Walking in a Winter Wonderland... Oh wait, isn't it October???

Whomever it was who told me that we still had 6 weeks till snow a couple of weeks ago LIED!!! There's snow on the ground & we haven't even Trick or Treated yet. Holy cow! It sprinkled a little dusting where we live earlier in the week, but when I got to work they had a prettier scene. This is what I saw on my walk from the parking lot into work:

(And yes, I do get to park in the parking lot right outside my unit. No more shuttle busses for me! WooHOO! lol) Pretty right? So no problem. It melted by the afternoon. But THEEEENNNN... I guess this massive "Nor'Easter" came through last night & dumped a lot of snow all over the northeast. (I still have to figure out what the heck that means!) So as I was leaving work last night it was already snowing like crazy & I had at least an inch on my car. Forecast said about 5" was projected for my area, and about a FOOT for where I work! OMG! I mean, don't get me wrong. I knew we chose to live in Vermont & I knew the snow was coming sooner or later, but C'MON! It's October! Anyway, when I woke up this morning, there is mayyybe 2" on the ground outside. So hopefully there really isn't 12 in Lebanon. (But I don't have to go to work again till Thursday, so I don't really care! lol)

So our plan for the day today? Play time! :) We haven't decided yet if we want to go sledding, or what, but I'll be sure to share pics later. :)

Last weekend, though, we had a lot of fun. The town right next door to us has a really nice indoor ice arena and it just opened for the season. So we decided to go ice skating. Can you believe Mathew has never been in his whole life?! That's just wrong! And though Kansas City has a really nice skating rink downtown, we never were able to go because it was not at all convenient for us living an hour away. So we went last Sunday & it was so fun! The boys were a little apprehensive about it at first. So they held on to some milk crates for stability. Looked kinda silly, but it worked! Little Gavin? Oh my sweet man. Ugh. He doesn't take on a challenge very well. He tends to think he needs to be perfect at everything the first time he tries it. So he got really pissed off when he wasn't immediately gliding away like Brett Hull. But he finally got the hang of it & then I couldn't keep up with him! lol Here are a few pics:

Sorry they're a little blurry. As it turns out, iPhone pics aren't made for action shots! lol

And, (if I can get it to post correctly) here's a video of Miss Natalie giggling her way across the ice:

(Woohoo! I did it!)

Pretty darn cute. So that's all I've got for now. Hopefully I'll have more progress to share with you on the house before too long. (This snow though is going to make that part all the more difficult! Yikes!)

Starting over sucks

Now that I am halfway awake I can update this blog, hopefully completing a coherent thought. You see, I had to work two night shifts the last two nights. Haven't needed to do that in over 6 years. I tried doing nights for exactly 6 months after graduating nursing school and it did not go over well for me. I'm terrible at it. Granted, now that I'm a little older & have dealt with sleep deprivation on a more regular basis out of necessity as a parent, I'm handling it a little better than I did back then, but it still sucks. More power to you guys who choose to do nights regularly. Seriously. I applaud you. But me? I'll just whine. I had been at my job for almost 10 years in Kansas City, and with working on a big unit, I was almost eligible for some pretty major perks given my tenure there. No more weekends, no more holidays (as long as staffing permitted of course, but still). And being such a big unit we were staffed as either a day shift nurse, or a night shift nurse. Some of you know this already because, well, you work there too! lol Buuuutttt... it doesn't exactly work that way here. I was hired to work on the bone marrow transplant unit only. 9 beds. That's it. So we share the love when it comes to staffing and there's no such thing as seniority. Everyone has to do their share of nights, everyone has to do their share of weekends, & everyone does their share of holidays. Thankfully there are a few wonderful nurses who choose to staff themselves exclusively on the night shifts, and that helps a lot. But we're all still required to work at minimum of two nights shifts a month.

Did I mention I suck at it?

I worked Tuesday night and Wednesday night. I wish I could just reverse everybody else's schedule just because mine is for the moment, but life goes on despite my sleep deprivation. Thursday the kids had off of school and our schedule was packed because of it. No sleeping for momma.

So we've chosen to live in a place that's both very convenient and also very far away from civilization at the same time. This town has a lot more right in town or right next door than I was used to in Kansas, so in that sense it is so much better. (Movie theater? Got it. Grocery store? Right up the street. WalMart? As much as I hate to need it, it's right across the border in NH.) There's not a major hospital anywhere nearby, so my hour-long commute to work is no big deal. I'm used to that from KS. But sometimes traveling across these mountainous states takes a little longer than a 60 mile drive would take anywhere else, so heading to a "nearby" town can sometimes be a big deal. Which brings me to our schedule on Thursday.

My work is 60 miles from home. It takes me one hour (North to South). So when I agreed to take the boys to their first orthodontist appt in another town 60 miles from home in NH for Thursday I didn't think it would be that big of a huge ordeal. Ummm... wrong! 60 miles from home, across NH to almost the Maine border = an hour & 45 min! 60 miles from my work to said town = two and a half hours!! So instead of meeting Matt there after I worked (my original plan) I decided not to commit sleep-deprived car-crashing suicide & headed home first. So this is how my day went: worked all night until 7:45 (which just had to be a crazy-busy, patients crashing & heading to ICU, exhausting night) and drove my hour drive home where I picked up my family. Then Matt drove the hour & 45 minute drive to the orthodontist where my plan for a little nap in the car was totally foiled. Hour long appointment. (Thank GOD this guy has several offices & we can do the rest where we actually live!) Then the hour and 45 minute drive back home to make it 5 minutes late for Mark's parent-teacher conference! Holy mother of pearl I was tired! I hope his teacher and orthodontist didn't think I was a total mess of a mom. Yikes. Then I finally got to go home where I was worth nothing more than a lump on the floor. (Yes the floor. We still have no couches. Thanks ServPro, you're awesome. Another story for another time).

Anyway...

I survived & got a great night's sleep last night & all is well again. And the bonus to all of our driving all over God's creation yesterday? We got to see our first MOOSE! :)

He he! We're dorks, I know, but we were very excited! :)

Okay. End whine. I'm going to enjoy my three day weekend with my beautiful family now! :)

Happy Birthdays!

So I feel like a really crappy mom that I wasn't able to share the boys' birthdays on this blog. They both unfortunately fell during our move (Mark's right before and Gavin's right after). So I didn't have the access to internet to share the details. But rest assured we made their days as special as we possibly could. Mark got to have a day with a friend from KS & we went to Dave & Busters. He elected to not have a birthday cake, but a birthday apple pie instead! lol We had a great time & he got the iPod he has been wanting. (I don't think he's put it down since!) Gavin's birthday was a low key day at home. That's actually what the poor guy wanted: just a day at home with all of us hanging out. (I guess he's been getting sick of all the running around we've been needing to do). But he had a nice day and got this massive Lego Harry Potter set he's had his eye on (of course!) (and then he set the whole thing up in about an hour. lol!) Oh, my crazy kid. :)

So fast forward to now & it's Natalie's turn! My little baby girl turned THREE this weekend! Holy cow where does the time go? It was a bittersweet day because especially as the kids have been little, we always make time to have a big family party for each of them. Of course, being so far away from family that just wasn't in the cards this year. But we had a beautiful day to work with and we let her choose what she wanted to do. First we went to the farmer's market where she got a bag of kettle corn as big as she is!

Then we went shopping for a little bit and we came home for lunch where she ate some Dora soup. Yep. That's what she wanted! Then she got play at the park for a little while (daddy took the pictures there. Sorry! I don't have them right now!). Then home for dinner & cake & presents! Overall, a pretty good day for a three year old!

(And yes, I have this incessant need to draw with icing on my kids' cakes in an attempt to make them special. This year: Hello Kitty! :) ). All in all I think we had a pretty good day. Though I wish we could've had all of our family around to make it that much better.

With every passing year, celebrating Natalie's birth, I am reminded (as if I could ever for a moment forget) what a true miracle she is. With everything we had to go through to have her, she has taught me to appreciate that much more what blessings all three of my babies are. I don't think we exactly took that for granted before, but I guess we didn't realize it as much as we should have. She gave that gift to us and I will forever be a changed momma because of it. Those who have never been through it would see infertility and loss as a horrible curse. Now that we're on the other side of that tunnel, we choose to see it as a blessing. With our losses & struggles to have our baby girl, God showed us how truly special each little life truly is and what a gift we've been given in each of our kids. And let me tell ya, we've got the three best kiddos a couple could ever ask for! :)

TAWANDA!!

Ok, so that's not me, that's Kathy Bates, but "TAWANDA!!" kept running through my head the other day while I was working on the house! lol (Oh yes, I just made a Fried Green Tomatoes reference. Yes I did. lol) There's not a lot I am capable of when it comes to fixing up a house, but I can be pretty good at tearing it apart! The other day, while Matt was on the roof putting all of that back, I got sick of standing around babysitting him & decided I could still hear him fall off the roof from inside the house just as well as from the outside, so I gave myself a job. ;) Knocking out plaster can be therapeutic sometimes, as Evelyn here clearly agrees. So I did knock out the walls in one room, but then got bored with the sledgehammer & decided to tear out some stairs instead. From where the ceiling was already crumbling apart, the stairs were covered in so much crap you could barely walk up them, and it really bothered me. So it took me 10 trash bags to fill plaster and old carpet from the steps, but now we've uncovered a beautiful staircase! It really shouldn't take much to revive. (Plus the house doesn't smell so bad anymore either! Eww! lol) I have a before picture, but I should've taken an after. I'll do that soon. I do love how doing little things in this house makes such a huge difference in uncovering how beautiful it can be. Hopefully it won't take long! :)

So, small world moment I've got for ya. It entertained me anyway! lol So this past weekend the boys' school had an apple event in their cafagymatorium. (another one of the words from Stacia's made up vocabulary). It was this really cute little party where they had apple snacks & apple shaped cookies to decorate, apple art activities, face painting (because no kid's activity is complete without face painting), and an apple cider press. The kids all got to participate in making their own apple cider by throwing in the apples & turning the crank and seeing how it all works. It was very fun.

(Oh yeah, the kids all got a little silly with the face paint and wanted scars & mustaches and dripping blood... ignore my son's beautiful face! lol)

So anyway, very cute & very fun. We got a whole pitcher of our very own apple cider to take home. So where does the small world part come in? Well I'll tell ya! lol I don't think you can zoom in on my pictures very well, but you'll notice a silver plate right next to Mark's hand which tells where the cider press was made. Well wouldn't you know, way out here in rural upstate Vermont, this cider press came from the one & only Happy Valley Ranch that sits right next door to our former home in Kansas!!! No I'm not kidding! How crazy is that! The press belongs to the man in the picture, & he knew all about the company & where it was. Turns out they're one of the major cider press manufacturers in the whole country. That little ugly blue building next door to my house with the cranky old man who hates my dog. Who knew? lol

Oh and PS: my patient told me yesterday that Moose hunting season has officially started. Aren't you glad you have me to let you know? lol ;) (Though we are all really excited to see a moose in real life. We haven't yet. Though preferably I'd rather not meet one with my car...)