I'll take all the help I can get~

So last night we were all hanging out in the living room before dinner and all of a sudden I got this bug to go to the sunroom and make me a silver ring. I made a few for myself in metals classes but they're wider and not what I want right now...I just want something thin and simple for summer. Maybe even stacking rings-we'll see...

Gabe follows me in and shimmies up on the barstool I've got at my workbench. He starts asking me what's that? and why? etc...you get the picture-he's 2. So I made sure he was way at the other end of the bench while I torch fused the silver together. He was facinated of coarse by the fire but stayed put-still asking questions. So I gave him a mini lesson on making rings...I was surprised at how intently he listened and never acted bored to run off for toys.

Today we retrieved the ring out of the water where it was set to cool last night and he got to hammer it. He was so happy to get to "bang bang bang" let me tell you! He actually did a VERY good job of getting the hammer to hit the ring and not the ring mandrel! Now that they're napping I'll tweak it a little more. Hope it fits...I told him it could be his Mother's Day gift to me since he helped work on it. :)

Random babble

Today I'm kicked back on the front porch-happy that we chose to get the deep seater furniture so I can sit sideways and be cozy. Thanking Travis in my head for the forethought of the extra outlet he installed "in case I ever want to sit outside on the laptop" lol. Never thought I'd see the day...Thanks, Dove chocolate, for showing me I need to sit and chill every now and then :)

So I sit here thinking about how some big ole ferns would look pretty...2 I think. We also still need house numbers for our address, mailbox and entry rug (all left over from last summer's OPAM-lol) Maybe I'll cruise some websites while out here. Although I'm itching to get back to reading my new book...hmmm...

Here is our yearly birdnest in our side Magnolia tree-right outside of the dining room window. Yesterday the eggs hatched and Gabe and I got to watch her feed the babies for the first time. Interesting to talk to a 2 yr old about how they feed the babies as we ate lunch. He looked at me like I was crazy (they're eating worm puke?) lol...Ya-did wonders for my appetite. Sure are cute tho.

It was time

I made it legal. :)

Now no more sitting and thinking about it...no more wishing I was doing more but not...I decided that only I could make it happen. So here I am.

All I've wanted to do for years is participate in art fairs and have a website-I would LOVE that! (even if just a couple here and there...) This is my first step-and it's checked off of my to-do list. Currently I'm sketching out new ideas, pounding out the beads as often as possible and working on a couple of earrings prototypes that I haven't seen out there....I'm honestly not anxious to really do anything this year as far as fairs are concerned with the economy the way it is (too late for most fairs this year anyway) but this gives me plenty of time to do my research and get my ducks in a row.

Ok so don't hate me for this but....look at the name to the left of my DBA-I was glancing through to see if it was run this week and my eyes instantly went to that ladies name! Now i can't get that "Thong Song" out of my head!!!!!

Wish me luck!

Terrible 2's are showing up a bit late...

This rotten little stinker has been running me through the ringer lately. Man-I'm whooped. If you can imagine-this is the look I get all day long-it's meaning either "I'm up to something" or "You need me but I am going to turn and run and hide" or "I didn't hear a word you said".

*Prince Gabe*

The little turkey is so cute about it though that it's hard to really get mad at him. Especially when he's wearing princess crowns upside down.

Cousins, egg hunts and fun

Our day started with baskets overflowing with sidewalk chalk, bubbles, jellybean trails and games. Then we headed to Papa and Grandma's for lunch and the first egg hunt with cousins. Gabe had a blast-but it's a good thing we practiced how to do an egg hunt or he'd stop at the first one and sit in the grass and eat the candy out of it.

After Papa's we ran to cousin Jill's for another egg hunt then to Nana's for dinner.

We took a walk out by the field behind their house to take a few pictures. It was full of dead weeds but was a nice backdrop. Here's Chloe and cousin Olivia.
I decided to play around with some different photo finishes-this was a 1960's edit-kinda fun! :)
Chloe glancing out of the window while going through her eggs...
I love this of Gabe out in the field for some reason.
He loves to find "pig noses" (walnut shells) Yesterday was a no-nap day since we had so much going on (and too much sugar anyway!) so he wasn't cooperating for the picture. You get the idea-lol.

New bracelet design!

It's been awhile...

My friend Cathy came up with a color combo for a set of beads~I got to work and made a boatload of them. It was hard to choose which ones to use ~and I love these colors together!! All cobalt, teal and transparent pink and added a smidge of lime green. The whole time I was torching all I could think of was Hawaii-maybe the fact that she's heading there soon put that in my head...



I'll tell ya-it takes me forever until I'm happy with something. I think I remade this 3 times until I was happy. And happy I am! I love this design! I think it's a keeper-whatcha think?

It's official:

Spring is springing...we'll get a hot day with mosquitos and bees then back to jackets and gloves and snowflakes. Goofy Illinois weather.

Yesterday we ran outside for an impromptu easter egg hunt in the front yard. lol-not many places to hide eggs concidering some landscaping we planted last year is just starting to sprout a few leaves but oh well...

I had to run across the street and get a shot of the magnolia tree in bloom-Chloe's so lucky-how her room is situated she's got the front magnolia tree and the side magnolia tree so out of all 4 windows right now you see nothing but pink fluff. Gorgeous.

Note the finished porch :) I'm so happy to have that to enjoy all summer now!!


You can see by Gabe's feet my hydrangea's are popping up! Yea! Now...how to keep them and all the neighbor kids out of that area....hmmmm...

My goofy egg I just had to make after seeing some similar ones in a store. It's made from window screen. Any idea how hard it is to "sew" w/ wire? Not real fun... A little blood involved. In any case-I started it well ahead of time-then forgot about it-then messed some more-then forgot again. So it was hung only a couple days before easter-oh well. Better than nothing-which is what I've always had since the house was always such a work in progress.

It doesn't take much...

to make me feel my age. Ugh!

So Trav and I were asked again to sub for adult indoor soccer. I was doing just fine til Mr. 7 foot tall decided to take me OUT with a body slam. Sprawed like a big ole loserrrrrr on the astroturf...Astroturf burn down the whole leg? Sexxxxxxxxy -lemme tell ya.

{{I am still feeling it in my bone-ow.}}

I'd take a picture of it but then I'd feel like even more of a loser-lol. Ya ya ya Kim...and you wanted me to take my camera tonite-ha! That would have been the million dollar moment Trav would have snapped you know... :P

Playdate

I love facebook. I can't believe I had it for 2 years and totally forgot about it. It's been so long since Cindi and I have seen each other. The internet can do amzing things. It's found a long lost friend for me.

Sweet little Jonas~


Here's my Gabey swinging~gave me some good toothless grins today...
Jonas again before the squirrel came to eat all his leftover cheerios~

Her other boy Isaac who poses the same each time he saw my camera~couldn't sneak it by him-lol.

It turned out to be a gorgeous sunny day so we grabbed a pizza, strawberries and cheesesticks and hit the park.

:)

Holy cow!

The dr just called again to keep me informed of final test results. He said definately a bad UTI (so continue on the med prescribed) and wants a follow up and retest in a couple weeks. At that time they want to discuss an ultrasound to rule out bladder reflux.
We had a nice day in the park today visiting with my old friend, Cindi. Once I go thru and upload photos I'll post em up. :)

Updates

I just LOVE our pediatrician.

I was at the grocery store last night when Travis called me. It was around 6 pm and said the doctor just called to fill us in on labs as they come in. I had already spoken to the nurse earlier as well-I think it's great that they want to keep us informed as more come in and that he actually sits and calls HIMSELF to discuss. You don't see that often. He's great!

Well, as it turns out her final urinalysis results don't show glucose! Whew. The blood test showed high blood sugars over the last couple of months-but the overall result is no diabetes!!!! Thank God.

I also called on Gabe's chest xray. They want a repeat in 6 months with 3 different views as opposed to 2. The radiologist is questioning whether or not it's a nodule. Ok-so what does that mean? He didn't mention comparing it to old xrays...so I get to stew about this one for 6 months.

I've got an old friend coming over today who I reconnected with on facebook. We met in 5th grade and hung out til after high school then lost track of each other. It's been about 15 years since I've seen her. So hard to believe so much time has gone by! I'm so excited to see her again and meet her boys. They're got about a 2 hr drive so they should be here soon :) Yea!

Breaking point

I used to handle stress just fine. In fact-I thrived on it-I worked better under pressure. Still do-depending on the situation.

But once I had kids-and those stresses came in the form of medical issues-that does me in. Not to mention that anything bad comes in 3's for us.....so I hope to God there isn't anything more coming my way or I may just crawl in bed for the next 2 weeks and not show my face.

Two days ago I took Gabe for an appt w/ the ped pulmonologist for a checkup. Everything was fine as he listened to him and all then he looked at his chest xray and kept looking at it at all these weird angles (was waiting for him to stand on his damn head to look at it) then kept doing hmmmmmmm...hmmmmmm...omg spit it out man! "i don't like this area right here-see this?" um no not really but...he says looks like some kind of nodule or something. Probably having to do w/ fungal stuff in our air here in Illinois but I want to talk to the radiologist first and I'll call you this afternoon to discuss. Greaaaaaaaaaat.

Gabe was sick last week (the only good about that is it's the FIRST time he's been sick where it didn't require antibiotics, nebulizers,etc to get him out of it-good sign!) BUT-he passed it to Sawyer. He wasn't so lucky. I kept waiting for it to be on the downhill slide but each day seemed worse than the last.

Yesterday morning I woke to him screaming. Thinking his leg was between the rails I rushed in there to stop short at the wall of stench that hit me at his door. Up to the changer and off goes the pj's to have me standing in stunned silence while he wailed. I've never quite seen anything like the diaper rash he had. The diarreah he'd had (from being sick I suppose) had evidentally sat in there all night (can't believe it didn't wake him!!) and had just burned his whole front and inner thieghs...So heres me-crying and panicing and getting him into a cool bathtub since wipes hurt him too bad. As the morning went on he was choking on the mucus, lethargic, fever and wheezey sounding. Their ped is great-got us in at 1 pm.

So I'm changing Sawyer to go to the dr appt and the school calls. Great timing. The school nurse is telling me that Chloe's in pain when she goes o the bathroom and is actually having quite a bit of blood when she pees. I had just enough time to grab her from school (of coarse on the other side of town) and get back over to the dr office w/o a minute to spare. The dr was great and went ahead and did a urine specimen. Now more stress...

So he was saying the little dipstick tester showed elevated everything...including sugar. I'm like ok...so what? He says well...concidering you shouldn't have any sugar in urine that's not a good thing so...
hmmm
So he says well, I doubt she's got diabetes but...
oh great.
So after talking it over about waiting for the urine to go thru lab testing, etc I decided to have her blood drawn (after asking what would YOU do if it were your kid?). She cried so bad while they drew her blood-I think more scared about what this meant that pain from the needle. She's got 2 good friends her age who have diabetes and has watched all the finger pricks and insuline shots.

So 2 calls I need to make today. To find out if my son has something weird growing in his lung and to find out if my daughter has diabetes.

This is great-2 minutes ago my phone rang and caller ID says it was the American Diabetes Assoc. Please tell me that's not a sign.