We Wish You a Merry Christmas!

Love,
Baby Micah, Hopie, Nova Jo, Juneau, Kaleb, and Secily

add it to the list of bad ideas....

as you may know, on Sunday we are setting out for the long car trip to ohio. My whole family is going to be home for Christmas and staying at my parents house (5 kids, 6 grandkids plus my parents), and we are doing some family portraits while we are all home. i thought it might be a good idea for everyone to get haircuts this week before the pictures, so i scheduled Cris and Nova for haircuts (Juneau's looks - or rather LOOKED - ok, and i just had mine cut).

Being fairly new to the area, i booked the appt with a hairdresser we had never been to.

bad idea. very very bad idea. "Auntie Linda", as she likes to be called, and I do not have the same idea about what looks good as far as hair is concerned.

Nova was first. she was a super star for her first haircut. my goal was to get rid of the mullet. Unfortunately, somehow linda actually made the mullet MORE prominent, by cutting all of nova's hair on top straight across her forehead (and crooked, at that), then leaving the back all long.

I didn't really realize how bad Nova's looked until it dried, so when she insisted on giving Juneau's bangs a little trim, i complied.

Juneau didn't really have bangs before, and now she has her little baby hairs (which i treated like bangs), and then a weird chunk of hair in the middle, then the rest of her hair.

Finally, poor poor cris. She took to his head with the clippers and the result left much to be desired. It's a weird length - too long to be a buzz cut, to short to be a normal cut. and then there are the bangs. yes, she buzzed the whole thing all the same length, and then left him bangs. so very odd.

all that to say, scheduling everyone in the family for haircuts with an unknown hairdresser is now on my list of bad idea. please remind me of that next time we are about to capture our entire family in formal portraits forever.

The girls are currently obsessed with all things "Little Einstein". Nova is also into putting anything and everything into her mouth (including sucking on her own dirty socks until they are covered in drool). Here she is giving her special drool treatment to Quincy.

Since the girls aren't really into riding in the sling anymore (and i'm not sure my shoulder/back could even handle it!) Nova tried it out to carry around Elmo in.

It worked pretty well!

I work a long long day tomorrow and saturday, and then we hit the road!

Can't wait to see the fam in just a few days!

"gorgeous!"

Juneau yesterday took a look at the big blue Colorado sky and announced "The blue sky is Gorgeous!". So cute. She's also gotten into using a lot of made-up words. Her current favorite madeup words are "Gwee-gwice" and "Squee-squosh".

We are gearing up for the big road trip. We leave on Sunday for our 20 hour drive....we'll keep you posted on how that goes. I anticipate i will be at least partially insane by the time we arrive.

Nova, excited to spend 2 weeks in O-H-I-O with the fam!

Juneau's been into pufffing her belly out after she eats. She makes it as big as she can, and then says "Juneau's tummy BIIIIIIG, rub it sissy!" Here she was balancing her sippy on her "biiiig tummy"
Today the girls got Christmas cards in the mail from Aunt Nutkin. They each play Christmas carols when you open them up. Unfortunately "Feliz Navidad", and "Deck the Halls" don't sound so great when played simultaneously! They LOVED the cards and kept opening and closing them. "Fun" for whole household!

Nova chillin' out with dad by the fireplace

The girls rough housing with daddy before bed

cold, i mean really really cold.

by the time i made it to work his morning it was 8 degrees BELOW zero! Seriously, people, this is craziness! I can barely stand to even set foot outside the front door! I am getting some serious cabin fever (or as my mom call it "caged animal").

I do want to say a sincere thank you for all of the heartfelt concern about my blood pressure. I have gotten emails, comments, phone calls, and letters checking in on me. I don't have much of an update. I did start some medication last week, but i haven't checked my BP since i've been on the new med. I feel really good though, so maybe it is working. anyway, now that i am really concious about my BP I have been able to really be aware of the times i am getting overwhelmed and stressed out, and i am trying to take a step back and relax when i realize it is happening. I am also really watching my sodium intake (although i have never been a salt-lover), and quit caffeine cold turkey. so, i'll let you know how things look when i finally get around to taking my BP.

So, enough about boring old Blood Pressure....let's talk about adorable baby girls! The cutie pies are doing well. Nova has been a bit challening the last couple of weeks, as she has figured out how to throw a fit. what's really funny, though, is as soon as she starts up with the fit, she heads straight over to the time out mat and plops herself down. We don't have to say a word. It's a little sequence:

1. Nova starts crying over something silly

2. she head over to the time out mat

3. she cries for a couple of minutes

4. she announces "happy"

5. she head back out ot the living room to play.

In other news, as was inevitable, the magic of the magic bracelet has started to wear off. they still want bracelets before bed, but then Juneau starts the "mama, mama" chant and crying just a few minutes after bed.

However, I have discovered the Parental Secret Weapon - The Guilt Trip. One night i told juneau "mommy is sooooo sad when you cry at night. When you go to sleep without crying it makes mom so happy! so try really hard not to cry, so mommy will be happy not sad".

not a peep out of that kiddo after the pep talk.

Juneau started playing a funny game this week. she tucks her hand up in her sleeve then tries to get you to look inside her sleeve, and pops her hand out and tickles you. Here she is in the midst of the trick.

Love these girls...

Disney On Ice - Denver!!

We were so fortunate today to be able to take the girls to an AWESOME performance of Disney on Ice in Denver, courtesy of the Feld Family Activator Program! I was a little unsure about the show being able to hold the girls attention, but boy was i surprised! Juneau especially was fascinated by the ice skaters, and their amazing costumes, props, and choreography. She didn't take her eyes off the ice for the entire 2 hour show (Except to get some popcorn and cotton candy at intermission!). Even Nova was fascinated, especially during the 2nd half when the Fairy Princesses were entertaining her with their spinning, dancing, and fairy dust tossing. They even had fairy princesses floating through the air! This is a definate MUST SEE if you are in the Denver area! A perfect performance for all ages. Click on the picture of the flyer for details about the show and a special coupon code

Here is Nova, excited before heading to Denver for the big show!

Ariel and the Prince were amazing!

Juneau loved the Lion King performance. There were some really cool animal props and constumes, and Juneau just kept saying "Lion King, Lion King" through the whole performance

Of course, Mickey, Minney, Goofey, and Juneau's favorite - Donald - were in attendance! Our seats were AMAZING, and we were so close Juneau thought Mickey was actually waving at her!

Nova LOVING the fairy princesses in the second half of the show

During the intermission Juneau just had to have some cotton candy, which came with this very cool Lightening McQueen souvenier hat!

We had an amazing time at the show! Like i said, if you live in the Denver area, don't miss it!

COUPON CODE! Purchase 4 tickets for the Monday through Friday matinee show for $44, or save $4 off weekend performances by using the code "MOM" when you checkout online.

After the show, we of course got to hang out with our blogger buddies from Pho For Five.
The kids were soooo cute together today, and really played well. It was so nice to get to spend some time chatting and laughing with Laurie and Travis.

Jackson and Juneau having fun with the Train Table.

Hanging out with Jackson. He is seriously adorable.

Can you tell Jbug was excited to be there!?

Finley is only a few weeks older than Nova. I really think they look like they could be sisters!

In fact, the first time we got to actually meet Finley, Juneau kept calling Nova "sissy one" and Finley "sissy two"All the kids (and the grown ups!) enjoyed some delicious Vietnamese food for lunch.

Are they not the cutest bunch of kiddos you've ever seen! What a crazy crew!

The One Where I Talk About How My Job Might Actually Kill Me

I went to the doctor (well, actually to the nurse practioner) last month for my annual army physical. My blood pressure was high, but i thought it was just because i was having a kind of stressful day (it was the week i was Dr. Death). She recommended i do a Five Day BP check.

Today at my BP check my blood pressure was 210/126. And that was while i was sitting and relaxing. First it was 180/107, so the nurse said "hmmmm.....lets check that on the other arm". Well, the other arm was not quite as friendly, and gave us 210/126. At which point i realize i am probably going to have a stroke while i am sitting right there in the chair. luckily i didn't. But I guess what freaks me out is that if my blood pressure is so freakishly high when i am just sitting in a chair, what in the world is it doing when i'm in the O.R. with an emergency c-section, while getting hammer paged from the ER, and all the while wishing i could just sleep 7 consecutive hours without any babies crying. I don't mean to complain about my job. it's really not that the job is so terribly stressful, it's more that i'm just not handling the stress very well.

I am frustrated with the fact that i spent 12 years training to be a doctor, that i have finally made it to being an OB/GYN (although i still have 2 more years before i am technically Board Certified - does the training ever end!), and that the majority of patient's i deal with every day are rude and entitled. That patient's (and their husbands) feel it is appropriate to curse and yell at the medical staff, and to threaten us with complaints to the Patient Representative if they don't get what they want. Just yesterday I had a patient's husband DEMAND that she be induced that very day, regardless of the fact that her due date was 2+ weeks away. She was in pain, and if I didn't agree to induce her he was going straight to the patient rep to complain about the medical care. Although I know i was right not to agree to an unindicated induction, it is still such a pain to have to deal with the patient rep, which often means the physician has to actually call the patient and APOLOGIZE that they were unsatisified with their medical care! What has this profession become! In the end i agreed to do an amniocentesis on this crazy patient to document that her baby's lungs were mature, then do an induction. so yes, she got her way. But who in their right mind would CHOOSE to have a giant needle stuck into their uterus just so that they can be induced 2 weeks early?

To add to the drama i was contacted by the Patient Rep at Tripler this week to inform me a former patient was seeking compensation due to the fact that she didn't like her hysterectomy scar. I have to say I am very, VERY careful with my incisions. Probably to a fault. Sometimes it takes me 30 minutes to get the incision closed the way i want it (compared to the 3 minutes it takes to just staple it closed - which i don't do). So this girl has had THREE c/sections, and a hysterectomy....there is no way her abdominal scar is going to be perfect. So she is trying to sue me, the last one who operated on her, so she can get an abdominoplasty paid for. It's so so so painful to have to deal with this kind of crap.

It is so hard to understand how much i have sacrificed over the last 12 years to become a physician, and now i spend my day, every day, trying to satisfy patients who just can't be satisifed, and trying to keep from getting sued. It is depressing that i gave up so much of my life for this.

So now i am going through everything i can to figure out what changes i need to make to get this BP at least out of the stroke-out range. this means giving up things that i LOVE, like caffeine (i usually drink one Grande Vanilla Latte, and at least 2 cans of diet coke/day). I don't know what else it means giving up. I don't have much of an option as far as the job goes. I can't cut back on my hours since i am employed by the U.S. Army for the next 3 years (oh yes, which adds to the stress that when Obama sends 30,000 troops to afghanistan this year, they are going to need a WHOLE LOT of doctors to go, and i will probably find myself in the desert sometime soon).

so anyway, this is a big, long, ranting post basically to say i am basically a walking ball of stress and anxiety, and it's driving me to an early grave!

Either that or i am allergic to Colorado and cold weather, and they army should send me back to Hawaii to keep me from stroking!

Hello, December

I can't believe 2009 is almost over! We are ready for a whirlwind finish to our year. In 3 weeks we load up the minivan with lots of presents, 2 little girls, 1 little dog, and make the 21 hour drive to Ohio. We contemplated trying to fly, but there is just too much stuff to move from Colorado to Ohio, and we still have some stuff in storage in Ohio that needs to make it back to Colorado. So minivan it is!

Not a whole lot to write about tonight, so i will just add some pictures from the week.

Here you can see Nova in one of her "Princess" dresses.

The girls' new favorite toy is a bag of little glass marbles i had bought at the craft store. They are literally obsessed with these "beads". They talk about beads all day long, and love to get them out and transfer them from one container to another. Cris found this cardboard tube, and they love sending the beads down the tube.

Favorite snack Fruit with a variety of dips.

Delicious!

Nova rockin' in her PJ's before bed

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving was certainly a little different this year than last year (and not just the weather!) Last year we had 3 separate Thanksgiving celebrations (one with the Tripler crew, one with the University of Hawaii crew, and one with our Hawaii Cousins Tim, Beth and Melody). This year we celebrated just as a little family of four. It was actually kind of fun to sit around the table with just our own little family, but it did make me miss the friends we left in Hawaii, and our families in Ohio.
We were lucky enough to get to Skype in the morning with Mammaw, Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt D, Aunt Coral and Uncle Ed, Alex, Lyndsey and Brent. The girls really enjoyed getting to see everyone on the computer screen, and it made us feel a little closer to home.
Today we of course had to head out into the Black Friday craziness (you know me, i can't miss a good deal!) This year we opted out of getting in line with the truly dedicated bargain shoppers on the night before the big day, and decided to sleep in as long as the girls would let us (which happened to be 6:30 a.m.), and then just head out to see what was left of the bargains. We were super lucky to score a couple of the things we were looking for kind of by luck. I have been wanting a KitchenAid mixer for about 5 years, and was hoping this would be the year i could find a good deal. We ended up at Walmart around 8:30 a.m., and of course all of the Kitchen Aid's were long gone....until Cris spotted an employee restocking the shelves, and what should be in her cart but the Kitchen Aid! He swooped it up and now i can't wait for Christmas to roll around so i can try it out! A lucked into a similar re-stocking incident with Hungry Hungry Hippos (which we thought was also sold out), but it wasn't nearly as exciting as the Kitchen Aid.

The girls were little shopping Angels, and didn't mind us hauling them around from store to store to try to find a bargain at all. The were super cheery and giggly all day long, and we really had a great time. Of course we ended the day at the local mall, which has a fantastic kids play area - a.k.a. a Swine Flu Germ Pool. The girls LOVE the play area, and always get excited when we get to the mall and scream "Shopping-Play" all the way in. Juneau is obsessed with the Little Einsteins TV show right now, and everytime she went down the slide she would raise her arms up in the air and shout "Blastoff". So cute.

I tried to dress the girls Festively for the Holiday Shopping Extravaganza, and they looked so cute!

Endless hours of fun with a Laundry Basket

Love that Smile!

Cute Little Bug

love the footies

nothing in the world cuter than 2 baby girls in footie pajamas!

feeling so very much better!
This is pretty much how daddy dresses his "girls" these days. As you can see, Juneau is wearing the "i love dirt" shirt, and Nova is wearing the "junior ace" airplane shirt. Fortunately Juneau's hair is long enough that she doesn't get called "little boy" anymore. Nova's still sporting the serious mullet, and gets called a boy pretty much every day (especially when daddy is in charge of the wardrobe). I'm thinking of instead of trying to get rid of the Mullett, maybe i will just really shape it up into a full-on mullet any white-trash-trailerpark-middle-aged-man would be proud of.

My Favorite Ohio State-Michigan Game

Today we celebrated another Buckeye win over that hated team from up north. The fact that this was the 6th straight win for the Buckeyes and that several times during the game, when the commentators said "Michigan" loudly enough to grab her attention, I got to hear Nova, who was playing quietly in the middle of the floor stop momentarily and say "Michigan...YUCK!" could have made this my favorite installment of the greatest rivalry in sports...But it didn't.

My second fall in Columbus (1992), my brother-in-law to be, Ed and I were in the Horseshoe when the Buckeyes intercepted the ball on the final play of a 13-13 game and looked momentarily like they were going to run it all the way back for a touchdown but didn't and ended the game in a tie (this was before OT in college football). The fact that this was the first OSU-Michigan game I ever attended could make this my favorite...But it's not.

In 1995, I stood on the sideline in Ann Arbor as a student athletic trainer, as our highly ranked and undefeated team, led by Heisman winner Eddie George needed only to win to clinch a Rose Bowl berth. Even though I walked away from the game with one of Michigan's game balls (which I still have) when one of our defensive back carried it off the field after an interception, the fact that we lost 31-23 makes this clearly NOT my favorite.

In 2005, our first year in Hawaii, the Buckeyes came from 9 points down with 7:00 minutes left with the winning touchdown with 24 seconds left to win and I jumped around the living room so wildly that I woke up Emilie who was sound asleep on the couch after being on call the night before.

The following year, the #1 ranked Buckeyes beat the #2 ranked Wolverines in a shootout 42-39 to advance to the national championship game.

Last year the Buckeyes decimated the Loserines 42-7.

All great games but none of these are my favorite...

In 1994, the Buckeyes were stuck in the midst of a 0-5-1 streak against Michigan. But that year, the game was in Columbus and hopes were high that we'd get back in the win column. That year, my sister Coral had a brilliant idea...as an early Christmas present, she would give up her ticket, we'd buy the ticket off our other roommate and I would take my grandpa and dad to the game.
Though both were die-hard and lifelong Buckeye fans, neither had ever actually been to an Ohio State-Michigan game so we knew they would love it!

When game-day arrived it was a typical freezing November afternoon in Columbus. That day as I climbed up to the upper deck of the 'Shoe with my grandpa and dad, I could feel all the eyes zeroing in on us...it was probably because our seats with right in the middle of a student section and I was parading up the steps with a 70 year old farmer completely decked out in his overalls and Dekalb hat. I actually looked out of place in our party as my dad was attired similarly to grandpa.

My grandpa had spent spent pretty much everyday of his adult life when he wasn't going to church or in the army wearing a pair of overalls so why would a cold day at a football game be any different?

Wearing the overalls even at a young age...


The farmers' standard issue uniform

Overalls even in formal family photos...

That day was destined to be great as the Buckeyes came out strong and began making plays. Each time the crowd rose to respond to a big play, there was my grandpa and dad cheering just as loudly as anyone. It became clear to everyone else in our section that these two "old dudes" were as big of Buckeye fans as anyone and it wasn't long before the drunk fraternity guys were back-slapping and high-fiveing my grandpa and dad after every big play as Ohio State built a commanding lead.

As the final seconds ticked down on the Buckeyes 22-6 win and brought an end to the losing streak against Michigan, the fans stormed the field. We stood in the upper deck and laughed as the cops did their best to keep the horde of fans from tearing down the goal posts (and were successful I might add).

After the initial ruckus died down, the three of us ventured down out of the stands and walked out onto the field at Ohio Stadium...it was clear my grandpa and dad were loving every minute of the experience.

I'm sure the next day as they took their normal Sunday afternoon nap that their dreams were a little sweeter as they reflected on the day.

Every year, when I'm watching the Big Game, I think about that day. It was especially on my mind today as this was the first Ohio State-Michigan game since my grandpa passed away last January.

In his 84 years on this earth, that game was the only time he got to see his beloved Buckeyes play Michigan in person. But I'm sure that today he was looking down from high above the stadium in Ann Arbor and I'd like to think he was fondly remembering the last time he'd seen an OSU-Michigan game in person...

...And when the final seconds ticked down on the Buckeyes 21-10 win, I know grandpa was smiling.