Here Comes the Sun

This weekend was the first in a good 7 months or so where we saw 70 degrees and SUN, and we enjoyed it to the fullest! Friday night we had an impromptu deck party and grilled some brats and hotdogs for a small group of friends. It was so wonderful to sit out on the deck, adult beverage in hand. Lucy made some new friends - a couple of daughters of one of Husband's high school buddies. They played so well together and kept each other occupied so the parents could catch up.

They all had to sit on the same side of the picnic table.

Saturday, we took advantage of another impromptu opportunity. Some friends from Iowa decided to make a last-minute getaway to the Twin Cities, and we joined them at the zoo on Saturday afternoon. More girls to play with, and more glorious sunshine to enjoy.

The best we could do to get them all at once!

Love this one - these two were having quite the conversation!

Moose!

Unfortunately after this she took a tumble off the retaining wall and hurt her leg. :(

The new black bear exhibit is pretty cool!

 After all the snow lately, hopefully we are on our way to a real SPRING. Hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did!

Happy Earf Day

Lucy made this gem at school. When I asked her what we should clean up, she said, "it helps the Earf when I  clean up my room." Kind of missing the point a little...but I'm not going to stand in her way!

Distant Cousins...Closer Than You Think!

Today I had the pleasure of meeting my second cousin once removed, my third cousin, and my third cousin once removed.

Huh?

Late last year I started a family genealogy page on Facebook, for my dad's side of the family. Since we had so many photos and I knew others also had some, I thought it would be a good forum for sharing them. It has been a lot of fun and through the wonders of social media, we have been able to make connections with distant relatives who share branches of our family tree. A few so happen to live in my area, and upon discovering this, one in particular contacted me and expressed her interest in meeting.

Leslie and I share a great-great-grandfather, Charles Schmitt. Our great-grandmothers, Emma and Helen, were sisters. It was about a 40-minute drive to Leslie's home, where I met her and her mom, Gayle, and also Leslies 5-year-old daughter, Laci. I also brought Lucy along, so those fourth cousins got to meet, too. Laci and Lucy. How cute! It was a wonderful time of looking through old photos and catching up on family members, past and present. We plan to get together again.

Since all of those ancestral photos seem to be so serious,
we tried to make stoic faces... not so easy.
As you can see, Lucy couldn't handle it!

What a wonderful connection to make, and as Leslie commented...I don't think when our great-grandmothers were taking all of those pictures years ago, they were thinking their great-granddaughters would be looking upon what may have been an ordinary day, and asking so many questions about these women from whence we came.

Sisters Emma, Gert, and Helen - June 1944

So Much TV, So Little Time

I don't watch a lot of TV. It's not that I don't think there are many interesting shows available, it's just that I don't have time. I get home around 6:30 or 7:00 most weekday evenings, and from then until 9:00 and beyond I am pretty consumed with Lucy. Occasionally we turn on the TV to wind down for bed, but that means we're watching Sprout or some equally appropriate preschool television. By the time I get her to bed, I can watch about 20 minutes of Real Housewives or something comparatively mind-numbing, and I'm ready for bed myself. Weekends aren't much better.

While I had plenty of channels upstairs, my lack of TV-watching was made easier by the fact that the "big" cable box and DVR were downstairs. So I couldn't even record shows and watch them later, or be tempted to find something good on our premium channel splurge, HBO.

Notice I'm saying "was" and "were"?

Back in February, Husband switched up some of our cable TV and I finally got the "full" cable box upstairs. It was like a whole new world! I had all the channels. No DVR, but I could watch On Demand. It was like Christmas, even though I still didn't have much time to watch anything.

THEN for Valentine's Day, Husband got me Google TV. I had never heard of such a thing and had no idea what it was for. My dear Husband has a penchant for buying me things that I'd never buy for myself, never would dream I'd want, but somehow just knows I will love. This was no exception.

I know I won't explain this well, but Google TV is a system that runs through the TV, and allows on-screen access to a number of online functions, like Amazon, YouTube, HBO GO, and a myriad of others I haven't even tried yet. So what's the big deal? I can access all of these on my laptop. Ah yes, but it's not the same as watching on my TV! Since I got Google TV, I have watched a number of movies either through Amazon Prime or HBO GO, as well as several TV series (especially on HBO) that I had been wanting to watch. I still don't have a lot of time to watch things, but now when I do have time, it's a lot easier and more accessible. When Lucy is napping, I can watch a movie and fold clothes. When I'm home a little early on Fridays, I can watch a few episodes of a show in the span of about an hour. And of course, Lucy has benefited by getting to see some new cartoon movies (and I avoid watching the same DVDs over and over again). It's nice!

So now that my TV-watching is more streamlined, what are some shows that are worth the time?

An Unexpected Easter Surprise

After all of the Easter travel and festivities this weekend, we were looking forward to a quiet SUnday evening at home. This was not meant to be.

Brandon was over and we had just finished eating pizza, and were hanging out downstairs. Lucy was, per typical, traveling between the upstairs and downstairs, dragging various toys and Easter gifts here and there. Just before 8:00 that evening, I heard a call from upstairs – “MOMMY!”

Husband actually went to check on her, but then called me. “She won’t talk to me, she’s just hiding on the couch.” I went up and based on the slightly guilty-looking face, I thought she’d had an accident. He went back downstairs, probably thinking along the same lines. But no. “Mommy,” Lucy said, “I swallowed my money.”

Her money. She had a fistful of coins from an Easter egg and was supposed to be bringing them upstairs to put in her piggy bank. “How many?” I asked calmly. She stuck up one finger. I spotted some coins on the coffee table, and I put them in my hand. “Which one was it?” She pointed. At that point, a little composure was lost. I called down, “She swallowed a quarter!” A quarter. We tried calling a nurse line, but were put on hold and it said I was the third in line. Lucy was saying her throat hurt, so we decided to just take her to the ER.

So we headed to Methodist Hospital and waited almost an hour to get in, and waited a bit more for an x-ray, which showed it was indeed a quarter, and it was stuck in her esophagus. After more waiting, the doctor came in and said it couldn’t stay there, and we had two options: 1) stick a tube down her throat there in the ER, which would be very uncomfortable but quick, in hopes of pushing the coin into her stomach, where it could safely move through the rest of her system. If #1 didn’t work or we didn’t think she would tolerate it, then #2 would be putting her under anesthesia and performing a scope to remove the coin. This option involved a transfer to Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis, because they didn’t feel comfortable doing the procedure on children at Methodist.

We skeptically elected Option 1, and waited another 45 minutes for the doctor to come back and tell us he didn’t have the right size tube and we’d have to go to Children’s anyway. Then another very frustrating 45 minutes to get all the paperwork for discharge and transfer. Meanwhile, Lucy was generally OK, but every once in a while would get really agitated and cry, “it hurts!” In one way we were relieved because it seemed the ER doctor was uncomfortable and inexperienced in doing the procedure in the first place, but we were also frustrated at having been there so long with no solution.

So, with already over 3 hours under our belts at Methodist, we were headed to another ER. At Children’s we had to wait again, explain everything again (tell me what is the point of a transfer?!) and then finally got back to where somebody could help us. We saw the actual doctor pretty quickly, and got in for another x-ray to determine if the offending coin had moved. No such luck. So we were back to Option 1. They explained everything to us, and we felt we were in very capable hands. So we waited a bit longer until they were all ready to go. This was taken about 12:45AM:

The doctor came back in with an EMT who was there to gently “bear hug” our Lucy and hold her down while the dirty work took place. Then they stuck about 20-25 inches of a rubber hose down our girl’s esophagus, with only a little spray anesthetic to numb things in the back of her throat. She had to be awake to basically gag repeatedly and get the hose down. It was not pleasant for any of us, trust me. It was quick, but we weren’t sure if it worked because Lucy threw up a little bit, and the doctor couldn’t get the hose down as far as she thought she should for fear of tearing her esophagus by forcing against the constricting. Only another x-ray could tell, but after the initial shock wore off we could tell Lucy felt better, so we were hopeful. Sure enough, the next x-ray revealed the coin had moved to her stomach. WHEW! It was 2:00AM and we could finally go home!

We’re all a little tired today, but Lucy is good. She slept in this morning but did go to school a little later and is eating, drinking, and playing just fine. It’s likely the sewer system will be $0.25 richer within the next couple of days, but we’ll go have another x-ray in a week or so just to be sure.

There have been plenty of quips about only giving dollar bills in the Easter eggs next year, and we’ve had a few conversations about only putting food and beverages in our mouth from now on. After her first x-ray, the tech gave her a little stuffed bunny. She decided to name him “Quarter” to commemorate the experience. This will certainly be one of those “remember that Easter when…” or “Lucy’s first ER visit was…” stories.

For posterity, here's Lucy's take on the evening.