I'm With Us

I've decided the best way to deal with the election results coming in tonight is alcohol and Doritos. This year's presidential election has been incredibly divisive to our country. My hope is that we can all wake up tomorrow morning, accept the results, choose kindness and respect, and celebrate the fact that we get a vote and a voice in our country's government.

Mike and I are fiercely private about our voting tendencies. In general, we lean the same way. One of us leans farther than the other. But neither one of us is opposed to crossing party lines for the right candidate. We have talked about the election in front of our kids in general terms. Like what the president does. Why voting is important. Yada yada. I'm positive that none of the children could have told you who was running.

Bugs got to vote at school today and was so so proud. She voted for Hillary. Because "I got to vote for a girl to be president, mom. A GIRL!" Her class elected Trump 10 votes to 9 votes. We got to have an amazing conversation tonight with her (and Q listening intently) about how every vote counts and if one person had voted for Hillary in her class instead of Trump, Hillary would have won. And how even if you vote for the person who does not win, it doesn't make your vote less important. She asked who we voted for. We told her. And told her why. As we tucked her into bed tonight, she told Mike to be sure to tell her who won when he gets her up tomorrow morning.

Hanging chad-like debacles aside, by morning the election should be over. I have a preferred result. But more than anything, I hope we can heal the divide of the election as a country and move forward with love, tolerance, and respect for each other. Even if they disagree with us. We have that right.

When Elsa, a Bee, and Mickey Took on the Neighborhood

Ever since I can remember, I've been torn at Halloween. Do I want to go get candy? Or do I want to pass it out? Because they are both SO FUN!! Then, I outgrew trick-or-treating and could just focus on handing out the candy. I love Halloween night, seeing all the kids dressed up, and handing them sugar by the handful. Except I'm pretty sure I lost my job. The small Vs discovered the joy of handing out candy this year.

They stood on our tiny landing for probably 45 minutes, holding fistfuls of candy, basically willing people to our door. No one could ring our doorbell because they had the door open as soon as someone even looked toward it. After they each put candy in every bag (the neighborhood kids scored at our house), they stood in the doorway waving and shouting "Happy Halloween!" It was the very best - everything I dreamed about in having kids that love holidays as much as I do! At one point, they were so sad that there was a lull in traffic that Mike snuck out the backdoor, put on some hockey gear and grabbed a bucket, and came around the front. We got a couple legit KitKats out of the deal, so it worked for us (as opposed to the other KitKats that I swiped from their buckets ...)

The girls didn't have school on Halloween so I took the day off and we had a girls day. We made hot chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow icing and delivered them to some neighbors. We picked up Dec early so we had time to make "Bats and Cobwebs" for supper (bowtie pasta as "bats," spaghetti sauce, and melted mozzarella pearls that string up as "webs") and get ready for our trick-or-treating date!

We met up with our neighbors Evelyn and Jonah and their parents. [Fiona goes over to their house every day and catches the bus in the morning with Evelyn.] Last year, we had so much fun trick or treating with cousins that we wanted to go in a group again. I conceded to the will of Fiona this year and she was Elsa. But I refused to buy anything new and told her she had to put together an outfit based on the many Elsa pieces in the dress up bin. Quinn decided to revive the bee costume for another year. And Dec found F's old Mickey Mouse costume in the closet and decided that was perfect. So somehow I got off with all existing costumes!

We started with the cul-de-sac and the big kids were pros. Dec was working hard to keep up and was loving being a part of the group. Q was done after the cul-de-sac, so she and Mike headed home to hand out candy. Bugs, D, and I continued down the block with the gang. By the end of the block, they were done too. So we headed back home, popped a Halloween music station on Spotify, and the aforementioned happy candy handing happened.

It was simply a splendid holiday!

Feelin' Fall

The days are getting shorter and chillier, so we are packing in as much outside fun as possible before the snow flies. We'll pack in outside fun then too - but we have to wear more gear. Right now, we are solidly in our puffy vest wheelhouse. Well, four out of the five of us, anyway. I think we'll have to get Mike one - so he's one of the gang!

Mike has been working his tail off getting the yard ready for winter. He's taken several trailer loads of leaves to the farm and the yard looks great. Inevitably, we have one windy day in November that will dump a bunch more leaves and we'll make a final farm trip ... but we're pretty close. He has had no shortage of helpers in his leaf piles. They are more than happy to run through them and jump in them - quality control at its finest. 

On Saturday, we went to the seventh grade football championship game to cheer on our buddy Jack. J is pretty much Dec's hero, especially after Jack played football with him all last summer. Dec sat enthralled for the entire game while his sisters wandered around and socialized with their friends. He cheered and clapped and watched all the football moms for his celebratory cues. J's team won the game and we got to go down on the field after to celebrate. As soon as J saw Dec, he ran over and grabbed him for a hug. For the rest of the day, Dec talked about how he got to watch Jack and how Jack hugged him. Our guy really loves his big boy buddies! Also - D's got quite the leg on him and is ready to try out for team kicker.

We Couldn't Miss the Corn Pit!

Two weeks ago (stop judging ... the blog struggle is real, as my friend J says), the weather forecast looked beautiful and the kids were in great moods. So we made our annual trek to Severs Corn Maze - and more importantly, the corn pit! Gma and Gpa J had made a short stop at our house on their way home from a month-long Western adventure. Even though we knew they were excited to get home, we put on our cutest faces, grinned our grins, and tricked them into coming with us. We love our grandmas and grandpas and we will trick them into staying longer any chance we get!

Up first, showing Grandma and Grandpa the corn pit. We couldn't convince them to jump in with us (maybe next year), but they admired all the jumping antics of the small Vs. After a few shimmy shimmies to shake the corn kernels out of our underwear, we headed to the petting zoo. It was Fiona's happy place. And Q and D were much less stressed out than they have been in previous years. Then we found the giant tires and climbed those for a while. The girls found a climbing wall with a rope and totally owned it (take that, spina bifida!).

After another delicious food truck lunch (tacos and chicken nuggets for the win!), we explored the hay bale maze. Exploring from the ground is so.last.year. The kids are big now, so decided that jumping across the maze from bale to bale was the way to go. We helped them out when the gaps were extra big, but they did a good job of trying on their own too. Both girls fell when they missed the next bale and got right back up and kept going.

Grandpa and Grandma wanted to head for home, so we made sure to take them into the big corn maze for a little bit before they left. We explored, Mike and Fiona ignored the "stay on the path" signs, and randomly ran into some friends. We didn't do the whole maze, but definitely covered a portion of it. After hugs good-bye, we sent Gma and Gpa north and headed back to the corn pit for one final round. We also did the giant slide, climbed on the fire truck, and got stuck in the giant rope web.

On the way out, we checked out the pumpkin patch - just in case there were round orange treasures we had missed in the previous two trips to the patch this season. We had a great day, which was even better once we got home and shook those final corn kernels out of our underwear!

The Latest from Spina Bifida Clinic

Hey everyone! Did you think I had forgotten how to blog? It's been a crazy couple weeks around here with lots of days off of school, a loooooooong work trip for me, and busy busy work schedules. The good news (for you) is that there is a rather lengthy backlog of information and pictures!

Almost two weeks ago (blush), we headed out for our annual day at spina bifida clinic. We know we've generally been the recipients of pretty great news at these appointments - and we are grateful - but this was the best day of appointments to date. Every doctor stopped mid-sentence at some point and just said "wow." It was really reaffirming to us on how well Fiona is doing and she was super proud that they were in awe of her skills!

We sent her to school in the morning because it was Read-a-thon day - and she really didn't want to miss it. We picked her up at 10:30 and headed up to Children's. We had a full schedule in Radiology with renal ultrasound, brain MRI, and shunt series x-rays (the standard battery). Fiona's done all these tests many times and she powers through the test portion of the day with little drama. Right after all the tests were finished, we headed over to neurosurgery to see "Uncle" Pete. Often when we go to clinic, we'll have a gap between the end of her tests and when we need to go to neuro. We did not have that gap this year ... and it is not in your best interest to get out of the queue. Spina bifida clinic is only on Tuesdays and they are moving lots of kids through. Don't miss your turn!

Oh ... you know. Just climbing
the neighbor's tree.
No big thing ...

Her brain scans looked amazing and Pete kept checking to make sure he didn't have last year's scans up on both screens. There was virtually no change year over year and that is THE BEST. Her shunt was still set at the right level, so after we showed Pete a few pictures of her on ice skates (because he didn't believe that was possible ... his "Wow" moment), we were on our way to clinic. Mike and Fiona looked sadly in the direction of the cafeteria, but I hustled them on. Don't miss your turn!

Everything from the tests in the morning looked great. Her surgery in March is a huge success so far, we got a couple good tips for dealing with the occasional accidents that still pop up, and were told to keep doing what we are doing. We'll go in sometime this spring to get the smaller version of her button, but they tell us that it is a 60 second deal.

Big on our list was to verify that her braces were still the right style, because she is outgrowing her current ones. The rehab doctor was thrilled with the improvements in her feet/leg positioning because of the braces. We all agree that the support is really good for her and she doesn't mind her braces, so they took casts for a new pair and we should have those in a week or two.

We learned that the three of us are a really good team when we push through lunch. Until 2:30. The team starts to turn on each other at that point. The appointments went until 3:00. There was a "no talking to each other" rule in effect until we stopped at Popeyes and got some chicken. Everyone was happier when some food hit the bloodstream again.

Unless something changes dramatically, we'll pop over to Minneapolis in the spring for a new button and won't go back to clinic until next October. We could get used to these "boring" appointment days. But next year, I'll pack snacks!