Is the candy gone yet?

Halloween has come and gone and I have officially eaten all the chocolate candy out of the kids bags. My sister Kelly calls it the parent tax. My kids never knew it was there to begin with. This Halloween was kind of hard to get into since we had a huge snow storm the week before Halloween (they cancelled school for two days) plus my Halloween spirit got sucked out of me last year and has yet to return. So I was pretty much ready to skip Halloween and move to the next holiday, but we managed to limp through the festivities mostly unscathed. Stuart also had the H1N1 virus the week before the snowstorm, so we were coming into it pretty drained.

Here’s proof of the two feet of snow we got the third week of October:

There were a few different events the weekend of Halloween. Grace was Cinderella, a queen, and a princess over the span of the multi-day celebration (school party, trunk-or treat, trick or treating). Stuart was a skeleton. Elise was a puppy and a princess.

Here’s a testament of our half-hearted attempt at dressing up this year:

People all over the neighborhood mistook Dave for the real Mike Ricci who once played in Denver for the Avalanche and was voted sexiest man in Denver, who then got traded to San Jose and has since retired and is now on the coaching staff. It’s a good look don’t you think?

Here’s what happens when your camera is on all the wrong settings and meters off the bright white snow.

The trick-or-treat gang:

Fall is here

We are still alive.  Summer ended.  Stuart started Kindergarten.  The great and terrible season of illness and rodent infestation is upon us.  The first snow has already fallen.  Our drawers and closets are overflowing as we experience 60 degree temperature swings from one day to the next.  We love fall!

Last weekend we drove up to Georgetown and rode the historic narrow gauge rail train with the kids.  It takes about and hour and a half to go a mile and half, which we didn’t realize until we were on the train.  But it was fun and the kids did well as long as we doled out gum and candy every few minutes.  It was a great day to be outside and we were able to see some of the fall colors.  It is always fun to be in public with our very loud and energy riddled children and wait for the commentary.  Yes, we have our hands full.  Is that supposed to be code for “Your children are obnoxious, how do you get through each day?”  or is it more like “Clearly you’ve lost your minds.”  We do get an occasional, “You have a beautiful family” every now and then which gives us the self-confidence to continue our parenting with love and logic, not to mention strokes our ego.

Some pictures:

 

Moab—May 2009

I do have some great pictures to share of some of our summer adventures so far....They will probably be a little out of order, but if I split them up into different posts, then I won't be so confused in 10 years when I look back on it.

In May we took the kids camping in Moab, UT and it was our first "vacation" with just us and the kids without a greater purpose (wedding, family reunion, holiday, etc.). It turned out surprisingly well. We stayed at an RV/Tent camping site so there were showers, flushing toilets, and basin sinks to clean our dishes in. Here are some pictures:

Here's a view from the car coming into the valley. Of course Dave had to stop to take a picture. Mostly he wanted to capture a picture of "The Big Nasty". He'll be riding the big nasty on his road bike later this fall--3,000 feet of elevation gain in 7 miles. It's part of the 100 mile ride he'll be doing for the Moab Century Tour.

This is the beautiful Riverside Oasis RV and tent campground.  We stayed in the tree area on the far left side of the picture.

 

Here's a good one of Stuart after I nearly took his eye out with a tent pole. Accidentally.

 

Nothing a little ice cream cone can't cure.

View Full Album

More love with the ice cream.

Where’s my cone?  Grace is eating mine after she dropped hers in the dirt. 

We thought the kids would be exhausted after our long drive and sweaty campsite set up, but after laying in the tent for three hours in the fading (albeit hot) sun they were still awake.  No amount of threats or whisper yelling could get them to be still and go to sleep.

Many hours later, dawn.

 

Breakfast—it was freezing before the sun peeked around the rocky hills to the east of us, then instantly blazing hot once it did.

  Mmmmmm, bacon.  See the fork?  We forgot the cooking utensils.

Runaway baby.  No really baby, run away.

View Full Album

Even though camping in a RV campground offers little privacy, at least there were some nice rocks for the kids to climb on to keep them entertained.

 

 

View Full Album

Friday morning--Arches National Park.  Or, the whines-a-lot tour.  Since they were a little sleep deprived, and we were back in the car after a 7 hour drive the day before there was lots of tears, crying, yelling (not the whisper kind either), and finally we just put a movie on they could watch in between the sites.

Much to our delight, Elise really liked the backpack and was the best behaved of the three for the entire trip (I guess she is fated to be the youngest child forever since she is already turning into “the favorite”).

View Full Album

Grace, whines-a-lot Buecher was happy as long as she was playing in the sand.  Lucky for us, there is sand EVERYWHERE in Moab.

Dave was a camera hog this trip, so I think there are only two pictures with him in it.

 

Oh Elise, It is easy to be the favorite child when I can’t see you and you don’t run away. 

View Full Album

After a few stops—hiking in to see an arch, hiking out… Repeat, we came to Sand Dune Arch.  The clouds parted and angels sang, and there was more sand than the Sahara.

View Full Album

Here’s the arch itself.

 

View Full Album

View Full Album

A necessary cool off in the river.  I so did not know that craw-dad’s were that big. 

Here’s how Stuart’s face looked on Friday night.

Saturday…

We headed out to Canyonlands Nat’l Park and stopped at first to see some petroglyphs on the side of the road.

Can you see them?  Me neither.  Well not in this picture anyway.

Then into Canyonlands…we stopped at Mesa Arch first, in which the trail guide read something like this, “Mesa Arch is a great hike for kids.  Just be sure as you approach the arch itself, that you take caution, carelessness would lead to a sure-to-be-fatal fall.”

I totally stole this picture from a professional photographer, but since the copywrite info is on it, I figured it was ok.  Right?

Here we are exercising caution, so as not to have a fatal fall.

Lastly, we headed over to Whale Rock, which looks like this:

 

But since we didn’t get a shot of it from far away, I stole another picture from someone else.  Copywrite in tact.

Here’s us on the top of that:

And the only other picture of Dave from the trip:

All in all, a fabulous experience.  You should go there. 

Yes, I am so far behind.

It is summer. And for some reason, we've been busier than ever (well, relative to our previous stay-at-home-and-don't-infect-the-world-with-our-germs schedule). I've been trying to keep the kids going with different park dates, and activities with friends and so far I think they've had a good time, but it means we are sure not getting much done around here. I am trying to appreciate these last days before we start the next 20 years of school, sports practice, music lessons, cub scouts, field trips, and dioramas. My sister Julia definitely put the fear of God into me regarding dioramas. Have they plagued your school children too? Anyway, even though we have been busy this summer, it's nothing we can't cancel or skip for a day or two if we start to feel burned out.

Every once in a while I get on my high horse about over-programming and over-scheduling kids. I am not a fan. I spent way too many years in California witnessing first hand kids who were under so much pressure to be the best at every one of the 12 activities they were doing each week after school. But since my oldest is now 5, and we have yet to fully embrace any specific sports or otherwise, I am sure my tune will change a little. For now, my kids need time to just play--thankfully. Play in the dirt, play pretend, ride their bikes, jump on trampolines, run through sprinklers, go to the park, you get the idea. I am sure as they get older and their needs change that the organized sports and activites will be great for them, but for now, we are happy to have our Saturday mornings open and our dinner times uninterrupted.

Here's to summer!

PS. Please send pictures of your kids' dioramas so we can start cheating ahead of time.

Light one up with me...

So another 2 months, ok 2 ½ months have gone by and surely this winter will go down as the sickest most exhausting season on record for our family. Some day I will be able to post about things non-health related, but until then…

After our pneumonia and ear infections came two rounds of head colds/coughing for the older kids, and somewhere in the middle Elise got RSV. Then she got some sort of stomach bug and threw up off and on for a couple of days. The following weekend Stuart got it as well. Each time I went to the doctor (we’ve already had 9 visits, with 2 more scheduled later this month) the baby’s ears were still infected, so after 4 rounds of antibiotics he referred me to the ENT to get ear tubes. So yesterday morning we headed down the surgical center to hurry up and wait. Elise was great while we were waiting and charmed all the nurses and doctors. This picture was taken before they took her away. She is squawking because I got the phone out to take a picture of her and wouldn't let her play with it.

When they came to get me after she was done, I could hear her screaming from down the hall with a couple doors in between. She would not settle down for quite a while, so we finally just took our screams elsewhere.

For some good news, Grace is now potty trained. And lucky for us we get to hear lots of talk about poop, bottoms, and how girls don’t have peepers and boys do, but we don’t touch them, and we don’t talk about them. She also says to us about 10 times a day and often in the middle of the night, “Remember when I throwed up in my crib?”. This was something that happened back at Thanksgiving (and actually lots of other times, but I think she is referring to this incident specifically) in case she asks you and you need to have an appropriate response.

The weird part of all of the sickness and disease plaguing us is that we’ve had a really mild winter so far. There have been so many days of 60+ degree weather it is hard to believe. It’s been kind of nice since at least the kids can go outside to play in between the sick times.

People keep telling me to savor this time, and that I will wish it back someday when the kids are in high school and things like that. Savor it? Bring on the medical marijuana and then maybe I might be able to.

"Hell, Part II"

I must not be living very righteously, because I had another visit to hell and back. If you missed the first one, you can read about it here. Some of you have commented on my lack of posting during the past two months...so here we go:

It is with great emphasis that I say goodbye and good riddance to 2008. There is a reason why there was no Christmas greeting in your mailbox from the Buecher family. Nobody wants to get a letter filled with cynicism, sorrow, pain, suffering, sarcasm, and pure unadulterated whining accompanied by a picture of crying, tortured kids and angry, sweaty, blood vessel bursting mom and dad. Instead, I will post here--where you have heard and seen enough of that to have your palate already prepared.

We began the holiday season already beaten down by weeks of vomiting, head colds, antibiotics, and sleepless nights. My brother Jeff invited us to spend Christmas with his family in Utah and we vacillated back and forth for a few weeks. We finally decided to go. The Sunday before Christmas we realized there was a major storm coming our way, so we had to leave a day early on Monday, and didn't get away until about 1:00. We knew we'd only be able to drive about half way, and planned on staying near Grand Junction, CO. What should have been about a 4.5 hour drive took us almost 7 since the storm had already started in the mountains. Both girls had woken up that morning with bad congestion and the baby had really yucky, goopy eyes to boot. When we arrived in Grand Junction, Grace threw up at the McDonalds (actually it was Fruita, CO if you'd like to avoid it). After a terrible night in the hotel with both girls fevering and coughing and snotting everywhere, I was resolved that by daylight, we'd start driving back home again and skip Utah all together. I-70 Eastbound was closed indefinitely when we woke up, so we could stay and have Christmas in Fruita at the La Quinta, or keep driving to Utah. I called the pediatrician on our drive and got convinced that the baby did not in fact have pink eye, rather just a lot of congestion that was making it's way up and out through her eyes.

Sometimes when we are taking long road trips with the kids Dave likes to pull over on the side of the road to take a few scenery pictures. It's a big hit with all of us in the car.

We arrived at my brother's house and immediately started contaminating everyone and everything in sight. I am pretty sure Grace threw up again that night, but it's very blurry. By mid-morning Christmas Eve, it was evident that a trip to the urgent care was necessary, so we spend the better part of the day hanging out with the other sick and depressed people in the South Jordan locale. Diagnosis: Pneumonia and double ear infections for Grace, and conjunctivitis and ear infections for Elise. Prognosis: A very unhappy Christmas for the Buechers.

In the afternoon, another coughing/vomiting episode for Grace, followed by ginger bread house making, (Dave's is on the left--the outhouse with the lean-to wood pile...because you never know when you might need to build a fire while you're taking care of business. Stuart's is on the right)the nativity, and the Christmas-Eve-gift-opening-disaster where Stuart's gift was a Christmas blanket I made when all he really wanted to open was a toy. Seriously, what was I thinking? Usually the Christmas Eve gift is pajamas, but I thought I'd mix it up a little and throw down a blanket. So after his hiding and crying episode, I rummaged through the gifts that I couldn't remember what they were and found a toy for Stuart to open. Here's Stuart opening the blanket....

I am not sure if you can see the disgusted look on his face, but the cousins behind him are laughing because of his disgusted reaction.

Here's one of me so lovingly making the blanket a week or so before Christmas:

Here's the smile and the toy that saved the evening:

Grace and Elise missed out on the Christmas Eve festivities (thanks to small mercies) since we put them to bed early.

We spent another night of fevers, coughing, and general misery and as we headed up the stairs from the basement to join the rest of the family on the top floor for the processional down the stairs, Grace threw up again.

Santa did a great job in saving what was left to salvage of Christmas morning, bringing Stuart a matchbox mega-rig shuttle, which we lovingly encouraged and guided him to add to his list.

Grace pretty much whined and cried in between (and during) most of her gifts, but was generally pleased with Santa's choice of all things Disney Princess.

The rest of our time in Utah was spent playing Rock Band World tour: and watching the Disney Princess Christmas movie over and over and over again. A totally inadequate thank you to my brother Jeff, his wife Mary, and all their very, very tolerant and helpful children for putting up with us.

There was more vomiting on the drive home. For reference, the Subway in Green River, UT, and the Burger King in Glenwood Springs, CO.

As a capstone to our fantastic holiday, I left the all the antibiotics in Utah, so there was a lot of phone calls during the last two hours of the drive trying to get new prescriptions prepared, then a late night run to the 24 hour Walgreens here in Littleton.

Then, because we are gluttons for punishment...

Early this week I decided it was time to try giving regular non-allergy formula to the baby for the first time (Her GI doctor wanted me to do it in mid December, but...) So I gave it to her in the afternoon and about an hour later she started to rub her eyes like crazy. I thought she might be getting the conjunctivitis again, but then she started itching her ears. After a few minutes I started to get suspicious so I took her clothes off and she had hives all over her chest and belly. I was getting really nervous that her allergic reaction would escalate and I would have to rush her to the ER, but luckily it did not effect her breathing, so we dodged the bullet on that one.

We seem to be barely coming out of the fog now, although I took all three kids in to the doctor on Wednesday and the baby still has double ear infections.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you from all of us.

Goodbye 2008. I shall not miss you.

Onward and upward.

Our little barf baby

So Elise is 8 months old now, and still we can count on a baby barf incident about once every 20 minutes during the day. I managed to capture the end of one of these on camera, along with a few other awesome pictures of my kids:Good thing we have wood floors right?