We've Gone Viral

I was faced with a terribly difficult decision around midnight, last night. Should I hold my precious, shaking, sobbing little boy close and stroke his head and tell him it would all be alright? Or should I clean up the puke first? I opted for standing there, holding him as close as I could tolerate, both of us dripping over the tile floor, while I said, "Oh no! Oh, NO! Umm... oh no!" Smooth. Praise God Scott was there. He snapped awake, and came to our rescue. Slowly getting a hold of my senses, we both knelt with our little son on the floor, trying a little frantically to get his clothes off. I couldn't help but cry a little with Micah, he was so pathetic. Tears streaked his face, some of the stuff had come out of his nose, even his hair was covered with the mess. It was so sad. Scott cleaned up the floors while I gave him a quick bath. The entire time, he was shivering and wailing. My poor little love.

Finally, after everything was cleaned up and he appeared to be feeling much better, we put him back to sleep. Unfortunately, he kept waking up. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep last night.

This afternoon, we took him to the clinic on base to confirm our suspicion: he has hand, foot, and mouth disease. Or rather, virus. I don't know why they call it "disease." He has ulcers in his mouth, red spots all over his mouth, hands, and feet, and a few that are looking like blisters. There's not much we can do but try to make him as comfy as we can, and give him Infant Tylenol.

As I'm writing this, it is 40 minutes past bedtime, and we've had to go to him multiple times already to try to calm him down and get him to go to sleep. I am so tired. Afraid we have another rough night ahead tonight.

*sigh*

Ah, the joys of motherhood.

It's your WEDDING today!

To: My precious friend. Rachel NAGEL (it will be when you read this)

Rachel,

You are getting married today! I've been to many weddings before, and have EVEN had one of my own. But I believe every single one is so amazing. We've talked about it, you and I, about how wonderful it is that two imperfect people can come together, and under His blood, strive to become an image of Christ and His church, glorifying to God.

I wonder how you felt this morning when you woke up, your last day as a single person. I wonder when the intense, achingly beautiful reality of it all hit you. I wonder what the scene was like, as you made your preparations with your closest friends and family. I hope there was much laughter and joy involved, and a minimum of stress. I wonder how you felt when all was ready, and you were standing there in your dress, moments away from walking and pledging your whole life to your husband under God. I wonder how your now husband felt as he got ready to take you as his wife.

I am longing to be there, to celebrate with you, to be part of your friends and family and see you take this monumental step in your life. I wish I could see you in your white dress. I'll bet you are STUNNING. I wish I could stand up and see you walk down the aisle, and see the look on Samuel's face as he sees you in all your beauty. I have had moments today with tears in my eyes, wishing I could be there, my dear friend. Don't worry though, it's (mostly) tears of joy for you. I want you to know that I am celebrating quietly over here for you, all day long.

I hope so much that your day goes smoothly. And if there's some stress involved, well, you'll have a funny story to tell your children later, right? ;) I hope someday in the not-too-distant future, we'll see each other again in person, and we can go have hot chocolate at IHOP, and talk about anything and everything like usual, but we can talk about being wives too.

Know that I will be praying earnestly for you and your new life together, for you to both glorify God as you learn to live together, learn to serve each other, learn to lean on each other and be each other's support.

I love you.

Your friend,
Erin

P.S. You're going to have BEAUTIFUL babies. And I don't mean of the pug variety. ;)

Happiness is...

...a five pound bag of sour gummy worms. Oh. Yeah.

And in the blink of an eye...

...my baby can walk. Just like that.

Ahh... I'm a happy husband

Scott (Erin's Husband) here...

Just wanted to drop off a little note explaining what a wonderful wife I have. We have been talking about how I needed to do a guest post sometime. So I guess here would be a good time...

Reasons why I am a happy husband:

1. I came home today(late) after a long day of appeasing the higher ups, to a house smelling of soup (for those of you who don't like the smell of soup you are either communist or you need to get your nose checked), and was promptly greeted at the door with a kiss.

2. The soup was "Tuscan Bean Soup" a glorious comfort to taste buds and soother of souls.

3. Erin called me over to Micah's room and told me "I just had to see my little boy sleep." She was right, he was so calm and peaceful looking... lying there on top of his sheets with his pacifier barely hanging on to his lip.

4. She plays "Just Dance2" with me and laughs along with me as I fail miserably.   

5. My lovely wife (don't read that with to much sarcasm ;-) also comes up with trip ideas to places like Denali...

This could be longer but I'll cut it to this for now...

I LOVE my wife!

Scott

I'm an over-cheeser.

It is a very good thing to do one's best to not waste. Not only is it good for the grocery bill, there's a lot less guilt involved. For me lately, every time I throw yet another piece of food away, my mind is churning with, "MORE excess that's just wasted. 25,000 people are dying every day of starvation, and I'm the rich man who just wastes food. For FUN. Ok, not really for fun. But..." And it goes on and on. I'll spare you the full circle. All this to say, for the past few weeks, we've been trying very hard to cut back on wasting food.

Yesterday's dinner on the menu was lasagna. Upon inspection of our cabinets and fridge, I realized I would have to be a bit creative, since I didn't have what I thought. I had about half the meat, a quarter of the red sauce, and approximately 7 bags of various kinds of half depleted cheese. At least I had lasagna noodles. Except they'd have to be boiled in the big pot we have, which was occupied by a bunch of mashed potatoes in the fridge. Also, no more containers to which I could transfer said potatoes. Being the lazy person I am, I decided to just boil the rest of the egg noodles we had and leave it at that. I felt that I was being creative and resourceful.

I had my doubts as I began the layering process. The rest of the bag of egg noodles ended up being a few more noodles than I thought. Egg noodles also don't lay flat. But no matter, I was being resourceful. The oven heated, I stepped back to survey my handiwork. That's when I started writing this post in my head. The gigantic pile looked mostly comprised of cheese. Which is no surprise given what I had to work with. I was slightly concerned about my lactose intolerant husband how it would turn out.

As soon as the timer went off I ran back in to drag the dish out of the oven. It definitely smelled good. Looks...not so much. Scott got home and stared with ever so slightly bugged eyes.
"Ok!" He bravely proclaimed, "Let's...eat dinner!"
We gathered round the table.

All in all, it actually tasted really good. We horked it down as only very hungry people can do and decided it wasn't a disaster after all; although the rest of the evening, Scott definitely didn't want either his affectionate wife or boisterous son coming in contact with his stomach.

So - point of the story? I've decided to use one bag of cheese at a time, to avoid uncomfortable episodes of this nature.

Now I'm going to go get my husband some TUMS. You know. So we don't waste those, either.

Droppin' the Bass with Baby

Here's a little something we enjoyed the other day. The video isn't the greatest quality, but we thought it was cute all the same. Enjoy! :)