What a weekend!

This weekend was a whirlwind of activity, but an incredibly rewarding one!

We celebrated Kaelynn's 6th birthday with my family.  Her actual birthday is this coming Friday.

Karrie and Justin, Emma, Ava and Brendan came over to help us celebrate!

The day was absolutely beautiful and a basketball game was just what everyone needed to run off the sugar from the cake and ice cream.

Here's a cute pic of my mom and Kaelynn in one of her new outfits from Autie Katie, Uncle Rusty and family.

This afternoon, the Kingdom Kids Choir at Bethel presented the musical Let's Rock.  Connor and Carson are in the choir and I co-directed it.  It was so fun and went as smoothly as it could have gone.  To say that I am blessed is putting it lightly.  The kids were amazing!  They sing a song called "I Will Glorify" and the lyrics say, "I choose to glorify You Lord, in every way, every day
Lord be glorified in my life
No other one, no other Name
You'll receive my praise
Lord, in everything be lifted high
I will glorify"

When I saw 45 kids singing those words straight from their hearts on that stage this afternoon, the tears were flowing!  It was an awesome thing to be a part of!

Here are a few pics from the dress rehearsal on Friday night.

Connor and Carson had a non-speaking role as the video crew for the music video that was being produced in the plot of the musical.  They took this part very seriously and did a great job at it!  Way to go buddies!  

We have a full week ahead with Connor and Carson's school music program on Tuesday and a circus birthday celebration on Friday for Kaelynn.  The Shrine circus will be in town and we have front row seats!  I can't wait!  Hopefully a little rest will be had in the midst of all of it!

Oh what a glorious day!

You know the saying that March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb.  Not so the case this year in FM.  We have had an unbelievable winter and spring it proving not to disappoint as well.  Yesterday was over 60 and we are supposed to be in the 60's all week.  WooHoo!!!

We took advantage of the beautiful weather yesterday afternoon.  The clothing of choice for this beautiful day:

Yes, that's right a T-shirt, spring skirt, and winter boots!  Sometimes you choose your battles, and this was one I was not willing to fight.

Here are the kids on the snow mountain in our cul-de-sac wearing shorts:

 
The bikes came out:

And basketball was played:

I love the determination on Carson's face to make this shot.  He is passionate about sports in general, but his love for football and basketball far outweigh the others.  This winter he was outside most days shooting hoops after school.  This is from a couple of weeks ago.  

On another note, I really, really love Kaelynn's hair!  It has gotten so long and pretty.  However, I do not like the tangles that come with the long hair.  Brushing her hair in the morning has become quite the battle.  We have been in the process of growing out her bangs since last summer and they are about to her chin.  Her best friend at school has curl, long hair and Kaelynn wanted to have curly hair. So, instead of standing in the bathroom with a curling iron for an hour and a half, I decided to french braid her hair while it was wet and then she slept on it.  Here's the results on Sunday morning:

She was so excited, that she wanted to do it again on Sunday evening for Monday.  It didn't go quite as smoothly as she had quite the tangles to comb out first.  It was fun for something different though.

 

Update

Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers for Andy.  He is doing much better and is on the road to recovery.

We can attribute all of the craziness to a giant muscle spasm.  Who knew we'd use all of our flex for the year on a muscle spasm gone wrong!

Seriously though- Andy got out of the hospital on Wednesday was tired, but feeling for the most part okay.  His hip was still sore and stiff, but the rest of his body was pretty good.

He went to a chiropractor today and is getting some relief.  The chiropractor thinks he will be back to training in 3-5 days.  Hmmm!

In other news, we are gearing up for a busy week ahead with the children's musical next Sunday 3/18.  Connor and Carson are both in the chorus and have a non-speaking part in a couple of the scenes.  They are taking this part very seriously and feel quite important!  I am super excited for it.  I love directing this choir and love seeing the kids' hearts to worship God shine through their voices and faces.  It gives me joy beyond measure!

Again, thank you all so much!  We love you and feel blessed to have such wonderful love and support.      

From bad to worse in a hurry....

It's pretty late on Tuesday evening, but I'm pretty jazzed up from the last few hours.  Andy is lying in a hospital room right now for overnight observation.  He's okay!!!  There is a story to tell though.  Here it is:

Andy has been training to run the FM 1/2 marathon in May.  He has been running 4-5 times a week and has lost over 20 pounds.  I have been very proud of him!  This morning he did what his program told him to do- run at an incline of 3 for a certain amount of time.  He hadn't run at that steep of an incline before, but thought it would be good for strength training.  After his run, he was a little sore and when he moved a certain way, he felt something wasn't right in his hip.

He went about his day with a little pain, but not too bothered by it.  This afternoon he went into the balcony to work in the production room and when he sat in a chair, something happened and he immediately felt excruciating pain in his hip.  So much so that he couldn't put any weight on it!  He called for some of his staff to come help him down the 30+ stairs of the balcony and called the ask-a- nurse to see if he should have it looked at.  They said since he couldn't walk on it, he should go in.

He called me at 5:15 and I got the kids in the car and went to get him.  Jonathan wheeled him out to me in the church's wheelchair, and I thought, "This could be bad."  Little did I know, bad can get worse pretty quickly....

I was back and forth throughout the evening from the walk-in, to getting supper for the kids, to taking them home and arranging a babysitter for them and back to the walk-in.  Andy was given a few different pain meds and was taken for x-rays.  The nurse said the pain meds were very strong and that he would feel pretty crazy.  He did start to feel a little loopy, but they did work and the pain started to get a lot better.  When the Dr. came in from reading the x-rays, she said there was no bone damage and that it was possible that it was something with the muscle. She asked him if he could he stand on it, which he thought was possible and he kind of stood up.  Bad decision!

About 3 minutes after he sat down, he got completely white and said he was going to puke.  He then passed out while in the wheelchair.  They couldn't get his head down between his knees, so he lost oxygen to his brain which then caused him to go into some sort of a minor seizure.

Can I just tell you, after Kaelynn had her seizure when she was a baby, I really didn't want to see another one, and now my husband was going through one!  Not cool!

I backed up into the hallway and tried to stay out of the way as best I could.  There were about 6-7 people in a tiny waiting room trying to figure out how they were going to get him lying down to get oxygen to his brain.  They got him into a little bigger room when he regained consciousness, but then the words, "Rapid Response Team" were announced several times over the loudspeaker and about 15 people with all kinds of equipment came running from every direction.  Not kidding!!!  I was doing okay with it all until I heard the sentence, "We need a crash cart in here now!"  I lost it at that point.

Thankfully, they didn't need to use it!  He was able to come out of the hypertension and regained oxygen pretty quickly.  After several hours of lab tests, and solutions being pumped into him, they decided to admit him to the hospital for overnight observation.  When I left him, he was doing ok.

So here I sit, recalling the story, trying to get tired enough to go to sleep.  Tomorrow is another day and I am so thankful that I get to spend it with my husband and kids!!!!!  Praise God!

It sounds like he will be released tomorrow sometime.  We are still not sure about the hip thing.  He is on the orthopedic wing of the hospital, so I'm assuming he will have someone come take a look at his hip before he leaves.

Nothing like a little drama to start off an already crazy couple of weeks...........



 

 

Precious Time!

Starting at 1:00pm today I will do something I have never done before.  I will have a whole and complete weekend all to myself.  Andy is leading worship at a men's retreat and the kids are going to grandpa and grandma's house.

I have not had this since we have had kids and I am so excited!

What will I do?  Not laundry or house-work.  Maybe some shopping, definitely some digital scrapbooking, coffee with a friend, and some girl movie-watching.

Oh yes, and waiting for a phone call about the arrival of my newest nephew.  My sister Katie is being induced today...........

Next week is spring break so hopefully I will have some pictures of some good family time.

Baby it's cold outside!

Today was one of the coldest days we have had all winter long, and it happened to also be the day we had planned to go tubing in Alexandria, MN with Jan and Luther at Andes Tower.  So we bundled up in 3-4 layers packed in the car for the 1 1/2 hour drive and had a "we can do this because we are hardy North Dakotans and Minnesotans :)" spirit.

When we got there, there wasn't a single soul on the tubing hill and I started to get a little worried that they had closed it because it was so cold.  No sirree, Bob!  Cold does not stand in the way of this family.  The tubing hill was open, so we chugged down some lunch and headed up the hill.

 You sit in the tube you selected and it's attached to a tow rope and you are pulled up the hill.  This is definitely the way to go.  The hill was very large and to have to walk up it, would have done us all in.

 Kaelynn, our "no fear" girl was the first one to go down.  She had no hesitations about going speeding down the hill at 30 mph.

We thought it might be fun for Julianna, Lydia, Isaac, and Jonah to have a taste of what it feels like to tube down a hill, so we took the following video for them:

We also celebrated Valentine's Day and Kaelynn's birthday as Jan will be Indonesia on March 23rd.

Kaelynn got a DS for her birthday this year.  She was really excited as were her brothers because now they don't have to share with her anymore.

One of my favorite pics from the day is this one of Carson and Kaelynn:

There can be some tense moments between these two some days, so it warmed my heart to capture this sweet moment.

A little piece of humble pie (or cupcake).....

I'm betting my sister Katie, "cupcake maker extraordinaire" will get the biggest kick out of the following story:

We have a family carnival at church on Saturday and I volunteered to bring a couple of desserts for the cake walk.  Of course I want my desserts to be something kids will want to choose first, so I remembered some super cute cupcakes Kaelynn brought home from a friends house this past fall.  Rainbow cupcakes with white frosting!  

My first thought was, how hard can it be?  Just split the batter into however many colors you want and put food coloring in.  Done, no problem.  My next thought was pretty clever too- Put each color of batter in a ziplock bag and cut the tip off so I can easily layer the colors on top of each other.  Done, no problem.

As I was layering my five colors on top of each other, trying to completely fill each layer so as not to make it look like tye-dye gone bad, I was thinking to myself, "Boy, there's a lot of batter in these cupcake cups.  I suppose I'll have some pretty big cupcakes."

In the oven they went, with great anticipation of what was about to come out.  When the timer went off and I opened the oven door, this is what I saw:

How awful does that look??????????????????????

In fact, Carson came rushing over and stated, "That's awful!"  To which I replied, "Ya think???"

I was able to salvage them by peeling off the excess cupcake, but they are still not cake walk worthy.  Back to the drawing board, I guess.   

If you can get past the large chunk missing from the side of the cupcake and are willing to taste one, the inside looks really cool:

I'm actually quite curious how the pink got down to the bottom because I only layered each color once and the pink was on top.  Maybe we'll have to use this as a science experiment.

Note to self for next time, if it looks like too much batter in the cupcake liner, it probably is.
 
Katie, if you have any tips for me for next time, pass them along.  I obviously need the help :)