Monday, Monday (and I don't know the rest of the words)

We finished off the weekend on Sunday with a really nice day at home. I made a game out of picking up toys and books. We went through stuff and got rid of thing and then did a little mini spring cleaning. The weather was very inspirational.
After we were done, we set up all of Louie's train tracks and pretended we were on the Island of Sodor. Emily loves to get in on the action with her Emily train from the Thomas collection.
Everyone took a nice nap in the afternoon and then dinner and bedtime to get ready for a busy day on Monday.
Dan took the kids to their Monday morning ECFE class and then headed over to Auntie Tesa's house. She watched Louie (with her eyes shut, HA!) while Dan took Emily to Gillette for her evaluation appointments.
A couple of weeks ago, she had her annual appointment with Dr. Tervo, the neurologist. He went through everything with Dan and gave him the rundown of her genetic testing that finally came back from the University of Washington (or somewhere like that). All is good. No need for further testing or further MRI's at this point. He did suggest that she have some evaluations with the speech, physical and occupational therapists.
Yesterday, Emily had her speech and physical therapy evaluations and I'm happy to report that she did very well. Her vocabulary is at the level of a 3.5 yr. old and her physical therapy went very well too. She is climbing stairs unassisted and with confidence and her sense of balance has greatly improved!
We've also noticed over the last week to 10 days (and so have her teachers at school) that she's much more attentive and better at following directions. She's even showing signs that she is starting to understand the feeling of having to go potty. So, all is going well for Emily right now.
Keep your fingers crossed that she stays on this road of improvement!

Jackson Street Roundhouse

We went to the Minnesota Transportation Museum today. Let me just say that Louie was in sensory overload for the full 2.5 hours that we were there. He could hardly contain himself.
He loved every minute of it!






While walking around and checking out all of the old train memorbilia, I found this hanging on the wall back in a corner. It was really cool. A poster for the St. Paul Winter Carnival dated January 17, 1887. The poster had been used in Green Bay, Wisconsin and listed the train times, etc. to get from Green Bay to Saint Paul, it took almost 11 hours by train.

There's a bunch of old trains that kids can be the engineer on.

This was an old engine that Emily and Louie were pretending to drive.

The only way that we were getting Louie out of that place, after we went on our train ride around the train yard was to bribe him with french fries. He wanted them fast as it was way past lunch time.
We stopped at White Castle. Emily and Louie LOVED it. They both ate two cheeseburgers and a small french fry. When we got home, he sat down right inside the front door and drained my Coke Zero.

Last night, we watched the Little Einstein's Big Huge Adventure. Lou was really excited to eat fish sticks in the living room in front of the TV. It is one way to get him to eat everything on his plate.

Crazy Kids

Ted got a haircut. He seems to have way more energy when he gets his haircut and then he sleeps a lot. He is an absolutely crazy dog.

Louie

He has a mind of his own. He decided that he loves to wear my headphones. He loves flashlights and wants to have one in his hand at all times.
He seems to be in an endless number of time-outs lately. He skips one and two and goes straight to 3. Automatic timeout for throwing your food, plate, milk, silverware. You get the picture. Meals have turned into our least favorite time of the day, thanks to Louie.

He has one freckle on his belly and thinks it is the coolest thing ever. He is constantly trying to look at his freckle and show it to us when he has the chance. We thought that he was interested in potty training, but not so much. We're taking a hiatus on that for a few weeks.

He loves to make goofy faces in front of the camera and he LOVES my camera. He wants to look at pictures all the time. He runs around the house yelling "To Infinity and beyond!" We have "I'm Buzz Lightyear" arguments all the time. He still loves Thomas the Train and Lightening McQueen, but Buzz Lightyear is the greatest thing ever.

Emily

Loves her Bitty Baby Twins, she loves her babies and puts them to bed every night in their bunkbeds. She takes them for walks in their doll carriage throughout the house regularly.
She pooped on the potty four times this week. She is still struggling to make the connection between having to tinkle and actually going. She loves to go to school everyday. She is learning how to peddle a bike at school. She loves her teachers at school and tells us that Lois, Lori, Ann and Carol are her favorite friends. She is so incredibly excited to go to swimming lessons in April. She is also going to be starting a preschool tumbling class.

She loves to take baths and pretend to swim in the tub. She washes her own hair. Big girl!

When do siblings have to stop taking baths together? These two LOVE to screw around in the tub together and have the best time playing in the tub. They LOVE to play with all the sea creatures. We play a game and try to find Mr. Ray everytime they take a bath. It's fun. It's our thing.

These two also love to make funny faces in front of the camera. The other night was the first time that I was able to capture it on film.
Ahhhh, good times!

Pelletier Wordle

I had to give this a try too . . . . it's pretty cool. Give it a try at Wordle

How am I doing?

Wow, I can't believe when I re-read my post from yesterday??
My dad would have been 75 years old tomorrow . . . not 73?
I guess it's just proof that I refuse to admit that I am also getting old. I would be happy to just say that I'll be 41 forever!
Anyhow, we had a really nice day with our family today. It was Scout Sunday and all the Scout's at Holy Spirit were there. They had doughnuts after mass.
We headed out to my Mom's house for brunch and spent time talking and remembering stuff about my Dad. Funny stories, etc.
It is hard to believe that he's been gone for 7 months already.

We were getting ready to leave yesterday and Emily said that she wanted to sleep over at Grandma's house, because "I love my Grandma so much!" It was so sweet. She really hasn't spent the night without Louie anywhere. Of course, Louie misses her. But when I called Grandma's house to check in, she was having a ball. She is fascinated by Grandma's big jewlery armoire and she was having a fashion show. Trying each thing on and dancing around the living room with it, then putting it back and trying something else. She's is picking up a love of accessories from her Auntie M. (she's also picked up the love of laying in bed for an hour after she wakes up).

Betty Crocker, eat your heart out!

I did a little bake-a-thon tonight.
We're having brunch tomorrow at my mom's after mass as Holy Spirit. A mass is being said there for my dad, Monday would have been his 73rd birthday.
I made an Alice Hoolihan's Sour Cream Coffee Cake, a delicious cake from the Pioneer Woman website (secret ingredients that can't be disclosed until after everyone eats it) and a pan of those luscious bars pictured below.
Can I just tell you that they are absolutely as delicious as they look in the picture! Oh my goodness! Hello LOVER, let me sink my teeth into you. So good. I would highly recommend moving that to the top of the "recipes I should try list" if you have one of those going.

Hello Lover . . . .

Check out this recipe and I dare you not to try it????
I'll probably give this a whirl on Saturday . . .

Emily's appointment

I forgot to mention Emily's appointment.We have a concern about her being caught up in time to attend mainstream kindergarten, we are hoping that she would be able to go to Nativity School. Based on the assessment that everyone submitted, she is showing up with the maturity or a 2.9 year old child. A little more than a year behind in development. The speech therapy, physical therapy and occupational therapy that she receives at school right now is doing wonders for her, but she's not progressing as well as we had hoped. So, in order to be assured that she is going to receive the therapy through the summer (May-September is a long time to go with nothing), he is writing her current evaluation to say that she is borderline on the cerebral palsy spectrum and will require treatment through the summer and all next school year. If necessary, this diagnosis on her record will keep her alligned to receive the services needed through St. Paul Schools. I have always be leary of having a label of "cerebral palsy" attached to her as I don't want it to follow Emily throughout her whole schooling. However, right now she needs the special attention and treatment that goes along with that diagnosis. Dr. Tervo also gave Dan a book on toilet training your "special child." We're doing what we can right now, we're just waiting for the lightbulb to go off in Emily's head so that she will be more confident in herself to be fully trained.

The latest and greatest

So, several people have asked what happened at our house on Tuesday morning. Here's the low down:
Emily had an appointment at Gillette for her annual evaluation with Dr. Tervo, the pediatric neurologist on Tuesday morning at 8:45am. I planned to go to the appointment and then work from home for the rest of the day. On Monday night, Louie was complaining that he was hot and his tummy hurt. We were eating dinner and he got down and went to the living room. He started making these weird noises, Dan said "oh, he's been making sick sounding noises lately." But, I had a feeling. I went to the LR to find him throwing up all over the floor. He was feeling better on Tuesday morning, but I really didn't think it was a good idea to bring a kid that was sick the night before to Gillette and spread the joy to the patients there.
So, Dan was getting ready to go, I was in Louie's room getting laundry organized and I heard a really loud pop and buzzing sound. All the lights in the house went out. I went to the back room where the circuit box is and smelled this horrible smell. I opened up the closet and the smell was really bad. I quickly called Lynch's house to see if they could recommend an electrician to come and take a look. I called Xcel energy to see if there was anything weird on their end. No, but when I said that it smelled weird, they sent someone out immediately.
Dan left with Louie and Emily. He dropped Lou off at Lynch's house and went to Gillette with Emily.
Mark from Highland Electric showed up and so did someone from Xcel Energy. The immediately turned all power to our house at the meter outside. They came in and looked. The main breaker had tripped, but upon further investigation, it tripped because there was a short between one of the circuit breakers and the main breaker. It melted the main breaker to the electrical panel and thus caused the trip. Both the Xcel guy and Mark, the electrician said that we are very lucky we were home. If we had not been home, we surely would have returned to house that was burned to the ground as the current was still coming in from the meter and that could have continued to melt the panel more and cause a fire.
Thankfully, I was home. Dan couldn't smell a thing??? and had I not mentioned that I smelled something weird, Xcel or the electrician wouldn't have been to our house in 15 minutes and shut everything down.
The root of the problem is that when the house was rewired in 1997, the electrician at the time used aluminum wiring in the circuit box rather than copper. It isn't as durable as copper. It became loose in the connection and thus caused the problem.
There you have it. We now have a new panel and all new circuits in our house.
We all spent the day at Lynch's house on Tuesday as they had to shut down power to our house for several hours to get everthing repaired and install a new circuit panel.
We are sooooo thankful that we were home at the time, had it been 15 minutes later, we would not have been.

My final assignment

Today, I had to submit my last assignment for The Photographer's Workshop. The assignment was an evaluation of progress, basically submitting a picture before and after.
Well, here's my before:

Notice how it's out of focus? it was shot in full auto mode (the green square) and used a flash.

Doesn't follow the rule of thirds or have any sort of compositional value to it what so ever.

My "after" picture:

Follows the rule of thirds, exposure is good, it is in focus and I didn't use a flash. The only light in the picture is the light from the piano lamp in front of the kids. This is one of my favorite pictures that I took during the class. I just love it.

I took both of these pictures from the exact same spot at my sisters house, one year apart.