20 years later...

I cannot believe 20 years has passed since I graduated from high school! April 27 was my reunion in Battle Creek and I had a chance to see about half of my classmates. We had lunch at the school and then went to a classmates house to catch up and watch our high school senior video. I also went by my grandparents' home. They lived there for 40+ years and so many of my childhood memories are at that home. I also lived there with my grandparents my junior and senior year of high school. I hadn't been by there since 2001 when my grandpa moved out so I wanted to see how it looked. Other than looking smaller than I remember (especially the backyard!) it was just how I remembered it. It was a long day but a nice trip down memory lane.

Homemade Cheese Crackers

I found a recipe for homemade Cheez-Its on Pinterest that I thought looked really yummy. Only 5 ingredients - cheese, flour, salt, butter, and ice water - so I knew it wouldn't be too complicated. We are cracker eaters around here and I knew Chloe would love making them, so Sabbath afternoon after she woke up from her nap, we got moving on baking our crackers.

Once we had our dough, rolled it out, cut it into squares, and poked a hole in the center of each little square, we were ready to bake them. We had to watch them because you are supposed to bake them until they start to darken a little, but you don't want to burn them which can happen quickly since they are so small. After about 12 minutes, they were ready.

YUM!

Chloe L-O-V-E-D them so much. She parked herself in front of the plate and stuffed her face with them. After about two minutes of this I said, "Chloe honey, you cannot stand here and eat the whole plate." She put her face on the counter and refused to look at me - she was so upset. 

So we can testify that these crackers are quite good and worth the effort. The ones that were a little thinner and got crispy tasted EXACTLY like Cheez-Its. We will be making these again! I love that they are so quick and that they only requires ingredients that we usually have on hand.

Baby Cradle

Chloe and Megan both love baby dolls. They are everywhere around here. I find them in toy boxes, lying in the middle of the kitchen. I step on them everywhere I turn.  I wanted to get a nice baby cradle for the girls because they are really starting to play with them to the extent that there is a full-day schedule for these little dolls. Feeding, diaper changes, nappy-naps...the whole routine. I was down in the basement organizing and came across a little treasure -- MY baby doll cradle from when I was a girl! It was wooden and in really good shape. There were even two old blankets in there. I can't believe I had thought to save it after all these years. I brought it up from the basement and after a quick wipe-down, the cradle was back in commission.

How authentic is this? I mean, does that little plastic mattress pad scream late-70's to you like it does to me? I ended up tossing the "flower-power" pad (it didn't clean up to my standards) but I kept the little blankets. The girls play with it all the time. Chloe even tries to rock herself...after several attempts she finally told me, "Momma, I'm too big."  Yep. 

Megan's Surgery

The day finally came when we had to take Megan in for her surgery. I was dreading it so much but I was so glad to get it over with - and of course, she did great. We were the first ones on the docket so we had to check in at 6:30am for a 7:30am surgery.  After playing in the waiting room for a few minutes we were taken back to the pre-op room. Megan had her vitals taken and was given some Tylenol to get a head start on the pain relief. She also got a little bit of a sedative to help her relax - which I'm glad we agreed to because she was very calm when they took her back and I think it helped get her surgery off to a good start.

The surgery went really well and before we knew it we were being paged to come speak to the surgeon. They were able to get everything out and she was doing really well after the surgery. She was already waking up so after about 30 minutes we were able to go back and see her. Other than being a little disoriented, she was sitting in her bed drinking a bottle of apple juice and acting fine. It was such a relief to see that she was ok. We spent about 2 more hours in the post-anesthesia care unit before going home, just because her voice was a little raspy from the breathing tube.

We went home around 12:30. It was so nice to leave the hospital and Megan was already well on her way to recovery. (It did take about 2 days for her voice to get back to normal but her incision healed great!) Megan got a new stuffed animal from one of her friends at Mott - it was nice to have a buddy in the car as she got a little car sick on the way home. Luckily her new friend was spared (mommy was not).

Nathan and I had not eaten hardly all day so we stopped to pick up pizza. It was almost 2:00 before we got home, partly because it was rainy and one of the signals was out by our house.

Have you ever seen something so crazy?  Seriously? We were so glad to get home, change into our pajamas, eat our pizza, and just unwind from our day.

Spring!

Mommy said to smile!