November little things...

-
It's an interesting dynamic in our house. Parenting a middle schooler all the way down to a threesome tyrannosaurus with two others in between. At the end of each day we collapse on the couch and I think, "phew, survived another one." A good parent gets up and tries again...or so I've read. And that's what we've been doing.

 Kate sang in her first ever middle school concert. The kids did a great job after a trimester of practice. In middle school students are lined up by last name rather than height. Kate blocked a few kids standing in the front row. Love my tall girl.

We received our first snow storm of the season...in early November. I love winter, I love winter, I love winter...(trying to convince myself.) The snow has since melted but I snapped some cute photos of the girls playing before it disappeared.



And after a couple of hearty Thanksgiving meals with various families (three Thanksgivings in all), we drove up to Wapsie Pines and picked out our Christmas tree along with 3,000 other families. I think we were all trying to avoid the big snow storm expected for the following day. That beast of a storm dropped zero flakes on us. I don't understand how the weather works but I'm glad I'm not the one in charge of predicting it!


We also snapped our annual photo of the girls with Santa and Mrs. Claus. I'm always so impressed that no one ever cries about having to sit on strangers laps. Although Maddie did look a big skeptical.


And lastly a photo of my little kitchen helper. The Lord made children cute for a reason.


Other points of interest from this month...
My birthday...I turned *cough, cough* it's hard to verbalize...41 years old.
Our wedding anniversary. We've made it 14 years!
Three Thanksgiving meals with family in three different cities.
Black Friday shopping with my mom, Kate and CJ. Shopping actually happened on Thursday but it still counts.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The dark day of June 27th...

-
 June 12, 2023 We typically don't share a lot of updates about Kate's health, primarily because she wants to remain "a normal teenager." However, we still get asked how Kate is doing and I started thinking maybe it's okay to share updates now and again. Most people care about her and our family, some others could maybe be labeled as "tragedy junkies," but I'm going to operate under the assumption that most people have the best of intentions.  Today is June 12th and we are quickly approaching the dreaded dark day of June 27th. Have you watched, "Gilmore Girls?" It's a witty, comforting television show from the early 2000's. In it one of the main characters has what is dubbed, "a dark day." This is a day the character dreads each year and in response he goes into hiding from the world with no communication. Well for Kate, and the rest of us to some degree, the dark day of the year is June 27th and that date is closing in on
Read more

The other side of the dark day...

-
 Kate's dark day of Jun 27th came and went like any other day. Kate swam 100 fly in the Independence meet and finished 1st (she was the only swimmer in her age group to sign up, but who cares about details) and then she and Matt hopped in the car to drive up to Rochester for next-day appointments. The worst part of Kate's dark day was probably Matt trying out the Grimace meal at McDonald's. It was death by milkshake and yet he drank the whole thing. Can't let food go to waste, or something.  We braved June 27th with dread and came out on the other side. We enter year three into the cancer life. Two years of appointments, scans, blood draws, IVs, endless chemotherapies, daily medications. It is difficult to remember life before all of this, when Kate was able to get up at 6 a.m. to swim, play basketball, ride her bike, go to school and chase her sisters. We've all adapted even though no one wants to. Hand to God I keep hoping to have a tantrum and wake up from whatev
Read more

October things...

-
Image
It has not been the easiest October on record. Kate had a couple of hospital visits to Rochester but she is somewhat better at the moment. She continues with chemotherapy and has not been back to school for quite some time but she is doing her best to set aside time for online school work between naps, loving on cats, and hanging out with her family. I was able to get the girls to visit their great grandma in western Iowa a few weeks back. Here's Claudia shortly after arriving at great grandma's house. She is very into jewelry and lots of it. Grandma had several questions for her about the number of bracelets and thankfully Claudia loves talking about them. Many she has made, some were gifted to her...it's a lovely hodgepodge of middle school girl goodies. Clearly the girls and I were blessed with height genes from relatives not named great grandma. We spent time relaxing, taking four wheeler rides, eating candy and we also received a visit from my aunt and uncle. Aunt Deb
Read more