The Crafts

Let's talk brackets. I love a good competition. I love to win. But when I don't win I can typically move on quite quickly from a loss (unless we are specifically talking about Big Six Swim Offs, but I digress.) We have a family group on ESPN for the men's NCAA basketball tournament and it's "high stakes" with no entry fee, a chocolate rabbit for the winner and most importantly bragging rights. While I've never won, nor have I ever been close to winning, I thought I'd share my rationale for my picks through the first round of play. You should not follow this advice but if you so choose to, don't blame me when you too lose out to a cat with it's own bracket. East Region UConn 1 v Stetson 16: This is a silly way to start because it's a 16 v a 1 seed and clearly we know the very likely outcome of this game. But if I could, I'd choose Stetson cologne over a Huskie dog because Huskies kind of scare me a little. Regardless I am going with the

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

I am incredibly behind on a birthday post for our best ever second daughter. Claudia turned FOURTEEN on August 30th. She is branching out from the Claudia of younger years. She has discovered rock music (hence the German rock band t-shirt below) and she has updated her style to include a little more edge. Although she is still our bubbly, bouncy, loveable, curly-haired CJ but with a twist.  14 reasons Claudia rocks on her 14th birthday... 1. She is incredibly confident and loves herself. 2. Claudia is a whiz at jewelry making. 3. She is super creative and is always designing, crafting or engineering. 4. If there's something she wants, Claudia will often try to make it herself rather than buy i.e. candles, lip balm, various beauty products, hair wraps, and the list goes on... 5. She loves competitive swimming like her mom! 6. Claudia is an excellent consumer of fruits. Fruit is her go-to snack on most occasions. It's always a positive when you don't have to beg your kids to

We have had more than our fair share of ups and downs over here. A week ago Kate went to homecoming with a date and had a wonderful time. I loved her sparkly, emerald green dress and while the grandmothers pointed out just how terribly short the dress was (and they're not wrong) every single girl wears a shorty, short dress. I saw a funny meme the other day that said something to the affect of; I wonder if women in the 40s knew they're bathing suits would become this generations homecoming dress. Google it and you will understand. My favorite photo of the night. Kate looks so happy here. Kate and her date went to dinner with friends at Texas Roadhouse and, with time to spare before the dance, they played video games at Chuck E Cheese. Kate said they had a lot of laughs and that alone makes my heart so happy. A couple of days after homecoming Kate and I drove up to Rochester for pre-scheduled MRIs on her brain and spine. Images looked stable and we came home happy and surprised,

Here we are in mid-September already. We've had our ups and downs so far this month. I will share a couple of things that don't necessarily have photos to match. Kate hasn't had the greatest start to the school year. It began with a headache that wouldn't dissipate regardless of regular dosing of pain meds. She ended up going for an early brain MRI and God gave us stable results. Doctors are still unclear on the source of the headache but she was prescribed some strong pain meds and over the course of a week the headache finally went away. Since then she's been battling nausea and appetite loss. She's down several pounds in a short amount of time and we hope to find a way to improve her appetite soon. Claudia started 8th grade volleyball and while it's not her favorite sport, we are happy she's playing and having fun with her friends. She's also been doing well in school and has had a fun, generally positive, attitude to start the school year. She al

Happy first day of school! Two out of four of our girls were chomping at the bit to go to school this year. I almost typed "this fall" but since my weather app says today will be 103 degrees, I went with "year" instead.  To bring a little cheer to the morning we made rainbow pancakes for breakfast. I forgot to take a photo of our efforts this morning so I'm using this month old picture of Natalie. She is the most excited for rainbow pancakes, followed by Maddie. Claudia has to eat too early in order to catch the bus so she missed out, and Kate goes later in the morning. And now you know our full breakfast routine. Ha! Isn't she just so sweet! This photo of Claudia looks blurry or hazy but it's not the quality of the camera, rather the extreme humidity in the air that caused my camera lens to fog up immediately after going outside. Claudia wasn't super excited for me to take a first day of school photo but she played a good sport and we got it done be