If You Can't Stand the Heat...

One of the things I really worried about when deciding to move to Vermont was the summers.  I truly thought that the only way summer would be fun was if it was at least 90 degrees so that you could lay out in the sun & go swimming, and do all those fun summery things.  Mathew laughed at me, saying that Vermont would still have summer - it wasn't Antarctica for cryin' out loud - and it would still have the occasional hot day, but it would be more mild all of the other days.  And we could still go swimming and do all of those things, but be able to actually breathe outside while doing it! 

I hate it when he's right.  :/

So now we're out of the proverbial "kitchen."  (Yeah, yeah, I know that expression means something else entirely, but for this purpose I'm using it for actual heat.  :P lol)  This summer has been so nice!  We've had the occasional day in the 60's, and a day or two of 90, but for the most part it's been upper 70's to 80ish and very comfortable.  I can see why they don't find a need for air conditioning in homes here.  It's just fine with an open window, and it get's down to the 50's at night, so no big deal.  And frankly, for the most part, you're outside playing anyway, so who cares! :)

The kids are doing their fair share of playing so far.  We've never been big "over-schedulers" in our house packing the kids' days with a ton of activities (so far anyway), but they're keeping busy.  They started golf lessons - super cute in their little polo's & plaid shorts ;) - and they'll all start swim lessons next week.  Maybe starting guitar lessons here too soon if we can get it coordinated.  Besides that they've just been hanging around Matt at the house trying to get some work done. 

You know you want to live here...

I'm really really ready for this all to be done & get on with our lives.  Our self-imposed deadline for moving in will be here in about a month & a half and we've barely begun the process of putting it back together.  It's SO not gunna happen.  Poor Matt keeps getting hurt, the injections in his back aren't helping anymore, and it's seriously too damn hard to do it all with your own two hands.  I can only be there so much to help and when I'm there I'll be the first to admit I haven't the slightest clue what I'm doing! lol  But slowly but surely we're getting there, and I keep telling myself it'll all be worth it in the end.  In the above picture you can see that we got all of the god-awful siding off finally.  Yippee!  I'm sure that'll make a huge difference.  Plus all of the trees are cut down & out of the way, so that's great too.  It would be great though, if we could get some free help.  Maybe Phineas & Ferb could come by... they'd have it done by lunch! 

Good thing we live just a few miles from Danville! ;)

Field Trip!

This place is so flippin' awesome. (Or wicked awesome as the locals would say! lol). How cool is it that with just an hour or two's drive, we can have so many options for such incredible experiences! I hope we never take for granted what a blessing that is.

So nearly every kid in elementary school goes to the zoo for a field trip at least once in their lifetime. Nothing new there. But for a Vermonter? Well that means just a quick jog up to CANADA! Seriously people! (Or am I the only one who thinks that's super cool? lol). Yesterday, Gavin's third grade class took their field trip to the Zoo de Granby in Quebec; just a short hour and a half drive from our home town. His teacher and principal were kind enough to let Mark out of class to allow our whole family to come along, (and a sweet co-worker was kind enough to switch shifts with me too so that I could attend. Thanks again Sarah! :)).

Gavin's Third Grade Class with Mrs.C (best teacher ever)

So here's what you need to know about the providence of Quebec.  They speak French.  Almost exclusively.  Much more so than any other area of Canada.  And from what my friends tell me, they kinda look down on us American folks who expect them to know English.  (I guess choosing Spanish for my language elective in high school was an epic fail. :/)  But although the staff at the zoo spoke French first, they were all very nice & tried to take care of us English speaking Vermonters as best they could.

This sweet lady told us all about this owl.  We did not, however, understand a word she said.

I'll always be partial to the St. Louis Zoo.  It's where I grew up, it has a ton of great exhibits (and let's be honest, it's free.)  But I've gotta say that this zoo was pretty great.  The kids had so much fun!  (Except they didn't have Red Pandas. :(  Sorry Aunt Caroline! ;))   Aaaannddd... it was not only a zoo, but an amusement park & water park as well!  Though we didn't have enough time to do the amusement park stuff this time, we did enjoy the zoo and got to play at the water park for a bit. :)  Of course, I can't resist sharing a few pictures.

Gavin & his buddies Lucas & Carter (and Mark too! :))

Petting Sting Rays

Feeding birds in the bird sanctuary

Birds climbing ALL over Gavin!  Funniest thing ever!  (Except poor Lucas behind him.  He was fortunate enough that one of the birds left a "present" in his hair! lol!)

All the kids playing in the wave pool at the waterpark

Natalie & I getting some waterpark fun too :)

SUCH a fun day!  We will definitely be back!  Though we might brush up on a little French first lol ;). 

Okay, I think that's it for all of our travels for a little while.  Maine, Florida, Mexico, and Canada all in the span of about a month!  Phew!  I guess we better focus on actually fixing up our house now huh?  Darn it.  Guess it won't fix itself. ;)  Back to the grindstone!

The Wedding Cruise

As many of you know, we spent last week celebrating the marriage of my youngest brother-in-law John and his new wife Caroline on a 4 day cruise to Key West & Cozumel, Mexico.  I started to type out the summary of our trip while waiting in the airport (as my kids flung their flip-flops at each other out of sheer boredom), then didn't get to finish.  Then I got home & had to unpack & never got to it.  Then I've been dealing with this crazy constant dizziness thing & never really felt like sitting in front of a computer (which I totally still have by the way.  Ugh, it's awful feeling like you have a constant
hangover! :S)  So anyway, blogging about our trip has been looming over my head and I really wanted to do it justice, but at the same time not bore you to tears with the mundane play-by-play.  (Who knew blogging could be so stressful? lol ;))

So I will direct your attention to facebook for a bit more comprehensive collection of pictures.  (I took over 500 and pared it down to 66.  You're welcome! lol)  And like I said, I won't bore you
too much with the day to day details.  But I've gotta say how incredible it was to see so much of our family!!  We've gone from living essentially up the street from everyone in St. Louis, to just a day trip away from everyone in KC with some fairly frequent visits, to living 1500 miles away.  Plane tickets are expensive for a family of five, and frankly I don't think Matt or I could survive another 30+
hour drive one way! lol  So needless to say we haven't seen everyone in nearly a year & that was worth every penny in and of itself.  There are still a few members of our family that weren't able to come & that really sucks.  We hope to see them soon too!



John & Caroline's wedding was simple, personal, and absolutely beautiful.  Their love for each other exudes from them and it was such a priviledge to be part of their day.  Caroline is perfect for John,
and I'm so excited for her to be a part of our crazy family!  John was just a kid when Matt & I got married (twelve I think), so now I feel super old that he's a married man ;), but we are so very happy for them!

The happy couple

The cruise was great.  We visited Key West & went on a trolley ride of the island, and then we stopped in Cozumel where our family chose to visit some Mayan ruins & hang out on the beach for a bit.  On the boat we ate (and ate and ate...) some great food, swam & played on water slides, played minigolf, and had lots of fun-in-the-sun family time.  Plus it's great that the ship has a kids club.  Kids have fun getting away from us, we have a built-in babysitter for some grown-up time:
win win! :)  (See there?  Four day trip scaled down to one easy paragraph.  I can be concise when I want to! lol)
Here are just a few highlight pictures in case you're not a facebook friend.  (Or in case you didn't feel like flipping through all 66 of my pics! lol)



Sunset on the ship



Sloppy Joe's in Key West





Checking out the ruins of San Gervasio

Beach Fun! :)





Mayan god Henna Tattoo's for the boys



John & Caroline playing the Newlywed Game with the captain.  So hilarious!



Mathew's other brother Martin celebrating his 30th Birthday!



So, as you can see, we had a great time!  Of course we had some drama trying to get home.  But that's just par for the course with our family! lol  It's always something.  I think Florida hates us, frankly, because something always seems to go wrong there (car accidents, etc).  But after Delta Airlines bent over backwards to get us home safely, it was no big deal.  Now it's back to work & back to reality.  Thankfully, we now live in a place that we're happy to come home to! :)

Forever

Oh my goodness it's been forever since I posted!  Partly because I've been really busy and with a crazy work schedule, but partly because I'm sad I don't have a ton to update on the house, so I've left quite a few fun things un-blogged.  (That's totally a word, right?)  So I'll let some of the fluff go & give you guys the condensed version to catch up.  In a nutshell, this photo is my house: 

This is a photo from the upstairs landing. clear back to the back.  Finally completely gutted.  That.  Took.  ForEVER!  Each of those bags you see are full of plaster, each weighing about 50-100 lbs, and each have been loaded by countless truckfulls to the dump.  Saved a lot of money?  Absolutely.  But good lord that took a lot of time & effort.  And we also have a driveway full of lath boards that have all been pulled from the walls.  Hello craigslist?  Please send some weirdo who wants this stuff to take it all NOW!  Thanks! ;) 

So we're at this stage now that I really truly hate.  A whole bunch of little things going on, a lot of things started but nothing completed to speak of, and a lot of work with nothing to show for it at the end of the day.  Poor Matt.  We've had a lot of "discussions" lately where I vent that I want it all done, like, yesterday, but it seems to be taking forever... then he feels the need to defend himself on why it's taking so long and all he really has accomplished... then I apologize profusely because I don't mean to make him feel badly... and so the cycle goes.  But hopefully all of those little things will start falling into place so the big things can get started, and then we can really see some progress.  He swears we'll be done by the end of the summer.  I'm not holding my breath. 

On the subject of Matt though, I haven't updated on his back stuff in a while.  It took two months but he finally got in to see a pain specialist & is finally getting treatment.  MRI showed that he now has two bulged disks and they are impinging on two nerves (See!  I told them he did something new & no one believed me!).  PT is helping some, but what's really helping now is the steroid injections.  I don't know why he's never had them before, but they are making a world of difference!  He's been literally stunned by the lack of pain!  He's not pain free & perfect, but doing so much better that the pain in his back isn't the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up & the last thing he thinks about when he goes to bed.  I'm so happy for him! :)  

Okay, on to more fun stuff.  Who ever thought that my Kansas-born boys would be playing Lacrosse of all things!?!  Well they are!  And Mark especially LOVES it!!  Like seriously can't get enough.  I think he's just happy to be allowed to hit people with sticks to be honest with you, but he's having fun all the same! lol   

This year is just "skill building" so they don't have any games just yet.  (So this momma can breathe a sigh of relief for one more year until the real fun starts!)  But they really look forward to Thursdays & Sundays right now lemme tell ya! ;)

Last but not least, in case you didn't see it on good 'ole facebook, Matt & I got tattoos!  Yes, you read that right.  My husband got a tattoo.  I've corrupted him (he he!).  I've been wanting his name in Farsi for many years.  He's protested this whole time.  But after a lot of discussing & negotiating, he finally agreed to let me get it, and volunteered to get my name on his wrist too!  Holy cow!  So now, if we weren't committed before, it's in permanent ink now! lol  (Just kidding.  Hell, if anyone can get through all of the crap we've been through & see the light at the other side of that metaphorical tunnel?  Then I think we're good! lol)  So anyway, mine is on the left "Mathew" and his is on the right "Stacia."  I'm a little jealous that my name translates a little prettier that his name, but that's ok.  I was going to put "Mathew Jason" because it's prettier, but the small & subtle I think looks nice.  :)

If you don't agree, well then lie to me because I can't change it now! lol

So that's all I've got for now.  Next week we're heading to Florida for the wedding of the year!  My sweet brother-in-law John & his beautiful fiancee Caroline are getting married, and then we're all going on a 4-day cruise!  We are pretty excited!  So more than likely my next update will be after then.  TTFN! 

Maine

We had the best little three day weekend last week! The boys had a few days off of school and we decided to make the most of it and go for a drive. Gone are the days where a drive that takes less than three hours means the Lake of the Ozarks, mayyyybe making it to St.Louis or Omaha. All great trips in their own right, but now I'm spoiled! lol. Now I can have mountains in the winter and ocean in the summer! What more could a girl ask for! ;)

So the downside was that it's off peak season, so some of the things we wanted to do were closed (oh well, we'll have to come back! lol), but that meant less crowds, cheaper rates, and plenty of family relaxation time! We went to see the Nubble Lighthouse, played on a few beaches, visited the science center, checked out the country's oldest jail, went on a nature hike up Mount Agamenticus, and yes we did plenty of outlet shopping! :)  A full but great weekend! 
I wanted to share so many pictures I didn't want to make a ginormous post, so here's a little slideshow for ya!

If you're ever in the northeast, I would highly recommend the trip to York Beach!  We had a great time & I'm sure we'll be back! :)

Parenting Fail

Well, so we thought.

So I'm a paranoid mom.  I'll be the first to admit it.  Especially when it comes to my kids' health.  Being a pediatric nurse will do that to you.  You see a lot of terrible things happen to other people's kids & the irrational part of your brain takes over and assumes that all of those terrible things will happen to *your* child, completely forgetting that the population you see is only a teeny tiny fraction of the number of kids running around.
Having said that though, I feel like I've gotten better at that part.  (ie, not assuming my child has leukemia every time he gets a nosebleed).  However, I am a little extra cautious.  I'll never be able to let that go.

One downside to moving so far away from everyone & everything we know is not only not being able to see those friends & family members as often but (selfishly) a lack of childcare.  It's not so easy to hand over the kids to Pa-Pa when you need a night out or, I don't know, knock down walls in a house built in 1860!  So all three kids, especially little Natalie who is not yet in school, get schlepped to the house quite often while Matt or both of us work.  It's either that or it doesn't get done.
BUT, that bothers me.  A. LOT.  I don't like the multitude of safety hazards that that situation poses for my kids, and the biggest one that has been in the forefront of my mind has been:

Lead Based Paint.

Growing up in a post-1970's neighborhood in St. Louis and living in equally if not more-so recently built homes in Kansas City, lead based paint was never a concern for us.  But this house is old as hell & has been neglected for at least as long ago as when the whole lead-based paint concern came to light.  So it worries me.  Granted, we're knocking down plaster from walls that have never been painted, only wallpapered (about a million times), but still.  It's flaking off of doors & it's on the baseboards & it's on the windowsills where we've been disturbing paint chips to install new windows...  It's enough to make this momma nuts. 

So out of pure precaution, I called our pediatrician and asked if we could test little Natalie.  I just wanted to be super sure that we weren't exposing her & doing everything right.  (Figuring she'd be the most at risk).  No problem.  Tiny finger prick & we were sent on our way.

Well I get a call from the nurse and that's never good.  She told me to call right away.

Me: "Hi, Nancy.  This is Stacia calling back.  How are you?"

Nurse: "A lot better than you're going to be!"

(insert Stacia's pure panic here).

She said Natalie's level came back at 27!  Twenty-flippin-seven!  @$#%^&*(!!  Anything over 5 is not okay.  Up to 45 & we're talking hospitalization for chelation therapy.  @#$%^%^&**!!!!  So she asked me to get a venous test just to be sure (first time was just a drop from her finger, this time will be from a traditional blood draw).  I asked for a level on all three kids so I can be certain they're all okay.  Sure.

Thursday, they all get their blood drawn.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday, & Monday, Mommy is silently panicking that I've poisoned my children!

Well I got a call from the nurse this afternoon, and by some miracle all three of the kids came back less than 5!!!!  YAHOOOOOO!!!! :)  I'm so relieved I cannot begin to tell you guys.  I have no idea why the first one came back so high, but I'm so incredibly grateful they're all okay!

But we're not going to go back to letting them run around the house anymore.  I'm entirely too paranoid now.  It's going to make things a little slower, but no more Natalie going with daddy to the house while mom's at work.  No more mom & dad cleaning up together while the kids run & play.  Matt's going to have to go solo until it's all cleaned up and no longer a potential danger.  It sucks, but we've gotta do what we've gotta do.  We're tossing around the idea of looking for a mother's day out program maybe for Nataile too.  That way we'd have a few hours a week we could get more done.  I'm not sure.  Hopefully though we'll have it all taken care of soon & it will be a non-issue. Sigh.  This home renovation thing is tough.

(And PS: 3,200 page views at the time I'm typing this post!  Thanks for the love guys! :)  Leave me a comment once in a while so I can know who's reading.  I'd love to hear from you all too! :)) 

Easter Fun

Ahh, Easter in the land of "cute."  It has been such a fun weekend!  And after working every weekend for many many years I am always grateful to have weekends off for holidays like these now.  They're getting so big so fast and I'm so happy to be able to enjoy these moments with my family!

So yesterday was a jam-packed day of Easter fun.  Yep, I kept my husband from more important tasks like building our house, but that's okay. ;)  It was totally worth it.  First up was cake decorating at the local bakery.  For the last two weeks there have been many fund-raising activities for Melissa Jenkins' son, the woman I told you about in my earlier post.  This was one of them, and we were more than happy to participate & have the funds go to such a good cause.  The kids got to decorate a bunny-shaped cake for Easter & take it home.  This is what happens when you let three kids' differing creative visions explode onto one little cake! lol

It ended up a lot busier than this when it was all done! lol

 Once that was done we headed to a fun Easter Egg Hunt.  It was nice because it was divided by age groups so that you didn't have great big ten-year-olds trampling over the toddlers for eggs & candy.  Hard to get a photo op if you have kids in a couple of groups though.  :/  Anyway, they had fun, got some candy, and some prizes too.

                                                

 

After that we went on a Scavenger Hunt.  About twenty or so local businesses participated and we went from place to place collecting stamps on the kids' little "maps" and collecting candy.  Once their "map" was full, they came back to the welcome center to choose an egg that contained a prize.  So cute & fun!

Natalie wasn't too sure about this whole "giant Easter Bunny" business...

 Last but not least, we made it home to dye Easter Eggs.  They are a riot every year with all of their color-combo particular-ness. 

All three hard at work

 

Natalie showing off her fave.  (Pink of course!)

 I do love these holidays!  And now I must sign off to enjoy some of Mathew's delicious Easter ham!  Hope you all had a wonderful holiday too! :)