summer days

after months of huddling around the fireplace, we are soooo happy that summer has arrived in Colorado Springs! You've probably never seen 4 people so thrilled to see 90 degrees....we are loving it!

today we had to do some running around, and we pulled into the driveway just as the sprinklers were turning on. Juneau listened nicely as Daddy told her not to run into the sprinklers, but eventually it got the best of her, and i looked over to see her, fully clothed, standing in the sprinklers giggling. so we let them strip down and enjoy 10 minutes of running around before bedtime tonight. i love these giggly girls!

and yes, the sky does look that gorgeous a good majority of the time.

juneau just loves to take a little drink!
she got a kick out of the fact that "tinkerbell" on her underwear was getting all wet!

Cris has been getting ready for a week-long trip with some friends to Glacier National Park...the girls are enjoying exploring all the hiking and camping gear! and finally, it was a sad sad day today when our Hawaii license plates expired and Cris had to replace them! Hopefully it won't be long until the Aloha plates are back on the van!

A Brief Update from Ohio: my dad was finally transferred out of the ICU today, but only to face a few more roadblocks in his recovery. He developed an Ileus, which is basically what happens when the intestines kind of "fall asleep" after surgery and stop doing their job. So he will have to stop eating and drinking anything for a few days, and also have an NG tube from his nose to his stomach until his intestines decide to start working again. Not a major complication, but still a setback. Also, he has continued to go in and out of Atrial Fibrillation. If he is still having the AFib in the morning they will have to sedate him in order to shock his heart back into a normal rhythm...i'm sure he would like to avoid that if at all possible. We are hoping and praying that he will overcome these roadblocks in his recovery and start improving quickly. please continue to pray for him, as well as for my mom as she spends many long days and nights in the hospital caring for him.

lazy sunday

i am somewhat embarrassed to admit that i spent a good 1/2 of the day in pajamas today. i can't really remember the last time i did that. i'm sure it was some day, long, long ago, before there were kids running around at 6 a.m. :)

We enjoyed the morning playing outside in the beautiful sunshine, and loved every second. Juneau does not like hot things...(she hates hot bath water, doesn't like hot food or drinks), but the child has no fear of cold. She had the water hose running all over her this morning, and LOVED it! She especially thought it was super cool when i showed her how to drink out of it!the girls have been loving this Sand and Water table we got at a garage sale recently....only right now it is only a water water table since we don't have any sand! Nova doesn't mind, and fills it up with rocks and toys!
After we played for a while we enjoyed some delicious Cinnamon roles out on the patio.Nova wanted to be sure to share hers with Elmo. She loves being a "little mommy"
we finished up the morning with the girls playing out in their little pool. i decided to just bring the shampoo down and let them take their bath outside today :) i guess you can take the girl out of the trailer park, but can't take the trailer park out of the girl :) luckily our back yard is completely fenced in, so hopefully none of the neighbors noticed!

Things seem to be going ok back in Ohio with my dad. He is spending another night in the ICU tonight, however, this time i think it is more of a logistics issue. It seems the electronic medical charting/record was down, and they were unable to put his orders in the computer for transfer, so he is stuck in the ICU another night. apparently pen and paper orders aren't what they used to be! ahhhhhh.....i love it when the improvements in medicine actually end up hindering progress! it's tough in the ICU because that settting is not really conducive to visitors, and so it is hard for my mom and sister to coordinate their visits with the nursing care/patient care. we are all anxious for him to be able to move to the stepdown unit. hopefully tomorrow!

update

sorry for the delay in posting an update on my dad. things were a little crazy for the last few days. i am now back in colorado springs, and settled back in a little.

i made it up to cleveland very late on monday night. On Tuesday my dad had a cardiac catheterization to get a really good look at the heart in preparation for the surgery. I have to say i was incredibly impressed with the Cleveland Clinic. It is a beautiful facility, and the staff was competent and well prepared. plus i have to hand it to a medical staff that still wears 100% white from head to toe...even in the operating room! I must say i rely heavily on my dark green scrubs to hide a little stain here and there....i don't think i could last 5 minutes in all-white uniform!!!!

anyway, the surgery itself was Thursday morning, bright and early. The surgeon started at about 0830, and we were thrilled when our little pager went off 5 hours later letting us know Dad was out of the O.R. The surgeon felt everything went very well. He was quite suprised to find that when my dad had his original surgery in 1960 to repair his congenital anomaly, there was no Pulmonic Valve placed at all. He believes some sort of patch was placed in the place the valve would have normally been. He said that more modern medicine uses a human valve, but it appeared that possibly a portion of a vein was placed in the region. This "patch" had completely calcified and scarred over the last 50 years, and he had quite a challenge dissecting out the old tissue and placing the new valve. The aortic aneurysm was repaired without complication.

They were unable to get dad off the ventilator after the surgery, so he remained intubated overnight in the ICU. The next day he was able to be extubated, and initially did very well. He was on his way out of the ICU last night, when he developed a complication called Atrial Fibrillation. basically, the atrium of the heart is not in synch with the ventricles of the heart. This is actually not uncommon after heart surgery, and my dad has a history of developing intermittent A Fib. So, that has kept him in the ICU a little longer. It is not a serious complication, but is better managed in the ICU where they can keep a closer eye on him.

Overall i was really happy with how well everything went. His doctors were very kind, and well prepared, and we had overwhelming support from family and friends. Thank you so much to everyone who has kept my dad in their prayers over this last week. It was very comforting in the scary and stressful times to have words of encouragement from those who care about us. He definately has a long recovery ahead of him, and may continue to encounter roadblocks in his recovery, but i am thankful that the surgery was a success, and glad i was able to be with my family during this time (special thanks to my fabulous husband who didn't blink an eye at taking care of the girls all week....you seriously rock!)

Great Minds Think Alike...

Apparently my beautiful wife and I were, without knowing it, simultaneously posting to the blog from opposite ends of the country...

So be sure to scroll down for both posts - That means you Dad...I would hate for you to have to hear about what's going on in your kids and grandkids lives from someone else who continued to scroll down and didn't stop reading after the next post (emilie's).

And once again, thanks for keeping Tom (and Judy and everyone else) in your prayers Thursday.

big day tomorrow

i am in ohio with my family this week. we have been in cleveland for the last 3 days with my dad getting all of the preop testing done in preparation for his open heart surgery tomorrow. He was born with a rare congenital condition called Tetralogy of Fallot, which was surgically corrected in childhood. he now needs an extensive open heart surgery to repair/replace some of the defects in his heart. The big components of the surgery will be a replacement of his pulmonary valve, and repair of an aortic aneurysm. The surgery was supposed to take place last year (Actually on 2 different occasions last year), but for various reasons the actual repair did not take place. We are very anxious for the surgery tomorrow, and hope that it will go smoothly, without complication, and signficantly improve his quality of life. Please keep my dad in your prayers tomorrow. the surgery will start around 730 a.m., and will last about 6 hours.

Greatest Moment In U.S. World Cup History?

One could certainly make an argument that this was the greatest goal in U.S. World Cup history. Now, I consider myself a fairly even keeled individual but I will gladly jump around the room screaming in response to a sporting event when it is warranted. For me this was one of the top 3 most exciting moments in my sports viewing life...

Nothing will likely ever top the excitement of the Buckeyes winning the 2003 National Championship against Miami in the Fiesta Bowl...but Landon Donovan's goal in stoppage time to put the U.S.A. into the final 16 of the World Cup rivals my excitement the night that one of my favorite fighters of all time (Dan Henderson) knocked my most hated fighter (Michael Bisping) out COOOOLD with that crushing right hand. The night of that fight, I was holding Nova who had just drifted off to sleep but when that shot landed, I jumped out of the chair and screamed so loud that I not only woke up Nova, but also woke up Juneau who was asleep upstairs.

Today, I was standing in the middle of the room on the verge of depression as the U.S. looked to be on the way to a painful 0-0 draw and be eliminated from the World Cup. When Donovan buried that shot I started jumping around the living room and screaming so crazily that the girls thought I was putting on a show for them and started laughing harder than I've heard them in a long time.

Follow that performance up with the historic match at Wimbledon between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut (which still isn't over - called on account of darkness FOR THE SECOND DAY IN A ROW tied at 59-59 in the 5th set) and today was a pretty remarkable day for a sports fan - Not used to many great sports days happening in June...

In Other News...

The girls and I are practicing for next fall when Emilie is in Afghanistan. Emilie is in Ohio for a few days for her dad's big heart surgery tomorrow so it's just me and the girls until Friday.

A few highlights from the last couple days:

Thanks to the USPS, it was late in arriving but on Monday I got the coolest Father's Day present from my girls (all Emilie's work obviously)...this cool "ABC's with Daddy" book.

It is an entire alphabet book with stuff of me, Juneau and Nova for each letter. A couple of my favorites:
"K is for Kisses" and "L is for Laughing"

My personal favorite: "T is for Tackle" - the girls' favorite game to play with Daddy. What an awesome present from my awesome wife!!

Warning: Graphic Description of Animal's Inhumanity to Animal Ahead:
This afternoon while the girls were asleep I heard a strange combination of sounds from the back yard. I went out to investigate and couldn't find any of the dogs in their normal spots...When I finally walked around the side of the house where the dogs NEVER hang out, I realized there was an extra animal in the group...The moral of the story - If you are a prairie dog, don't crawl under a fence into the yard with 2 Siberian Huskies with a high prey drive. Sherpa and Denali had the thing pinned into a corner and were taking turns pouncing on it, grabbing it in their mouths and tossing it against the fence while Summit stood 2 feet away barking and egging them on as though she was participating in the carnage...Animal Planet would have had to edit out some of the horror...

The problem at that point was diffusing the situation. As soon as I'd grab one of them, the little creature would run away a few feet before the other one pounced on it and took over the onslaught. Finally I was able to grab Sherpa and hip check Denali against the fence long enough for the poor thing to crawl to the corner and find a spot under the fence to escape. Based on how he looked and the amount of blood on Sherpa and Denali's faces, I doubt he made it very far.

After I got them cleaned up a bit, they each had a little bit of battle damage...I guess that's why they got their rabies shots last month.

Denali had the worst - a nice little scrape on his muzzle. Sherpa, the one with all the experience from years of killing mice in Hawaii, suffered only a bloody lip. Not surprisingly, Summit was untouched :)

The girls and I have been having fun playing out in the warm weather the last couple days. They both love climbing anything and everything, even to the point of making me cringe if I'm not within arms reach.

And Most Importantly:

Tomorrow morning is Emilie's dad's big heart surgery. Please keep him and the rest of the family in your thoughts and prayers...Here's to a successful surgery and an even more successful recovery for Tom!!

Happy Father's Day!!!!

We are so thankful today for the opportunity to recognize our awesome dads! Thanks for all you do, and for the example you have been to us!!!!

It is also a great day to say "we love you!" to Cris :) What a wild ride it has been the last two years. Cris eased right into being Daddy to two little girls pretty much at the same time, and it has been amazing to watch these girls love their dad. I absolutely love watching Cris with June-bug and Nova. I love it when he is the only dad climbing in the crazy net tunnel at sea world, and the only dad who doesn't hesitate to climb in the jungle gym at McDonald's :) There are very few men who could spend an entire year as the primary care giver to two toddlers and not lose their minds....and Cris is one of those guys. I am amazed at his willingness to put his career on hold, and play full time Daddy to his little girls. Without a doubt this has played a huge role in their happiness and development this year, and i am so thankful that in the midst of our crazy lives and moving and traveling all over the place, these girls have their dad 24/7.

Well, on to some pictures of our weekend....
Yesterday i let the girls make their own "cold stone" ice creams, with any mix-ins they wanted...here is Juneau's creation.
Yesterday headed down to Royal Gorge for some fun. The girls had a fantastic time exploring all the attractions. Here they are getting ready to ride the incline railway down into the valley.

They loved the ride!

a view from the top down into the valley

passing the other tram on it's way up

A view of the bridge from down in the valley....the sun was just right to catch it shining through the bridge

Daddy can still carry around both girls pretty easily...not sure how much longer that will last!

Jbug

After we checked out the valley, we headed back up to the bridge. Juneau was amazed at the view from over the side of the bridge. Cris then showed her that if she got down and looked through the cracks in the wood she could see how high we were....she loved it!

working on their balancing skillspanning for gold

I'm not sure Juneau really grasped the technique....but she still had fun nova concentrating hard on the task at hand. you can tell because she is sticking her tongue out (just like her daddy at that age!)

this is Rocky...he was probably the highlight of the day. The girls LOVED getting to ride a real horse. Juneau kept saying "he's not even pretend! he's real!"

Even Nova, who is usually a bit more hesitant about trying new things, loved getting to ride Rocky

The girls love Merry-Go-Rounds! We had tons of fun today hanging out with the Goods. I can't believe i forgot my camera, but hopefully Laurie will have some pics to post later. We transformed their cute neighborhood into Trailer Park Central with the giant inflatable waterslide we set up on their sidewalk in the front yard. It only got better when Jackson decided to strip naked to enjoy the waterslide in the buff :) We then headed over to the little town of Evergreen to enjoy the Rodeo.

I'll finish this post with a classic Juneau story. Nova is prone to getting tummy aches, and a lot of times if she says her tummy hurts i will tell give her a suggestion for something to make her tummy feel better (taking a drink, or getting a snack). We were over at our neighbors house yesterday, and juneau wanted to jump on the trampoline. When i told her to wait a little while she said "but my tummy is hurting, and jumping on the bouncing ring will make it feel better".

no longer a landmark

"Touchdown Jesus" was struck by lightening and caught on fire last night! I could NOT believe it when i saw the reports this morning!
This statue is a pretty prominent landmark in the Cincinnati area, and you can't help just stare at it in awe every time you drive by. During the time Cris was living in Cincinnati, while we were dating, we used to drive by this all the time....and just kind of shake our heads at this giant, 62 foot tall, styrofoam/fiberglass scultpure that is apparently built around a steel frame. Oh yes, we do love Jesus, but it is hard to not chuckle just a little bit at this giant statue, surrounded by a huge pond. strange indeeed.
I guess it is somewhat of a miracle in itself that it has taken 6 years for this to happen, as his arms are constructed of large steel rods covered in styrofoam...literally dual Lightening Rods rising from the pond.
in other less monumental news, we are settled back into normal life inside an actual house, instead of the 4 of us living in a hotel room. ahhhhh, the space feels sooooo good. and, i think the girls are happy to be back among their toys. the dogs are DEFINATELY happy we are home. we have gotten lots of reports from both the neighbors and the dog sitters, that Denali was so wound up he was trying to bully Summit around. luckily she is a fiesty little 6 pounds of fur, and it didn't seem to bother her too much. I guess we shouldnt be surprised that an 8 month old siberian husky got a little bored without his family around.

i guess i am out of things to ramble on about for now. we should have some fun stuff going on this weekend, so i will hopefully be posting pictures of cute 2 year olds, and not pictures of 62 foot Styrofoam Jesus statues :)

Home Sweet Home...

After a looooong 2 days of driving, we are glad to be back in Colorado. The girls talked the whole trip about "going home to see our huskies" and boy were the dogs glad to see us.

We were so busy during the week doing all kinds of fun stuff that we didn't have much time to post so here are some highlights from our 2 weeks of calling San Antonio "home"...

The girls were thrilled to find this duck that lived outside the hotel for a couple days following some storms blowing through the area. Every morning we went out after that they were obsessed with finding that duck but eventually concluded "He went home to find his mommy."

Most of our days while mommy was at work, the girls and I took advantage of the Sea World season pass we bought. On the days they were open late, we waited until Emilie got off work so she could enjoy all the fun with us...

Nova LOOOOVED this ferris wheel egg ride

This is the "Monkey Version" of the ride that was cousin Alex&Lyndsey's favorite ride when they were Juneau & Nova's age - the Frog Hopper at Cedar Point.

The girls agreed with Alex & Lyndsey that this ride was awesome.

The girls couldn't get enough of the splash park.

Every day we went, Juneau was like a crazy woman from the moment she saw it...

One day she decided it was HILARIOUS to just let the fountains spray her dupe and just stood there like this for long stretches of time...weird like her mom!

Pretty much every single time we went, Nova acted like she'd never been sprayed by water and refused to do anything but stand along the fence for the first 5 minutes...

...but soon would be putting her hands in, then her legs, then eventually drenching herself in the biggest gusher they had.

Nova has been funny like that lately. She acts very tentative about trying things at first but then dives in with both feet...as seen below...

The one day we got roasted ears of corn and we were all eating them while Nova REFUSED to get anywhere near one. Finally, as I was about to finish mine off, I convinced her to just try a little. As soon as that combination of butter and salt hit her tongue, needless to say, I didn't get another bite before that ear was cleaned.

Both girls discovered a love for Sea World's Frosted Lemonade which they downed by the gallon.

They were both HUGE fans of the Shamu shows. Early in the week, we sat at the upper edge of the "Splash Zone" and got marginally splashed several times. One of the last nights we went, we all decided to sit right down in the heart of Splashville. The whales were particularly fiesty that night and we got completely drenched to the point that Nova burst out in a fit of revolt at the 55 degree salt water.

That experience did not stop them though from non-stop talking about "the baby shamu" or "i love when he flips and lands on his head"

One of their two favorite Sea World events was riding the "water rollercoaster"...a good old fashioned log-ride called the Texas Splashdown. It was the only non-baby ride they were allowed to ride so we did...over and over and over.

Nova has become quite the daddy's girl and always wanted to ride with me while Juneau rode with Emilie. Basically every time we rode, after we'd get to the bottom of the "BIG hill", Nova would squeal and announce "My daddy saved me!!!"

She has become hilarious with every statement being "MY daddy"...this started as a way to clarify that she means me when we are playing with Finley, Shane and Jackson and she wants to make sure I help her and not that other guy being called "daddy" (Travis).

Despite how much they loved the water rollercoaster, they still were constantly watching the real rollercoaster zoom by and saying "When I get bigger I'm going to ride that like Alex & Lyndsey." (Can you tell they are obsessed with their cousins?)

Their other favorite event was climbing through these webbing tunnels in the kids playland.

Despite being about 20 feet up in the air and that you can see down through the webbing at all times, the girls weren't the least bit tentative to take off through the maze with all the bigger kids. This area wasn't necessarily designed for the 2-year-old group so of course that meant daddy got to spend lots of time crawling through these tunnels with them.

Most days this was the scene in the van on the way back to the hotel as they thoroughly exhausted themselves with all the activities.

Other things we discovered on this trip:

1. The new Shrek movie was a huge hit with the girls, even if the movie reviewers were only luke warm about it. The girls sat through the whole thing and were spellbound...and it's really funny to hear Nova try to say "Rumplestiltskin" (the villain of this installment of the Shrek franchise)

2. Juneau listens to everything - one night when I stopped for gas on the way home from Sea World, Emilie and I (very quietly) tried to make a plan for her to go in and get a little ice cream snack for her and I to have later that night after the girls were asleep. Somehow, in the middle of the conversation, Juneau pipes up from the back seat "Hey mom, did someone say ice cream?" She did this about 3 other times with various things that we were talking about: "Did you say fruit snacks?" "Did someone say Shamu?", etc...

3. The McDonalds playland guarantees Nova taking a poop. While we were traveling and during our time in San Antonio we frequented McDonalds just so we could let the girls run through the tunnels in the McDonalds playland. It became a point of hilarity that basically EVERY time we went, Nova would crawl to the top, walk out to some isolated part of the maze and after not hearing from her for awhile, we'd yell up to her and she'd come out with a full pull-up.

4. Nova is about 75% potty trained and Juneau is now fully potty-trained (for the 3rd time). This meant FREQUENT stops on the long drive home to empty their pea-sized bladders. Juneau would actually be disappointed when, after announcing that she needed to use the potty, if we would be near a gas station and be able to stop at a real bathroom. She DEFINITELY much preferred this method:

Actual Quote: "Mommy, I LOOOOVE peeing on the ground."

On a closing note, we are SOOOO thankful that my family came away unscathed from the tornado that hit Millbury, Ohio over the weekend and killed 7. My sister and family live just on the edge of Millbury and the tornado (which they apparently now classified as a monstrous F4) went through less than a half mile from their house. My parents happened to be at their house visiting that night as well. Alex & Lyndsey are in 6th grade at Lake where the High School was virtually destroyed but their middle school next door came through relatively well. Having spent time around that little community and area over the years, I was really struck when I heard the news on Sunday morning and our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the many who lost family members or homes.

So, we are settled back in for now. The yard has 2 weeks worth of mowing to catch up on and there is lots of unpacking to do but it is soooo nice to be home.