For Mother's Day...

As a Mother's Day gift to my wonderful mother, Libby, and my wonderful mother-in-law, Lorna, I hereby promise to post AT LEAST WEEKLY on The Kitchen News so they can see their lovely grandchildren and, on occasion, their children.
Starting...NOW.

Here are some photos we took on a Saturday in February (or maybe March??) at Black Mountain. It was a family fun day or something like that, so after Kathryn had a ski lesson in the morning and we had hot dogs at the lodge for lunch, we took a sleigh ride. It was FUN! The kids were all on their best behavior - so lovely.

(Speaking of ski lessons, Kathryn was so in love with skiing this year that, one afternoon, she decided to make paper skis and snowboards and tape them them on to the little plastic animals we have. Viv helped.)

(She also made a ski mountain and a lodge, as seen here. They had a little line of animals waiting to take their turn on the ski lift and then they would slide down the book.)

After the sleigh ride we went bowling with Kathryn's best friend Paige and her family.

Kathryn and Paige.

Check out Betty's little bowling shoes. CUTE.

Dex doing a victory jump after his ball actually hit a pin.

Viv was focused, if not entirely accurate...

We had fun!

Look!

Look!!

Do you see what this is?

Our friend, George the Plumber



Look!!! Dishes I didn't wash!!

Hee hee hee hee!!!

I just thought I deserved it for baby #5.

January Days

We've been doing stuff...

...like hanging out in our pjs, watching Dora...

...getting to be great pals with our siblings...

...pulling on a tutu by ourselves and calling ourselves "princess" for the first time (oh dear)....

...getting sick of having the sewing stuff out for weeks on end and finally finishing the Christmas banner (after Christmas, of course)...

....getting styled...

...and looking awesome...

...cleaning off the car while listening to Cee Lo Green very loudly so I could go to my dr. appointment in a blizzard (ahh, Maine)...

...dressing up as Morgan Le Fay for the annual Dress Up As A Book Character Day at Rumford Elementary School (Morgan Le Fay was her idea, from the Magic Tree House series - and don't worry, she had all the proper winter gear on after this photo was taken)...

...looking official in our fancy-shmancy new office (who WOULDN'T want this guy defending you?)...

...still loving the deer head more than our own wife and thinking having it on our office wall makes us more manly...

...and once again resolving to be a better blogger. I swear.

Pardon my obesessive posting...

...but I missed these photos before when I was offloading the camera.

You can sort of see how swollen the eyeball is here.

And here's the nurse who had never seen a swollen eyeball like Kathryn's before. I guess she was sort of impressed.

Just what was in that Indian food?

Maybe I should just stick to cooking boring stuff, because apparently something in Kathryn's body didn't like something in the chicken tikka masala that I made for dinner. About a half an hour after eating, her eyes started itching, watering, puffing and turning red. Well, no big deal, she may be having a little reaction, we'll just keep her up for a bit to keep an eye on her (no pun intended).

But after taking a closer look and realizing her EYEBALLS were swelling (one in particular), I became a little more concerned. When I realized about two minutes later that it was even MORE swollen, quite noticeably so, I said that's it, take her to the ER. Maybe we were being paranoid, but the white was swelling up and starting to obscure the iris a bit, which JUST DIDN'T LOOK RIGHT.

You can't really tell how swollen the eyeball was here, but take my word for it...

So, Kathryn is thrilled because she feels fine, basically, and she gets to go somewhere, in her pjs, after her siblings have all gone to bed, with just dad. Um, FUN.

We still aren't sure what it was that made her puff up so scarily, but the Benadryl seemed to do the trick (grrr - if only we'd tried that first, I was just sort of freaked out but the BIG SWOLLEN EYEBALL).

Now I need to go through the ingredient list and see if I can narrow it down. Ginger? Nope, she's had that before, same with cumin and coriander. I'm not sure about the paprika or the turmeric. Going to have to do a little experimenting, perhaps.

Anyway. All's well that ends well.

And now, enjoy Kathryn's photo essay or her time at the ER. :)

Get well bear from the ER

It's the most un-wonderful time of the year

Uggggghhhh!!!!

The dreaded time finally came. Actually, it came about a month ago, but I just kept avoiding it.

It was time to CHANGE THE CLOTHING. Time to switch the 18 month clothes for the 2Ts for Betty, the 2Ts for the 3s for Dex, the 4s for the 5s for Betty and the 5s for the 6s for Kathryn.

Oh blech. It took me two days - I had a babysitter for several hours yesterday and Curtis took care of the kids for most of the day today. There were several baskets of random assorted clothes to sort through, too. A few pairs of six-month-old pjs here, a couple of 12 month shirts there, size 3 dresses in the closet that haven't been worn in a year.

Thank heaven I'm done with that. Now I need to organize my craft room...

Unclear on the concept

Getting Dex ready for bed last night, I was trying to distract him as I wrestled him into his dinosaur pajamas. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hold still! Kid...I'm warning you...Hey! If you could be any kind of dinosaur in the world, what would you be? A stegosaurus? Pterodactyl? Tyrannosaurus Rex? Anklosaurus? Brachiosaurus? Pteranodon? Giganotosaurus? (Running out of dinosaurs I've learned about by watching Dinosaur Train...)

Dexter: (with not one second's hesitation) A ROBOT!


Alrighty then.