I don't like camping

Friends

So last weekend we made good on a longstanding plan to take the kids camping. Anida did all of the research, planning and packing, and on Friday afternoon we piled into the car and drove up to the mountains.

And everyone had a great time. The post title came from Daniel saying the following on the last morning:

"I don't like to be cold. I don't like to be dirty. I don't like camping because it makes me cold and dirty".

Which didn't stop him from continuing to play in the dirt, learn how to throw a frisbee and in general have enough fun that he says he wants to go camping again.

There were marshmallows. There were s'mores. There were hotdogs over an open fire. And yes - it was cold. Even in the middle of June it gets cold at night at 9800 feet.

Both Daniel and Rachel had fun exploring, going on (very short) hikes and throwing things in the stream nearby.

The mosquitos mostly feasted on Rachel and Anida and left the boys alone. No major hiccups with regard to the trip, except that the coffeepot broke in transit, and we nearly ran out of matches because the "waterproof" matches turned out to also be nearly fireproof.

So we'll do it again.

Until next time.

ADRE

Random Updates on a Sunday evening

Friends


There are a total of three new posts this evening, so don't stop once you're done reading this one -> a lot of little updates that didn't fit anywhere else come first.


Eric usually takes Daniel to swim lessons while Anida does other things, and so she hadn't actually seen first-hand how good of a swimmer he's become until today.

And it was a good day for it too. He got to swim across the whole pool on his back, show that he can breathe properly, but the best part was that he got to jump from the diving board a couple of times. He was proud as a peacock over that one.


Daniel's been spelling out words as he sees them written on signs and buildings, but we didn't actually know that he had cracked "the grownup code" of spelling out things in conversation that we didn't want him to hear. That illusion was shattered at dinner on Friday, when Anida said jokingly to our guest "If you do that, I'll have to kay-eye-ell-ell you", and Daniel said "Did mama just say "kill"?

Oops. Oh well. Could have been worse.


Most of the Rachel updates are two posts down, but we had a similar exchange at dinner yesterday, when Eric - in frustration that Rachel kept making a mess at dinner, referred to her as "a little oink", to which she immediately said "I'm not a pig".


OK, note to selves - kids are listening more than we give them credit for.


Rachel scored major points with Anida for saying "Tank you for washing my pajamas", and then proudly took her clean clothes upstairs.


And that about does it for now. Since these posts appear witht the newest one first, keep reading for 2 additional updates.


Love, ADRE

Swine Flu stinks...

Friends


We were going to spend a nice long weekend at a resort in Cancun with the Pasta family, but given the hysteria around Swine Flu in the last couple of weeks of April, we changed destinations at the last minute.


In retrospect, that decision is looking a little wimpy, but at the time it seemed prudent.


Thankfully, we were still able to pull off a trip to San Diego, which turned out to be a very good trip.


Legoland was a huge success, and everyone had a good time. Daniel was tall enough for the rides that he wanted to ride, and Rachel had plenty to do too.

The highlights were driving a lego car, riding a pirate boat (where you could spray other boats) and putting out a "fire" (which the Pastas, to their credit, did faster than we did).

It was just a lot of fun all around.









On Saturday, we saw the San Diego Zoo in the morning, and the Midway in the afternoon. The Midway was the bigger hit of the two, but Rachel liked the Panda exhibit and proclaimed "I have one of those at home!" We wrapped it up with a chance to play on the sandy beach at Coronado.

The days were full of excitement, and we didn't have any problems keeping everyone entertained, but we might have worn them out a bit. On Sunday, we hit the San Diego Wild Animal park, and when we walked in the front gate, Daniel took one look and exclaimed in disgust "This is s ZOO". We didn't last long at that park, but went back to the hotel for a dip in the pool before going over to Jan Robert and Lia's place for a nice BBQ.


Monday was another full day of entertainment, with a harbor cruise, a ride on a double-decker bus, a drive along the coast and a chance to see sealions in La Jolla. If it sounds like we were busy, we were. The kids had a blast, and so did the adults. Sure, it was a little more work than sitting around a pool in Cancun, but not a bad vacation by any stretch of the imagination.

Tuesday, the Pastas had an earlier flight than us, so we parted ways at the hotel after breakfast, with the intent to return to Legoland, but the big L was closed. So we regrouped and went to the Birch Acquarium, which was very nice, and then played some miniature golf at Boomers, before heading back to town for the trip home. It was our first time playing miniature golf, and Daniel can whack the ball pretty well.


Next stop will be Providence, RI where we're all going to Eric's college reunion, then later in the summer it'll be Norway and Iceland.


Hope everyone is doing well. Will try to do one final posting here before calling it a night.

Love, ADRE.

A long-neglected Rachel Update

Friends

This little video is over a month old, and just fell into that pile of "things we need to post" before getting lost in Daniel's birthday.

Rachel, like her brother, has an amazing vocabulary, and has started to say some really funny things. The other day, Anida turned on the radio and the commentators were talking:

"Dat's a talking Song!"

Most of the time, she's easy to understand. She substitutes "s" for "f" at the beginning of words, so that "Firefighter" becomes "SiAH sitAH". "L" or "R" at the start of a word becomes "W" (I like it is I wike it and I ripped the book becomes "I wipped it"). We understand 99.9% of what she says, but occasionally, she'll rip out one that has us scratching our heads. "I wanna cosa cousins" turned out to be "I would like to close the curtains".

Rachel LOVES to read books, and one of her favorite activities (if not the top one) is to have books read to her. Dora and Diego are good standbyes, but she's recently discovered the Gruffalo books. She gets a kick out of painting, and now really knows her colors (the much earlier post on colors turned out to be a fluke, but we forgot to tell everyone that, which in turn caused our friends to think that their son of the same age as Rachel was a slow learner. Sorry, Sean).

Most of the time, she plays well with her brother, but when they got into it (usually Daniel's fault for getting in her face), Rachel had this nasty habit of biting him - hard. Thankfully, that seems to have diminished. A few weeks ago, Anida witnessed Rachel getting so provoked by Daniel that she grabbed a (clean) diaper from the pile in the bathroom and screamed "I hit you with a diaper" while actually swatting him with it. It's funny what constitutes progress these days.

Rachel has inherited Daniel's old tricycle, and has just figured out how to pedal it. She's not shown the same enthusiasm that Daniel did yet, but that might change. The swing is still her favorite. She'll hold on tight and as that you "Push me Hi-ah, please"

And that's about all for the Rachel-specific update. A more general posting coming momentarily.

Love, ADRE.

Daniel turns 4

Friends

Daniel turned 4 today, and the celebrations capped what has been about a week of birthday-related things.

The video is from his party at the park. In addition to our close friends, we also invited all of the kids in Daniel's preschool class, and quite a number of them turned out. So it was a bit of a madhouse, with roughly 25 children and and the same number of adults.














Everyone had fun running around, and we have some video of that too. When it was time for sandwiches and cake, the temperatures fell pretty quickly, and we had a bunch of cold little boys and girls. So the party ended pretty quickly after the cake was served and consumed.


Today began with the rest of us waking up Daniel with breakfast and presents in bed. Then Daniel made us all dinner (Shrimp and Mac'n'Cheese) before we all wandered down to the ice cream store for some dessert. All in all, a very pleasant way to celebrate a birthday.

Daniel got some really cool presents, and we'll talk more about those in a later posting, as it's getting late.



Happy Birthday, Daniel. We love you.

A.D.R.E.

I'd like you to meet Bennett

Friends

Through reading a friend's blog, I learned of the passing of Madeline Spohr, a little girl with hundreds of friends who never met her, but knew her through the blogosphere.

Like so many of the bloggers who linked to Maddie's page, I know this boy that I've never met, but I feel like his story needs to be told and shared. He's not my kid, but I want to use the little soapbox that is our blog to tell you about Bennett and what he means to me.

This is Bennett's page and story - the short version is that he's 5 years old and needs a new kidney.

I've never met this boy, nor have I ever met his family, but - well - in a way, he saved my son's life.

Bennett has ARPKD, which is a genetic condition which causes failure of the kidneys. It's a death sentence if it happens before birth.

Without kidneys, there's no amniotic fluid, without amniotic fluid, the lungs don't develop, without lungs, well - it'd be like stopping development at 20 weeks - it's universally fatal if it happens in utero. Except that Bennett's mother wouldn't accept that. She underwent a series of injections of saline into her uterus during the pregnancy, and despite being told by every doctor but one that it was hopeless, Bennett survived and today he's 5.

He's the only one.

He's a miracle.

Our first son, John Connor, also had ARPKD, and the input we got from the medical profession was unanimous - he was not going to survive.

I found the ARPKD support group on Yahoo, and through it met Bennett's mother who told me her story. Armed with that, we found a doctor who was willing to try the amniotic fluid injections on Anida. Did it work? Up to a point. In the first couple of weeks, we saw his lungs grow significantly. But you're not really supposed to stick needles into the amniotic sac, and in our case, the weakening caused it to rupture.

Still, the help he got for those couple of weeks gave John Connor a fighting chance at life, and when he was born at 29 weeks old, he fought valiantly for 29 hours before he just couldn't do it anymore. I owe those 29 hours to Bennett.

I can't give Bennett a kidney. He needs someone with blood type O. What I can do is to help spread his story, and that's where I'm asking for your help. I am not asking that you make my cause yours, but the more people that know Bennett, the greater the chance that a kidney donor will be identified. If you would, please take a moment to read Bennett's story, and then consider if you have a way of helping or passing it onto others.

Thank you.

Eric

A series of random updates

Friends

You could think, looking at the pictures on this entry, that we've had 4 seasons in 2 weeks. There was a blizzard and a heatwave, and that's just Colorado for you.

It took until late March, but we finally got enough snow to go sledding in the neighborhood. Daniel was a huge fan - Rachel a little less so.

Farmor and Grandpa have gone back to Norway after almost 2 weeks here. The kids got very used to having them around, and as usual, the days after they left were a little unbalanced. As Rachel would say "Dat not wight" (that is not right).

Daniel broke from his firefighter routine briefly, so that he could be a pirate wandering around Roxborough State Park, and impressed with his skills on the Razor. Rachel showed her artistic side on the deck and went for the nightly "family walk" with Grandpa.

First Daniel got a cold, then Rachel (and farmor), so we've been coughing a bit around here.

Daniel went to the Denver Auto show with Eric and the boys (Harrison, Harrison, Stu and Eli) and you know that your brand is in trouble when a 3-year-old says "These are all rental cars" as he approaches the Chrysler booth.

Finally, Daniel had an awesome swim lesson today. He was a great listener, and swam about 1/2 of the pool length with no assistance, and about 1/3 of the length on his back. His new teacher was very impressed. Oh, and he's been doing a heck of a Manfred Mann impression. We should have better video, but here is what we have.

Until next time.

Love,

ADRE.