Sick-os

Please note: After I read this post I realized how long and boring it really was. Sorry. I apparently needed to vent about cough syrup.


So the winter sicknesses have hit the Scott house. You may consider disinfecting your keyboard and mouse when you are done reading this. You can never be too safe.

Last week Emilyn was diagnosed with pink eye. Great. Every day I have to sit on her to pin her arms down while I pry open her eyes with one hand and the other hand has to hold her head still while I put her medicine in with the other hand.

Did ya' catch that last one? :) Three hands? I wish! If evolution was true new mom's would leave the hospital with real eyes in the backs of their heads and an extra arm with an extension.

Anywho needless to say we have been a little fanatical about hand washing around here. If Ahston couldn't talk yet I'm sure his first words would be "get your hands away from your face!".

Now both the kids have colds. Ashton's nose was running like a faucet all day the past two days. Ick. It is kind of funny though. He doesn't say, "I have a runny nose" like most normal kids. It always comes out "I have a bloody nose". If you don't come running with the tissue he starts repeatedly yelling it louder and louder. An almost 2-year-old screaming, "I HAVE A BLOODY NOSE!!!" as if he is dying is quite comical.

Last night Emilyn was up coughing quite a bit. It wasn't the kind of cough that woke her up. But it woke me up. Every. Time. She. Coughed. Gosh I just love that ultra sensitive mom sense. It seems especially sharp at night. That kind of thing NEVER wakes Kyle up. Or at least that's what he says. Needless to say I was up and down the stairs quite a bit trying as many things I could think of to ease the cough. Humidifier. Propped up pillows. Drinks of water. (Which is consequently very hard to make a sleeping 3-year-old drink water). The only thing that came of it was the poor kid rolled off the pillow and got her head stuck under the little rail on the side of her bed. Stellar mom award right there people. Finally I resorted to medicine. I gave her some homeopathic cough syrup and went back to bed. I kept waiting for it to kick in. Didn't happen. Didn't happen. Didn't happen. Almost 2 hours later I busted out the big guns. Robitussin. I laid in bed thinking, "If she coughs one more time, I'm going up there again. And there is was. One more. That's IT! I filled the medicine syringe and headed up in a huff.

Now I need to take you down a little side road for a second. Although my kids are very much their own individuals there are several things about them that are creepily similar. Their coughs being one of them. If I'm not in the room with them I have a difficult time distinguishing their coughs.

I needed to make sure it really WAS Emilyn and not Ashton coughing. After all I didn't want to medicate one of my kids if it wasn't needed. That would be disastrous. I'm sure it would create an early dependence on medication later leading to substance abuse at some point. Gosh that mom sense really sounds logical late at night. Sheesh. I should have just giving both of them some medicine and called it good several hours earlier. But I didn't. I stood in their room with the glow of the nightlight on the wall, waiting. Standing between Ashton's crib and Emilyn's toddler bed, holding the syringe loaded with the all-powerful Robitussin, ready to pounce. I waited for several minutes. And several more. Not a single peep out of either one of them. Finally I gave up. I took the medicine back downstairs and didn't hear a sound for the rest of the night. (By then it was closer to morning though.) Really?! Seriously? Was it only the threat of real medicine that made her stop coughing? Good grief.

I'm tired. But I have a plan for tonight. If someone starts coughing, I'm chugging the entire bottle of Robitussin myself and hope it kicks in before the guilt.

Good night!

P.S. I'll leave you with a few pictures. Who doesn't love pictures? Now maybe you will understand why I hiked up those stairs a million times last night. Anything for these faces. Holy moley I love them :)

The Chair

I know you all (All 3 of you faithful followers. You are the best! I love you. When this blog hits it big time I will forever acknowledge you as being my first.) Sorry for the side track.

Anyhow, like I was saying. I know you have all been waiting on pins and needles for the unveiling of "The Chair". It's a sentimental one so get the kleenex ready kids.

When my grandma decided to move out of her house, the only house I have known her to live in, the house that holds so many childhood memories..sniff sniff. She started cleaning out. As she decided what to give away she would put things in her basement. We would occasionally go over to shop in "Grandma's Bargain Basement". When I saw "The Chair" sitting down there looking lonely in the corner I knew I needed to take it home. I remember playing with this chair when I was a kid. There was no way I was letting some stranger buy it at Grandma's yard sale and take it to their strange house and let their strange kid play with it. I would rescue it and let MY strange kids play with it! But not before giving it a little nip-tuck.

Now, if any of you know me, you know I am not the best at finishing projects. Really good at starting...I won't tell you when I started it. The important thing is that I finished it before my kids were too big to use it! Victory! So once more here are the "befores". Lovely floral with touches of harvest gold....




Here is the "before" of where Emilyn used to read her books.



We gave her the chair for her birthday. Here she is reading her books before bed. Happy as a clam in her new chair.


The After

Much better!

Grandma and Emilyn


A small tribute to Grandma's house.

Better After

So my friend Stephanie did me the not-so-kind favor of telling me about this blog (Better After) quite awhile ago. I know she was well-intentioned, 'cause that's the kind of gal she is, but knowledge of this blog has been quite detrimental to me. I am obsessed. Really I am. If you don't take the time to go to the blog, it basically highlights people's home projects by sharing a before and after picture and a few details of the project. There is usually a link to the do-it-yourselfer's (if that wasn't a word before, it is now!) blog as well. I never follow the link, so I am left with two pictures. It always looks SO easy, but that's mainly because I don't pay attention to all the in-between steps. I leave the blog wanting to scour flea markets for inexpensive things I can redo. It is very inspirational. This summer I found a few things needing a little sprucing up. Here is my own little version of Better After. It's a lamp I got for $2 at a garage sale. It came with a "nice" pale pink shade. The kind with all the folds. The ones I hated dusting as a kid, because no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn't get the dirt out of those darn folds! I told the guy at the garage sale I didn't need the shade and left it there.



So this is what the poor girl started out looking like. Yikes! It just took a little sanding and a few coats of paint to add a few more years onto her life. For some reason I already had the shade laying around the house and the paint was leftover from when I had the red wall. So this project was SUPER cheap! Yeah!
Here is the after. Much better!



Stayed tuned to see what I do with this beaut of a chair. It came from my Grandma's basement when she moved. I used to play with it as a kid. Sentimental make-overs. Double whammy!

Crap I Find

So I don't know if this is a boy thing or what, but Emilyn has never been one to abscond things and hide them in weird places. Ashton on the other hand loves finding the most random crap and putting it in an even more random place for me to find. Here are a few of his treasures I have discovered.



Why yes superman, I do need that casserole dish. Thank you very much.





I left this one for Kyle to find.






Me while giving the kids a bath: "Kyle will you grab the body wash?"
Kyle: "Sure, where is it?"
Me: "In the washing machine of course.".

True story.

Mostly.





Pop some popcorn and grab a Dr. Pepper to drink while watching Spirit. I can somewhat understand his reasoning behind putting this there. Wait a minute, a one-year-old reasoning? Wow, I AM that frazzled tired mom of toddlers!





Don't make fun of me for owning tapes. They are sentimental sermons from Charlie McCall from my time spent at The Hill many moons ago. (Yes, I just said many moons) Kyle insists I need to do some purging. I chose to keep them because I WILL listen to these sermons again. Gosh darn it! As soon as I can find the tape player.
I think I own a tape player.
Maybe.

Hmmm, maybe I do need to purge a little.




The culprit himself. Playing in the tub toy box. I love that little stinker. And I'm thankful he hasn't started hiding food for me to find.

I'm Back!

So I have a confession, the "formatting issues" mentioned in the previous post really were OCD issues. As I am out and about blog-stalking I have seen so many people's REALLY cute blogs. Really how hard could it be? Apparently harder than I can handle. I struggle with having something plain and un-original. The perfectionist in me is throwing a royal tantrum right now. Maybe I'm just not meant to have a cute blog. Maybe people will come here because they enjoy the content of what I write.....ha! Oh well, you're here now, right?

I imagined my homecoming to the blogging world to be somewhat grand. I imagined I would post something amazingly witty as well as insightful and humorous all at the same time. Balloons and party blowers were even considered. The longer I waited to start blogging, the bigger my comeback post was idealized. So I figured I better just bite the bullet and do it. Otherwise it may have gotten out of hand and I would have felt compelled to do a tutorial of some sort or started giving stuff away.

A LOT has happened since my last post. Was that over a year ago?! Good grief! I could expound on all of it but I don't have the time right now, plus I would feel guilty making you read through it all. Maybe some day...in small doses. For now I will condense it into a list:

1) A lot of holidays came and went. We celebrated most of them in some way.
2) We probably took a few little trips to the west side of the state.
3) We added a member to our family! Not a dog you goons, a baby. Aston Lewis to be exact.
4) We won the lottery and bought a condo in Hawaii!

Okay, so only the first 3 are true. I almost had some of you didn't I? Who am I kidding? I know that most of you who read this keep in touch on a somewhat regular basis and you know better. A girl can try can't she?

There it is folks, in an effort to keep my sanity you may be seeing me around here more frequently. But don't get your hopes up.

I'll leave you with this picture of my adorable kids.

Under construction...

All right, I have officially completely messed up the format of my blog...and don't know how to fix it. It was my feeble attempt to make my blog cute like all my friends. I think this is God's way of telling me not to covet other people's things (and maybe to make better use of my time).

I get it. Now, how to get this thing fixed and updated... until that happens consider this page under construction. Please excuse whatever weirdness is going on.

The things we do for our children. Today I drank that completely gross glucose drink for my diabetes testing. If you haven't had the pleasure of doing this, it involves a nasty bottle of what reminds me of the mysterious McDonalds orange drink only doctored up with more sugar and a possible hint of something alcoholic. You have to drink the entire thing in less than 5 minutes and have to do it exactly a half hour before your appointment. Meaning whatever time that may be, you have to drop what you are doing and chug! (Sorry I missed the meeting Linds- now you know why) Bottoms up baby! I didn't throw up- thank goodness. It was a likely possibility considering what I had just consumed. My arm hurts though, apparently my veins were not having one of their better days. The tech had to poke around a bit to get the blood. Youch! I will find out hopefully soon if I passed or if I need to go back for the 3-hour test.

Everything else at the appointment went well. Baby Scottie (yes, we are calling him Scottie Scott) is doing well and amazingly not measuring big like Emilyn was. Sure feels like it though. Apparently I have only gained 7 pounds this pregnancy. I smiled at the Doctor when she told me that but thought in my head, "that's nice of you to say, but I'm pretty sure your scale is messed up honey. I don't pay your to flatter me. Besides that doesn't count the 25 or so pounds I never lost from Emilyn!" Anyhow, the count down is on with only 10 weeks to go! Oh man, I sure have a lot to do. Thinking about it makes me tired. I better get to bed. Hopefully my arm won't be so sore tomorrow.

On the fourth (and final) day of Christmas...

Yes, Christmas lasted four days in our house. Whew! On day 4 we went to Mom and Randy's for immediate family Christmas. It is always the best being with my brothers and sister and their fabulous families!


Mom and Randy


Playing with Uncle Kevin. Consequently Emi's spinning ball top toy ended up being a big hit, even with the over 20 crowd :) Thanks Uncle Jeff!


Amelia reading "Yummy Yucky". Gus and Emilyn sat and listened so well! (Not to mention Grammie)

On the third day of Christmas

my true love did not give to me three french hens, thank goodness. Although it does remind me of that funny Office episode...

Christmas day! Emilyn thankfully slept in a little since we were at Kyle's parents so late. I made a yummy caramel roll, bacon, egg, and juice breakfast. Making breakfast was pure delight. The whole time I kept thinking, "I don't have to hand wash all these dishes!" We spent a leisurely morning in our jammies opening gifts and taking it easy.



We later headed to cousin Nick and Megan's for the big Skaufel get together complete with aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and any other relative we could muster up. Emilyn had loads of fun playing with the kids and running around being generally crazy.


Fishing with Gus


Opening presents (yet again)



Grandma in Lyla's chair, man they sure don't make chairs the same as they used to.



An attempt at Grandma with the great-grandkids.


Having fun tickling everyone's feet.


Papa Randy serenading Anna.

On The Second Day of Christmas

So I spent the morning of Christmas Eve putting my kitchen back together. Kevin, Jen, and Jeff came later and we went to lunch to enjoy the traditional greasy Zips burger. We spent Christmas Eve with Kyle's family. Emilyn didn't last long in the Christmas Eve service unfortunately. She isn't the quiet type who likes to sit still (imagine that!). After dinner we opened presents. I wasn't sure how Emilyn would do, but she loved it! She was very methodical about ripping off tiny bits of paper and handing them to whoever was closest to her until the present was unwrapped. Then all she wanted to do was play with the pile of paper she had created.


Opening presents with Grandma.




The fam on Christmas Eve. Hard to imagine that next year both our arms will be full!

On the first day of Christmas

Christmas started on the 23rd for us. Kyle kicked Emilyn and I out of the house for what was supposed to be the day. He had a secret project to work on and needed us out of the way. I took the opportunity to visit Grandma and had her teach me the fine art of making traditional Norwegian Christmas krumkaka. It was amazing to watch her work. As I watched, she told me how her mother-in-law gave her the recipe, iron, and roller over 30 years ago and tutored the girls in how to make the traditional dessert. She has made them every year since then. After a few demonstrations, Grandma gave me a turn at the skillet. Mine definitely didn't turn out as uniform and pretty as hers, but maybe that will come with 30 years of practice.






Later Emi and I went to Mom's to wait out the rest of the day speculating what Kyle could be working on at home. As the hours crept by I became more and more impatient. He finally called around 7:00 and said I could come home at 11:00. I decided to just stay the night at Mom's rather than drive back to town that late. Kyle said that would be better because there were still some pretty strong fumes in the house. Jeff, Kevin, and Jen got in from Portland and Puyallup later that night. It was fun to be there when they got in. We stayed up way too late making bets on Kyle's project and woke up the next morning to a great breakfast. I haven't stayed the night at Mom's in a long time, I felt like I was 12 all over again...only in a good way.

Emilyn and I finally packed up and headed home later that morning. We were welcomed by a dishwasher and new kitchen counters! I just about cried...in a good way. I know it sounds lame, but after living without a dishwasher for as long as I have you come to appreciate the things most people take for granted. Kyle had worked long into the night making sure the dishwasher was installed correctly and all hooked up by the time I got home. What a guy!

New Things

I have officially been on summer "vacation" for 11 days now and I am a firm believer that time goes faster when not at school. I am loving being able to stay home and spend more time with my Emmers. I did my yearly dismantling of the classroom and was able to get some closure on the school year. Yeah!

Here is Emilyn "helping" take things down.


Emilyn is now very much into crawling around, pulling herself up onto things and cruising around. Which is incredibly liberating for her, but equally nerve wracking for me. She has taken a few little spills and gotten some little bumps and bruises to show for it. I didn't realize how un-baby proof my house is! (and how dirty my floors are - yikes, we now do baths more frequently)

She has figured out that if she stands on her tiptoes and stretches she can just barely reach the top of my desk to discover all kinds of fun things.



There are all kinds of new things growing in my garden. I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of some fresh peas, cucumbers, and squash later this summer. Here's to hoping I can keep things alive that long! Here is the master gardener at work, little miss green thumb.


For my birthday, Kyle got me a new camera. Yeah! I took a bunch of pictures, but when I put them on the computer quite a few of them had weird lines through them. Not so yeah. Back to Costco we go. Grrr.



With the hot weather, we couldn't resist getting Emi her own little pool. Even though the water was pretty cold, she LOVED it! She cried when I took her out.


Emilyn loves her cousins (okay so that's not so new, but I couldn't resist putting this one in).


And one last one...

My new favorite picture


Loving to stand up



Sleepy time with Teddy


Emilyn's new favorite thing is to pull herself up and stand in her crib.

Memorial Day

Brace yourselves for what I am about to say...I know this may create quite the stir and people will think I am crazy but I just have to get it out there. I don't really care for Memorial Day. There, I said it. Finally it's off my chest. I love what Memorial Day stands for. I think there should be more days to honor the men and women who have served our country and I definitely appreciate the freedoms afforded because of their sacrifices. But it bothers me that so many people see it as just a day off. A day to BBQ or a weekend to go camping. To those of you I know who have served or are currently serving, I extend my deepest gratitude. To Scott, Jeremy, Phil, Nick, Kyle's family members, my uncles, my grandpas, my dad. I thank you.

For me Memorial Day is an emotional day. As a kid we had a tradition of going to the cemetery to put flowers on my Grandpa Engle's grave. As we admired all the U.S. flags lining the roads in the cemetery we would stand there as a family and my dad would pray. Now I am the one standing over my dad's grave praying.

Even though it's been almost 10 years I still have an incredibly difficult time seeing his name written on that headstone. It's just so cold, so permanent. I know my dad and grandpas are in a better place because of what they believed, but it doesn't make me miss them less.

When I have managed to muster up the courage to go to the cemetery I end up standing there sobbing and blubbering like a baby. My eyes are red and puffy for days afterward and I get what I call a crying headache. I hate it. Last year the count of graves to visit went up again as we added Grandpa Skaufel...which made it even harder.

I didn't go this year, to the graveyard. I feel terribly guilty for not going. I know people in our family keep tabs on who has been there by the kinds of flowers or vases that are left. They are going to know I didn't go. Maybe they will understand.

Kristen sent me an email this week with pictures of various military moments. The one that got me was a picture of a boy being presented with a flag by a military gentleman wearing white gloves and a hat. the boy looks about 9 or 10 at the most, sharply dressed in a suit and tie, he is stoically standing there accepting the flag, but you can tell by the look on his face he is struggling to accept the fact his dad is gone. The extent to what people go through for our country amazes me. To the families of all our military personnel, I thank you.

Bloomsday

Contrary to what you may think from the title of this post, we did not do Bloomsday. I used to do it every year with cousin Stephanie and Grandma. We wore fanny packs filled with candy as "fuel" that gives you an idea of how long ago it was. Then it got popular and everyone started doing it. So I quit. Hey, don't give me a hard time and ask "why didn't you do it?" I put my time in people, now I get to be the one to laugh at the crazies the day after who complain about being sore. All for a shirt that you wear once before it becomes a good candidate for new pajamas.

We did however go to Uncle Neal and Aunt Jo's for the annual Bloomsday BBQ. It was fun seeing the fam. Grandma's brood of great-grandkids is growing rapidly. The number is up to 7 now! Here she is with all of them.

Reduce Reuse Recycle!

I just had to put this one up. She fits so nicely in the recycle bin and loved having Kyle pull her around in circles on the kitchen floor.

Emilyn Discovers Grass

So Emilyn and I played outside awhile back when it was super nice and warm. Until then she hadn't experienced grass. Keep in mind that she is very oral and puts everything in her mouth and what won't fit in her mouth she licks. You will just have to look at the picture to see what she thought of her first encounter with grass.

"Hi Mom! I love it outside!"


"Ooh what's all this green stuff? I am so excited, something new to discover!"


"I better check it out."


"It would probably be a good idea to taste it."


"This stuff isn't too bad."


"Actually on second thought..."


"What was I thinking?! What kind of terrible crap is this? It better do something amazing for my figure."