Category: Uncategorized

Fall 2014 was more than a bit of a challenge this year for us.
September 19th I was rear ended while taking the boys to meet Scott for a work outing a 6 flags. Everyone was fine however my car is totaled and gone. It has been a difficult transition for me as Scott’s car is a manual that needs transmission work so I am not driving it. We have decided not to have a second car and are now in the process of replacing Scott’s sports coupe with something larger and with out transmission problems…..needless to say the limbo time has been pretty crappy. But, as always life goes on. In our family it seems that the colder it gets the more we have to do and staying busy has been nice…between the holiday scheduling of events and were still fiddling with getting all summer and fall items packed away. A feat in and of itself considering we acquired a yard this year and about 80 bajillion new outdoor items.
We picked up the raised garden beds with the plan to store them in the garage for winter.
The new play equipment also went into the garage where I created a “play space” by super gluing old bamboo reeds to the cement walls….were hoping to use the space as somewhat more protected winter play area. With an old rug to soften the ground for the kiddos and a treadmill/ weights for me or Scott we are off to a good start.
With everything outside falling into place we’re now looking at what else we want taken care of inside the house. We packed summer stuff into storage and got a new space heater. Even though our windows are brand new we sealed them up-minus two for circulation-and noticed a temperature difference. So far we haven’t had to turn the heat on but I’m guessing that we will have to any day now.
Stay tuned because as the cold rolls in I will be trying out a some new crafts and DIYs with the littles

Ok first, how the hell is it just days away from august?! Where was summer? And yes, I’m referring to the hot.sticky.schhhvetty.summer. Maybe I’m the only one bit disappointed, but guys in less than 3m we could be up to our ankles in SNOW. And remember what that polar vortex is like when it’s already cold?!

……meanwhile in Wisconsin……

But, aside from the unusually cool temperatures and the regular few mix ups or problems, things have been going fairly smoothly. We did get the new-to-us grill hooked up, and we already forgot to turn it off once…oopsy. We had our cookout this past weekend which was great to see everyone!! The boys even got to see auntie kimmy-I’m just sad we didn’t get any pictures of them together! The no show from an acquaintance who was supposed to sell her party lite stuff was a disappointment because a few of us planned on getting some Xmas gifts. The highlight by far was nana and an ex-military friend of Scott’s getting into a water fight, priceless.
Scott may have been an innocent bystander but still got drenched 😉

We were able to finally take advantage of the garden!!
But I’ll save that for another post:)

After a challenging few weeks things seem to be going really smoothly! The long holiday weekend was a great recharge with some especially exciting news.!.!.!.!.!.

I took a meeting with a local dog facility about opening a doggie daycare and training facility!! The existing facility is a pet lodge 5 minutes from our house, I couldn’t really walk or bike. But hey, I’ll be working from home and when I do go in there is virtually no commute. We are meeting again this weekend to discuss “logistics” but obviously I am very excited to be able to continue my work with dogs. Even though I will be stepping into a more professional role I’m hoping to get to plenty of smoochi love and play time.
My trip to target to find some “business clothes” for my meetings turned out semi-comical as Scott informed me that shorts are apparently a faux-pas…who knew? My work attire has always been filled with yoga pants, T’s, and hoodies. Basically anything that can get destroyed and I wont cry about. So, I’m learning

Wish me luck finding comfy professional clothes, I’m still hoping I wont need them though! On a less exciting, but still gratifying, note we FINALLY have our couch back!! Scott’s parents were nice enough to let us store it there and this weekend we went to pick it up. After only having a love seat for the first three months in our new place it is wonderful to have the couch again. We can finally design and decorate our living room! For now, though, it’s just nice to be able to all fit on the couch:)

I haven’t done an update on the mini men in ages, let alone anything in weeks :0 lets just say we’ve been busy….very very busy.
As I’ve said before there are MANY ups and downs in twin land and these last few weeks have been no exception. So, I’ll fill you in….
Last week B took a digger that ended with a lemon size lump on his forehead and a trip to the ER for a CT. On a good note the nurse said he was the best toddler she had in 16 years! YAY for my well behaved little man! And while it hasn’t even slowed him down, it scared the crap out of me, and kinda tempts me to tie pillows to them. After that we started the next round of circle of change classes! So, our weekly visits to madison have picked up again:) I love doing this class so much and it’s wonderful to stay in touch with madison friends and family. The next day, while in the hospital parking lot in Madison, (getting the boys records) B almost got hit by a CRAZY lady. Never thought I would be that parent screaming the F bomb at someone….but…given the ER trip two days previous….I was a bit protective. Icing on the cake was that she almost hit a second adult when she backed up to straighten herself in the parking spot…he also screamed and flipped her off. Sweet validation, some people really shouldn’t have a license. The weekend had it’s redeeming qualities with some well deserved QUIET family time, yard clean up and a visit from gramma now that shes back from the Bahamas! But in true fashion this weeks adventures have already proved challenging with a Dr visit on Tuesday for me and Wednesday for the boys. While my Dr. was wonderful and I will be keeping her, we will be ditching the pediatrician. No one even asked why B still has 2 horrendous black eyes (and no he didn’t have the records for last weeks ER visit). Strange to me, but on top of that it took 2 hours! Not like they really need to see a different dr for a while now, but I would still like to have a good ped. that we like…so the search continues. As for doing dr visits with the 2 vs 1 ratio, it would be putting it nicely to say its a challenge. My advice don’t do it! Lol, but if you have to bring toys, movies bribes whatever you need to to keep them busy for at least an hour…more if you have twin toddlers 😉
but were settling into “townie” life quite nicely and as we head into month no. 4 in the new house were loving life:)
…..especially jack ❤
The break from blogging has allowed me to catch up on some projects I had piled up like making a new dog throne, a storage "bin" for blankets, planting all of our seeds, rebuilding our fire pit and starting a wall mounted tv cabinet and making the garden bed covers! Plus, I've been stashing summer fun activities and now that A&B are big enough well be taking advantage of them over the next few months! Ohhh yeah-I'm ready for summer!

I am realizing now, months…and MONTHS later that I never finished the second part of the NICU stay, or our discharge from NICU. Any parent who has ever done NICU time understands, it really is it’s own form of jail. We were lucky enough to have a short stay and our boys are what are often referred to as “feeder-growers.” They had no serious complications and the only thing we waited on was gaining weight (and of course what we now look at as the pointless round of antibiotics for a bacterial infection that was really a lab error). Never the less the time passed painfully slow. We stayed at the hospital for the whole time the boys were there, since there were suites in the NICU. We had family watch the dogs and the poor cat was lonely in the apartment:0 Scott would go back and forth to Madison for class since he, at the time, was in his first semester of his masters. Early in the second week we were told the boys would be able to go home Wednesday, at the latest, which would have been 10days in jail (the minimum they had to stay because of those stupid antibiotics).
But to recap: Saturday both boys had Brady episodes and Dstats….on top of deciding to not eat! The episodes meant mandatory 3 days of observation, and not eating meant gavages were still in. And luck didn’t seem to be on our side because Sunday Aedons little veins couldn’t take another IV line-they had collapsed again-and even the ones in his head wouldn’t hold. The PA had spoken with us about our only option left-a PICC line-thankfully his IV came out on a SUNDAY. No one was available to do the surgery until Monday, it bought his veins a day to recover, and he was given the meds orally…if I remember correctly 😉 We ended up talking the dr out of the PICC line as it would need to be removed for their tentative Wednesday release. The next few days were fairly uneventful as the boys gained back what they lost in the first week. As our Wednesday release fast approached B had a Brady….and not more than an hour later Aedon had one….3.more.days 😦
This time though, no surprises. The 3 days went by with out event and Friday April 20th was the BIG DAY!!13 days and we were all going home.

Welcome Home

We were so nicely reminded by yesterday’s chilly weather that winter is again on its way 😦 BOOOOOO. I don’t care how much you hate the heat I will take being warm over cold ANY day. But, for us it served as a reminder to get the boys winter clothing in order. Since I’m rather picky about what they wear we’re nowhere close to done, we did find a few goodies though!

ADORE-ABLE even Scott agreed, we very rarely do “matchy-matchy” with the boys but for these boots we may need to 😉

And these sweater sets, pretty cute! I have a hard time paying full price, which is probably why we didn’t get all their winter gear. Normally, I would get it the season before on clearance, except we didn’t plan on being here for another winter, so I didn’t buy. Oh well, I think we found some pretty cute stuff!