Kelly’s Blog

Every now and then I realize that it’s been a while since I last updated.  Today is that day!

So, what’s up in our little world?  We’ve been super busy this summer.  We got season passes to Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun (amusement and water park near us).   We got at least once or twice a week!  The kids have a blast there.  Bryce even likes it!  He splashes and plays ball in the pools and loves to float.  Our neighborhood pool finally opened this summer, but it’s 3 feet deep at the shallow end so I don’t want to take the kids by myself.  We go after dinner every now and then, but we’ll wait until next summer or so to go without Dad.

Grant starts school in less than 2 weeks now!  I can’t believe how fast summer went.  He’s getting really excited now.  We bought all of his school supplies including a Batman backpack and lunch box so he thinks he’s cool now.  I’m exicted to get him out of the house all day, but I’m sad to let him go too!  Jared will hopefully start preschool soon too.  He just needs to wear underwear and stop having “accidents.”  I quote that because it’s not really accidents, it’s that he doesn’t care.  He could wear diapers until he’s 14 for all he cares.  It’s no big deal.  We’ve tried everything under the sun to potty-train him for over a year now (off and on.)  Everyone says to just wait until they’re ready and all that.  He is ready, he just doesn’t care!  Ugh.  I could go on, but I get so frustrated everytime I think about it.

As far as knitting, I’ve been keeping busy too.  I made 20 rectangles for the Handmade Afghans Project.  They put together knitted or crocheted rectangles into afghans and give these to wounded soldiers.  I LOVE this project!  I need to get some more done, but I’ve been busy on other projects too.  I’m anxiously awaiting an “Oddball Blanket” from KnittingHelp.com.  These take a bunch of knitters and we each knit 3 inches of 300 stitches each (that’s quite a bit more than the baby ones I’ve done!)   I’ve started on another afghan from my stash.  I like to buy yarn on clearance and I have a ton of it!  I have some forest green that I started an afghan with.  I don’t know who will get it, but it’s fun and I’m cleaning up my stash!  I also just finished a log cabin blanket.  I’m going to donate it as soon as I get around to contacting someone who will want it!

I’ll try to do better with updating this.

Yeah. It’s been two months. Time for an update.

Bryce- sitting up now, eating cereal, happy all the time! He tried to pull up today. Crazy kid! He’s too young for that. He got pictures taken this week.

Jared- sick last night. No fever. Just threw up and went to bed. Slept all night (except for asking for a few drinks) and nothing else. Weird kid.

Grant- nothing exciting. Loves drawing and making things now.

Me- knitting up a storm! I’ve done 3 charity baby blankets. My www.knittinghelp.com forum has these blankets that we send around the country and each knit a few inches and send them on. Then they get donated to either preemies or other needy babies at the children’s hospital. I love it :).

Here’s the first one I did. It’s called Mexican Fiesta:

Here’s the preemie blanket called Citrus Punch:

Here’s the Angel Wings baby blanket:

Back to work in full force. I’m teaching 2 nights a week this month. (I teach cake decorating at Michaels.)  Hey, I need the play money!  Plus we have AWANA on Wednesday. (Grant is in Cubbies and I work in the nursery.) Busy busy.

That’s about it.

Yeah, it’s been a while. Here’s an update.

Christmas: We were supposed to leave for Iowa the Saturday before Christmas. Weather sucked so we waited it out for a while. It wasn’t getting any better so we decided to wait until Sunday. Turns out I-29 was closed from St. Joe to the Iowa border (our route) so it was a good thing. It was snowing and very windy- slick and white-out conditions! Sunday, the roads were still kind of yucky until well north of St. Joe, but it was at least bearable- just snow, no ice! (It took about 5 hours.) We had dinner and opened presents at Jon’s mom’s house. Stayed the night at his dad’s house. He has one of the extra rooms upstairs and one downstairs. Jon and Grant slept downstairs and I stayed upstairs with Bryce and Jared. Jared slept with me and Bryce ended up with me about halfway through the night when he decided he didn’t like the crib anymore! It is NOT fun sleeping with a baby and an almost-3-year-old!

Monday afternoon, we headed to my parent’s house. It’s about a 2 1/2 hour drive. Tuesday morning we opened a few presents when my sister got there. Then headed to my aunt and uncle’s (another 45 minutes in the car). Had lunch and opened presents there. Jon and I went to my Grandma’s to try to get her new digital frame working, but it didn’t. Headed back to my parent’s after that for more presents.

Wednesday was time for Jared’s birthday party. We had it in Ames (part way between both parents and sort-of on our way home.) There’s another 45 minutes tacked onto the trip. After the party, we headed back home (another 3 1/2 hours in the car). Bryce did AMAZINGLY well in all the car trips! He cried most of the way to Iowa for Thanksgiving and back so we were bracing for the worst. We of course got a ton of presents and ate a LOT.

Jon went back to work Thursday, Friday and Monday. Had today off of course (New Year’s)

Nothing too exciting for the holiday here. Little kids do that to you! I knitted and chatted on KnittingHelp. We did a knit-a-long washcloth. Here’s mine:

Also finished the Quinn bag, well except for the strap. Still trying to decide what to do for that!

Grant goes back to preschool on Friday and it’s back to life as usual!

Christmas is right around the corner and we’re as busy as ever. Three kids is a handful while attempting to shop! I’m so anxious for Grant to start school and Jared to go to preschool. I can’t wait to have only one kid for a few hours a day and 2 for even longer. Not that I don’t love the kids dearly, but I need a break and it’s HARD work getting all three pottied/changed, dressed, bundled, shoed, buckled, fed, and out the door! Then, we get one thing done and Bryce is hungry or we forgot this or that, or Jared falls asleep on the way, or well….you get the picture! To top it off, Jon usually takes off a few days (at least) in Nov/Dec to burn vacation before he loses it. Well, this year he didn’t have to, so I’m at it all alone AND he takes of for Detroit for a work trip for 2 days with almost no warning!!!! Not to mention the crappy weather to keep us inside and him working on the basement when we could be doing things-STILL!

Anyway, I made candy buckets for friends and teachers this week and some cookies for AWANA nursery helpers. (I’m one of them.) Also, got Christmas letters and Jared’s party invites out. We’re doing a party in Iowa right after Christmas. I just don’t want to come home, clean, and all that junk so we’re staying an extra day and having it there. As far as Christmas letters, my document that I use to print the labels sucks. It was a mail merge, but for some reason it doesn’t work when I try to reopen it. It has addresses with the wrong names, people that I don’t send letters to on it, etc. It’s more work trying to fix it than to just redo it, but I’m too stupid to figure that out until I’ve worked it all out and look back.

It’s been a busy week so I haven’t had much time for anything else. Can you tell I’m stressed? I can’t wait for next week. Then I go back to work the next. I’m not ready for that AT ALL! Oh well.

It’s been a few days, but I’m still around. Sunday was the usual church and then I went scrapbooking! It was my first crop since Bryce was born. It was so nice to get away without a kid and do something for myself! Sunday night Jon bowled.

Monday was usual. Nothing too exciting- preschool and errands. Bryce slept 6 hours again! YAY!

Tuesday Bryce had his 2 month checkup. He is in the 31st percentile for height and weight and 59th for head. Go figure. Jared was always 25/30/95. Gotta love my big-headed (literally!) kids. He got 4 shots and an oral vaccine. The 4 shots were expected as the other 2 had them at their 2 month checkups. The oral vaccine was for rotavirus. Apparently it’s new since they were babies. Oh well. Anything to help my baby keep from getting sick.

Wednesday I went to preschool. Grant’s preschool has a parent helper each day and it was my turn. It was pretty fun. A bunch of the kids are the same from last year so it’s fun watching them all grow up. Jon stayed home with Jared and Bryce and took Jared to the dentist. He had some dental work done in May, complete with going under at the children’s hospital, and this was his 6 month checkup. He passed, but didn’t like it! Then, Grant’s been bugging us that he needs his hair cut so we met at Great Clips. The 3 biggest boys all got haircuts. Grant and Jared got suckers too. I think that’s really the only reason they want haircuts, but they were in need. I went to AWANA and worked in the nursery and Grant to Cubbies like usual. My room (1-2 year olds) only had one kid and the baby room had 2 so we combined. We were missing 3 helpers so it was good it was a slow night.

Today, it’s snowing. We’ve probably got a few inches. It’s very pretty, but cold. It was supposed to be freezing rain, so I’m glad it’s just snow! Good thing we have no plans for tonight. We’ll see if school is called off tomorrow. They like to cancel school around here for a flurry. They were closing early already today. We NEVER got out of school when I was a kid. It kind of sucked, but then again, we never had to go halfway through June with make-up days either!

Well, not so bad here, but Iowa got it worse!

My parents were supposed to come down today and go to the Singing Christmas Tree at my church, but the weather changed plans. It started raining here in the middle of the night. I think it was warm enough that it was never freezing rain here, but further north, it was. They ended up with a mess of an ice storm and canceled plans. I took Grant with me instead. It lasted about 1 1/2 hours and he did really well for a 5 year-old! He did get bored towards the end, but he liked the singing and dancing. Santa even made a few appearances. The tree is 40 feet tall and has about 100 people in it singing along with lights coordinated to the music. There were dancers, drummers, a full orchestra, kids singing and all sorts of fun things.

Went to Applebees for dinner. Jared fell asleep on the way and slept until his dinner got there. Had one comment on his eye. (He fell last week and cut it open pretty bad on the humidifier. He’s got a “butterfly bandage” on it. Grant asked me where the butterflies were when he saw it. It’s hard to explain that to a 5 year old.) Nothing else too exciting. That’s it for today.

Yeah, I know I haven’t posted since my first day. So, here’s an update.

Grant went to preschool today. They went to a tree farm and cut down their class Christmas tree. He had to get his outer part of his coat on and find some mittens to wear. It was in the lower 30s this morning. That’s pretty cool for him being outside all morning. We almost missed it. I went back to sleep after my shower. Bryce was up LATE last night and fell back asleep after his 7:00 feeding. I expected him or Jared to be waking me up, so I just went back to sleep. I woke up at about 8:45- the time we should be leaving. Jared and Bryce wore their jammies and Grant got dressed and brushed his teeth while I got everything else done. Ugh.

Bryce is 2 months old as of yesterday. He’s still not sleeping through the night. The other two were great sleepers early on, so I’m not too disappointed. I figure I was lucky with the first 2 so it’s only fair! He wakes up 1-3 times and usually goes right back to sleep so it’s not bad. He does finally sleep in his crib well though. I’m trying to get used to sleeping with the buzzing monitor instead of his moaning. (He moans and makes all sorts of noises while he sleeps.) At least I don’t have to listen to him hit his hands on the sides of the bassinet anymore!

Knitting- working on my Quinn bag, trying to finish the Pinwheel Sweater (ugh-sleeves) and I have a star on the needles that just needs to be seamed up (can’t take it off until I have the needle to thread through the last 5 stitches.)

Basement- almost done! Jon has just a few more pieces to paint until spring. (He’ll have to take out the door and windows to finish some but not until it’s warm out.) He spent last night down there again while I watched Survivor and part of Grey’s Anatomy. Grant watched Survivor with me. I thought he didn’t pay attention, but he knew who was going to be voted off and then went down and told Jon when he was right. Haha! Grey’s was a rerun so I didn’t watch too much of it. Darn writer’s strike!

I’m starting a blog. We’ll see just how interesting my life is…Nothing exciting yet. I’m going to play. Have fun!