Thank goodness for the kitchen

The weather has been so chilly/ dreary/ rainy/windy for the last week, it has really put me in a "blah" kind of mood. I am so glad we got Isabella this kitchen for Christmas, she didn't play with it a whole lot at first, but now that she is a few months older she is SO into playing kitchen. It has been her main source of entertainment for the last week, since we haven't been able to play outside. It's funny how we were stuck inside all winter, and I didn't mind it a bit, but now that we've had a taste of warm weather, I'm ready to go stir crazy inside the house for a week straight!

How Depressing

You more than likely won't see any posts similar to the last few for a couple days. This morning it was 29 degrees and the ground was covered in a fresh coat of SNOW!

Fully Loaded

Isabella's Jeep is now fully loaded with all the extras! There's a place in it where it must have once had a cell phone attached, so she took her little play cell phone out and put it in that spot. We also attached a horn that is actually a bicycle horn, she loves that thing! But the radio, yes it has a radio, only works some of the time, but I don't care. I can't complain, the thing was free.

Stopping to make a call, but my goodness it's windy, I need to fix my hat.

There, now I can make my call. I'm talking to my Mama.

Honking my horn. Good thing the neighbors love me, it's a pretty loud horn!

And she's off . . .

87!!

It was 87 degrees here today, how very unusual! And now the highs for the next five or so days are in the 40's, very weird. So we made the best of this very warm, but windy day. We spent the remainder of the day after Isabella's long nap outside. Monte and Isabella got most of the garden planted, and we cleaned out/organized our storage shed which is slowly getting taken over by baby items that will hopefully be needed again in the future. We also got some of her outdoor toys out, like her sandbox and her dinosaur. Despite both Monte and my allergies acting up, a very good day.

She's home!

I ducked out of Bible Study a little early this morning to go meet my mother-in-law and pick up Isabella. She had a GREAT time at "Mama's". In fact she told me as we were leaving she wanted to go home with Mama. :( She was telling me on the way home about all she did, she got to ride the four wheeler, play on Mama's swingset, blow bubbles, check the cows with Grandpa, and play babies with Mama. She went down for a nap as soon as we got home, and she is now 3 and a half hours into it, I think it's safe to say she's worn out. She came home to an extremely clean house, since I had lots of time on my hands the past couple of days. Besides lots of cleaning, I went on several walks and runs while she was gone, and Monte and I had our date night, which was wonderful. I realized she doesn't have much for summer clothes, and I got some great deals on clothes for her at JC Penney's and Target when Monte and I went out. I really have to set limits for myself while shopping for her, have I mentioned how much I LOVE having a little girl, and the little sundresses they have out now have got to be some of the cutest things EVER! I think she's going to be wearing a lot of sundresses this summer because A) I'm a girly girl, thus I will dress her in dresses as long as she complies, which will hopefully be a long time since she is exhibiting a lot of my girly girl tendancies, and B) dresses seem like the easiest option for someone who has recently become potty trained. And now her hair is getting long enough for me to actually do a few things with it, oh my goodness I'm just giddy about all this girly-ness!

And as requested, my new wheels . . .

I've got a funny feeling . . .

Monte's parents have been wanting Isabella to come stay with them for a few days, so we decided since Monte has to go near there for work today he could take her up there. They left about an hour ago, and it is such a weird feeling for me to be home without having her here, even though this isn't the first time. We told her yesterday that she was going, and since then she has been talking a mile a minute about how excited she is to go, and telling us all the things she's going to do there. Her first words when she got up this morning were, "I'm going to Mama's (grandma) house today, Mama's going to be so cited to see me!" So for the next couple of days, it's just going to be Monte and I here, which will be kind of nice, but I'm sure going to miss that little girl too! I've got plenty to do while she's gone, I want to get lots of cleaning done, including bigger cleaning projects that don't get done as often as they should, like cleaning out the china cabinet, and washing everything inside. Right now it has a lovely layer of dust over everything, I don't remember the last time it got cleaned out. Before I had Isabella I did it once every month or two, funny how that works. :) I also have 150 little table decorations to make for the upcoming mother/daughter banquet at our church, there are only three of us planning it and doing all the work. And tonight, Monte and I are going on a date - dinner and possibly a movie, and shopping for a new lawn mower since ours went kaput at the end of last summer.

The Rest of the Day

The rest of the day on Friday was so beautiful, our warmest day yet! Monte was home almost all day, Isabella spent A LOT more time in her new Jeep, and she and Monte even planted a row of onions in the garden. It's still too cold to plant most of the other things though. Monte got the garden tilled while Isabella watched, and ate her snack from her Jeep. It's so good to finally get outside, I'm so excited for summer, Isabella has started asking me everyday if we can go swimming! Umm, I think it will be a while yet for that! :) The rest of the weekend was colder, and this morning was not so good as I had a whopper of a migraine. I spent a good portion of the morning on the couch, unable to move, while Isabella happily and noisily played 2 centimeters from my face. She did, however, give me her blanky and pat and kiss me several times to make me feel better. And she succeeded in getting me off the couch by having a HUGE accident in her underwear! "I thought it was just a toot", she proclaimed. Oh well. And now, my migraine med has finally kicked in, and I'm good to go. AND the weather is supposed to be awesome the whole rest of the week!

Shoveling in the garden.

Planting onions with Daddy.

Sorry, I don't have any pictures of the car yet.

Sometimes the best things are free . . .

Monte's sister gave us this Barbie Jeep last year for Isabella, since their daughter is older and done with it. When we told people (the grandparents) we were going to get it out for her this spring, they all said she was too young, and that she wouldn't know how to drive it. And we kind of thought that too. But she proved us all wrong this morning! Even though her little foot barely reaches the "gas" pedal, she can make that thing go. And she just thinks she is all that driving her own car by herself! It was so much fun watching her have so much fun with it. I've said it before, but some of the best moments of my life have been seeing my child having so much fun, and being so excited! We are LOVING this warmer weather, it has been in the upper 50's here lately (go ahead and laugh you people from the south). :) I love getting hand me downs, there is no way we ever would have bought this for her otherwise, these things are expensive! And not only did Isabella get a "new car" yesterday but we did too, or should I say I did, it's mostly for me to drive anyway as Monte has his Durango for work. But I don't really like saying it's mine, I prefer to say both vehicles are "ours". Our old car had 180,000 miles on it!! And then the air went out, so it wasn't worth fixing it. We traded it in for one that's only 2 years old, and has 20,000 miles, that should be a little more reliable I would say. :)

And I just threw this random picture of her swinging this morning in here too. We just got her swing up a couple days ago.

Amazing!

Monte has been injecting himself with the new med for about 7 weeks now, the results are absolutely amazing to us!! He's off all other drugs, he just injects himself once every 2 weeks. We are constantly talking about how we can't even believe this is happening. He says he hasn't felt this good in the last SEVEN years. Even his best days in the last seven years don't even compare to how good he feels now! I can't even imagine how horrible it must have been for him, it's one thing to watch him, but another thing to actually be going through it, he was very good at hiding how he really felt many times. He said he just expected to always feel that way, and accepted a long time ago that that was how it would be. His weight is also back up into the 150's, he's gained TWENTY pounds just in the last couple of months. He looks so good, I took a picture of him when he was doing really bad a few months ago. I wish I could post a before and after picture on here, but I know there is no way he would let me. He reminds me of someone in a concentration camp in the picture from a few months ago - SO thin, face sunken in, a pale greenish complexion. And now, as you can see from our Easter family picture I posted before, he looks great. And if all that wasn't the best news EVER, there's one thing to top it all off even. He can have dairy products again!!! Once again . . . amazing! It's been about 7 or 8 years since he has tasted anything like milk, cheese, ice cream, etc. Do you know what this means for my cooking?!! I can't wait to try out all sorts of creamy, cheesy dishes! Even as I write this, the tears are flowing down my cheeks - wonderful, happy, THANKFUL tears. We've come a long way since that awful day at the Mayo Clinic about 4 and half years ago, when we were given very little hope that things would get better. We thank God every day for the gift of health he has given Monte. This Easter season truly is a time for us to celebrate the gift of new life, it's like a whole new season in our lives. We know there are ups and downs with this disease, but for right now we are celebrating! I have a healthy family, and I couldn't possibly be any happier. If we hadn't gone through everything we did, I can guarantee you I would not be as appreciative or so happy about having a "normal" life. I would have taken it all for granted, and for that I thank God for our time of suffering. Our priest talked about suffering in the Good Friday homily, how it does one of two things. Suffering can make you angry at God, and make you turn away from Him OR it can be a form of prayer, something to offer up, something that brings you closer to God than you've ever been before. For us, it was the latter.

Recent Pics

Sitting in Grandpa's tractor.

Easter

Hanging out in the hotel pool with cousin Chas.

Children's museum.

Having fun in the toddler room at the Children's museum.

A recap of the past month goes something like this - We went to visit Monte's parents for a couple of days, then Monte left for his two week business trip. During that time Isabella and I travelled to go stay with my parents and then my sister. We were all home for one day when we took off again to attend my dad's birthday bash. Once we arrived home from there, I took off to go pick up my niece and bring her back to stay with us for 5 days. I then took her back, and Isabella and I were stranded at my sister's for a few days while there was a blizzard at home. A couple of hours after Isabella and I finally got home Monte took off for another business trip (but just overnight). Once he got home, he had ANOTHER business trip, last Monday through Thursday in Fargo, ND. And this time Isabella and I went with. We arrived home, exhausted, on Thursday and then travelled another 4 hours on Saturday to spend the next couple of days with my family for Easter. And now we are HOME, and this time I think it will be for a while, not just a day or two and then have to take off again.

Our trip to Fargo was so much fun. Monte's parents joined us, as did our nephew for one of the days. We had so much fun in the hotel pool, shopping, and visiting the local children's museum. Isabella has never been on the go as much as she has the past month, but she handled it SO well. I'm glad she likes car rides because she has spent A LOT of time in the car lately. I'm thinking she's going to be sleeping a lot for at least the next week to get caught up. Last night she went to bed at 6:50, and got up this morning at 8:00, then took a 3 hour nap. I hope we didn't get her too run down.

Back to my regularly scheduled blogging . . .

Not that I have any sort of schedule about it, but I hope it's going to be at least a little more frequent now. We're home finally, it's been a CRAZY but fun past month. I have lots of posts floating around in my head, we'll see if I get time to write them.

Snowed Out

Isabella and I got my niece back to her rightful owners on Monday, right before a big blizzard hit. The weather was fine at my sister's but it was a total blizzard where we live, roads closed and all. Thus I was snowed out until yesterday. It was fine, I like staying with my sister, but I feel like we've hardly been home for the whole month of March, except for the time my niece was staying with us. I was longing for some "just my family" time. We got about two hours of that after we got home, then Monte took off for another trip for work (this time just an overnight trip). I've heard a lot of "Where's my daddy? I need him, I just NEED him!" lately from a certain little girl. We'll have the weekend here, then it's MORE traveling for us coming up, this is crazy! At least I got the main part of the house finally cleaned today.

I think the girls are really going to miss each other, they were together for a whole week. One night I overheard them in the bath telling each other, "I love you.". So sweet! They are quite the pair, on Tuesday this is the conversation I overheard from the 2 two year olds!

Rachel: I don't like this cookie.

Isabella (in a very concerned voice): Oh, you don't like it, you just don't like it Rachel?

Rachel: No

Isabella: Why don't you take a drink of milk, I think that will help you.

(Rachel takes a drink)

Isabella: There there, is that better honey?

Rachel: Ya, thanks Belle.