Thanksgiving

I still cannot get this layout to work the way I want it, so you're getting a slew of pictures here first from our day of Thanksgiving. We have much to be thankful for and more than anything else the return of our brother, Bill. He has a long way to go, but he is whole and alive.

Aurora, Justin and Kelly's youngest daughter.
Kelly's mother, Mary Kay, holding Perry, Justin and Kelly's youngest child.

Abby and Anna. Anna was being a tad possessive with the coloring book.

Aaron. :)

Aaron's Grandmother Greenwood. How fortunate my girls are to be able to have a close relationship and know their great-grandmother.

Whitney, Justin and Kelly's oldest.

Mary, Aaron's only sister and youngest sibling. She really pulled Thanksgiving together.

Aurora again, just because. :)

Abby. :) "Did you say there was pie?"

Justin and Kelly. Justin is next in the sibling order after Aaron.

Aaron's dad, Bob, with Whitney.

Spencer. Justin and Kelly's oldest son. We spent quite a lot of time together. He was telling me all about some cool new computer game. :)

A group shot.

The kid's table.

Afton, David-Bob's brother, Mary, Whitney and Bob.

Our current babies, heading up the table, both very much enjoyed their Thanksgiving meal.

Thanksgiving was such a nice day. The food all turned out(I was so nervous about the turkey being dry, overcooked or undercooked, but it turned out really well) and there was plenty. This year we only celebrated with Aaron's family; next year we'll do mine. Making dinner was a group effort that was a lot of fun to see come together and as the Greenwood clan continues to grow this will probably be more and more what happens. I hope all of you had great days spent with those you love. We sadly were missing "Ganma" who spent Thanksgiving with Aaron's brother, Bill and his family at Walter Reed. We're very much looking forward to Aaron's other brother, Robert's wedding in the Spring. That will be the next time that hopefully the whole clan will be able to get together since summer of 2005.

We hope you all had wonderful days with your family and are returning back safely to your own homes.

Cruising and No More Yucky Cells

Charlotte is officially cruising. She's edging along furniture and even did a handoff from the ottoman to the coffee table. Pretty exciting! She's my youngest to start doing this so far...at not quite 10 months. I predict she'll be walking before her first birthday.

For those who have been praying about my "skin issues" I got my results this morning when I had my stitches removed. They removed all of the mutating cells the first time and my second biopsy was clean. Yeah! Praise God! (From whom all blessings flow.) I will have to go back in six months to do another check and then after that it should be every year. Thank you for your prayers and your thoughts. :)

I had a great time last night at The Cheesecake Factory. I just wasn't in the cheesecake mood...I was really in the mood for steak, but settled on fries. I also brought my dear husband home a piece of their chocolate peanut butter cookie dough cheesecake. He's had a hard past week and needed a little pick me up.

Remember me tomorrow as I cook the turkey and I will also send prayers your way. Here's wishes for a happy day and yummy food. Happy Thanksgiving!

Standing Up and Falling Down

My have had an "interesting" last few days. We celebrated Aaron's birthday on Wednesday...35 years now. Charlotte started pulling herself up to a standing position...which by itself has created a bit of strain on her and the mommy. While I am glad for her new abilities and it promises of wonderful new things to come, it's difficult right now because she can't seem to get down once she's gotten up. It's almost like she's frozen in place. This will happen during nap time and in the middle of the night. Thankfully, she is getting better at pulling herself up and looks a little less like someones been beating her. Well, at least until she does actually start to walk.

Wednesday afternoon I took Abby in for her two year check up. She's doing everything and more that you should be doing at 2 years old. She is by far the best baby at the doctor's office so far. Anna starts crying as soon as we go back in the office while Abby has always been such a good little soldier through all the poking and prodding they do.

The ridge that Abby had on the back of her head has finally been identified and will soon be fixed. Because the injury was caused by hitting her head on a window, we were naturally concerned that there would be glass in one of the wounds. I stood over the attending ER doctor like a hawk while he checked each section to make certain there was no glass and he assured me that there wasn't and stapled the wounds closed. A couple of months later there was a ridge and ultimately something poky feeling at the end of it. Surprise, surprise...we've got a piece of glass about the size of a raisin in poor Abby's head. The ridge was caused from where the glass entered and tunneled through trying to get out. We'll be going to a pediatric surgeon on December 2nd for a consult and possible removal of the glass, so we'll keep you posted.

I've been doing a lot of baking here the last few days as well. Aaron wanted an apple pie on his actual birthday since we would be celebrating with family during the weekend. I've made probably 20 apple pies in my life thus far and each has been with a different recipe. I've yet to find one that I really like...my sister does make a good apple pie now that I think about it...Hmmm. Note to Amy: send me your apple pie recipe.

I also made Aaron a spice cake with cream cheese frosting for the party with his family. I hope he likes it because he's not gonna have any Sarah help eating it. Cream cheese frosting...yuck!

I made Monkey Bread on Saturday morning which was a big hit. I will only make this maybe two or three times a year because it is so rich and so sweet, but Aaron especially likes it because it reminds him of a Hungarian Nut Roll that his mother made when he was growing up.

Over the weekend we also came down with colds. All three of the girls are snotting green and slightly wheezy sounding, but probably just from their stuffy noses. No fevers or anything and they do seem to be doing better today, so hopefully they'll be gone soon.

Aaron had to work all weekend which was a bummer. It would be nicer if we had more space, because I don't know how he got anything done with all these children making all the noise that they make just walking down the hallway even. I'm glad that he'll have Thursday and Friday off.

I'm also looking forward to going out with some friends a couple of times this week. If my kiddos don't get more sicky or transfer it to the mama, I'm planning on going to The Cheesecake Factory tomorrow night with a small group of MOPS mommies. Then Friday, maybe, going out and doing a little shopping with a friend. Yeah!

I'm supposed to get my stitches out on Wednesday and then of course Thanksgiving! Not a terribly busy week in the life of a mom, but we're looking forward to it. Hope you all will have great holidays with your peeps and stay safe if you're traveling. :)

Laundry Soap

A couple of weeks ago I ran out of laundry soap and instead of going out and buying another gigantisauras box of soap from the store, I decided to try making my own. I did a bit of research into stain lifters, laundry boosters and the cost associated with it and jumped forward. Overall, we were very pleased with the results and will keep on making it. Here is the recipe that we used and the information that came with it.

16 cups water
1 Bar of Fels Naptha Bar Soap
1 Cup Washing Soda
1 1/2 Cups Borax

"Use Stainless Steel or Enamel Pan. Bring water to boil and turn off heat. Grate up soap bar with cheese grater, add to water and stir until dissolved. (I used the stainless steel and it dissolved and set up much faster than my mom's did in the enamel pan.) Stir in Washing Soda and Borax. Stir every 30 minutes until it becomes thick. Completely cool and pour in a storage container.

*Use 1/2 cup per load.
*OK for front loaders.
*Stirring is very important.

You can use Ivory Soap or any other brand you like. The Fels Naptha is all I have tried as it is for stain treatment on clothes in the bar form. It is a fairly large bar of soap and my mom said her friend made the batch using only 1/2 a bar and it worked great. I am going to try 1/2 bar Fels Naptha and 1/2 bar of Ivory in my next batch. This will save even more money."

I read other people were making the same recipe and added an extra gallon of water to it and it worked fine. It does make a very thick gel soap.

My Brother-in-Law Bill

For those of you who don't already know, Aaron's brother, Bill, serving in Mosul, Iraq, was severely wounded when a uniformed Iraqi officer fired into a crowd of soldiers. Two men were killed and six were wounded. He is now here in the states at Walter Reed Hospital in DC. Bill was shot at least five times and sustained multiple injuries. He will have 12 weeks minimum rehabilitation time and has already gone through many surgeries. We thank God that Bill is alive and ask you to pray for his healing on all levels. His wife and parents are out there with him.

I'm pasting the latest update from Bob (Aaron's Dad) below.

"Dear Family,We are on our third day at Walter Reed. The Washington, DC area hotels are booked for some convention, or perhaps due to the upcoming inauguration -- in any event, they have put us up in the Navy Lodge at Bethesda Naval Base, which is not too far away, but a bit inconvenient, even though we have been provided free shuttle service.Bill was in surgery most of the day yesterday. It turns out that a lot of the information we got from the Army early on was incomplete or just plain wrong. As we reported earlier, Bill was shot at least 5 times. We don't know how many shots hit his body armor. According the surgeon who operated on Bill yesterday, the shot to his right leg shattered his femur about 4 inches above the knee. They implanted a titanium bar inside the two halves of the bone, and secured it with screws. New bone tissue will grow around this rod, which will remain in his leg for life. He has a huge and deep open wound on the front of his thigh, which will not be closed up for some time. They have installed a WoundVAC device (vacuum assisted closure) to keep the would clean and free of infection until the healing process begins. Eventually they will sew it up. He took another shot in his right hip that fractured his pelvis. That fracture does not require surgery, but it will take a while before it can bear weight.Then there was another shot in his left hip that hit his other femur just under the hip joint - they call it the femoral neck. This is actually the most serious fracture, because sometimes, if not treated correctly, the knob at the top of the bone will die. They pulled out the temporary steel pins that were installed at the field hospital, and replaced them with three stainless steel screws. He won't be able to bear weight on this for at least 12 weeks, and possibly as long as 5 months. A woundVac is also implanted in this wound.Yet another shot, in his right hip fractured his pelvis. This will require no particular treatment. There is a fragment of bullet metal near this fracture will remain there.He took a shot through his right arm near the elbow, but fortunately, it did not hit any bone and inflicted only minor nerve damage, from which he should fully recover. Another bullet hit his left him, pretty well shattering his middle finger. Yesterday, they undid the stitches and bone setting that had been done in the field, and more or less rebuilt it. They said they were going to call in a hand specialist.In addition to the stapled 10" incision running from his sternum to just below his navel, he also has two huge incisions on his right shin - one in back and the other in front, each about 10" long. Nobody seems to know why. He may have been hit there too, but no information on this came from theatre. He also suffered a "spinous process fracture" to his lower back. It should be okay.Bill will be an impatient here for probably a month, or so, and then will require many months of therapy to get him back up on his feet. That may happen here, in Texas, or perhaps somewhere in the Midwest.All in all, I am very much impressed with the quality of care he is receiving here, and they are treating us like a million bucks. We are confident he will come through fine -- he's got a great attitude, and is otherwise in great physical condition.Thank-you all, for your prayers, thoughts, and best wishes. I will keep you posted as I have opportunities to get on-line. As it is, my access is limited -- no wireless, or public connections are available. Rob. I have limited internet access here. Please forward this message to your brothers, and sisters-in-law. I have Mary's and Grandma's address committed to memory. - Bob"

Back to Blogging

I know I've been off of here for a couple of weeks and I have no better excuse than computers seem to be making me vomit. But, it's also the couch, the kitchen, the laundry and my children's toys. I can't seem to escape it. Hopefully, now that I'm almost out of my first trimester things will get easier. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Also on the baby front, we had our first OB appt last week and were able to hear the heartbeat after a few tries and it sounded really good. I'm always a little nervous until I hear the heartbeat that first time. Really, I'm always a little nervous in the back of my mind until the baby is born. Okay, maybe until they are about six months old...Shoot, I'm always a little nervous about my babies.

Speaking of my babies...Charlotte is starting to pull herself up on things and falling down. She has a nice little bruise on her forehead. She is also adding to her technological advancements and is able to spin the dial on the stereo speaker box thingy. This is now her new favorite thing to do.

Abby turned two last week and this morning I looking at her and realized she had a neck. Not just any neck...a little girl neck. She's still a bit on the short side, but she's definitely growing up. SOB SOB. She is also speaking more clearly. Abby took forever to say anything and then she would just babble non-stop and now she has conversations with anyone who is willing to listen. It's actually pretty neat. She'll have her two year old check-up tomorrow and also a check on her head. We'll keep you posted.

Anna has grown as well. She is now tall enough for the clothes that she has been wearing for the last six months. No more rolling up of the cuffs. She is officially average in height. Yeah! I always wanted to be average in height. Oh, well. But, something exciting on that front...my OB's office wanted to measure my height and I was 5'3". Can I just say...YEAH!! For the last ten years, I have thought myself to be 5'2" and to hear that I am a WHOLE inch taller is so cool. It may mean nothing to any of you tall people out there, but to me its nice. :)

Aaron has been working hard and helped me clean up our room over the weekend. Very nice of him. Aaron's 35th birthday is also tomorrow..."Happy Birthday, my loafer." Send him a note if you think about it.

I'm also starting a writing class tonight that I'm pretty excited about. We'll see how it goes.

We're going to get more regular on this again, so look for more updates soon.

The Election

I cannot possible tell you how happy I am that it is all over and decided. Politics have strained us and angered us so much lately...we just really need a break from it all, and the three months until the inauguration might help us out. :)

Most of the people who know me, know I wouldn't, couldn't vote for Obama, even though I was confident that he would be elected. I am not excited about "Change," but fearful about what those changes might be. I worry about the rights that I hold dear and my ability to hold on to them for both my family and myself.

These things I know...I know that God is ultimately still on the thrown and that He is the one who sets up leaders and takes them down. He has given to us a spirit of peace and not of fear.

I would just encourage you to be watchful and leave you with a couple of quotes by Edmund Burke that people often pull out for such occasions as these. :)

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts."

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

A House for the Pooch and Carving Pumpkins

Here we have the beautiful Molly-dog surveying her domain while lounging on the stoop(My idear...Aaron wasn't going to put one on. How can you not have a stoop. I mean really? A dogs gotta be able to survey, right?) of her lovely new dog house, handcrafted by Aaron.

It took several evenings and a few weekends, many trips to the hardware store, but now it's complete and Molly has her new heavily insulated doghouse to protect her from the elements. It was Aaron's first doghouse, but I must say it is a spectacular effort. He even had some leftover house paint for it, so it matches our house, too. :)

Ooooohhhh!!! Sssooooo Ssspppooookkkyy! Here are our Halloween pumpkins for this year...there are only two, because the Halloween rules strictly state that one must be walking before one gets one's first pumpkin. So, next year, Charlotte. Aaron and I got all the seeds out and I cleaned the seeds while Aaron carved the faces into the pumpkins. This is my first year to toast the seeds on my own and I think they were okay...even though Abby is the only one that wanted to eat any and she's just sucking the ummy stuff off the outside. Oh, well. Fun thing I noticed this year...Aaron calls the cut out stem thing-y a hat and I call it a top. Hmmm. Wonder what our girls will call them. Maybe top hats?

My Pack Rat and My Keys

Another sign that Abby is just like me...she too is a pack rat. Oh, I am much better than I used to be mind you. Waaaaaay better. But, I suppose it was the various pieces of chip bags that my mother found in my room that eventually led her to believe that I had a problem. "But, they're so pretty! Please, Mommy, don't throw them away!"

Abby is just a baby pack rat. She has two locations in which she stores her "stuff." One is the right cabinet in my bench...only in the right, because Mama stores her "stuff" in the left. Hey, I'm better, but it's a process. Don't judge me! The other location is the cabinets in the TV stand. Usually if anything is missing, that's where it will be. Anna's shoes that were missing for three days turned up there.

Well, now we are missing my set of keys. House key, car key, various shopping tags and other things I may or may not use on a daily basis. I searched the normal spots. I only keep them in one or two spots...okay...three or four. Okay, maybe I do lay them down wherever when I walk in the door. Yes, I'm a mess. Don't judge me!

I searched in Abby's normal spots and while I did find the cake server, I have yet to find the keys. I'm hoping they turn up soon. Please. That would be nice. I'm afraid that I'm going to have to clean the house in a deeper fashion than I am normally want to do. That, to me, is almost a fate worse than death. I like all women, I think, when there is no one but them around, find it soothing to organize and clean, but children and a husband around always seem to put me completely out of the cleaning mood. Hmmm.

Anyway, pray that I can find the keys after I clean our bathroom, but before the garage. :)

Busy, Busy

We here in the Greenwood home have been pretty busy the last few days, but thankfully, to make it a little easier, Aaron had Wednesday through Friday off. Tuesday Charlotte and I continued on our "merry" way with some colds that thankfully didn't really seem to hit the others too badly. Charlotte, finally, over this past weekend, became a little closer to her normal giggly, wonderful, baby self. You know, this is such a case in point for not knowing how good something is until it's gone. Charlotte is such a wonderful baby normally, but when she doesn't feel good, she completely changes into whine-y, angry, mutant baby.

Speaking of Charlotte, she had her nine month well baby check on Thursday. She weighed in at almost 22 pounds and 28 inches long. She's following the older girls on weight, and looks to be following Abby into the land of the petite...my gift to them along with the curly hair. :)

Those of you who were wondering how my second round with the dermatologist went...They removed more flesh from one of the areas of concern and are sending it in for more testing. For those of you I haven't told about my skin "issues" it's nothing to really be worried about. I had a couple of patches of skin that were looking like they were changing and I felt the need to get it checked out. Thankfully, I did it when I did, because they definitely were "changing." The cells that they removed were mutating, precancerous cells...mutating into what would have become malignant melanoma. Lesson to learn here...know your body and own your medical care. Hopefully, that's the end of that story.

There is a lot more to tell about our busy week and some great pictures to post. Stay Tuned. :)