Running Behind

I have a lot of emails to catch up with. I am going to run to the store this morning and hopefully answer them this afternoon. I haven't hardly been online since Christmas and I am running a bit behind! Sorry about that. And, yes, Karen, you have the correct address, thank you and I will write this afternoon!

Blessings,
Me <((>(

Please go leave a comment at this blog!

This is off the pass the torch blog:
My corporate sponsor is raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. And you can help. Just leave a comment here, and Empowering Youth, Inc. will donate one dollar per comment.

So far she has 234 comments. They will sponsor her comments up to 500, so please go leave one! It's a great cause. :-)

Thanks!

Chocolate Cookie Bark

I made this as gifts this year for our nurse, speech therapist (did I mention how much we love her??) and our respiratory therapist (whom we also really like!).

It is sooo yummy. I made some for family gifts as well and hopefully there will be a little left for me. ;-)



1 pkg. (8 squares) BAKER'S Semi-Sweet Baking Chocolate
1 pkg. (6 squares) BAKER'S Premium White Baking Chocolate
2 Tbsp. peanut butter
10 OREO Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

PLACE semi-sweet chocolate and white chocolate in separate medium microwaveable bowls. Microwave until completely melted, following directions on package. Add peanut butter to white chocolate; stir until well blended. Crumble half the cookies over chocolate in each bowl; mix well.

DROP spoonfuls of the chocolate mixtures onto wax paper-covered baking sheet, alternating the colors of the chocolates. Cut through chocolate mixtures several times with knife for marble effect.

REFRIGERATE at least 1 hour or until firm. Break into 14 pieces. Store in airtight container in refrigerator.

updates

Here are some updates for things happening around our house:

1. I passed the 1 hour gestational diabetes test! WOOHOO!!! HALLELUJAH!!
(I have never passed with any of my 4 other pregnancies -- but, then, I didn't know I already have the victory!)

2. I have been having some pain in my upper left stomach area for about 7 years. A few years ago they ran some tests, determined that my gall bladder wasn't working and took it out. However, that did not stop the pain. The pain has been really bad lately, even enough to go to the hospital, so they ran some more tests and they discovered something! (Praise God! I am so tired of being told they can't find anything! And, especially with being pregnant, they were being very cautious about giving me a lot of tests) Okay, so the diagnosis is: h. pylori bacteria which has caused a peptic ulcer. Now I know what to pray against! HALLELUJAH!

3. I have 8 more weeks until my due date. :-)

4. Kaedra had her regular dr appt yesterday.

-She is doing great in everything except gaining weight. She is just so active now that she is off the vent and she is growing taller and taller so she is shedding the pounds. She is the same weight now that she was in August. (She gained more after August, she has just been losing weight a little at a time since being off the vent and being able to be active) Anyway, we increased her feedings even more so that should help. We are looking into buying a heavy-duty blender because she is going through almost $50 of babyfood a week!!!! (mostly in meat) Obviously our budget isn't prepared for that! But we are blessed and God provides ALL our needs out of His riches in glory! (Anyone have a heavy duty blender they don't need?)

-we have clearance not to take her vent with us anymore during the day! She is officially free of the vent while awake!!

-she is off the vent 1 hour of her sleeping time. We are going to see how that goes and then graduate to 2 hour increments. Last night was her first night and she did great! Her sats were 95 or above the whole time she was asleep. Being on the vent didn't change her sats at all. :-)

-last night she was able to not use supplemental oxygen all night! When Tonja noticed that her sats didn't change after going on the vent, she turned off the oxygen and Kaedra did fine without it all night! (we had talked about taking her off the vent at night, which she obviously doesn't need, and leaving her on oxygen - if she needed it. Now we are looking at her having NOTHING! PRAISE GOD!)

-Dr. Carey reduced two of her meds also. One of them we will be getting her off of completely in about 3 weeks!

5. We have no news about nursing. I am assuming we will not have nursing after Dec 31st. We will be moving our bedrooms around next weekend, to make room for Kaedra (and, soon, Ethan) in our room.

That's pretty much it. We have a busy day today, getting ready for Michael's whole family to come here on Christmas day. Tomorrow we will be busy with church in the morning and evening. Michael has to work all weekend, but he does have Christmas off.

Have a very Blessed CHRISTmas!

Thirteen things I plan to do differently for next Christmas

I have decided to start getting ready for next year's Christmas today.

Yes, Today.

I realize it's not even this year's Christmas yet, but I'm not happy about how it has gone! I am going to work to make next year's better! So here are my ideas so far:

1. Make a Christmas organizer section in my household binder (would help if I got my household binder done!)

2. Buy all my gifts before the day before Thanksgiving. (buy some gifts year round, buy the rest of the gifts in the beginning of November)

3. Start a Christmas savings account in January.

4. Have the girls write articles for a Christmas newsletter, all year round.

5. Draw names for our big family name draw at the OU-Texas game next year. See if we can draw names just for kids.

6. Keep a readily accessible list of my Christmas wishes easy for hubby to find!

7. Put away all of our Christmas stuff this year in better boxes and better organized with better labelling in better order (put C1 towards the front of the attic, with the other stuff nearer to the back)

8. Before doing #7, declutter our Christmas stuff this year.

9. Buy a pre-lit tree after Christmas this year, give away our tree and lights.

10. Make a plan to start our advent book on Dec 1st.

11. Plan to make a Jesse Tree.

12. Plan for the stocking idea

13. start making homemade presents in January (keep list)

oops, I need one more!

14. Send packages and newsletters right after Thanksgiving

Thirteen of my favorite things this year

Here are thirteen of my favorite things that happened this year....

1. doing the mystery unit and dinner with the Konos group

2. The video Melanie made for Kaedra

3. getting our pool! & all the family time in the pool

4. Kaedra walking! WOOHOO!

5. The time the terminex guy came when I had mud on my face.

6. finding out I was pregnant.

7. cutting down on nursing.

8. Our new church opening.

9. Britty's birthday party.

10. .Kaedra's birthday (more pics here)

--Now I realize I didn't say Emily's birthday. That's because her birthday wasn't a great day for Michael and I (he went to the hospital with chest pains). But, Hallelujah! nothing was wrong and they let him come home after an overnight stay. However, I was thrilled that Emily HAD a birthday party, I just missed the whole thing! And thanks to Ria for stepping in as "mommy for a day!" Here is my blog about Em's first 5 years.

11. Kaedra off the vent all day!

12. going to the park with Kaedra for the first time.

13. still to come......have to leave some room for some great memories in the next 10 days!!

CELEBRATE!!!

We celebrate lots of things around here. Heck, when my kids get a new freckle we sing "Happy Freckle day to you, ...." BUT, I have BIG news I want to share today so EVERYONE can celebrate! (no no no, I KNOW you already know I am pregnant! that's not it!)

Happy pregnancy to Brandi,
Happy pregnancy to Brandi,
Happy and blessed pregnancy to the Zaaaaannnndddiiis
Happy pregnancy to Brandi!!!

Yes, the Zandi's are expecting their 8th blessing!
Make haste to congratulate her!
(remember, she still lives in California where they think she is an oddity for having more than 2! so let's show her some good ol' Oklahoma support!!)

Works for Me Wednesday - Trillian

I have friends on three different Instant Message Systems: AOL, Yahoo and MSN. My friend, Melanie, introduced me to a great program a few years ago so I can talk to everyone with only one piece of software! It is called Trillian and it can be found at http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/.

I use the *FREE* basic version which is wonderful and fits all of my needs. Now, when I log on to my computer, trillian logs on and I am automatically on AOL, Yahoo and MSN. (you can also have ICQ) My friends don't notice a difference on their side and I don't have to juggle 3 programs to talk to everyone on my side!

It has all the standard options of Instant message programs like smilies, hiding yourself and away messages and allows you to pick which networks you want to be logged onto (whether you choose all networks or just one is up to you). The only thing I really miss is the Yahoo Avatars, but I can live without that. ;-) Trillian even has some great sounds, if you want them, for the emoticons.

Highly configurable, free and it simplifies my life...what could be better??

Now check out other great ideas at Rocks in my Dryer.

Christmas pictures

Awesome father

[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]
I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike.

Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester , Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs."He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an institution.''

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. ``There's nothing going on in his brain.''"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want to do that.''

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried.``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore for two weeks.''

That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, It felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''

And that sentence changed Dick's life.

He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway. Then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?'' How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii . It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together. This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record,which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.''And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him,``you probably would've died 15 years ago.'' So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's lives. Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including on Father's Day. That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''