses to a committee for revision so that they could get watered down and lost in a sea of meetings, he didn't force his ideas down folks' thorats either...nope. We need more people like that in this day and age.

In church today, Mike was running around like a chicken with his head cut off. Our organist/music director is leaving, so he was in charge of the music that included handbells, a choir, and some brass instruments. Things were going so well....everybody showed up, the music sounded great, and our kids were being QUIET. It was the middle of the sermon before Mike and I simultaneously realized that the kids were being quiet. They are NEVER quiet by the middle of the sermon. Uh oh.

We shot each other a Look. A quick scan of the church: Julia was digging through the pockets of my coat, eating some ancient trail mix. check. Mary: wait. where was Mary? We reached a very disturbing conclusion at the same time....

Two milliseconds later, (still in the middle of the sermon) we had solved the mystery of Mary's whereabouts. Someone was playing an impromptu solo on the piano. Mike and I shot up out of the pew...it was like a scene from a movie where they play the characters out in slow motion: both of us leaping across the choir toward the piano with arms outstretched and our mouthes in a silent "nooooooooooooooo."

But it was too late. pound Pound POUND...of course Mary was on the left end of the keyboard where the low notes reside. As Mike tried to whisk away the Sermon Interrupter, a gleeful laugh erupted from my daughter. She LOVES attention, and by now, most of the congregation had turned around in their seats. Poor pastor Franck was preaching on, but nobody was listening. Everyone wanted to know who decided to share their musical talents at such an opportune time.

Mike set Mary down and tried to help me close up the piano before she could come running back for more. Unfortunately, that's when I chose to slip (WHY do I wear heels?) and landed my right forearm on the extreme right end of the keyboard. A shrill sound from the piano provided overdue entertainment for our audience, who was now watching as I stood up, crashed into the piano bench, and scooped up my toddler who was now completely hysterical.

I pretended that I had to go to the bathroom and left the sanctuary. I snuck back in during communion, secretly hoping that the kid next to us would climb on the organ pedals and interrupt the petitions. No such luck. After church, instead of getting "thank you's" for all of Mike's hard work, we heard plenty of compliments on Mary's solo.
"Thanks for waking me up in the middle of the sermon."
"What a nice change from the regular music."
"She's not afraid to be heard, is she?" they all said.

I think Luther would have agreed.

THANK YOU!!!

2009-10-25T23:54:00.003-04:00

A big thank you goes out from us to Jimmy and Joy, who drove up from the cities to visit and spent their entire Saturday cleaning and painting our kitchen. Yes...I know. We have nice friends. And they are talented, too! Joy makes great bars, and Jimmy can paint without using masking tape! We are blessed....

PS: Also a big thank you to gramma Ruth, who took the kidlets for the weekend so we could get some work done. Now I remember how people without kids manage to put make up on in the morning and do things like dust furniture and clean behind the fridge.

Here is a picture of what it looked like under the oven. I made a rabbit with all of the dust bunnies. Notice the baby chew toys and rawhides. That about sums it up.

Random photo of the day

2009-10-24T16:41:00.002-04:00

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Coolest thing EVER

2009-10-14T22:35:00.004-04:00

Sarah and I are faithful JCPenney shoppers. There's almost nothing about the store that we don't like. Whenever we need to get something that's not a) groceries or b) tupperware, it's off to Penney's we go. And we almost always find what we need. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy just thinking about a trip to Penney's.
The two of us have taken this love to an extreme level. Whenever we travel, we make it a point to visit the local JCPenney to check it out. We're kind of JCPenney connoisseurs. It's actually starting to verge on the nerdy. For example, during our recent trip to the Mankato Penney's we had a conversation that went something like this.

Sarah: There are too many walls in here. They need to do something to open up this space.
Me: It looks like this store is pretty low on the remodel list. Look at that tile. I think that's pre-1990s remodel tile.
Sarah: Yeah - it's the same stuff they had in Southdale. That lavender color.
Me: Holy cow - is that the home department?
Sarah: This is a tiny store. They don't even have any dishes. It's all sheets and pillows.
Me: I think this place is smaller than the Sun-Ray store was before it closed. And that was a small store.
Sarah: You know what? Penney's would do well to move out of the mall to a free-standing building in this town. Like Maple Grove. (Etc...etc...)

So imagine my delight when we happened upon this small-town treasure in Ashland, Wisconsin on our recent trip to Marquette, Michigan. A real-life Main Street JCPenney store. This thing is a relic!

Front of the store - I made Sarah pull over so that I could get out and take pictures. Check out that lettering!

Alas, they were closed for the day. Otherwise we would have had to go in and buy something just to say that we did. The signage in the windows was current, though, so I know the store hasn't been closed like so many other similar JCPenney stores.

On the rear of the store. Check out that vintage sign! I can't even guess how old that thing is - anyone have any ideas?

This place seriously has to be the last downtown Penneys in existence. And who knew it was only an hour away from my home?

I know where we're going this Saturday.

Fall has come to Duluth

2009-10-09T15:55:00.001-04:00

Sorry about the quality - I think one of the kids slimed my camera lens.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

In Da UP

2009-10-04T23:40:00.006-04:00

Hey Der!

We spent the weekend driving across northern Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan to attend a friend's wedding in Marquette. Despite the constant cold, rainy weather, it proved to be a fun-filled weekend. The kids were actually pretty good in the car. (A special thanks to the Show Machine, Nemo, Milo, Otis, Dori, Larry, Bob, Merriweather, and the cops who didn't pull us over despite our kiddos sleeping on the van floor...)

I accidentally put the photos in in reverse order, so here goes.

On the way home, we went on a hike somewhere in the UP. The girls were getting restless and we wanted to get them good and tired for a nap...SO....we drove sixty some odd miles looking for a rest stop. When no rest stop would come, I told papa to "JUST PICK SOMEWHERE!@!!!!" (Mama's coffee, water, and BLADDER were simply finished. nuf said.) So, papa pulled off the road at some random old logging site for a hike. We braved tall wet grass and a "sort of" path, and the girls examined various types of pine trees, moss, and lichen. It was wet and took a little bit of imagination...but I think we had fun. Julia enjoyed petting the moss, Mary thought the milkweed was simply delicious. When our hike was finished, we made a big bed out of the back of the van and attempted "naptime." Before we even got up to highway speed, we passed a BEAUTIFUL rest stop on the side of the road, complete with potties and real hiking trails. Drat. Mama, you should be more patient!!!

The fall color was gorgeous. I'm sorry this picture is not, but say "oooh and ahhhh" to yourself anyways. I have never seen Fall Color like there is in the U.P. Wowzers.

Before we left, Mary took a turn at the wheel. Beep Beep!

After breakfast at the HOliday Inn. Two tired, stuffed kiddos. Julia ate TWO whole servings of eggs benedict...Mary dissed all the breakfast food and went straight for the bbq ribs. Good thing we were at a buffet.

Wedding reception: Jessi, Jamie, Dan, and I danced "THRILLER." Jamie commandeered the DJ's computer and we had a blast. We stopped their ghetto rap crap (nooone was dancing anyways) and danced to a barrage of Michael Jackson, along with Mr. Robato, The Devil Went Down to Georgia...and even Convoy. I have not danced to Convoy since I was at a tiny bar near camp about seven years ago....but it was just as fun....

Papa and Julia take to the dance floor. Mike gets kudos...he spent half of the wedding reception putting our kids to bed. What a guy. I owe him big, which is why he is enjoying a captain and coke tonight.

Julia....dancin the night away.

Mary...eating. Another buffet. This time it was a huge pile of corn. We saw that corn again just this afternoon.......

BIB.

PRODUCE!

2009-10-02T14:04:00.002-04:00

Mike and I joined what we affectionately call "The Hippie Farm Co-op" this year, which means we get big box of fresh locally grown veggies every Monday. This year, since September was so very warm, they had some extra canning shares of broccoli and tomatoes. At Mike's request, we bought one. I was thinking we'd have a few jars of each and we could eat them sometime in January...

WHOA. When the "canning shares" arrived, I finally figured out what I had committed to: a winter of Rabbit-dom. FIFTY POUNDS of broccoli awaited me on our doorstep...and then came a box of SIXTY POUNDS of tomatoes. !!! I had a hundred and ten pounds of rabbit food on porch...and two days to pack it away before we went on vacation. Ugh!

That night, I cleaned up my favorite cleaver (yes we have more than one) and spent five hours hacking away at the broccoli pile. I didn't know this, but broccoli wants to be steamed before you freeze it...which meant I was dumping steaming piles of green cruciferous vegetable matter on any flat surface I could find. With the added smell of the HUGE box of tomatoes on the floor, our kitchen smelled like a V8 factory.

HACK.

The next night, it was time to can tomatoes and spaghetti sauce. When it came time to do the work, Mike popped his head around the corner and said, "Dear, I will be back in two minutes to do the canning for you. I think the canning part is a little complicated for you. Just give me a sec to sew one corner on this mitten." (He was making grandma Mitzi a pair of mittens for her birthday...) So, slop, squish, squirt, smush...I peeled the little red suckers and gutted them for TWO HOURS before I saw my husband....apparently the mitten tried to get the better of him. Conquering the Tomatoes was supposed to be a team project, but the other half of my team copped out at game time. Oh well. I had a blast listening to Metallica and being a Domestic Diva. I learned that you don't have to use a spoon to neatly remove the seeds and juice from a tomato....after you peel it, just hold it over the sink and squeeze. Pretty soon, a little stream of tomato guts comes zooming out of the fruit and hopefully lands somewhere in the sink (or on the wall...or ceiling...etc) What fun! After awhile, I even learned to aim properly.

The sixty pounds became sixteen quarts of tomatoes, nine quarts of sauce, and a bunch of pint jars with various combinations of the above. Ahhh...success.

Before we could get to all the canning, Miss Mary came along to help. She loves tomatoes, and I do believe she ate ten or twelve of them. Since they spent two days sitting in a box on the kitchen floor, she had plenty of time to help herself to a bite when passing through. She would bite a hole in the tomato and then suck out all the insides. It was funny until I discovered that she was secretly hoarding them upstairs. I noticed that there were red splotches on the carpeting through the living room and up the stairs. After following the trail upstairs, I found a small heap of juiceless tomatoes under the crib. Queen Mary was sitting near her throne of tomatoes, with gobs of tomato guts on the front of her onesie. mmmmm... Thank God for Lysol Deodorizing CArpet Cleaner...

Julia's new bike

2009-09-23T23:33:00.002-04:00

OK, I have a LOT of blogging to do. I have been trying to remember to take pictures here and there, so the next few posts will be a "blog hotdish."

I'm going to start with two weeks ago when Mike and I picked the cherries from the bushes in our yard and actually made them into a pie. It was grueling...the darn things are about the size of a little bitty marble. Oh well. We were sad watching them get too ripe and fall off the bushes...so we spent five hours picking, pitting, and pie-ing.

Just for the record, and in case I ever read my own blog: SARAH: YOU HATE MAKING PIE CRUST. It is the most abomidable task I can think of. Messy, requries exact measurements, requires lotsa counter space (not little countertops made for an Asian midget like we have), and feeling comfortable about using a recipe that calls for a CUP of crisco. Ew. I pledge to you, my family and friends, that I will always buy extra frozen pie crusts when I"m at cub just in case I get the urge to make a pie at home. !@!!

I was so tired by the time I was making the filling (damn that stupid pie crust) that I accidentally added three tablespoons of baking soda instead of cornstarch to the cherries. It was incredible. Within seconds, the cherries became a molten, fizzing, bubbling, oozing mound. I stared in shock and awe....what the heck? Then I tasted it (because whenever you make some oozing red mound of stuff by accident, the first thing you should do is eat some!). It was very salty. And then I realized what I did. Luckily, the cherries cleaned up nicely with a little bath and we were back to where we started.

Here is psymuhn, with a couple of cherries stuck in his fur. He is trying to tell me, "you idiot. You KNEW they had cherry pies on sale at Super One for only $3.99. Fool."

Here is my replica of the sculpture in the cities in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

I had a weak moment. There was a princess trike on sale at Target and I went for it. Mike frowned. He wanted a red trike for "when" (HA!) we have a boy someday. I guess he has a point: why get more than one trike? Girls can ride on red, boys, too. But before I had a chance to return it, Julia saw the box and started to jump and scream for Joy. You can see the results of our rash, emotional decision. Eldest-daughter bliss. Papa put it together for her right away. What a softie.

Labor Day Weekend

2009-09-12T22:45:00.002-04:00

The Sprengeler clan spent Labor Day weekend at the Lake in Deer River with Grandma Beth and Grandpa Dick. We also had the joy of hanging out with auntie Annie and SOON TO BE UNCLE MARK!!!

Yupper, my baby sister, my favorite sister, my only sister, is officially engaged! She somehow found a wonderful guy in her organic chemistry class last fall and they clicked. Let's just say there are eerily similiar characteristics between "Mark" and my "Mike." First of all, their names. Secondly, they are both the same build: Six foot or so, and about a hundred and fifty five pounds. And they can both eat more calories in one sitting than Annie can. Yup, I know...amazing. They both have moms who work at their respective Lutheran churches. Mark knows how to sew. They both like science...Mark is taking analytical chem right now, and Mike wishes he was. Mark wants to be a PA. Mike is a PharmD. Healthcare careers, nerdiness, skinniness....whoa.
I remember meeting Mark in my kitchen one day.....He was standing with his back to me and I didn't know he and Annie were at our house yet. I completely mistook him for Mike...(He had a sweatshirt on from JC penney that could also be found in Mike's closet...) I handed him a knife, and said, "honey, could you cut up this green pepper for me?" He took it and began working straight away. I came in the kitchen a few minutes later to a nicely diced pepper and a look of shock when I realized it was NOT my husband who was standing there. It was then I knew that Annie would marry him. She and I are similiar beings...and he would be a perfect match.

Anyways, we spent Labor Day Weekend with the newlyengageds, had some dinner with DAn and LIndsay, the newlyweds, and went sailing, swimming (after Annie and I jumped ship and left the guys on the sailboat...), hiking, and even NAPPING. Yes...it was a blast. And a nice time to see the fam. Unfortunatly, I forgot my camera. I wished I would have brought it. I could have gotten some hilarious pictures the night I gave my lightweight parents a drink of Bailey's, Brandy, and chocolate ice cream. We put the electric piano on "demo" mode and danced the night away over a game of pool. Ahhh...it was fantastic. Dangit...I WISH I would have had the camera. My mom invented a new pool game, amongst other things. :)

State Fair 2009

2009-09-03T00:05:00.011-04:00

This picture was supposed to be at the end, but I accidentally deleted it. Julia was asleep before the car left the parking lot. Nice work, mom and dad!

Last Thursday was our annual trip to the Great Minnesota Get-Together, aka the State Fair. Mike's family is nutso about the fair, so we always "get-together" with them and make a go at it. This year, we went on opening day. What fun we had!

We have also sort of made it a tradition to stay in a fancy hotel for as cheaply as possible (thanks priceline.com...) the night before so we can get the most of the day with the kiddos. They expire in the early afternoon, so walking onto the grounds by nine gets us through a few extra exhibits.

Julia partakes in the raspberries that grandma brought. She is eating them on a featherbed...

Mary explores the new turf

The first food of the fair: foot-long CORN dog. Julia had the first bite. It was a delicious breakfast.

mmmmmm...

The next series of photos are quite amusing. After eating Kettle Corn, the Corn Dog, a Deep Fried CAndy Bar (Jenny ate that herself..), we mosied on over to the Horticulture building because Julia wanted to see the honeybees. In the Horticulture building, you can buy a frozen apple cider for 75 cents...probably the best buy at the fair. It's like an apple juice freezie.

Well, I bought one of them for each of the girls. Julia liked hers for a few minutes, then left it in the stroller. Mary, on the other hand, was in seventh heaven. She wrapped both hands around the frosty thing and started digging in with her incisors. Of course, after a minute or so, she had eaten all of the freezie she could reach...the plastic sleeve got in the way. A blood-curdling scream echoed through the Horticulture Building. Mary was in tears. John had a fingernail clipper in his pocket, so I tried to take it away from her so I could cut some of the plastic away.

The second I took it away, my second child went completely postal.

She stopped shrieking and mounted a loud, deep HOLLER. Tears of anger flew slid down her frozen cheeks as she walloped her daddy with the back of her noggin. She was VERY UNHAPPY. She wanted that freezie back NOW.

I tried to cut it as quickly as I could...I managed to bathe my entire face and chest in the sticky apple juice that poured out of the holes she had gnawed in the bottom. I finally was able to cut an inch or so off the top and I gave it back to her.

Silence. No more tears. Smile!

Whoa.

Because I like science, I decided to try this little experiment again just to see if Mary would predictably behave in the same way. See the pictures below for your amusement.

Before. Happy. Life is excellent and everything is in its place...

Papa's hand reaches in and moves the freezie away from the Baby. Fear and anguish...

NOOOOOOOO!!!!

GIVE ME THAT BACK, YOU #(&!$& (!$)%$#!!!!!!!

oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh

Damn you, papa.

Ahh...I love my children!

Next, we took a ride on Ye Old Mill. Julia loved it. Mary's freezie ended somewhere inside, so she had another nuclear meltdown in the dark, wet tunnel. Our boat rocked something crazy...Grandma's sweater took home a sampling of the unnatural blue-hued water.

Mary, recovered, plays with giant legos at the Thrivent booth

They had this cute little farm exhibit for kids. We took the girls through it. They picked corn, fed fake animals, drove fake tractors, and even had the opportunity to plant plastic veggies in real dirt!

Mary takes a ride on her big green tractor

Julia's favorite moment of her life: she got to sit in the cab of an EXCAVATOR. She adores construction equipment. The excavator is her favorite, and she will drive one for her job someday. Then, she informed me, she will "also tell the other men how they should be driving their excavators."

Look out, world.

Auntie Jenny took Julia down the big slide. Julia had a great time.

This was a very odd scene. While we were waiting for J and J to get down from the slide, I noticed a 50-something woman taking a nap on the very busy boulevard. She didn't have anyone with her, and she was wearing ALL WHITE. I checked to see if she was still breathing, just in case. She was. And now, she has her picture on the internet. Ha!

Julia was getting very very tired toward the end of the day. She did get the chance to see a huge pig give birth to piglets. She was fascinated with the placenta. I didn't want to start explaining that one...

Mary took a nap in the stroller and awoke with vigor. She is saying, "Ohhh..."

Julia and uncle John

Julia had the chance to meet a real live princess! This one was about to have her head carved in butter. Julia was green with envy.

By 4:00, we were in the car. Mary does not sleep in the car. She would rather shriek and demand things that are out of her reach.

There is supposed to be a picture of Julia here, who fell asleep before our van left the parking lot. It's at the top of the page.

Farewell, state fair! FArewell, calories!

Farewell H1N1! I'm glad we didn't spend too much time in the 4H building.... eek!

bars

2009-08-30T23:51:00.002-04:00

A little story to jump-start your Monday:

So I signed up (again) to sponsor the after-church goodie and coffee time. Instead of being stressed because I had forgotten about this until the last minute........I had everything planned out ahead of time, right down to the sweetened condensed milk. I was going to make some homemade bread, a big salad with fresh veggies, and two pans of the bars I have been craving for a LONG time....Payday bars. They taste just like the candy bar. Peanuts, marshmallows, kind of like a salted nut roll. mmmmm...

I looked up a recipe on Thursday, and on SAturday it was off to Cub to pick up the remaining ingredients. I very rarely go to the grocery store with a list or recipe in hand...I usually buy the cheapest food I can find at the best deals and then make something up when I get home. But this time, I was completely out-of-character. I had a list, I clipped coupons, and I made Julia ride in the cart. We were out of Cub in record time. This is another odd happening....those of you who know me at all are aware of my ability to be early. It is not one of my strong points, to say the least.

At any rate, I spent an hour last night making the bars. I helped Julia lick out the pan. They smelled heavenly and it took everything in me to not dive into a pan of them. (Who would know if I ate a few and then cut up the rest and put em' on a display plate?) But again, the odd thing happened. I somehow found the willpower to leave both pans of bars alone. Another totally out-of-character move.

I was supposed to refrigerate the bars overnight, but our fridge was too full. I put them on the back steps instead, with the covers tightly fastened.

....

The next morning (this morning) I was enjoying a morning shower when Husband rudely stuck his head in and shouted, "You'd better hurry up, woman. Your bars are GONE. I think something ate them."

WHAT?!?!

I went through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief very quickly. The first one, denial, hit me. The bars weren't really gone. Mike was just being silly. And mean. Very mean. That Jerk. I"ll get him back during the sermon today....

I arrived downstaris in a bathrobe and went out to check out the scene of the crime for myself. Sure enough, both of my pans were open, and only a few wet slippery peanuts remained. I then experienced the next stage: Anger. THAT RAT/RACCOON/BEAVER/DOG/CAT/ELEPHANT/JULIA (every mom who finds something terrible has happend always thinks of blaming the three-year-old) who ate my bars will PAY for their crime!

The bargaining phase set in: maybe I can just bring the drooly peanuts to church and we can eat that. wait. Scratch that. Speaking of scratch that, read on.....

I investigated the scene some more. There was drool in my cake pan. One of them was full of little brown fur. Squirrels aren't brown. Whoever it was sure likes peanuts. Elephants like peanuts, but they are not in Duluth, as far as I know. Do beavers like peanuts? There were TWO POUNDS Of peanuts in those bars. Raccoons? Skunks? I smelled a skunk last night. Just then, I saw the covers. My precious rubbermaid cake pan covers were strewn across the back patio like garbage. When I picked one up and examined it, I gasped.

There was an enormous paw print on one of my cake pan covers, complete with giant claw marks, as big as my hand. This was definitely no squirrel.

I talked to my neighbor, who is a major plant/animal fiend, and a Duluth native. After she laughed until she cried, she told me, "honey, that wasn't a raccoon or a skunk in your bars...it was definitely the work of a BEAR."

A BEAR?

In my backyard?

In TOWN?

Eating MY BARS?!?!?

This information quickly pushed me into the acceptance stage. A giant bear ate my Payday bars. Both pans. And I am not about to try and get them back.

Good thing I keep the house stocked with rice krispies and marshmallows for emergencies like this...

Papa's project

2009-08-18T23:05:00.005-04:00

A little while ago (OK...maybe longer than that....it was April), we stumbled upon this little number at a garage sale. Mike and I had been looking for a cabinet thing with glass doors (he says it's a "Buffet and hutch) for a long time to match our blue and white dining room. Finally, we gave up finding the perfect piece of furniture and bought this.

Mike said, "Give me a weekend and I'll have it done."

I said, "I better take the kids away."

So, I took the kids away somewhere for a weekend in April, and Mike worked on the thing. After three trips to Menards, he had the cabinet taken apart and was scraping the finish off.

Instead of going through a long drawn out story about the four months that ensued, I'll just share a few of the things he/we learned about restoring furniture:

1. Varnish doesn't scrape off of particle board.
2. Wood glue is water soluble.
3. Glass pieces slice fingers easily.
4. Cheap hardware made in China can make even the calmest, mild-mannered man go completely postal.
5. Black and Decker cordless screwdrivers are rather wussy.
6. Milwaukee cordless screwdrivers are awesome and expensive but the lady said it was worth it.
7. Spray painting looks like it's easier than regular painting...but don't be fooled...it is actually THE DEVIL.
8. The smell of Turpentine makes Sarah spontaneously vomit.
9. Hornets like the smell of vomit.
10. Having toddlers around cuts your productivity down by at least 1000%. Especially when they try to "help."

The old cabinet is above, the new, revamped cabinet below. I think Mike did a nice job, don't you? I hope it was worth it.

We are still here!

2009-08-10T14:56:00.003-04:00

Psymuhn...pre haircut

Post haircut

Hi Friends!

My apologies. Our blog has been sorely neglected for the past month. I promise you two things:

1. We have a bunch of good reasons for that.

2. The neglect ends today.

As far as the reasons go, I will elaborate on that as soon as I know what's going on around here. We are in for some big changes. We appreciate your prayers. Just ask God to tell us what we should do next. We are game for whatever He has up His sleeve! (does God even have sleeves? Hmmm... I'm sure he would if he lived in Duluth.)

To begin our update, in the last month:

Mike has been working more hours at St. Luke's in the pharmacy. He adores his job. I think he likes being the OR pharmacist best, except on days where Drs. Boylan and Hampton add big heart surgeries on late in the day. (That means he has to make up all these crazy specialized IV drug combos.) His job in the OR pharmacy is kind of like being a solo guy in a take-out restaurant for narcotics and antibiotics. You name it, he'll make it for you. And always with a smile. And no fries with that.

Julia has been very busy lately. We just spend a weekend at Lutheran Island Camp together, her first Camp experience. She adored the sheep song. She also spent a week with her grandparents while mommy and papa flew to another state for a few days. (more details to come) At home, she has been napping less (ugh) and getting very very cunning. Her latest love is playing with her dad's Iphone. One day, he downloaded some games on it to keep her busy. Now every time he is home, she begs him for his phone and then hides behind the couch and plays with it. I am so glad I don't have games on my phone. She is also learning how to use our computer. Neither Mike nor I taught her how to do this, but she can turn it on and open many, many, MANY applications and *USE* them! She likes "microsoft paint" the best. She also gets on the internet and has searched for things on Yahoo. The best part? She loves the "control panel" icon and has changed the settings on our computer. I had to disable the "tty" setting on the computer's phone today. I didn't even know our computer had a phone in it, much less equipped for the deaf....

Mary is growing and changing every day. She can walk, but only proceeds to do so when she HAS to. She much prefers toddling while holding onto the walls. She can say mama, papa, puppy, more, kiss, Dan, woof, no, and Ja (aka 'julia'). Her favorite activities are eating fruit (and filling her diaper with it), playing with Julia, and stealing her mom's purse so she can empty EVERYTHING out onto the living room floor. Excellent.

Psymuhn has undergone some major changes. He is now eating Pro Plan dog food (it was on sale at Petco). He is also sporting a new look! A few weeks ago, Mike took the girls to the lake to see Grandma Ruth and Grandpa Dave. I stayed home to clean up some loose ends, and I attempted to brush the dog. His long, thick fur was matted down and he was shedding clumps of hair the size of our neighbor's maltese. So, I took him to Petco to get him shaved. The grooming lady who was working that day informed me that his breed is not meant to be shaved. She directed me to the brush aisle and handed me some $35 "undercoat blade" thing that looked like a medieval torture device. I laughed, and the Psymuhn and I went next door to shopKo. For less than the price of the Blade of Torture, we bought a nice shaver with twelve attachments. I got home, put Psymuhn in the kiddie pool, and proceeded to spend two hours shaving him down to 1/2" of fur. He didn't even object to the shaving, except for his head. I was unable to shave his head at all because the shaver vibrated on his skull and scared the crap out of him. Annie called me when we were shaving, and so I wasn't paying attention to what he looked like. It was just talk, shave, talk, shave, shave, talk.....When we were done, I looked up and began to cry with laughter at the creature I had just created. That just didn't matter, though. From the look on his face, Psymuhn was full of delight. He was transformed into a puppy again. He ran all around the yard, bounding with glee at his new found freedom from Hair Everywhere. I hosed him down and he dried off in five minutes! He looks like a scrawny lab/dalmatian thing with a big hairy head. And boy does he feel good. (see pics above)

As for me, I will give you a thorough update soon. I look forward to taking advantage of my first amendment rights with this blog... ;) So stay tuned. And as soon as I find the camera, I'll post some pictures for you so you remember what we look like. Ha!

Deep Sea Diving

2009-07-15T00:34:00.004-04:00

Here is a picture of Mary Sarah Jayne, aka "Squishy," now shortened to just "Squish," a term of endearment given to her by her older sister about a year ago. It stuck. The following story is mostly about her. If you work for CPS (child protection services) from the state of MN, kindly please stop reading now. Thank you.

While we were up in Grand Rapids for Dan and Lindsay's wedding, we tried to spend some time as a family. My family had a cabin on Sugar Lake when I was growing up, and it's a wonderful lake to take kids in. Since it was too cold for swimming, Mike and I decided to take the girls on a canoe trip. We put lifejackets on the kids and off we went.

Julia had a great time. She had her own paddle and was very well-behaved. Squishy, on the other hand, would NOT tolerate her life jacket. It was keeping her from getting close enough to stick her arms in the water off the side of the canoe, and she screamed blood murder with the thing on. The second I took it off, she grinned at me and toddled over the the side to see the water again. She has no fears. I was glad that the screaming was over. My head was beginning to throb.

Mike and I made a point to canoe within 20 feet of shore on our way out because Squishy refused to wear her life jacket. (OK, MIke....she didn't refuse to wear her lifejacket. *I* refused to listen to the screaming...) We were in 1-2 feet of water the whole time on our way out. I only paddled about five strokes the entire way because I was so afraid that Squishy's new blue hat might get in the water and float away. I was keeping one hand on my kid at all times. She was peering into the water and sticking her arms into the frigid Northern Minnesota lake, sometimes up to her elbows.

Here is the Squish, doing what she does best: 1. fearlessly leaning over the side of a canoe, and 2. manipulating her mom into letting her go without a life jacket.

Mom, THIS IS GREAT!!!

...

Well, on the way home, Mike and I were getting hot. We made a mutual decision to avoid taking the long way along the edge of the lake and instead "booking it across the bay." This involved traversing deep water. Making light of her screaming and hollering, we put Squish in her life jacket and started paddling like mad.

About thirty seconds later, amidst my furious paddling (the screaming was making my migraine come back), we heard a "splash." Then silence. Mike and I turned around, and sure enough, about twenty feet behing the canoe, there bobbed Squish, thankfully in her properly fastened life jacket, in a state of "cold water shock" due to her polar plunge.

We looked at each other. Our canoe, which had been going at mach-3, continued to streamline away from the baby, who was now beginning to gather enough composure to shriek again, this time MUCH louder than before. The Look he gave me was classic: "Sarah, I guess you'd better jump in and swim over to her. She is alone in a frigid cold lake. Wow. That life jacket really works as well as they say it does!"

Reluctantly, I took my shoes off and removed the belongings from my pockets before I lept from the canoe into the glacial waters. Luckily, all of those canoeing trips at camp had taught me how to leap from a canoe without tipping the thing. I rescued my screaming child and swam her to shore. Since the canoe didn't tip, our digital camera survived to take a picture.

I walked an angry Squishy back to the resort. About five minutes into our walk, she began to shriek again. "What NOW?" I wondered. I had already removed her life jacket.

She pointed to the water. I lowered her down into the frigid bath and she giggled with delight. For the love of Pete and George! She wants to SWIM.

Much to her joy, I dragged her through the water all the way home. I had more goose bumps than she did. Every time I tried to swing her out of the lake and over my shoulders, she let out another ear-piercing shriek. I think we just might have a water baby on our hands. A manipulative one at that.

Here are our wet clothes. Mike likes to take pictures that remind him of neatly organized laundry. He took this one.

And here is the Naked BAby, making her rounds in the cabin after we removed her ten pound water logged diaper. Luvs are amazing.

Heh heh heh heh....

The Flower Girl, part II

2009-07-14T23:55:00.005-04:00

Julia's first encounter with a curling iron and hairspray. She has never seen either one of them since I don't use them at home. She thought we were nuts. And she HaTED the hair spray. She would only let me use it on her (not the hair lady) despite the hair lady's degree in hair spray. Oh well.

Julia, all dolled up except for the dress....which went on at the very LAST minute...

Lindsay and her Dad

Papa and Squish

The girls

A cute photo of the three flower girls.

Three kids is difficult, but taking pictures of five little kids? Are we crazy?
Julia would only hold still for the group photos if I let her hold her glass of sprite AND the straw.

Lindsay and her flower girls

Dan, Lindsay, and the kiddos

Julia and Mary spent a good deal of time fighting over/playing with this alligator/xylophone thing from Aunt Mary. It is actually Mary's toy, but the closest she could get to playing with it was smacking Julia's hand while she was holding the mallet.

Dan and Lindsay's Wedding, July 4th, 2009

2009-07-09T23:53:00.006-04:00

Squishy wouldn't let Julia touch her head piece. She screamed bloody murder when her sister came to try it on. It was hilarious. It won't be hilarious when they are fighting over it in the car...

Twelve year old cousin Andy played the piano for the entire ceremony. Wow can he play! And notice...no music!

Squishy and Gramma

Squishy, Gramma Beth, and Cousin CArly

Julia took her job as "flower girl" very seriously. She methodically dropped one daisy blossom every three steps from her "step off" point until she hit the altar. She didn't miss a beat. If only she listened that well when she isn't all dolled up with everybody looking at her....

The flower girls and bridesmaids

MARRIED AT LAST!

Grandpa and Grandma share the true meaning of wedding vows

I love this picture of Julia

Aunt Trice (aka mother o' the groom) and the flower girl, armed with ANOTHER thing of bubbles

Susie and Dave

Twistin' the night away

Glamorous Julia, whose Papa changed her into a blue dress for dinner after he saw the barbeque sauce on the table.

Bride, groom, and (fore)headshot of Miss Flower Girl

The Riesgraf Clan

Random photo of Squish...no idea how it got in with the wedding pictures, but it was cute so it stayed.

Matt and Paula

Julia, delerious from dancing for HOURS...

Chris and fiance Laura

Bob and Mary

Photo shoot

2009-06-29T00:20:00.006-04:00

Dan and Jessi came over last week while Papa was working late and the girls enjoyed the extra attention. Out came the dress-up clothes (AGAIN......) and on went the bling bling. Julia was cinderella. Mary was Snow White. Julia ran the show. Mary chewed on her crown. Both of them loved being in the spotlight. Oh bother....I can only imagine what they will be like in ten years. I need to stock up on good wine now.

We are not amused.

Even Psymuhn participated in the party. He is dog-erella. He also chewed on his crown.

Uhoh...they've realized that I"m in the living room....I'm in trouble now!

Mary is getting tired. Time for night nighting!

Hello Dan. Thanks for coming over and playing dress-up with us. Next time you get to wear the crown!

Nemo's maiden voyage

2009-06-28T23:20:00.006-04:00

Julia has been begging to fly her kite for the last fourteen months. Auntie Annie gave her the kite for her second birthday present....and we always forget to take him out of the package until it's either completely still outside (which doesn't happen very often in Duluth), OR there is abundant thunder and lightning outside...an absolute contraindication to kite-flying. Well, Julia tried her hand at flying her Nemo kite last week, and he had an impressive maiden voyage!

Squish and I watched from the sidelines until Nemo decided to take one of his inevitable nose-dives into the gravel. Julia didn't quite grasp the concept of "keep tension on the line" just yet. Maybe that'll be next week's lesson.

Hmmmm...how did the water get all over the front of my shirt!?!?

A father's day tribute

2009-06-19T07:39:00.003-04:00

Dear Papa,

I love you because you know how to coo like a pigeon.

Can you bring our Christmas tree back now please?

You are the best papa.

Love, Julia

(This is what was written inside the Father's Day card that Julia brought home from preschool.)

hats of meat

2009-06-11T23:37:00.003-04:00

While searching for images to put into a talk I am giving tomorrow morning, I somehow stumbled onto this insane website. If you have a minute....

http://www.hatsofmeat.com/

Single Parenting

2009-06-07T23:29:00.004-04:00

OK...don't read the title of this and gasp. Mike and I are doing just great.

I have had the privilege of parenting my small children by myself the last two days since Mike took a couple of afternoon/evening shifts at work to help them out. We pass like ships in the night...I work early in the AM and run home mid-afternoon, Mike blows me a kiss as he flies out the door and then it's just the kiddos and I....

In the last three years of child-rearing, I have learned many things. Today I will comment on how I have learned that Mike and I parent our kids in entirely different ways. Let's take Saturday as and example. I had clinic in the AM and wasn't home. Mike spent the morning with the kiddos. They ate cereal in high chairs with bibs on, did nice clean puzzles, and helped their papa fold the laundry. I came home during their nap and Mike headed off to work. When the kids got up from their naps, they were wearing cute tops and skirts (spick and span, mind you.) Mike dresses them up so NICELY! It was beautiful outside and I wanted to take them to a good park and spend a few hours out of the house. Problem: parks are dirty. My kids were so clean. The thought of changing their outfits before we went anywhere crossed my mind.

I must be honest with you: I am becoming afraid to pick out clothes for my kids. When I get dressed for work, I have two choices: black pants or scrubs. I like to keep it simple. I even bought three pairs of the same black pants because I liked them. Dressing the girls is an entirely different endeavor. I think it's about as easy as shopping for car parts. Mike, however, seems to effortlessly dress them each day, and two darling little girls emerge from the bedroom, simply flawlessly put together. When I dress them, I spend forEVER digging through their drawers of neatly stacked tops, searching and searching for something that might match. I can NEVER find a shirt and pants to match. All of the jeans have girly stuff on them! There are multi-colored buttons and ribbons and pink and green plaid. How am I supposed to find a shirt that goes with that?? Plus, all of their summer shirts are so CLEAN and NEW. I am afraid to put new shirts on them (with good reason, see below.)

Well, after stressing about the thought of picking out a new outfit for the kiddos, I made an executive decision to just wing it. I brought the kids to a park without accessible water in it (no mud, right?). We went down to Bayfront Park, where there is an awesome playground and a big field to fly kites. Julia brought her Nemo kite along and had a grand old time flying it while Mary watched and I fetched Nemo when he made bold nosedives into the gravel.

We ate a picnic lunch at the park. I packed peanut butter sandwiches, strawberries, and graham crackers. Sounds innocent, right? Well, if Mike had been taking the kids outside for a picnic, then it would have been. Unfortunately, St. Luke's Pharmacy had their reins on my husband and I was left to feed the children myself. Mary started out eating a graham cracker. I helped Julia get her sandwich out of the baggie and turned around to find Mary with both hands in the strawberry container, a huge grin on her face. She dug her fingers into the strawberries and smushed them into her face. I was incapacitated with laughter, so I didn't get there in time to stop the strawberries from making their imprint on her formerly pristine-clean white shirt. Oh well, I thought...Julia's still clean. oh wait.

Just then, I heard a shriek from The Toddler. "MAMA!!!!! There's a BUG and it's COMING for ME!!!"

A teeny tiny ANT had wandered onto our picnic blanket. It was heading for the peanut butter sandwich. One brisk moment later, I saw what I knew had been coming to me all afternoon. Julia lept up from her spot and slipped on her peanut butter sandwich, which left a smear of peanut butter along her leg and clean shorts. She fell onto her strawberry-laden sister, sharing some of the leg/peanut butter with Mary. Mary wrapped her hands around Julia's neck, and my blonde three year old was suddenly a nice shade of strawberry blonde.

Oh dear. If only I had picked a park with a body of water in it...I could have thrown the kids into it. Instead, I let Julia take her shoes and socks off and go play at the playground some more. Who was I kidding? The peanut butter might look kinda cool with playground gravel stuck into it. And Mary was merely saving some strawberry guts for later. In her ears.

We went home later on that evening and I washed the kids up in the kitchen sink. I attempted to put them to bed a little after nine. Mary stayed in her crib. Little did I know that Julia had other ideas.

Since there was frost forcasted for Duluth, I was running around our yard throwing bedsheets, tarps, and tablecloths over my precious flower beds. Every time I looked up from my work, Julia was standing at the door with her nukker and snuggly, a little devious look on her face. When I stormed in and asked her why the heck she was out of bed again, she would stutter and attempt to explain herself out of trouble. I have to hand it to her, she is pretty smart with some of her excuses. At first, it's easy stuff, like "I forgot to brush my teeth" or "Can you help me sit on the potty again?" Later, though, she had to think of more creative excuses. My favorite? "Can I sleep in your bed? I think there's a big scary bus in my bed and it wants to crunch me up." Where does she get this stuff? I tried not to laugh, and I told her it would be OK if she wanted to sleep in my bed until I came inside. I let her go upstairs by herself as I was muddy from my flower beds.

When I came in to get Julia from my bed, I found her sleeping in our bed...in a very peculiar way It was so funny that I had to leave the bedroom to get the laughing out. My little girl had somehow managed to curl up using the entire down comforter on herself. There wasn't an inch to spare for anyone else. She also had the bedside fan on high. She was snoring a little and had my feather pillow perfectly positioned on top of her head. I couldn't see her at all. I knew she was in there because I could hear her breathing. How the heck did she do that? And why?

More importantly, why did her mum have to leave the bedroom, overcome with laughter? Yeah, it's funny that she hogged the queen-sized down comforter and that there was a pillow on top of her head....But that's not why I thought it was so hilarious. You see, that's the way *I* sleep, every night. I had no idea that my kid paid attention to those little details. Apparrently, that's just what being a parents is all about.

It's a good thing I washed the peanut butter off of Julia's legs. That down comforter has my name on it.

Happy Birthday, Mary!

2009-06-01T00:00:00.006-04:00

Well, I can't believe it's been a year, can you? Our little Squish is ONE. To celebrate her birthday this year, I mowed the lawn. That's what put me into labor last year, so it was only fitting that I mow every year on her birthday. This year, the job seemed a LOT easier....and I managed to mow the whole lawn without needing a gas refill. I guess I was a bit slower last year when I tried to mow the thing while overdue and quite giant...

In honor of Mary's love for all creatures with fur or feathers, we took a very spontaneous trip to the Lake Superior Zoo. Squishy LOVES animals. Every time she hears a dog barking, she does this bouncing up and down thing and laughs...and shouts, "Puppa, Puppa!" Well, we thought the zoo was only fitting. We had to teach her the difference between a "puppa" and a "kangaroo", "polar bear," "monkey," and "goat," among other animals. Julia had a great time, too.

Here's the kangaroo!

Julia made friends with a hideous scary snake sculpture...

They had a little kids park in the zoo. The girls tried out the plastic bumble bee.

Ride em' cowboy!

Our little Mary is almost walking!

Later, Holly and Luke came over and brought some presents.

Mary had about three seconds with each present before Julia "helped" her by opening them up and confiscating them immediately. You can see Julia swooping in for the kill in the picture below.

Hey...can I see my present?

Two exhausted, but happy parents. We had all these grand plans to go to Menards and buy stuff for a piece of furniture we were working on...and the later I would make homemade something for dinnern in honor of Squishy...I was going to find some matching napkins and birthday hats....and blow up balloons....no wait...find a helium tank and have real balloons!....but instead we ended up cancelling Menards, the hats, and the balloons. And my gourmet dinner? Chicken nuggets and mac and cheese. Julia and Mary's verdict? Yum. The cake? Fan-diggly-tastic.

Here they are, the play by play pics of the first cake. Yup...she had the run of it. And what fun she had!

I think I'll touch it to make sure it's real...

Ooooh! sticky! mmmm.

Come here, mama...lemme grab your nice clean sweater!

Don't bug me...I'm CONCENTRATING.

One satisfied customer...

hats

2009-05-21T06:15:00.002-04:00

I'm tired...

2009-05-14T23:50:00.004-04:00

I am officially on my last month of internal medicine in residency. Some of you already know what that means...for the bulk of you, however, I'll explain it. Internal medicine rotations are difficult. You're on call every third night, you try to learn lots of obscure information, and you fufill the title that you are given...."resident." More plainly stated, you live, eat, and breathe hospital. You get your days and nights mixed up because the call room doesn't have a window. You know Marge's dog's name (she's the cashier at the hospital cafeteria.) All the days seem to run together into a big exhausted clump of sick old folks and alcoholic young ones with an occassional witty remark from an internist thrown in for good measure. ahhh..

Last night, I was on medicine call and I did something I have never done before, and I really hope to never do again. I didn't realize how tired I really was. I was up admitting some guy with abdominal pain at 1AM. When I was fininshed with the admission, I picked up the phone to dictate a note. A dictated history and physical usually takes about ten minutes and is two pages in length. After you're done dictating your patient, you get to go home. I must have been awfully comfortable in my chair on 4 West. I remember dictating this guy's current history, family history, social history, exam, labs, x-rays...*yawn...* I have to hand it to myself...the guy was a boring patient, especially in the middle of the night. He had constipation! Who comes into the hospital at midnight because they are consitpated? I know the answer to that. A bored someone, that's who.

ANYWAYS, I was dictating along in my soft warm chair with my decaffinated beverage at my side, going through this gentleman's normal labs and normal x-rays...and then I honestly don't remember anything until a nurse came and poked, me in the shoulder.

"Doctor Sprengeler?"

(jerking awake) "Huh?"

"Um, I hate to intrude, but are you sure you know what's going on? You just dictated that your patient was scared to go to school because Mister Caleb makes her go pee pee in the big potties."

...

Yes, you guessed it. I actually fell asleep while I was dictating. And I was dreaming. AND, I was dictating my dream right to the hospital transcriptionist! Bring on the ambulance chasers, this doc has gone officially insane.

Good thing I still had the receiver of the phone in my hand and I could go back and delete what I had dictated. The assessment and Plan section of poor Mr. Constipated's history and physical started out making sense....place an NG tube, pain relief, zofran....but suddenly, things changed. My dictation/dream morphed him into a little girl who wanted to sit on the potty chair instead of the big potties in the preschool room. Oh dear.

It's after eleven. I should be in bed.

A trip to Enger tower

2009-05-07T22:44:00.003-04:00

Tonight was particularly productive. Mike and I both got home from work early, so supper was done by 6:00. Then it was off to a garage sale, where we found EXACTLY what we were looking for: a hutch and sideboard for the dining room, in good shape, for under 50 bucks. Score. After that, we went to Enger Tower (see pics), where Julia pretended to be a princess. She has been watching this Rapunzel Barbie movie lately, so I think that's where she decided that princesses live in cold drafty towers. :)
We also made it to Menard's, where we bought new hardware and white paint for the hutch. We found everything on Papa's "Menard's list," the list he builds on over months... We found everything from a new curtain pull, to sand for the sandbox, to a new garbage can, to a new cord for the vaccuum that Julia decided to rip to shreds.
After Menard's, it was a trip to the DQ. Julia and papa shared a blizzard. I made an amazing discovery: the marshmallow sundae. Being conservative ol' me, I *always* get the small strawberry sundae. I always have. Well, they were having a sale on Sundaes, and I wanted to get Mike a funny thing because he gave me his usual, "I don't care" response. So, I bought him a Marshmallow Sundae. Who would order a marshmallow sundae when they could get hot fudge or carmel or STRAWBERRY??!? I kind of lump it in the same category as the Nerd Blizzard. Why would you do that? When it came, I tasted it for fun. It didn't even look like anything was on top of the ice cream.

.....

Holy Hannah. it was delicious! I felt immediate pangs of guilt. How could I abandon my tried and true Strawberry Sundae for some indulgent imposter? It was sitting right in front of me, clueless about my new-found guilty passion for sticky marshmallow sauce. I still don't know what to do about this. I think I will have to avoid the DQ for awhile. You see, I will automatically order the strawbery sundae as usual...but next time, I will know that I actually want something else.....something forbidden and gooey...something a five-year-old would want. Not a mom. Moms don't order marshmallow sundaes.....

Or do they?

A trip to the park

2009-04-30T01:19:00.004-04:00

I am behind on blogging. These pics are from Easter Sunday. Mike and I took the girls to the park. It was the first weekend to break in the wagon. sigh... We'll have to wait a few more days to break in the wagon again since there are currently SNOWFLAKES flying outside. Ahhh Duluth. Mayday! MAYDAY!

...alone

2009-04-23T00:00:00.003-04:00

Tonight, my mother-in-law came and drove her son and grandkids back home to St. Cloud for the weekend. Yep...that's right. Mommy has to stay home and work. I didn't think much of it...Mike will be going to a conference in the cities and Grandma will watch the kiddos (yay Grandma!) and I will go to work as usual...blah blah blah.... the usual drill...

It didn't sink in until they had been gone for about five seconds.

I have the house to myself. I'm alone. Alone. ALONE!!!!!

I walked through the living room, listening for the usual squeals and crunches and crashes and thuds. Nothing. Not a peep except for the occassional pant from the dog.

I went straight to the Easter basket and helped myself to a piece of Julia's candy. I ate it on the couch, in the living room. (We NEVER eat in the living room...Julia knows the rules. We had to adopt this rule to protect our poor carpet after we had kids.)

Next, I let Psymuhn walk into the dining room and I pet him. Mike really hates it when he outsteps his boundary of the kitchen/dining room doorway. Psymuhn was standing with his front legs in the dining room and his back legs in the kitchen and I wasn't yelling at him. I felt naughty. What the heck? I might as well go all-out "bad Mama." I took a stroll into the kitchen, opened up the fridge, and took a big ol' swig of milk right out of the carton. Mmmm. I haven't done that in a long time. I almost stuck my finger into the container of fruit dip...but I didn't want to take this too far just yet.

Next, I washed the dishes and swept up the kitchen floor. I decided to take the dog for a walk. Ten seconds later, I had my shoes on and Psymuhn and I left for an hour-long walk. I didn't have to put three coats, three hats, and six mittens on. I didn't have to unfold the huge stroller. I didn't have to pack a bag that included diapers, wipes, kix, a water bottle, and band-aids. All I needed was a leash! Beautiful! And the best part? When we got home, the kitchen was exactly as I had left it! No one had come by and dripped mister freezie juice all over the place. Psymuhn wasn't licking the floor around the high chair. It was after eight o'clock and nobody was melting down because it was past their bedtime.

I took another swig from the milk carton.

By now, you know where I'm going with this. Those of you who have children are smiling right now. Those of you who don't....just trust me. Kids are worth the work, but good Lord, am I glad I never think about how much work that really entails. I also know that before we had kids, I never really appreciated a few minutes alone.

I am going to sleep in the middle of the bed toinght.

2009-04-21T08:38:00.003-04:00

Although it was a whole week ago already, Easter Sunday was a fun time with two little blonde girls. We dressed them up like dolls for church, decorated eggs, and had some visitors! (Sorry gramma Beth and grandpa Dick...I forgot to take pictures of you guys.)

Handpainted eggs

The Particular One paints her egg "just so"

The Happy One eats a snack whilst she watches the Drama

The Easter Bunny came!

Ooooooh!

All dolled up for church. Mama is a lousy picture-taker. Mary actually kept her headband in longer than her sister.

SQUISH.

Good Friday

2009-04-11T00:16:00.004-04:00

I guess I'll have to finish the story about the church and soup later on. I know...it's a cliffhanger. I will finish the story later when I have more time. Crap. I said it, so now the rest of the story resides in the Pile. The "I'll do it later when I have more time" pile. You all have one and you know it....the half finished scrapbooks, quilts, basements, knitted sweaters, paintings, garage projects...etc. Well, the story has been moved to the Pile and it's there until further notice.

I have something else to report on tonight.

I had a couple of "a-HA" moments today. The moments you get when something clicks in your brain. You memorized something long ago and didn't really understand it....and suddenly, "A HA," you GET IT. Today, I realized that coumadin didn't protect you from a heart attack. You need plavix or aspirin because acute coronary syndrome starts from an inflammatory cascade brought on by a crack in the plaque and PLATELET aggregation. Hence the plavix. Coumadin works on factors II, V, VII, and IX, and therefore doesn't have anything to do with platelets. Whoa. A HA!

My next A Ha moment is more serious, but also more important. I took the kiddos to church tonight all by myself because their dad was stuck in the pharamacy. I was also slated to ring handbells and sing in the choir, somehow maintaining a toddler and baby at the same time. Luckily, Holly and Luke were there at church to help us. Those two are a gift from God, I swear. The just step in and act like surrogate parents whenever I need them. Anyways, I was supposed to be at church at 6:45 for choir rehearsal. At 7:02 when we walked in the door, Holly and Luke were there to take Julia for me. Julia stayed with them through the whole service. Mike showed up a little later and helped me with Mary.

Our Good Friday service is pretty somber. Lots of hymn singing and the reading of the entire Passion. At the end of the service, the lights all go out and the pastor slams the Bible on the altar. It creates a defeaning sound, followed by silence and darkness. It's a pretty profound moment...the usual post-service joyful organ music and jibber jabber of the little old ladies is replaced with an empty, dark void.

It was at this moment that I heard Julia sniffling like she was crying. I was holding a hungry Mary, so I left Mike to get Julia from Holly and Luke. Mike and Julia took a LONG time to come out. I stood in the narthex for about fifteen minutes making small talk while I was waiting for them. When they finally came out, I was preparing a tiny little "mom-rant" about why they shouldn't dawdle at the end of church...mary is hungry...we are up past the girls' bedtime...you know the drill....

He looked like he was about to break down. This was weird...I have never seen Mike cry in public except for when the girls were born. He shot me a Look and said, "I'll talk to you when we get home."

When we arrived in the house and put the girls to bed, I asked him again about why he and Julia had taken so long to leave church tonight. It turns out that Julia wanted to go up to the front of the church after the end of the service. When Mike asked her why, she replied,

"I want to go up there and give Jesus a kiss and tell Him thank you. I want Him to know that I'm sorry that He had to die.."

...

Mike walked her up to the front of the church and Julia proceeded to "look" for Jesus. She walked up behind the altar and looked under the chairs. When she couldn't find him, she decided to kiss the old wooden cross that was brought in for Good Friday.

That's what was taking them such a long time to leave. It never ceases to amaze me just how much my "not quite three year old" daughter understands. It is humbling.

ambition

2009-04-02T15:19:00.006-04:00

I must have been feeling like life was under control last January. I don't know what posessed me to do this, but I signed up to host one of the weekly "Lenten soup suppers," which occur every wednesday night in Lent at our church. This job entails preparing the church basement for dinner that starts at 5:00pm. It means that you agree to make a cauldron of homemade soup to feed a 75-100 people. It means that you bring seven pans of "bars" to feed them dessert. The church supplies a big thing full of peanut butter. You're on your own for the rest. Sounds like fun, right? Besides....the median age at Mount Olive Lutheran Church is at least 70. I don't think most of our members can even lift a huge pot o' soup. I felt guilty. If I didn't feed them, who would? I don't want the old folks to starve. Peanut butter sandwiches get stuck in their dentures! So much for trying to run from my Catholic upbringing. The Catholic Guilt is there. Still there. I signed my name on the dotted line that cold January day.... March 25th was a long ways off, anyways. I will probably have tons of time in March. Yippee.

...

Well, it had been a very busy March. I was on the pediatrics service at St. Mary's, which is usually a nice relaxing rotation with 2-3 admissions a day, lots of time to read and learn, and a cup of coffee with fresh apple fritter promptly at 10:30 every morning. Not so this month. I think God decided that I didn't know enough about sick kiddos or something. Instead of peaceful relaxing nights and time with my own kiddos, I spent my evenings and nights admitting sick kiddos...right and left. I think I set a record for the number of peds admissions overnight. 12! People didn't believe me when I told them I admitted twelve kids in one night. I had two other nights of admitting eight kiddos each. Then there's the fact that yours truly made the call schedule for the month...apparrently not my strong suit. Two weeks ago when I looked at the schedule, I noticed that I was on call Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday.... Call every other night for five days in a row. Oops. What idiot would do that? um....

Somewhere in the middle of all this call, we got a letter from the IRS: You screwed up your 2007 taxes and you probably owe us at least $10,000. Yippee! Excellent news. Then, the resdiency decided to subject me to a series of nasty meetings (see last week's blog).

After five days of every other night call, I was pretty shot. Everything I encountered was suddenly hilarious, especially Dr. M, the tall red-headed lovable nut ball attending doc that I did all of these peds admissions with. On a late Tuesday night after five or six kids with gastro entered our service, he joked about me needing to go home and bake a cake. Suddenly, I had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach: BAKE....uhoh... BARS....SOUP....100 people.....eee gads. I checked my calendar: I was signed up to host dinner for a hundred people TOMORROW night. It was 11:30pm and I was just remembering this. Oh dear.

I called Husband, who was sitting at home, awaiting my arrival. (I had called him an hour ago and said, "just fifteen more minutes, honey...) Our conversation went something like this:
S: "hi Honey!"
M: "grunt. When will you be home? I'm tired."
S: "I need you to do something for me tonight."
M: "I already turned on the electric blanket."
S: "Could you throw a turkey in the oven? I need it for soup for church tomorrow night."
M: "(still groggy) What?!"
S: "a turkey. There's one in the downstairs freezer. Just run some hot water on it, pull out the paper things inside, and throw it in a pan and bake at 325."
M: "damn woman. Let me get a pen and write this down."
S: "thanks." *click*

...

I was home an hour later to find my patient, exhausted, devoted husband chopping carrots in the kitchen that smelled of Thanksgiving. He had tears in his eyes. I was alarmed only for a minute...then I noticed the huge bowl of diced onions on the counter.

Since I was waiting for an admission to come in from Ashland, WI, I decided to stay up and make the soup. By 3:00AM, the turkey came out of the oven and I chopped it into a million pieces. The minute I was finished, my pager went off and it was back to the hospital with me.

...to be continued....

In memory

2009-03-29T01:34:00.002-04:00

In memory...

Ashleigh Sue Bergman
5# 6oz

Infant daughter of Joe and Danielle

Friends

2009-03-23T23:24:00.003-04:00

Hello out there,

The sky threw up on us today. It spent the night wretching with dry heaves, but by morning, it was full-blown "sky vomit." It rain/iced all day. Ice came falling from the sky and stuck to every surface it came into contact with producing an invisible slippery glaze. I noticed it when I stepped out of the house this morning and suddenly found myself clear across our back patio head first into the recycle bin.

I knew that today would be a lousy one. Why did I keep going? I should have gone back to bed. Mike said the girls slept in until almost nine today. Another good reason to have turned around and gone back into the house.

Instead, I recovered from my visit to the recycle bin and dug through the empties to find all of the stuff that had fallen out of my white coat pockets during the little mishap. I cut my hand on an empty can of sauerkraut. (Who does that?!?) At least I think sauerkraut is sterile...no bugs could ever live in it, so I don't think I need antibiotics.

Then it was off to work: pediatrics. I had been on call Friday/Sunday and had thirteen (another good sign) patients to round on. Before I had to be at a meeting at noon. A meeting which my advisor from work had scheduled and refused to let me postpone despite the fact that I slept zero hours on Friday night and had slept two Sunday night. I was a complete zombie even after two cups of the gut-rotting coffee in the hospital cafeteria.

Another sign of a great day.

The first patient I saw was a kiddo with pneumonia whom I was planning on sending home today. Instead of feeling better, he was doubled over in pain and had poor breath sounds on his entire right side. Turns out the pneumonia was now an empyema and he needs a surgeon.

It was only nine o'clock.

The rest of the morning I spent rounding on my patients as fast as possible in order to get the work done on time. Rounding on kids is hard work. The parents have millions of questions for you and sometimes you just want to hand them Nelson's Textbook of Pediatrics and say, "just read chapter seventeen." Alas, I don't own that book, and even if I did, it probably would have died during my trip to the recycle bin (see above.)

At noon, I had to leave the peds floor for a meeting at the Family Practice Center...our residency clinic. The meeting was just plain lousy. In ways I can't say on this blog because anybody can read it and I could get Hosed for being more specific. Just go with me on this one.... The meeting was the equivalent of melena* or clostridium difficle diarrhea, shooting from a cannon, onto a neat stack of freshly pressed white bedsheets....for about an hour.

Anyways, this brings me to my point for the day. Before I went to this utterly poopy meeting, I called a friend of mine. I've known him since day one of medical school and he is my kids' doctor. I asked him to go to this meeting with me, to make things more bearable. Without a second thought, he came right away and sacrificed an entire noon hour to attend a meeting with me. And then, he called me tonight after work to reiterate how lousy the meeting had been and offered me his support for any future meetings I may have to attend.

After that, my darling husband poured me a glass of wine and fed me a bowl of chocolate ice cream. He listened as I complained about today, about the slice in my hand, the kid with the empyema, and the meeting from hell. As I was thinking about what I should blog about tonight, I had a thought: I am really blessed. I have a lot of good friends in this world. I have a husband whom I can depend on. I have wonderful people in my life who are willing to drop their free lunch hour to attend an awful meeting with me out of the kindness of their hearts, and then call my house to check up on me. I have friends who would put their reputation out on the line for me. I have friends who bring an extra #2 pencil to exams for me because they know I will probably forget. I have friends who ask if they can walk our dog when we're gone, friends who will pick me up from the car place when I have to drop off the car, and friends who buy two bottles of wine because they know I'd like one, too....especially if it's on SALE.

I guess that the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days put things into persepctive. If we didn't have the terrible ones once in awhile, we'd never really appreciate the great ones.

Here's to bad days and good friends. Let them both be here to stay!

*melena: bloody diarrhea that you see in a G.I. bleed. It is the most foul-smelling thing in the whole hospital.