Saturday, April 28, 2012

When I grow up...

More artwork from school:
When I grow up, I want to be a doctor that helps babies.
In the picture, the baby is on the top left, and Natalie is the one taking a tool out of a drawer in the middle of the picture. 

I think she'd make a great pediatrician. 

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Happy Easter

As usual, we had an Easter egg hunt in the back yard. I'd been filling Easter eggs for a while, not really keeping track of them, so when I went to put them out I was a little surprised to find that I had 48 eggs for the hunt! I think there might still be one or two out there that we didn't find yet...

It was a pretty cold and windy day, so it didn't lend itself all that well to pictures, but we still got a few:
Of course, there were some Easter eggs on the playset...

And there were some in Daddy's trailer...
Opening all the eggs after we came in. This one had lots of tattoos in it.
Happy Easter!

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

At the park

On another beautiful spring day, Natalie and I went to the park. And while she was having a blast playing around, I played around with my camera. This improvised "photo-session" resulted in quite a few gems, like these ones:
Such a good climber...
We brought Natalie's bike...
And her scooter...
Look how high I can go!
Just having fun!
Soooo strong!
Natalie can go almost all the way across on the monkey bars!

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Everyone should have one of these...

This came home from school the other day. Gotta love that girl's imagination!

Monday, April 23, 2012

At the Wildlife Sanctuary

We've been fortunate to have lots of beautiful days lately. One of them we spent at the Wildlife Sanctuary. Natalie loves exploring there, we must have been there for hours!

Here are just a few pictures that I really liked:
Natalie is such a good climber - sometimes a little too good for my nerves...
Always ready to be goofy!

Sunday, April 22, 2012

St. Patrick's Day

We had a great St. Patrick's Day.

Of course, we started with a traditional breakfast of lucky charms and green milk:
A true St. Patrick's Day breakfast.
Then, of course, we did the treasurehunt. Because the day is perfect for finding the pot of gold (or other goodies) at the end of the rainbow. We did lots of picture clues, and Natalie followed them around the house:
One of the clues was hidden in the washer!
And of course, there were lots of goodies and rainbow colored treats in the pot at the end of the rainbow/treasure hunt!

Saturday, April 21, 2012

The Leprechaun

Natalie was obsessed with the Leprechaun in the weeks before St. Patrick's Day. So, one evening while she was at gymnastics, Karsten made this little track of leprechaun footprints as a surprise for her:
The leprechaun must have come in this door (and left a couple of gold coins)...
Then he walked up the wall...
And out the skylights...
Natalie loved it! The gold (chocolate) coins were a hit, of course, but I think the surprise itself was the best part.

That night, she went to her art area and was working really hard on something. Later, she came over to us and said "I think you should look in your bedroom". Turns out, she had made a little surprise for us:
Leprechaun footprints on our window. She traced her own feet, cut them out of the paper, and colored them green. She also put a three leaf clover under the window...

And she even put a real leprechaun on the wall, too!
How sweet of her to surprise us like that!

Friday, April 20, 2012

Chemo update

Well, I guess it's been a while since I posted something here. I'm about two holidays behind. Don't worry, we're still here. And I'll be posting lots of pictures in the next few days. For starters, here's a chemo-update:

I'm now on chemo round five. I had my treatment on Tuesday this week. The last three treatments are with a different drug than the first three. That means that lately, everything is like "opposite day".

- The old stuff would make me sleep for a couple of days. The new stuff doesn't make me as tired, but it makes my bones and joints ache.
- The old stuff made my hair disappear. With the new stuff, my hair is growing back, but I've lost most of my eyelashes, and my eyebrows are getting very thin.
- The old stuff made my eyes dry. This new stuff makes my eyes water.

And so on and so forth. Oh, well, only one more round to go after this one, so there's definitely light at the end of the tunnel. After the last round of chemo we'll have to wait at least four weeks before we can take care of the last surgery. For now, it sounds like I'll have surgery sometime in June.

And another great thing: The first stuff I got can affect the heart. I had a scan of my heart before we started and again recently, and everything looks great - no damage! That's great news.