Baffling Blood, Beautiful Boys, and a Birthday

I'm 35. As in, Years Old. Life is great, it's been a good year and 2010 is going to be another even better year, but it is a little weird to be on the upper end of the thirties. I know it's technically "mid" but you definitely don't round-down from this number. Only those with grandchildren might still consider me "young." Ah well, who really wants to be young again? With age is wisdom!

Besides a year wiser, I'm now about 37 weeks pregnant. I haven't written about it til now, but there has been a "complication" of sorts with this pregnancy: severe anemia. It's been completely confusing because I have no symptoms whatsoever. I tested fairly low the very first time weeks before the big road trip, so I added an iron supplement (something I haven't needed with the previous pregnancies) and tried to be very mindful of my diet, especially trying to avoid those things that inhibit iron absorption. Well my next blood test was a week or so after the trip - you know how much energy I had to have to do that! - but this next result showed even LOWER iron in my blood, that's when the "severe" category kicked in.

By all medical rationale I should have been (and should still be) barely able to get out of bed each day, sickly pale, dizzy or faint, etc... But nope, I even rearranged all the furniture in my living & TV rooms to get the Christmas tree set up just the way I wanted. I have to admit I suspected the lab results could be wrong, but dutifully altered my supplements again, and watched my diet even more carefully, now adding quinoa grain and beef liver in the regular meal plans. My midwife wasn't scheduling another test for 6 weeks, but I wanted to see for myself if the lab she was using had somehow mixed up their reports so after about half that time I got my chiro (who's also my friend) to write up a request for a local (different) lab to draw & test my blood. Hmmph! It showed the SAME results as the test 3 weeks earlier. So now I not only had to believe it, I was starting to panic a bit that all my efforts were in vain. Nothing was helping!! And then I worried that worrying about it would make it worse (call it law of attraction or just stress-induced illness, whatever). Increase the liver frequency! Work on a positive attitude! Get a priesthood blessing from my sweatheart! And visit my friend Lorrie, the essential oils/energy healing worker.

In the meantime, Mark & I celebrated our 8th anniversary. Thanks to his brother Spencer and his friend watching our kids half the day and late into the night, we got a really relaxing and fabulous date! We went to the temple and stayed in the celestial room as long as we wanted. We hung out in Barnes & Noble looking in practically every section. (I'm a dedicated Amazon shopper, but there is something irreplaceable about picking up and flipping through actual books.) And then we had a liesurely dinner (and desert!) at the Cheesecake Factory. We truly almost never go to a restaurant so this was a major treat! My meal was delicious and I was completely and utterly happy. Total joy as I reflected on my life, my marriage, our boys, and our expectations for what is to come.

Another fun thing lately: we experienced our first murder mystery game. The McCammon's hosted us and two other super fun couples and fed us a fabulous meal. We were all supposed to have Italian accents (except one French character) and half the fun was hearing what people tried to pass off as Italian! I thought I was the guilty one for quite a while, but everyone had complicated motives and in the end it was a twist. Total blast. Getting good quality adult mingling time is so nice.

Isaac & Sam still have their Musikgarten class, and now we have Isaac signed up for Upwards Basketball starting in January. Sam will be taking swimming lessons next month as well. Hope I have as quick a recovery after the birth as I always have in the past! Homeschool, such as we do, is going great. I know I'm hormonally supercharged right now, but I seriously get teared up on a regular basis while observing the boys at work or at play. They are just so beautiful and brilliant and funny and creative! This new boy coming is sooo lucky to get them for big brothers!

So, back to that. My most recent blood test came back showing some improvement. Hooray for that! Boo that it isn't enough yet... The risk with low blood-iron is hemorrhaging during/after delivery (i.e. uncontrollable blood loss). My midwife has methods to work with slow clotting/excess bleeding but the bigger problem comes if her methods don't work, then I would need immediate transfusions and surgery - not available at the birthing center. I really don't want to switch to an OB/hospital plan, for many reasons, and thankfully because of the uptick in iron my midwife is willing to keep with me a couple weeks longer and work on a plan B first (leaving the hospital as plan C). Plan B will quite likely include me getting a blood transfusion a week or so before my due date to jump up my iron... but if I get (well, let's be honest here and say if GOD gets) my iron up high enough before then (I'll be doing weekly tests), then that (the transfusion) won't be necessary. So more prayers & positive thinking!! FYI, everything else with my health and the baby himself seem to be just peachy. I am really so ridiculously blessed, it is rather petty of me to get down at all about this little glich.

Anyway, besides trying to find creative ways to choke down more liver, I'm of course busy with Christmas (decorating, shopping, parties, etc) and the Young Women (along with all the regular Wednesday night activities, we got a new Beehive finally, and we sang for a special sacrament meeting program this week), AND I'm on the hunt for a new-to-us family vehicle. Yes, the time has come as in just a few short weeks (3ish?) we will officially have more kids than the backseat of the Avalon can hold. Thanks to internet research, and lots of advice from friends on Facebook, I'm narrowing things down and hope to be able to get exactly what I want for a great deal. I'll keep you posted.

Mark decided to bake a cake while I napped Sunday afternoon, so we had a just a bit of an early birthday celebration for me last night. Here's my men singing to me...

Isaac's Irony

This morning we had the most delicious waffles. (It's the stiffened egg whites folded in that does it.) Isaac ate more than anyone, and he & I were the last ones at the table. He seemed deep in thought (and evidently was), then burst forth with this considered opinion:

"I think to make cartoons would be the hardest job, and to see the world would be the easiest."

(Since my brain had to whir a bit to follow him, I'll give yours a little help: he's talking about making television programs; I even gave you links for visual aid. But still. And he wasn't finished.)
"Also I think that Siberia would be one of the greatest places to visit."
I actually laughed at that (he looked a little hurt). I explained to him my perception of Siberia as a place that, at least in times past, was so frozen and barren that Russians would send the people they didn't like there as punishment. Isaac was still confused - doesn't Mom know any better? Somehow he already knows that Siberia can also look like this:
And that it holds all sorts of amazing wildlife... I hope that we can help Isaac to see more of the world in person, but I'm still not totally sold on eastern Russia. I'll add it to the bottom of my list. (Anyway, if Isaac helps with the trip planning, maybe he'll see just how "easy" it is!)

(I forgot to note who gets credit for these images - sorry.)

Skipping the Stamps

Lately I've been making slideshows in lieu of actually mailing cards & pictures to family for their birthdays. My brother's was this week and I finally found an application that would let me save & post my creations here. Sam's contribution this time cracked me up so I used it as inspiration for the the rest of the presentation... Enjoy!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

The Shearing

Like in Highlights magazine, try to find the things that are different from the first image to the second:

Snow Play?

Fruitland has seen a lot of snow already this winter but we haven't had much action in it. Shortly after we returned from Seattle the boys wanted all their gear put on so they could try out their new construction vehicles in the sandbox...

Charlie was more interested in trying to draw with the sidewalk chalk (it made a nice shape of blue snow), and in going down the slide and mowing...

Clearly they were not thinking much of snow-related activities. They came back inside in about as much time as it takes to upload a handful of pictures to a computer. I think their enthusiasm went a little something like this:

The Best of '08

New Year's Day 2009 I started out feeling overtired and innerly-whiny. Charlie woke up screaming bloody murder around 1:30 and we were up together until sometime after 3, when I passed him off to poor Mark, who went to the factory after breakfast not taking a nap or a holiday. (He took a whole uncomplaining week off for Christmas in Seattle -blog post to come - and I have resolved in 2009 to be more supportive of Posterity Pellets in every way, including laying off the guilt when Mark needs to work. He never complains, the saint.)

ANYWAY, so I'm tired and in my head I had these moments of petty jealousies. Reviewing all the vacations I didn't get to go on the past year (Oregon coast was cancelled, no Europe, no Hawaii, no return to Brazil for the temple dedication), the hobbies I didn't get to devote much time to (no finished scrapbooks, piles of incomplete sewing and decorating projects)... And then, before too long, I recognized that I was comparing myself largely to friends w/o children or with lifestyles that in other ways I wouldn't wish to emulate. I started thinking of other things I "didn't get" such as lonely, or bored, or unappreciated. I realized that, despite my actions or moods, not a day of 2008 passed without me feeling needed, wanted, and loved. That makes a tidy cap to my first year of blogging, don't you think?

You can check out my sidebar, or other posts, for the kinds of things generally on "Best" lists, but for me this year there's just one thing: My Family.

Without further ado I present some of the best pictures from our 2008 Family Portrait session, credit to dear sis-in-law Val.

To wrap up this end-of-year wrap-up post, and in full humility, I am compelled to admit that I did get to go on vacation this year (to Arizona alone, Seattle twice, McCall twice, and to D.C./Virgina sans kiddos - one of the best vaca's of my life) not to mention the several times we enjoyed family or friends who traveled to see us; I did get to do some scrapbooking, and organizing of craft supplies in anticipation of future opportunities, plus got a camera and - duh - I'm blogging. Also I've done some decorating & sewing (painted rooms & cabinetry, made a Roman shade and throw pillows, etc.); I read a zillion books and participated in a book club, became the secretary of our local John Birch Society chapter, attended a Ron Paul rally, and enjoyed many church-related activities. So I really had no business with the inner-whining in the first place. But you knew that.

One Week til Christmas

Our ward (church) Christmas party was held the first weekend of December. I don't think we got our tree up for another week or so after that. I have a dear friend who had hers up, along with the whole Christmas decor shebang, the day after Halloween. I love the feeling of Christmas, don't get me wrong, but seems to me that Thanksgiving is an important enough holiday not to "skip."

Santa passed out oranges to the kids this year. I heartily approve of that choice, but...

...the only time my kids have ever been thrust into the "sit on Santa's lap" situation is at our church parties. Does that seem wrong to anyone else? Just what are we celebrating at Christmas?

Anyway, eventually I put together our lovely nylon-needled tree and the boys helped me decorate it. I am so grateful to have collected ornaments throughout my life. Some are homemade by me as a child (wire & bead candy cane), some from the boys (gingerbread stocking), some fanciful (a plumed peacock), but many represent images or symbols of Christ. I love a fully decorated tree!

I also love vignettes. We don't have very many surfaces to use for display (no mantle for instance) so the bookshelves got re-arranged or added to. (See above and below - different bookcases.) Then there's the shelf above the French doors. I need to find something great to put there the rest of the year - totally underutelized space.

Here's a full view of the front room. Between the windows I hung my little nativity plaque. I haven't shown much of the house before, have I?

I know I mentioned repainting the TV room when my dad & brother were here in the fall, but I never showed the finished look. Before & After will have to be some other post, but here is my wooden nativity that I thought would be child-friendly... Well, the shepherd had his hand broken off this year in (successful) efforts to get his staff. Hmm. The plant makes the table look lopsided here. Maybe it's because I took the speaker off the other end (for the picture)?

Lastly are the little vignettes on the kids' bookshelf in the hall and the kitchen shelves. So glad we made the kitchen cabinet people figure out a way to add those!

There are no pictures of the outside because, sadly and for the second year in a row, we have no outdoor lights up. Next year I'm going to ask Mark to hang lights outside for my birthday present or something!

What about your place? Does the outside of your house rival the Griswalds? Or maybe it looks like the Grinch visited (when his heart was still too small). Do you decorate just in time for the Twelve Days of Christmas, or will it have been done for two months by New Years?

We Got a New Camera!

Mark's birthday was yesterday and I decided that an appropriate surprise would be to get him his own camera to take to work & various other semi-dangerous places. So I cleaned our (rather old 4 MP) Canon Powershot S45 and packaged it with all the original manuals, cords, etc. in the box that my new (wide angle/ultra zoom 8 MP) Panasonic Lumix DMC-F18 came in! Was that mean? Mark thought it was perfect. He didn't even notice that I was using a different camera for birthday party pictures until he opened that box, and he knows how much and for how long I've wanted a better camera.

I'm really excited to play with all it's SLR-like features, but I'm only about half way through the manual and I haven't even loaded the software on my computer yet to upload my first attempt. Point is? Beautiful shots of Mark's 35th Birthday BBQ coming soon... (and yes he did get other presents).

P.S. Thanks to Sharee for hooking me up with Consumer Reports' ratings to help me pick a camera. I also used information from these sites: Digital Photography Review, Imaging Resource, Digital Camera HQ, and even the Digital SLR Guide, though I ultimately decided not to get a full SLR (couldn't sacrifice the video clip ability).

Warning: Not for Vegetarian Viewers

Reed (Grandpa Dame) was informed that the neighbors were beginning to complain about the roosters crowing at all hours so he decided it was time for them to go. Like with an ax. Mark & Aaron helped.

Charlie thought the chase was hilarious, but I kept the kids away from what happened once the birds were caught.

I watched too much for my own good, though certainly I didn't stick around for the whole show. Those were once baby chicks that my boys thrilled over! Not a hunter or a farmer am I (waves to all the fellow city peeps - pun intended). I am really anti-killing in general, feeling a teensy bit guilty when I squash bugs (except mosquitoes). Maybe I was introduced to Ghandi at too impressionable an age.

I'm a huge hypocrite, though, 'cause once the breasts & legs were rinsed in the sink I think "Oh, now it's just chicken."

Sorry for the graphic images but thought some might find it interesting, maybe??