No pix again . . .

It's been a busy week at our house. We had Grandpa Don over for dinner on Sunday to celebrate his birthday. It was so good! Beer can chicken and delicious potatoes (with tons of garlic) that we saw on the Food Network. Louie likes to eat the potatoes like an apple, he just digs into the whole thing.
Lately, both kids have been going through a growth spurt and putting away the food like you wouldn't believe. Emily had an appointment last week for her neurological evaluation at Gillette Children's Hospital, she finally tipped the scale at 30 pounds and she's 35 inches tall. Louie is still a skinny little thing, he's only 25 pounds. It seems like he's grown taller though. All his pants fit him in the waist (they're 12-18 month size!), but they're too short. We had to go to the store and get some 18-24 month with an adjustable waste so he wouldn't have floods. Not sure how tall Lou is though. We'll have to measure him one of these days.
Today was the day that I dreaded. Emily got on the bus to go to school and she started sobbing and got herself so worked up. She was just screaming! I felt so bad for her. Hopefully, she'll be ok this morning and they won't call to have her be picked up. She got to sit by her best friend, Emmett. She pretends to call him on the phone at night and says "Hi Emmett, see you on the bus tomorrow for school. Good night, bye." Hopefully, Emmett's parents will be at the ECSE picnic at the end of the month so we can get together with him over the summer. The aides on the bus and the bus driver both said that they are best friends, he asks about Emily everyday.
We've got a busy weekend ahead. Dinner at the Lynch's tomorrow night and then Mother's Day at Grandma and Papa Jansen's house on Sunday. The husbands are taking care of all the food (at least at our house he is. . . )

All Better

We're all better now. Life is back to normal.
Emily went to school and boy was she excited to see her friends on the bus this morning. She was also excited to wear her new rain boots and rain jacket too. Something about kids and puddles, requires them all to have a pair of rain boots. She and Louie LOVE to run around in theirs.
Dan and I got the whole house ready this morning for the carpet cleaner to come at 8am. We moved everything that would fit through the porch door outside only to find out that his new steam cleaning machine had a leak and needed a new valve. He called and was going to be late. Well, he called a little bit later and said that he wouldn't be able to get it fixed today. He needed to reschedule for next Tuesday. So, we need to move all the stuff back into the house for the weekend. . . . bummer. I really was looking forward to clean carpet, finally!

On the mend . . . .

We're on the mend, but not 100%. So, we're being cautious and staying clear of friends and family (and work) until everything is gone.
Emily and Louie finally got their appetites back last night at dinner, pasta with alfredo and broccoli was a huge hit! Fevers have been gone 24 hours, but each of them still has some sores in their mouths.
Both kids are also full of energy today. Dan may take them on a walk this morning to burn off a little energy.
Funny story, sort of . . . my project of working on pictures etc. at home is continuing and I've been busy trying to learn some tricks in Photoshop. One thing, we needed to get a new DVD burner in our computer as our current burner doesn't read DVD's. So, being one that always need to try and do it myself, I ordered a new DVD burner from www.newegg.com (excellent website for computer stuff, great customer service). Well, it came yesterday afternoon. So, I thought I would install it myself. I got the computer all disconnected from the cuzillion cables and wires and got it all taken apart. The old DVD burner was pulled from the computer, only to find out that I had ordered the WRONG one! Who knew that there were different types of connections to the computer? Of course, I had ordered the other kind from what we needed. . . .
I immediately called Newegg.com and the very understanding woman sent me the correct one right away and also sent me a prepaid UPS label to send back the wrong one. So, we never paid shipping on anything for this thing. That's great customer service, if you ask me. Shipping costs sometimes cancel out the savings you get from shopping on line.
Best news of all, we'll have the right DVD burner by Thursday and I can take the computer apart again . . . I'm getting anxious to get to work on our wedding images.
That's another story, I sent in all the negatives from our wedding photos to www.digmypics.com and they converted them all to .jpg and put them on DVD. We're waiting to get our album made . . . should be soon.

YUCK!

We all came down with hand, foot and mouth disease over the weekend. YUCK!
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hand-foot-and-mouth-disease/DS00599/DSECTION=1
It's disgusting and it's very contagious.
So, I'm working from home today and no school this week for us.

Update on School

Emily went off to school today on a BIG bus. It still had the integrated child seats in it, but it was a BIG bus. She was excited for the change this morning. We got out to the bus and it was a sub driver and aid, but the students were the same. Apparently, Emily's friend Emmett said that he wanted Emily to sit by him this morning. He told Lisa, the aid when they pulled up in front of our house! He was very exicted to have her there.
It's funny, in the last few weeks I've run in to several people that were in my graduating class from highschool. Dan and I went to a "newbies" party at Nativity a couple weeks ago, there were three people from my class at Derham there. As I was standing in line to go through security as MSP on my way to Palm Beach last week, I ran into another person from my class. This morning, the substitute aid on Emily's bus was also a classmate of mine from Derham.
Maybe it's a sign, with Emily going to school in the old Derham building . . .

Ugh! Back-up Photos and Photoshop!

Last Friday night, some "kids" were out and about the neighborhood causing trouble. Being that light sleeper that I am and our bedroom window was open, I heard them out carousing in the street. At first, we thought it was people from the house on the corner outside smoking . . . until the doorbell rang.
Dan and I both jumped out of bed, he to his robe and me to the window to see what was going on. I could hear them, but couldn't see them.
Well, they stopped by and left a box of junk on our step . . . but lit it on fire before running off.
Ever since then, I've had visions of our whole house burning to the ground and all I can think of is all the pictures that we would lose . . . wedding pictures, family pictures, kids pictures, etc.
Currently, we don't have them backed up anywhere. I found SmugMug last year when I was searching for somewhere to scan negatives and make them digital, but never checked it out.
I checked it out in January and have had every intention of starting to upload pictures to their website.
Well, I've finally started uploading and what a project!
http://pelletierfamily.smugmug.com
At the same time, we've gotten all our wedding photos transferred to digital images and want to create an album, but they need a little work. Now we're adding Photoshop to the list of things to work on.
If anyone has a recommendation on books for Photoshop Elements, please let us know. It's soooo user friendly and my patience for this stuff isn't very long.
We're plugging away at all the pictures to Smugmug . . . I didn't realize we had so many pictures.

Ted and Ivy

When we go out of town or simply need a break from Ted, he goes on vacation to Spa Owen where his buddy Ivy lives. He LOVES to go to Ivy's house and goes nuts when he sees the Owen's car pull up in front of our house.

Mary just sent me a couple pictures of Ted and Ivy before their Russian Motorcycle Club meeting . . .

Flowers . . . .

What a busy weekend!
Dan, Emily and Louie went to a Pump It Up birthday party yesterday, it is the "inflatable party zone." Sounds like sensory overload for me, but the kids had fun. I guess the idea is that you load up kids with sugar (aka: cake and ice cream) and then let them loose in this building that is full of slides, jumpers, bouncing and climbing things.
While they went to that, I headed to Cottage Grove for a baby shower for my friend Sara. She is anxiously awaiting the arrival of her little baby girl, Charlotte Mary, from Guatemala. My, how baby things have changed since Emily was born. . . .
Today, it was such a beautiful day, we went to Gerten's and got some pansies for the front steps and also some begonias for later. We got the herbs for the garden. We also decided to give growing watermelons a try. Last year we bought these black ball shaped watermelons from Gertens and they were soooo delicious. We thought if we could find seeds, we'd try and grow some. Well, they had some. Now we just need to get the ground ready to plant them, soon! These watermelons were the best that we've ever had. So delicious! Can't wait. I hope they grow.
After naps, we went to Fabulous Ferns for dinner with Tapios and Grandma. It was Charlie's confirmation at the Cathedral this afternoon. It was fun to see everyone.

Yeah! It's a BOY!!!

Here he is. . . .

http://oliviawagnerphoto.blogspot.com/2008/04/its-boy.html

Update

Emily's in her second week of school and loves every minute of it. We really thought that she would have resisted or cried at least once, but it hasn't happened.
I asked her if she liked going to school and she said "I yove it, it's so fun!" She wants to sing songs from school all the time, but we don't know the words or what songs she sings there.
Louie cries when Emily goes on the bus, I'm pretty sure it is because she gets to go for a ride and he doesn't. But it is giving him quality time home with Dan, Ted and all the toys!

We're anxiously awaiting news on the arrival of Baby Ramos in the next day or two. Baby was supposed to arrive sometime today, but there wasn't room at the hospital today . . .