Sharing the Stroller

I returned home last week to find a surprise in Rachel's stroller--new baby kittens!

We started with four, but now have two.  I believe Callie is to blame for that, although she isn't talking.  We built them a safer place and all has been well since. 

We are enjoying our new little friends, and Rachel is happy to share her stroller.

Nathan's Smile

A day or so before school let out, I was in Eureka for the day and picked up some water shooters for the big 3.  They turned out to be a great $3 investment!

Nathan even created some artwork with his--a giant smile!

A beautiful day for baseball!

 

It's baseball season!  We have a Jr. Pee Wee and a Pee Wee this year.

It was a gorgeous day for our first game.  There were hits, slides, nachos and hot dogs. 

It's time to PLAY BALL!

You don't know what you got 'til it's gone!

That seems to be the theme of the spring!

Don't appreciate your enclosed sewer pipes?  Uncover them for a few days and sleep with one eye open in case sewer gas starts to seep into the house.
Don't appreciate your washing machine?  Take it away for two days.  (Really, that was not as traumatic as I had thought it would be.)
. . . the concrete floor?  Take it away for a few weeks!
. . . the mini van?  Hit a deer.
Yes, that's right.  We hit a deer returning from a graduation party a week ago yesterday.  We saw it running at us and braced for the impact.  Thankfully, the deer was not too large and all it did was dent the entire passenger side.  We were all OK.

We had not visited our favorite auto body shop in awhile, so it was time to stop in again.  I dropped our van off on Wednesday, and came home in a gold Honda Accord.
I was thankful to have wheels in the interim.  I did not anticipate the kids' excitement.
That car was the best thing they had seen in quite awhile!
They explored the car inside and out, checking out every button and knob.  It was so much fun, they packed the trunk for baseball practice hours before we had to leave.  (I was not complaining.) 
Yes, driving a CAR is quite exciting, but there is a problem with a 5-passenger car and a 6-member family.  Thankfully, we also have a pickup that seats 6.  We are packed like sardines, but we can get where we need to go.
Hopefully we will be renunited with our van in a few days. 
It will be nice to stretch our legs and arms again!

Rainy Day Progress

We have been blessed with some beautiful rains in the past few days.

That has been good for the fields . . . and our basement project.  We poured the concrete over the new plumbing this afternoon.  No more walking on plywood and Rachel sneaking in the laundry room to play in the dirt trenches.  It worked, but a new floor will be so much nicer.

We're getting there . . . slowly but surely.  I stay happy about it as long as I see progress! :)

 

Making new {happy} memories

Rachel turned 17 months old today.  It also marked 6 months since her surgery.

David and I were just commenting last night how amazing it all was.  The doctors took most of her skull apart and put it back together and it hardly bothered her at all.  Six months later, the only order we have from the doctor is to keep a hat on her to keep her incision from getting sunburned.  With her complexion, she would be well covered anyway, so not even that has changed our normal routine.  Amazing.

My brain seems to have some sort of muscle memory.  For example, in spring 2007, I was extremely nauseous expecting our first daughter.  The next spring, the smells of the season brought back that nauseous feeling from time to time.  Weird.

This past week, I had a few anxious mornings.  Remembering this was the day we got the phone call form Dr. Jundt.  This is the day I hid in my bed.  This is the day we went to Sioux Falls and I got the bejeebers scared out of me.  And then we waited and waited because there was nothing else we could do.

Whenever I go through something tough, I want to use it for good.  I tried to log on to craniokids.org, a website to support parents going through various types of craniosynostosis, but I just couldn't do it.  It was too overwhelming.  The other night, I came across a chance mention of craniosynostosis in a story in Catholic Digest and I just wanted to run into Rachel's crib and scoop her up. 

I did share a very brief synopsis of our story on the Mayo Clinic website.   It already got one "helpful." :) If I can help one mom or dad feel a little bit better . . . if they don't have to wait weeks . . . months . . . to hear or see that it's all going to be OK . . . I wanted to at least do that. 

And, please, if you know of anyone with a child with craniosynostosis who needs encouragement, send them my way.  I may not be ready for an online forum, but I certainly can and would love to help one-on-one. 

 

So, anyway, enough of my sappyness.

As I said the other day, it is time to make NEW HAPPY memories THIS summer and we have been doing just that. 

As you can see, our poor cat Nip Nip is being a good sport with his new-found best friend.  Teresa loves her bike and has been venturing to the stop sign and back.  There are times that I feel a shift in my children's development and I am noticing that now.  Landen is growing up and teaches me so much.  Nathan has been so helpful and has grown out of his constant fighting back.  That was a good 6 years, but I'm ready to leave it behind!  It's good.

All good.  

A Happy Mom's Day

I was a very Happy Mother's Day here at the Melius farm. 

If I could have made it better, the father of the family would have been able to spend more of it with us, but corn must be grown and I sure wasn't getting around to getting it in the ground!   

I do believe that Mother's Day and my birthday are my favorite days of the year.  Those are the days that my children approach me as though a glowing angelic halo surrounds me.  OK, so maybe I'm not quite THAT special, but I did have toast and coffee made for me and laundry going before we left for church this morning!  That doesn't just happen every day.

Since our usual Sunday morning hangout was closed, (even Donna needs a day off now and then), I was treated to pizza for brunch and it was fabulous.  Then it was back home to farm life during planting season.  There is no "lazy Sunday/Mother's Day afternoon" in planting season.

But, we made the best of it anyway. Since days can really start to run together at busy times of the year like this, I wanted to do something out of the ordinary today. So, the kids and I spent the entire afternoon outside enjoying the beautiful day.

 

I had picked up some of these gorgeous gerbera daisies last week.  I know that every year they will have just one or two beautiful blooms, but I just couldn't pass them up! 

Look at that!  Could you say, "Umm, no, thank you.  I'll take a snapdragon, please," to that orange beauty staring you in the face???? 

Not I.  That's why I bought three . . . or four . . . I don't remember.  They were just so pretty!!!!!

 

My wonderful husband had already dumped a pile of dried manure on the flower bed. 

(That's right.  We don' have to BUY our manure in bags out here on the farm.) 

It still needed dirt, so the big 3 helped me do that, and Rachel carried the cat upside down around the yard. 

Everyone was happy.

Then we brought out the garden hose and started adding some moisture to our manure/black dirt concoction. 

It was about this time--as I had just paid my willing workers in ice cream handed through the kitchen window--that our resident farmer showed up.  He said our ground would need to dry off and get smoothed off again before we could plant our flowers.  Since he KIND OF is the expert on soil conditions around here, we decided to believe him.

It was then time, Nathan decided, to turn out attention to a wienie roast, which we did for our supper. Flowers will wait for another day.

Rachel's expression pretty much sums it up here.  She was dirty and covered in cat hair, roasted hot dog, popcorn and chocolate cake from her hot pink sun hat to her muddy little toes.

Does it get any better?

I don't think so.

 

I know that sometimes these enormous blessings can test my patience, wear me down, share their germs, and break my heart, but they are the BEST blessings EVER and I am so VERY grateful to have had them in my life.

 

God bless your week.

 

 

Teresa is two wheelin'!

I told you she was determined!

By this evening, the training wheels were off!  She can't wait to get out and practice more tomorrow.

Smarty Pants

She can identify her hair, nose, eyes, ears, and teeth.

She has added "tractor" to her vocabulary.

Time to start with the neuroscience . . . and reading right side up is just not challenging enough!

On our bikes

It's time to get the bikes out of storage! 

Landen gave the girls a ride in the trailer last night.  He made it about 1/4 way of our 2 mile walk before unhitching the girls and handing them off to me to push. :)

 

Teresa declared earlier this week that she was ready to learn how to use a 2-wheel bike without training wheels.  No problem, until we noticed that the bike the boys both learned on was beyond repair.

Today was the day for a new pink and purple bike!  There aren't many days more special than the one when you get to ride a brand new princess bike out of the store.

It's like wearing new shoes out of the store . . . only better.

She could not wait to get home and hopped on it immediately!

We went up a size in bikes, so it may take a little longer to get the hang of it without the training wheels, but she is determined.  It is too easy to get high centered on the gravel with the trainers on the sides!

Big brother and me

 

After Rachel was born, David noticed that she brought us all together. . . and she really did.  She has been loved unconditionally by her siblings even before she was born. 

  As I often tell people, if the big 3 can't agree on anything else, they can always agree that their baby sister is pretty great.

All of them do very well with Rachel, but Nathan really likes to play with her and make her laugh. 

He has a t-shirt that says, "Will trade sister for tractor."

He's been asked a couple of times if he would really do that and he has answered, "One of them."

Don't worry, Rachel.  You are safe. 

You will always be a "keeper" in Nathan's book!

 

Photo shoot

My talented sister-in-law Angela was kind enough to meet us at our farm after church on Sunday to take some updated family photos.

We didn't take a family photo at Christmas, so it was time.  It is quite difficult to get us all in the same place at the same time this time of year . . . and especially all dressed up! 

 

 

David and I both liked this hugging one, too, because Rachel was doing exactly what she was told to do!  Maybe next time her big brothers will be looking up, too. :)

 

 Callie had to get in on this one.  She is part of our farm family, too.

 

 

Hold on to me as we go / As we roll down this unfamiliar road / And alrhough this wave is stringing us along / Just know you're not alone / Cause I'm going to make this place your home.

 

- Phillip Phillips

 

Summer dreamin'

The Burger Shack opened last weekend.
My flower beds are cleaned out and ready for new plants.
Baseball practice starts tomorrow.
Only 1 more full week of school is left.
Yes, summer is just . . . around . . . the corner!
It's hard to believe when we were just covered in white, but the snow is gone!!!

Yes, summer.  I am excited for this one.

The past two summers were tough for me. This one, though, feels like a fresh start. 
No pregnancy worries/morning/all day sickness.  No visits to surgeons and a scary surgery looming in the way too distant future for me to worry about every day.

A NEW summer is upon us and we are going to embrace it!

What I'm looking forward to:
-Lots of walks on the gravel roads near our farm
- Watching my flowers grow, grow, grow!
- Watching my kiddos grow, grow, grow!
- Soaking up the sun as much as possible
- Finishing the basement bathroom/utility room project so that we can continue on to the KITCHEN!!
- A road trip to Breckenridge, CO, for a Melius Cousins (our generation/no kids) reunion.  We have had 2 of these in different locations, with the last one in 2006.  It's always a GREAT time and long overdue!
- Hopefully a Twins game with the kiddos!
- A trip to Brainerd, MN, for a family reunion
- PeeWee and Jr. PeeWee baseball games
- Sprinklers, slip and slides, swimming and swimming lessons

It won't be perfect. The days won't all be great.

But, today is a good sunny day.
I'll take it.

WalkMS 2013

Here is our 2013 team (except for my parents, due to my mom's recent surgery, and husband and boys who didn't get there quite in time for the photo.)  It's OK.  The boys reached their goal of running most of it and "winning" the walk. 

We don't have any official totals yet, but our team raised at least $1500. 

Thank you to everyone who supported us again this year!