Black Belt!

After training for 2 1/2 year, participating in 9 separate belt tests leading up to this, Michael participated in a grueling 3 1/2 hour black belt test this past weekend. It was a complete demonstration of all of the skills he's learned over the past two year, interspersed with lots and lots of pushups, jumping jacks, and other physical fitness techniques.

I have a ton of great photos and I'll put them in a photo stream soon, but for now, here are the five boards Michael had to break in order to complete his test.

If Disney did diabetes ...

This is a cute blog post from another diabetic who loves Disney as much as we do - obviously.

Disney does diabetes

27", 2 trees, 4 bushes and more to come

So, the final tally from the snowstorm this weekend.

27" of snow
2 large trees in the backyard down (uprooted)
4 arborvitae bushes on the side - 6' tall - down. At least one has a split trunk

Loudoun County has closed schools for the remainder of the week. They believe it will take through through the weekend to get the parking lots cleared.

Tuesday's forecast into Wednesday mid-day is for another 10-20" of snow!

Shoot, we've had winters where we didn't get that much all winter, and here we are with our potentially 4th storm.
-- Dec 19: 22"
-- Jan 30: 4"
-- Feb 3: 6"
-- Feb 5-6: 27"
-- Feb 10: 10-25" (predicted)

Is it spring yet?

I just walked down to a friend's house about 1/2 mile away. I saw geese flying overhead in a V formation. I think they've decided its got to be better in Canada than it is here right now, and they're headed home.

Damn that groundhog!

23" and still coming down (along with two trees)

We woke up this morning to 23" of snow on the ground - it was about 12" when we went to bed.

Woke up at 6am to no power - don't know how long it had been off but it wasn't cold yet, so it must not have been long. It came on again right before 8am.

Mike headed out to shovel, with Michael for a while and now with Samantha. And when Samantha looked out her window, she noticed a tree down in the backyard. What she didn't realize is that it was TWO trees. The two main ones on that side of the yard. I guess the snow, rain, snow, more snow, and wind was too much for the roots - they are definitely uprooted and I see the roots coming up out of the snow.

So, after the snow cleanup, we'll have tree cleanup we have to tackle!

The other shoe

Almost 3 years ago, Emma was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease, one of many in a family of auto-immune diseases. There is often a relationship between these auto-immune diseases. As a result, Type 1 diabetics go through routine screenings for other auto-immune disease antibodies.

A few months ago, some of Emma’s antibodies came back elevated and we started working with a gastroenterologist to further delve into the situation. After further blood tests and a quick but invasive upper endoscopy last week, the gastroenterologist has indicated that Emma has Celiac disease. He is waiting for the biopsy results to absolutely confirm it, but his observation during the procedure was sufficient for him to tell us to proceed.

Celiac disease is an auto-immune disease where your body has an adverse reaction to gluten, primarily found in wheat. When a person with celiac eats gluten, it causes a reaction in their intestines and causes damage to their intestines. Most celiacs identify the problem because of gastro issues after eating but others, as in Emma’s case, show no outward symptoms and are identified because of a screening. The good news is that the damage to the intestines caused by gluten is easily healed – by removing gluten completely from your diet.

So that is what we have started to do – remove wheat, rye, barley and other gluten from Emma’s diet. A no wheat diet is not an easy one to adapt to, but we are fortunate to have so many other products available to us that weren’t available even 5 or 10 years ago – including crackers, frozen waffles, pastas, and even cake mixes. I came home from the Whole Foods store last week with 4 grocery bags full of gluten-free products, and we had a completely gluten free taco dinner our first night, including soft corn tortillas and regular corn crispy taco shells. Where we can, we will eat entire meals gluten free with Emma, and in other cases, we will have a meal where we eat the same food but Emma’s portion will be gluten free and the remainder of us will have gluten (such as pasta).

This transition definitely has its challenges and we will go through times when Emma will absolutely hate that she has restrictions on her diet. Its much like an “allergy” in that respect but unlike those who have allergies, she has had the foods and enjoyed them, and now can’t have them – so we are trying as much as possible to find replacements for many of her favorite foods. We’ll be splurging a little too, with gluten free cupcakes and cookies, as rewards for trying foods she might not otherwise want to try.

I just wanted to share with all of you what’s going on with us these days. We’ll be transitioning as quickly as we can to a gluten-free diet for Emma, and we all may be a little extra grumpy as we figure this out, but everyone is still healthy, and happy, and we’ll make this transition with a child who still spends all of her days relatively happy!

Happy 13th Birthday Samantha!

Thirteen years ago, I became a mother when Samantha was born. She came into this world backwards (Breech) and has been bucking the system ever since!!

We now officially have a teen in the house!

Happy Birthday Samantha!

(picture is fuzzy because its a zoom in of her in a group shot and it was such a good picture of her, I wanted to use it!)

Ready for Black Belt

Michael completed a Tae Kwon Do test this past weekend - this was the last one before his black belt test. He is currently a Red belt and when they reach that level, they need to "relearn" all of the routines they have learned at all of their previous levels. He has participated in 3 tests since his Red belt, each time demonstrating the routines that he was relearning.

He is now ready for his black belt test - scheduled for Feb 27th!















Michael above is demonstrating a routine (called a form) and a kicking technique. And in the photos below, he is demonstrating some of his self-defense techniques, including taking down his instructor, Instructor David.















We are very proud of Michael's accomplishment and look foward to celebrating his black belt in a little more than a month!

Done (enough)

So Mike put my new cubbie shelves together last evening and I got to work organizing my supplies. I have TOO MANY scrapbooking supplies, especially for the amount of time I spend scrapbooking (not enough).

So, anyway - here it is. I'm pretty happy with it. There are a few little things I still need to do, but they are little. I have a huge "leaf-sized" bag of garbage that I cleaned out from double/triple memorabilia, etc. The black shelves are still right beside this space, but the only things left on those shelves are things I'm currently listing on eBay to sell.

And notice on the top row, second from the left, are the light switches for the room. I have to keep small stuff in that cubbie but it works well!

Maybe this will motivate me to scrapbook a little more!

Happy New Year - 2010!

Well, another new year.

In the spirit of the New Year, I'll share a few resolutions.

I'm going to get some more of the C.R.A.P. out of this house. It is amazing how much stuff you can accumulate. I've been doing ok recently, especially with kids stuff, by consigning items twice a year as a fundraiser for Michael's baseball team. But, there is so much more I need to get rid of.

We went to IKEA the other day (ugh, I hate going to the store but I love what I got) and got these new shelves for the basement. We have replaced a cheap set of plastic shelves with these nice cubbies. Easier for the kids to keep it neater because they are only dealing with one cubbie at a time, instead of an entire shelf.



We've moved all the games into the cubbies and I need to start getting into the toy closet and purge, sort, and organize into these cubbies.

And, I went back today (yes, two trips to Woodbridge this week) and got a smaller set of these shelves. These will be to organize my scrapbooking stuff in the basement that is currently on a table, under a table, and in a corner. These are the before photos - I'll share the after photos after we get the cubbies up and I get my stuff sorted into the cubbies.









Oh yeah, and I'm gonna lose weight. But that's not just a flippant resolution. I'm already 8 lbs down on my 25 lb goal (I started the day before Thanksgiving). I look forward to being at my goal weight by the time I'm done wearing sweaters for the season! (end of March)

Cheney

I was playing with the camera yesterday and Cheney was making faces at me, so I took his picture.

This picture is such a reflection of his personality - he's very "perturbed" that I was disturbing his sleep to take a picture

I have just become my parents ...

... as if that hadn't already happened.

I just met up with Mike in the parking lot of Harris Teeter to hand off a child! I had done two drop-offs and he was going to go do two pick-ups, and Emma was just along for the ride. I'm off to a meeting and Christmas shopping and he's feeding the kids and home for bed.

Memories of another time!

Straight As!

Samantha returned to public school this year after three years of homeschooling. We've had an adjustment in a lot of areas, including an adjustment by me to not actually knowing what she's studying since I'm not the one teaching her.

She brought home her first quarter report card - All As. This includes two classes for high school credit (Latin and Algebra) and two additional honors classes! We are very proud. Samantha hadn't gotten any "letter" grades in elementary school before we started homeschooling, this is the first real time she's had a bunch of assignments with individual grades that add up to an overall grade.

Good Job, Samantha!

Happy Halloween

Emma had her Halloween party at her preschool today. I thought I'd share a couple of pictures. I'm not sure why they're grainy - I think maybe I had the wrong setting on the camera.

But her costume was easy - we just dug into the dress up box and look what we found. At one point, it was complete with long gloves, a magic wand, and a bejeweled ring!

All of her class looked cute - I thought I'd share that photo as well!

Next stop: Daisy, Chip and Dale, Goofy ...

One day a few weeks back I was dropping kids somewhere - I don't even remember the context - and I said something to the effect of the title above. The kids chuckled but didn't quite know what I meant. I told them that the tram drivers at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World when you were going out to the parking lots would say this to let you know what part of the parking lot you were approaching - all of them were named for Disney characters. For some reason, this memory has stuck in my mind from when we went to Disney World in high school.

Emma recently laughed and said she was remembering when I said this in the car.

But my kids are deprived - they have never had this experience. When we go to Disney with them, we stay on property and we don't rent a car. So, we don't park in the parking lots and we take the bus. So they have never had the experience of having the tram drivers announcing the names of the Disney character-named parking lots!

Smart Cat

I didn't really need any more evidence that we have a smart cat, but I got some today - daggone cat!

A few months ago we noticed that Cheney was losing weight. Through a bunch of checking and testing, they realized his thyroid was overactive - pretty common in a 16-year-old cat. So, they gave me some medication to slow down his thyroid. It was supposed to be 1/2 pill, twice a day. By the third day, Cheney would see me get up from the couch to go into the kitchen and he would go running - and the great chase had begun. I finally asked the vet if I could do a full pill once a day - not because I had trouble actually giving him the pill, but because the great chase was wearing me out! Smart Cat!

Well, for a couple of reasons, we have stopped the medication for a little while. But last week, we started giving him one package of moist cat food a day - in addition to his regular cat food. He's picky - he'll only eat Meow Mix dry cat food and it turns out he'll only eat Meow Mix moist cat food. I've been giving it to him usually around lunch time. We leave out his dry food all the time. After the first couple of days of shunning the dry in hopes of the moist cat food, he has finally settled in to eating both the dry and the moist.

I just came home from taking Michael to art class and I walked in the door to Cheney yelling at me - how DARE I leave this house around lunch time WITHOUT giving him the moist cat food first. You'd think I was starving him.

Smart Cat!

Summer, Fall, Winter, Fall, Huh?

The weather has been quite unusual recently. We went from really quite warm to outright cold last week - the high one day was in the 40s. And it was raining. A lot. It rained for 4 days straight! And the wind blew. It was miserable.

The high today is projected to be 72.

Can we please just pick a season and stick with it - my sinus pressure goes nuts when we change back and forth, because each one is a result of a changing weather front and each change wreaks havoc on my sinuses!

Travel Baseball - Fall 2009

Not long after the last summer tournament of 8U Eagles was over, Michael started right in with tryouts and then practices for the new 9U Eagles. New age group, a few new rules, a couple of new teams in our league, but a continued positive outlook.

We've had a pretty good season so far - we are 7-1 in the regular season and placed 3rd in the USSSA Fall State tournament in Petersburg, VA the first weekend in October.

Michael is doing a great job pitching - is pitching consistently more than 60% strikes, with a decent number of strikeouts each game and few long hits. The other thing we have noticed is that the Eagles defense seems to really work well together when Michael is pitching - it enables the coach to put each player where they play the best and we have the strongest outfield - so all in all, the team really plays their best with Michael pitching.

We have a tough opponent this weekend - the Manassas Generals who have been in our league since the first season. We look forward to strong competition this weekend (as long as the weather holds out).

I think the twin bed will come soon!

We have kept Emma in the toddler bed for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that its closer to the ground - and she still manages to find a way to come close to falling out of the bed, despite two bed rails.

But tonight as I tucked her in, with her head near the top of her pillow at one end, her toes are starting to hang off the end of the mattress. Of course, the mattress on a toddler bed is just a crib mattress, but I think she's getting to the point that she's getting too long for the toddler bed and we'll finally have to pull out the twin bed and upgrade her.

Who told these kids they were allowed to grow up?!

8 interim reports, 8 As

Samantha has adjusted pretty well to going back to middle school. For my part, I wish to see that she had a little MORE work so she isn't looking at school as "easier than home" (although it sure appears to be right now - guess my standards are just a lot higher)

Anyway, mid-way through the first grading period, each of her teachers gave her an interim report. It breaks down, assignment by assignment, what their grades are and what the overall grade is.

She has 8 classes - and has 8 As!

We're pretty proud of her!