Poor little Evelyn!

I heard from Dave this afternoon that Evelyn is in the hospital. She awoke with a fever during the wee hours of Saturday morning. Tylenol brought the fever down, but it kept coming back. The doctor recommended that she come to the hospital if the fever reached 102 degrees, so that's where they went on Saturday afternoon. They haven't determined the cause as yet - they're doing blood tests. Dave says that she seems to be feeling better. Poor little girl! My heart goes out to her AND her parents!

We had dinner with Gram tonight to celebrate her birthday. She received a potted miniature Christmas tree from Dave and Melissa, and a beautiful bouquet of roses and alstromeria from D.J. and Michele. Bob and Mary Ann sent her an assortment of fruit, cheese, truffles, cookies, nuts etc. She had phone calls today from Bob, Rob and Dawn. And Sue visited her this morning and brought a gift, so her 92nd birthday was well remembered.

Pop and I have been working on packing. Both of our suitcases weigh in at less than 50 pounds (41 and 34) so we're doing OK so far. We'll keep thinking of more things to bring between now and Wednesday.

Time for me to get ready for bed while Pop watches the Bear/Viking game. Love to you all, and say a little prayer for Evelyn and family.

Mom

Chatty Evelyn

I love being naked. Press play and I'll tell you all about it.

a Happy Thanksgiving

We had a lovely time at Dave and Melissa's. Evelyn was adorable and stayed awake all the time except for the time we were eating, when she conveniently took a brief nap. Sadly, our picture at the table is missing Chris, Sami, Melissa and Pop, but they were all there. Chris and Sami were very busy trying to track down Chloe, who was smart enough to stay 2 steps ahead of them. Gram managed to stick it out for close to 4 hours, and I think Linda really enjoyed herself. Thanks, Melissa and Dave!

Our departure is less than 5 days away, and it turns out that I have to open the store at 5:00 every day until then because Karen's mother passed away today. So I can't really complain (can I?)

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Mother Goose

Chris and Sami outdid themselves on one of Gavin's presents. They gave Gavin a book of Mother Goose nursery rhymes AND a CD of them taking turns reading each one in the order of their appearance in the book. CLICK HERE to listen to the 23 tracks. *Note that if you click "Play" for Track 1, it will take a few seconds to load, then it will play all the tracks in order. As Michele wrote in their letter to Gavin, "Cautionary Note: Sami really got into her recital of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' [Track 22], you may want to cover the dogs ears and yours too for the finale." THANK YOU for the neat present, you guys!!

Arrivals - early and late

We're home! We came home a day early. We had planned to take 2 days to get home from Pete's, but once we got on the road (around noon) we decided we wanted to sleep in our own beds tonight. Gavin's sleep schedule is all out of whack. Aren't babies/toddlers supposed to fall asleep on long car rides? Apparently the answer is the same as the answer to every other child-related question: it depends. He finally did fall asleep for the last hour of the 6-hour drive.

When we got home we were delighted to find the so-called "suspicious package" on our doorstep. Thank you so much to Michele, DJ, Chris and Sami for the great birthday presents! The personalized gifts and hand-decorated card are fantastic. We can't wait to listen to the CDs tomorrow! The wooden doggie pull toy is terrific. Hopefully it will inspire mister 'two-little-steps-and-I'm-done' to get the walking thing figured out once and for all. And of course, Gavin can always use more books and clothes. You guys are awesome!

Love and best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!

Miscellany

We're working on getting ready to hit the road so I'll make this a quick one (I hope!). When Gavin gets up from his nap we're going to hop in the truck and head south. We're staying at Pat & Michelle's in Loa (near Capitol Reef) tonight, then heading further south to Pete's (near Zion) for the rest of the weekend. We'll come home Tuesday. The weather is supposed to be in the 60s and sunny at Pete's, so we're looking forward to hanging on to a mild fall before the real cold weather hits.

Gavin had a stomach virus and was sick for 5 days. On the 5th day (Wednesday) I took him to the doctor because I was worried about him getting dehydrated. He had diarrhea and wouldn't eat or drink much. Turns out it was a 5-day virus and by Wednesday night he was hungry again. It also turns out that some of his fussiness probably had to do with teething since as of this morning he's cutting one, maybe two bottom teeth. He's been toothless up to this point, so this is exciting news. He's also started "walking" a little. Only a couple of steps here and there for now but it won't be long before he's running circles around us.

After many phone calls back and forth with the Postal Service Inspector's offices in Chicago and St. Louis and my local post office, the package that Michele and family sent to Gavin for his birthday is still missing. I got a call 2 weeks ago from an Inspector asking me if I was expecting a package from Chicago. After a few minutes of questions and answers and a phone call to Michele it was determined that the "suspicious package" that was being held up in Chicago contained birthday presents for Gavin and was therefore not a threat to national security. Supposedly the Inspector released the package for shipping that same day, but since then nobody knows what happened to it. Bummer! I hope it wasn't a diamond-studded truck solid gold building blocks.

I'd better go and pack before Gavin wakes up. Love to you all!

A skosh more progress

For those of you who, like me, always wondered how to spell "skosh", there you have it. I looked it up ;). Mom wanted to see pictures of the bathroom so here they are in all their splendor. As you can see Gavin feels the need to investigate every drawer in his path. And as you can see from the other picture, Brandon is fixin' to fix our toilet (or so we hope). It used to flush just once, then it graduated to twice, and now when you push down the handle it flushes a full three times. Not exactly a water-saver, unless you count the times that one person goes and flushes and then a second person goes and is done before the toilet is done flushing. Still - not ideal. So hopefully its the flushing mechanism and not the throne itself that's the problem. We spent a little time today buttoning up the patio area and the driveway. All the mulch and gravel and road base that got shoved around by the skiddy last weekend has been dealt with in one way or another. Now if we can just get the rest of the leaves raked before it snows....

EEEEEEEEEEK!

This is my third attempt, since my first 2 newsy posts have disappeared. I quit!

I just wasted an hour and now I'm out of time.

Happy birthday D.J.!

Love, from your frustrated Mom

Happy 38 years and 10 minutes

Mom - I found a draft of your post! Here it is :)


Let's see, I talked about D.J.'s birthday, The Palatine Woods, Gram and Pop:

Tonight we'll be meeting D.J. and family at Famous Dave's (again) for a celebratory dinner. I'm looking forward to seeing these four members of our family. Prior to that, we'll be shopping at Ace because it's a rare opportunity for Pop to get a 30% discount off regular prices. They do it every year before Christmas for employees. Anybody need anything? Let me know in the next 6 hours!

Pop will be getting a shot, or shots, in his back next Wednesday morning. We hope this will give him more relief from the sciatica than Dr. Fay has been able to do. Meanwhile, our weather has been cold, windy, wet and generally miserable. Pop is doing as much as he can in the yard under the circumstances. The gutters in back need cleaning, but the stuff is frozen in there. We need a warmer day - perhaps tomorrow, but it will be rainy. He also needs to shut down the pond operation before we leave - and that will be in 3 weeks from today.

Gram's abscessed tooth continues to plague her. The dentist last Friday started her on an antibiotic, and we went to the oral surgeon on Monday afternoon. He said he still couldn't treat it because the infection was still draining, so we go again on Thursday, when he will decide if it can be done on either Saturday or next Monday. On the day of the procedure she has to take 500 mg. of penicillin within one hour. There's another tooth that is suspect and I worry that will flair up. Wish I could talk the oral surgeon into doing them both at once

Happy 38!

2 months...

Today I'm 2 months old!!!

I love sleeping at night~ about 9 hours. I'm not into naps at the moment, but have learned to entertain myself which allows mom and dad time to get things done. I smile more and more everyday. I discovered my hands and enjoy putting them in my mouth. I love bath time! Sitting on mom's lap while she reads to me is also one of my favorite pass times.

I had such a fun weekend. I got lots of cool stuff at the party yesterday. The ladies passed me around like a candy dish. I loved the attention.

I go to the doctor on Thursday for my 2 month checkup. Mom wonders how much I weigh.

Hope everyone has a great week. Make sure to vote tomorrow. :)

Neighborly photo shoot

Our neighbor Buffy is a whiz with her sweet SLR digital camera, so I asked her to take some pictures of Gavin for us. She came over on Saturday afternoon and followed Gavin all over the yard. Judging from the filenames of the photos I think she took ~200 of them! She sifted them down to about a hundred and I've sifted them even further and put my favorites in a Picasa Web Album. There are so many great ones! I'm going to have some prints made to send out to family and friends, so if you have any requests please let me know. I might be a little biased, but I think this kid is pretty darn adorable :).

beautiful fall weekend

All of you wonderful blog-posters have shamed me into making a contribution...

This has been a lovely week for me, since I had a week's vacation to use up before my Jewel anniversary in November. I think I could adapt to not working at all, although I might have a tendency to vegetate too much. Pop and I went to the Arboretum twice for a couple of nice walks. On Thursday we also took a one hour tram ride (our "free" coupons expired in 2008) and we nearly froze. It was in the high 40's, but an hour traveling in the open air left us almost frozen. We thawed out over lunch and walked through the woods for awhile.

Gram has had a terribly painful week - the hematoma in her hip seems to move around a bit, and there was a large lump right where she couldn't sit or lay down without it interfering. Linda has been really good about applying hot wet compresses to the area, and that seems to give her some relief. She's pretty reliant on the Darvocet to control the pain. When she ran out on Thursday night I offered to pick up the refill, since it wouldn't be delivered until late on Friday. She declined my offer, but I should have done it 'cause she had a really bad night.

My oven refused to turn on all last weekend, so on Monday we had a repairman replace the igniter, to the tune of almost $200. Pop watched carefully, so the next time he can do it himself - as if the same thing would happen again ;-)

Melissa and Dave, I'm delighted that Evelyn is sleeping all night for you. What a difference it makes when you're not feeling like a zombie all the time. We really appreciate all the pictures that you post - can't wait for her "2 month old" picture (tomorrow?) I hope that something happens to make Dave's job more tolerable.

Julie and Brandon, we wish we were at the birthday celebration (and not just for the yummy cake!) Thanks for making Gavin's first year so open to us - we feel like we're there.

How's everything in North Aurora? We enjoyed the Halloween festival at the Devonshire last Saturday, and loved seeing Sami in her ghost costume and Chris in his ninja costume. I expected to have more trick-or-treaters this year because of the wonderful weather, but we only had between 50 and 60. I should give some thought to returning the un-opened bags to the store so they don't tempt us.

Pop has been on an antibiotic for the past 9 days for a sinus infection, and he seems to be feeling pretty well (for an old guy...) Lots to do in the yard, but he has both sides of the garden tilled. We have only 4 1/2 weeks until our New Zealand cruise, so we should be busy getting ready. I really hope we can put together enough suitable clothes, and figure out what else we need to have and fit it all into 2 suitcases (Thanks to D.J. and Gram for loaning us theirs!)

I just found out that the Bears are losing 20-10 to Detroit. I had best go root for them to turn this tide...

Love to you all, Mom

One Wonderful Year!!!

Happy 1st Birthday Gavin!!!

It's amazing to see what you have learned and how you have grown during the first year of your life. (Thanks to your lovely parents for logging all your pics and videos on the blog.) Can't wait to see what's in store for year # 2.

We hope you have a stellar birthday and that you enjoy your homemade cake with yummy cream cheese frosting. Make sure your Mommy and Daddy post a few pics of you devouring it.

Lots of Love,
Aunt Melissa, Uncle Dave & Evelyn

Making progress

There seems to be no end to our home improvement project list. We're still not done painting the bathroom, there's a long list of yard work chores that need to be done before winter, and in a few weeks we'll be getting new vinyl siding on the 'old' part of the house (since our pennies seem to be worth less every day we figured we might as well spend them now!). Our most recently completed project is a little patio on the south side of the house where its nice and shady all day in the summer. I say it's completed, but actually it spawned yet another project, which is to landscape around it.

We spent the evening yesterday (Halloween) across the street with our neighbors, Phil & Barb. We ate white bean chicken chili for dinner and drank a few too many cocktails while greeting trick-or-treaters. Gavin wore a lion outfit he inherited from his cousin Rhiannon, and Brandon and I pulled out our piratewear.

Tomorrow we're going to celebrate Gavin's first birthday! Its hard to believe a whole year has passed since we checked into the hospital because my water had broken. We're going to have a small gathering - not quite a party - with cake and ice cream at 2 pm. You're all invited, of course! Brooke and her family and Dale are coming up from Ogden, and some of the neighbors might come over as well. I still haven't decided what kind of cake to make but I have a few baby-friendly recipes to choose from that have applesauce, bananas, pumpkin, and/or carrots in them. We've determined that cow's milk no longer upsets his tummy (hooray!), so the frosting will be made from cream cheese. Yum!