Thanksgiving Blitz

We are finally home from our second Thanksgiving celebration. We spent Thursday at my parents' house celebrating with my side of the family. On Friday I spent from 1-11p scrapbooking at Archiver's with my Mom. I think I got 18 layouts done....we had a lot of fun and my Mom finally spent more money then I did while we were there. :) Jake took the kids to his parents' in Red Wing to do the local Christmas kick off down there. It sounds like they all had a ton of fun there too. Then today we headed back down to Red Wing with the Early family. Peder had a ton of fun playing with his cousin and we got to do some catching up with the family that is in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Tomorrow after church we are going to grab some lunch and then we'll be picking out our Christmas tree at Gerten's. We have the living room all set up so that once the kids are down for their naps we can bring in the tree and get the lights on it. We'll hopefully be able to decorate it after dinner tomorrow night. I'm excited!

I have a lot of projects that I need to finish up this week. And another bunch that I need to get started on. I'm excited to get these things done. I have three of the five stockings done and hung up and I should be able to get the other two up by the end of the week. That has been a HUGE project that will be nice to have done. I'll post pictures once they are all done.

I also have some pictures from our Thanksgiving celebrations and I'll hopefully be able to post those in the next couple of days.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and were surrounded by loved ones! We've had an excellent weekend so far and have SO much to be thankful for.

Busy, busy, busy

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the projects I have going on right now. Things are a bit crazy with all of the projects I have going on right now. So here's my list of things that I need to do:

- Two Christmas gifts, almost done with one haven't started another.
- A special surprise for family and friends
- I need to finish stitching Mari's Christmas stocking so I can get it sewn together and it will be able to be hung up with the rest of our stockings.
- I need to sew my stocking and create a "hanger" on it.
- Sew Emmy's stocking and create a "hanger" for it.
- Finishing touches on Peder's stocking and create the "hanger" for it.
- Write up our annual Christmas letter
- Get our Christmas tree, decorate it, and get our family picture taken so I can print it off for our Christmas cards
- Finish Christmas cards: add our family picture to it, stamp the sentiment on it and sign them all
- Make a Christmas list for shopping AND shop.

I think that's it, but some of it is really time consuming, so I'm hoping that I can get it done in my timeline that I was hoping for.

BLECH! I'm glad I started some of these projects LONG ago. :)

New goal...

Today is the beginning of a new schedule in my life. I'm going to be getting back into working out regularly and try to lose 15 more pounds by Jake's birthday (March 15th). If I reach that goal, I will be getting a nice reward from Jake's annual bonus and purchasing a new wardrobe. I'm trying to decide if I should post my weight or just how much I have lost.

This is going to be tough for me, especially considering I have had continual issues with my pelvis. I'm hoping to get into the doctor this week and get a plan in place to deal with this. I've just been doing core workouts because anything lands me on the couch for the rest of the day and sometimes the next. I hope to get back onto the elliptical more regularly as I strengthen up my core.

I'm tracking my weight and will weigh in here every Sunday. Hopefully this will help keep me on track.

I've been working on all kinds of Christmas projects lately. My biggest one is Mari's Christmas stocking. This week I also need to get Peder's, Emmy's and my stockings sewn together and hanging loops on them. Then I can hopefully finish up Mari's in the next week or two and have all our stockings hung up this year.

Here are some pictures of the kiddos. They are happy and cute and silly....just as they should be. :)

Here is Peder in my boots and his Handy Manny hat. Can you get cuter?

Mari pretending she is 15 and too cool for her parents.
Emmy trying to get around with an enormous catheter bag and a ton of tubing.

Peder with his new kitty he got from some family friends before Emmy's surgery. He LOVES it.

Mari looks a lot like her mommy when she wakes up from a nap. Sad, yet hilarious.

Where is God?

So it seems like I'm getting things at just the right moment a lot lately. I read a chapter for my book club this week and it talked about where the women thought God was and where the saw God. It, of course, made me think....

God was with us the last 3 days. There is no other way to explain the miraculous events of the last 3 days. The fact that Emmy was home from the hospital less then 48 hours after she got out of surgery floors me. The fact that her surgery was 4.5 hours when we were expecting 6 or more, amazes me. The fact that Emmy is crawling around our living room, playing with a xylophone and is happy and giggly makes my spirit soar.

So where is God? God was with my baby girl over the last 3 days. I told my sister on the phone the other day that God had to listen to all the prayers going up for her.....it was just too noisy to ignore.

The last 3 days have been filled with miracles for us. There is no other explanation for me, but to say that God guided Emmy through this.

The pictures below are proof. The first one is from yesterday evening and the second is from this morning. Could you be that happy 36 hours after a surgery? I know that I've never been.

Prepping for the week ahead

So I've been spending my day playing with kiddos and doing some packing when I get ignored. I had to share how cute Peder is this morning. I got all his and Mari's clothes packed and there was quite a bit of space left in the suitcase. I still have quite a bit to pack for both of them, but a lot of it has to wait until after nap time. So Peder threw his pillows in the suitcase to be packed. And about 10 minutes later, he did this:

What a goof ball. He's definitely ready to go to Grandpa and Grandma's.

Some things come at just the right time

I am involved in a book club at my church. We have been meeting since June and the women in that group have become a big part of my life. Outside of book club we send each other e-mails, pass along prayer requests and "follow" each other's blogs. We are a community and a safe place for each other. We are currently reading the book "The Faith Club" which is about three women, a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew, who came together to write a children's book and the challenges they faced in overcoming their stereotypes and their own struggles with their faith.

We meet on Tuesday nights and I was reading the last chapter for this week and a story that Priscilla, the Jewish woman, included hit a note with me. Here it is:

I loved best what he called "The Paper Bag Story," which addressed the challenges people face in life, challenges he himself faced.

"Imagine this," he used to say to us. "Take your problems, all of them, from the tiniest, annoying concerns to the most horrific, difficult challenges, and put all those problems into a brown paper bag." He'd pause. "Then imagine if everyone else in the world took all of their problems and put them into their own paper bags. Think of how many bags there would be, all piled up into one gigantic mountain of brown paper!" The image was vivid to me.

"If you were told that you could pick any bag of problems and take it home with you, do you think you'd want someone else's problems?" my father would ask. "I don't think so. You'd be scampering to find your own bag in that mountain of brown paper."

I think that this is a great perspective for everyone. I often times tell people and Jake and I say it quite a bit, that we are thankful for all of our children, for the challenges of having twins, one with a medical issue and where all of this has brought us in this life. There is no way we would trade our life. There is no way we would ask for anything different. If things were different, our life would not be what it is, we would not be who we are and our children would not be who they are. I can't imagine Emmy without her yelling, spit-fire personality, and I don't know if that comes from yelling at doctors and nurses or it just is who she is, but I wouldn't want to find out either. I can't imagine Mari without her flair for drama. I can't imagine Peder without his sweet soul handing out hugs and kisses and telling us that he's worried about Emmy in the hospital. All of these things may not have developed if things didn't happen the way they did.

So today I choose my brown paper bag of problems, and I would choose it any time, any place without pause, because with that brown paper bag of fears, stressors and worries come my beautiful children and their giggles, kisses and sweet smiles.

Some Halloween Pictures

I have been getting to updating this a little more often. We got some great pictures of all the kids trick or treating. We also went to the Unicef Carnival at church, and hopefully in the next couple of days I can get pictures up from that fun event.


Mommy and Peder getting ready for trick or treating. I tried to go as Minnie, but this is the best I could do without spending any money.

I think Peder's favorite part of the evening was when we would ask him: "What happened to Peder? I see Mickey here, but Peder seems to be missing." He thought it was the best, and still asks to wear his costume every day.
Mari the butterfly. The other two got out of their costumes right away after we got home from trick or treating, not Mari, she work it until bed time.
Mari's costume from the back. Isn't that just the cutest thing ever?

Emmy the flower. She wore her hat all night starting at about 2:30p. It was so cute seeing this big flower around her head all day.

Can we please get to this trick or treating thing? I want to get going!

Peder and Mari rode together in the wagon. They were very cute talking the whole way.

Emmy got her own ride....and Mommy's hat.

Trick or treating at one of the houses in my parents' neighborhood. You can't see Emmy, but she is there in full garb watching this guy give them each a bag of treats.

Grandpa Pederson was the driver for Mari and Peder....Daddy got to push around Emmy and I caught everything that was thrown out of the wagon and stroller.

We all had a ton of fun and the kids loved the fact that they got all this candy just for saying, "Trick or Treat." When we got back to my parents' house, Peder would walk into the dining room where they had all their candy and yell "TRICK OR TREAT!" To which Grandpa or Grandma respond by throwing HUGE handfuls of candy into his treat bag. What a little cutie.