Wordless Wednesday - Learning to Floss

Cooking With Christopher 101:

A Step by Step Guide to Quick and Tasty

Christmas Cookies

Step 1 : Open pre-made cookie dough package. Pull hard, they're tough!

Step 2: Spread dough pieces over cookie sheet. It is not necessary to spread them evenly.

Step 3: Taste dough to assure freshness.

Step 4: When satisfied with the position of the dough. Place cookies in the oven for 12 minutes.

Step 5: Take a nap while waiting.

Step 6: Prepare sprinkles.

Step 7: Add sprinkles to cookies.

Step 8: Add a few more sprinkles. :o)

Step 9: Taste sprinkles to assure freshness.

Step 10: Taste cookies to assure proper sprinkling.

Step 11: Taste a few more just to make sure. Enjoy!!

A Thanksgiving to Remember

Warning.... this post is a little on the long side, sorry for the rambling! :o)

2010 has been full of memorable occasions, and Thanksgiving (week) was no exception. We were lucky enough to have most of our immediate family together, and the day started out wonderful! Amazing aromas filled the house from the moment I awoke. Phil was up super early (as usual) and had the turkey and stuffing cooking away. He has mastered cooking the perfect Turkey! We all worked together making our favorite dishes, and Christopher even "helped" to set the table and disperse the napkins.

Our family started to arrive about 1:30pm and the dogs were super excited to see them all! Since it had been raining all morning, I put the dogs in their kennels to keep them from getting their muddy feet on our guests. Once everyone had arrived and were settled in with yummy hors d'oeuvres, we let the dogs back out to mingle. Not 10 min later - Rosie, our 8 year old black lab, suddenly vomited right in the middle of the munching guests! Nice. As we are no strangers to animal messes, Phil and I quickly cleaned it up and went about our business. Here is a picture of Christopher hamming it up for the family with Rosie moments before she got ill.

A very sort time later....it happened again. This time, our usually hyper, bubbly, playful girl started to look a little green (and believe me, if a dog could look green, she was). Poor girl. It's a good thing most of our family is in medical related fields; they weren't as bothered as they could have been! She started to look very uncomfortable and couldn't even lie down without groaning, so we called our Vet's emergency number and waited for a response. By then, the turkey was done and looking great, so while we kept a watchful eye on Rosie for any change, we proceeded with dinner as planned.

Christopher "helped" dad cut the turkey.

Does he look ready to dig in or what?

We sat down to an amazing meal with the best family a girl could ever ask for, and the most precious little boy ever created on Earth (I'm not biased or anything)! Despite my runny Jello, everything was just perfect. I was relishing the moment.

But something was wrong, and it was about to end our perfect afternoon. Rosie suddenly started to have difficulty breathing. She was in distress and labored for each breath. At that point I knew we couldn't wait for our vet to call back -we had to run! The closest 24 hr emergency vet to us is an hour away, so Phil scooped up our girl, who let out a shriek of pain when lifted, and my mom and I left the family table and sped in the rain to the emergency hospital. I have made this trip 3 other times (twice with horses and once with an alpaca). Once we prevailed, the other two times we were not so lucky. I silently cried they whole way there.

After vowing to sell an arm and a leg to pay the deposit at the veterinary hospital, they rushed her in for evaluation with a chest/abdominal x-ray and blood values etc. Surprisingly, they couldn't find a problem with any of her values or on the films, and decided she must have an easily treated "acute pancreatitis" from something really fatty she ate (though she was never out of our sight all day and nothing was missing that we were aware of). They would keep her overnight on pain meds and fluid, so we traveled home without her, but feeling greatly relieved.

When we returned home I was informed that our refrigerator is no longer functioning - nothing was cold! (Remember my runny Jello?) So now we had yet another vet bill AND a new fridge to squeeze into this months budget!! I was really bummed, but I am so thankful that no one ended up with food poisoning!! Yikes!

Phil traveled Friday to pick our supposedly "better" dog, but when she got home she was clearly no better. She couldn't walk strait and fell flat on her face getting out of the car. She wouldn't get up to go potty and barely wagged the tip of her tail when she saw us. We hoped she was just feeling punky or was a little drugged up from the pain meds, but it definitely made us nervous. Saturday there was no denying that she was still very ill. Our regular Vet was open and had us bring her right in. They re-ran all her blood values and did an abdominal ultrasound. We were shocked to learn that her liver was barely functioning!!! No one could tell us why or how, but they set straight to work with lots of IV meds. The vet even took her home one night to keep a close watch on her she was so sick! Fast forward a couple days and we sat on the phone with our Vet answering questions late into the evening. She decided that shy of a miracle there was not much more that could be done for her and the only option we had at this point was to take her to MSU for exploratory surgery on her liver to see if there was any chance the cause was something treatable. We couldn't imagine putting her through surgery in her deteriorating state "just to see" and decided that the best thing to do would be to bring her home and spend some quality time with her. Phil would pick her up the next day after work. We cried most of the evening.

The next day, while at work, I was informed that Phil was on the phone, since he rarely calls me at work, I immediately panicked and the first thing I blurted out was "did she die"? I prepared my self for the worst......but Phil let me in on the most wonderful news! When the Vet checked on Rosie that morning, she had suddenly and quite miraculously changed over night! Rosie greeted the vet excited and bright eyed and wagging her tail! They re-ran her blood values and everything was suddenly close to normal!! What?!!! Did we get the miracle we wished for? We were ready to bring her home to say good bye and suddenly everything is normal? All the vets that monitored her together can not figure out what caused it or why, but whatever it was, we are thankful it did! Today, Rosie is sitting happily at home with us, functioning liver and all! Thanksgiving this year was one for the books, and despite the craziness of the week, I can truly say that we have much to be thankful for! We have an amazing family and a beautiful son! We have a super cool new fridge on the way! We have a houseful of fabulous loving pets! We have an amazing Veterinarian and staff who care about our animals as much as their own! We're so thankful to have Rosie home! Wouldn't you do anything for this little face!!!

Autumn Adventures...

Well, the remainder of October held up the same crazy pace it started with. We rounded out the last weekend with a true whirlwind trip to Washington DC. This was Christopher's first airplane ride since coming home from Korea, and this time he got to have his very own big boy seat! I'll admit he looked a little freaked out at first, but after we were aloft, he excitedly entertained himself with the buttons on the armrests and the air vents and lights above him. Good thing it was only a short plane ride!

In DC Christopher participated in a rally with tens of thousands of people - all of which I am pretty sure he thought were there to clap and cheer for him! He was loving the attention of the excited and joyous crowd, and had lots of pictures taken of him cheering and clapping along.

We rounded out the day with a trip to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, where Christopher discovered the amazing world of Dinosaurs. I think we have a budding scientist in our midst!

The next day we went home to share Christopher's first American Halloween with the grandparents. It was a crazy 6 hours (round trip) in the car after the plane trip the day before, but worth it to see how happy they were to share it with him. He was not a big fan of the pumpkin carving experience. I couldn't even get him to put his hand in it once...he just kept pulling his hands back with a look like "Are you nuts? That looks disgusting!" Oh well, we still enjoyed it! :o)

It was a very cold and windy evening, so we bundled up our little spider tight and set out with Buster (sporting his little devil horns) to hit the neighborhood. I decided to put his winter coat on under his costume so you could see how cute it was, but I think he ended up looking more like a full tick than a little spider! :o) He was a little confused about trick-or-treating at first, but after we showed him how to put the candy in his little bucket he thought it was pretty fun and kept putting his hand out, palm up, for "more". My parent's neighbors obliged several times with a laugh before I had to step in and stop the greedy little bugger! ;o) We tried to visit the homes of old friends who still live on the street, and ended up only going to 5 houses, which was plenty for him. It was pretty neat that I ran into a few childhood friends who had the same idea to bring their own children back to the old neighborhood. What a great testament to how special the neighborhood was (is) that I grew up in. It is the kind of thing that makes me a little sad that Christopher will grow up without lots of neighborhood children to play with.

November started out with lots of winter preparations on the farm that Christopher was happy to help with. I think Sunny thought he was some sort of little bear...she was most curious.

He is just so cute all bundled up in his baby Carhartts.
We recently made a trip to the Children's Museum for a special event just for adopted children and their families. It was such an amazing night full of beautifully blended families! As an added bonus, we got to see some great friends we have made through the blog! We all had a ball! There was so much to do there - Christopher was especially fond of shopping in the little market and I think he would have taken ALL the fruits and veggies if they would have fit in his little cart! :o)

As we come nearer to the holiday season, I am really looking forward to sharing so many special moments with our little man. We have already started baking together, and Christopher is a master at the cookie dough placement (lol). This morning he helped me mash sweet potatoes and stir the jello (he also "helped" by dumping an entire bag of brown sugar on the floor for the dogs - ha)!

Ta da! Just right! :o)

I can't even begin to describe how much happiness and pride I feel watching MY son, my very own child, enjoying this season as much as I do! I think I am more excited about Christmas morning this year than he is, just to see his little face! Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we truly have so much to be thankful for!

Have a great one everybody!

Crazy October....

It's been a crazy and busy month! Christopher is fast entering the "terrible twos" and keeps me running all day! He is in the process of transitioning to one nap a day which leaves me even less time to breathe, and his new favorite "game" is to up end every bucket or bin, and pull out every dish, pan, toy, or book he can reach as he runs by. I spend most of his nap time putting the house back together. Don't get me wrong though, I wouldn't change it for the world!

He is such a cool little person!

This is a pretty typical day at our house now!

This month started out with the tail end of our vacation to Lexington, Kentucky to see the FEI World Equestrian Games. It was this event that I purchased tickets for the very morning we received our referral last year! It was such a strange feeling to be there with our son when we bought the tickets not expecting to even have been matched by now. It seems crazy that we have had him home for over 10 months! So surreal! Christopher was such a great little traveler; we are so lucky that he likes to ride in the car!

The next weeks included trips to the petting zoo and the pumpkin patch -where we took this picture - my new favorite!

I can't wait for Christopher to carve his first pumpkin (an activity we traditionally save for Halloween day).

Phil and I had a date night out to see the Lord of the Rings live with the GR Symphony and left Christopher with a teenage babysitter for the first time. It was great that it went so well, but I felt pretty old when I was explaining to the babysitter that she had to be careful where she put things on the counter because Christopher has "go-go-gadget arms" and she looked at me like I was nuts...obviously that reference is a little before her time lol!

We took a trip to Wisconsin via the ferry across lake MI to see some dear friends and their children. I am not a huge fan of boats in general as I suffer from pretty severe motion sickness, but with the help of a Thomas the Train DVD (yup, I have become one of those mothers) I was able to stay seated with my head down and made it without vomiting - Yeah! ;o) We went to the children's museum in the morning and spent the evening at Boo at the Zoo in Milwaukee! It was so much fun, and Christopher made the cutest little lion ever!

Can't you almost hear the roar? (ok ok, I know he was yawning, just humor me! )

Yesterday Christopher finally had his hernia surgery (which was previously postponed due to illness). He was such a little trooper and it turned out to be quite large, so I'm glad we were able to have it fixed. Once the surgery was over we were holding him as he was sleeping off the anesthesia and they announced over the loud speaker there was a tornado warning! Yikes! All the nurses hurried to move the kids and their monitors and cribs into the halls and closed all the doors to protect from flying glass just in case. The hospital staff was so great. They kept the little ones busy with games and toys and bubbles - what an amazing person you would have to be to work with sick kids all day! The crazy part was that a total of 5 (yes FIVE) times they came on over the speaker and announced the warning was now over and was back to a watch, only to come back on a short time later to say it was a warning again! The first two times the nurses had already moved most of the kids back to their rooms and they all groaned in disbelief that they had to do it all over again. We were lucky enough to still be waiting to move when the second warning came, so we just stayed in the hall. They obviously couldn't discharge him during a tornado warning, and since they kept changing the status, they just had us hang out most of the day (in the hallway with all the others). I can't complain though...they really took good care of him! I finally have a chance to update the blog since he is still exhausted from the anesthesia.

This is how Christopher passed the time waiting for the surgery to start...good 'ol cozy coupe saves the day!

Have you ever seen such a cute little hospital gown?

If that wasn't enough excitement for one month, we will finish the last weekend of October with an overnight whirlwind trip to Washington then a little trick-or-treating! We can only hope that November will be a bit more relaxing.....but I won't hold my breath! :o)

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