Two hours in the Emergency Room

With who else? Garrett...

At around 5pm, Garrett came over to me crying and coughing. He was actually foaming at the mouth and drooling this stringy mess. It was like nothing I had ever seen before and it kept coming and coming. I panicked.

We drove to the ER and proceeded to wait for a long time. I kept asking him if anything hurt or if he ate anything unusual. He insisted that he didn't. By the time we were actually back in a room, he said "Now I remember, I drank some funny water in a bowl in the backyard." The funny water? It was Caelan's afternoon "experiment" - something that she learned in first grade. You mix water with salt and pepper. Then you dip your finger full of dish soap into the bowl and the salt and pepper moves to the side of the bowl. Garrett was foaming Palmolive! Uugh! He is fine and no longer drooling foam. What a night.

End of Summer, sort-of

Well, Bob's days of leisure are over. He officially goes back to work tomorrow after 5/6 weeks off. We spent most of the summer at the cottage. We are planning to go there next weekend, but I am not sure after that how often we will make it up there. We are going to my parent's cottage for an "Olympics" party on the weekend of the 8th, which I originally thought was going to be a typical Hannan party: boat ride, hot tub, some wine and a good dinner, but I think that they are planning "games"... Hmm.

Lia has quite a few appointments coming up as well. Nothing this week, as I am waiting for my babysitter to come back from Florida (Hi, Katerina- we miss you!!), and would prefer not carting around all three kids. Lia is going in for a vision screening, hearing screening, vaccines and will have her first visit from Early-On (other than the evaluation). Garrett also has his 4 year old well child check. Fun. His also will have vaccines involved.

How many have you read?

I saw this on another blog and as I have been reading quite a bit lately, I wanted to see how many I actually have read. I didn't do very well, but at least I did better than "6". (This is coming from a teacher with a minor in English- and when life is calm, I do a lot of reading for fun.) I do suspect that I have read a few others- but did not bold them as I can't remember any details.

Here’s how it works:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE - mine are in red
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.

The premise of this exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I did read the first one)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible ( I have read quite a bit of the bible-13 years of Catholic Education- but I am sure I haven’t read the entire Bible)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Big Girls Weekend in Chicago

My friend, Becky and I have been planning a trip to Chicago with Caelan and her daughter, Isabel for probably six months. She wanted to do something special for Isabel's seventh birthday. My brother, Kevin lives in Chicago and so does my cousin Molly. My aunt is now renting a condo near Lincoln Park Zoo. I wasn't sure if I was ready to be away from Lia for an entire weekend, but decided to go. Lia did great, as I expected at home with Bob. We drove 4 hours, to Michigan City, Indiana, where we got on the commuter train to Chicago.

Friday we went to Lincoln Park Zoo and out to dinner with Kevin. On Saturday morning, we woke up and took Molly and Ruthie (the girls' American Girl dolls) out to breakfast at the American Girl Cafe. Caelan and Isabel were pretty excited. We shopped a bit at the store and then went to Navy Pier to the Children's Museum and then spent the afternoon on Navy Pier. We walked back along the lake and then went to dinner. It was short, but I felt like I had been gone for more than a weekend. It was very refreshing. I really don't think that I needed any kind of a break from Lia- but Garrett has been a bit of a handful lately and two nights away was exactly what I needed. Also, it was nice for Caelan to do something special. We had a great time. I LOVE CHICAGO!!

Garrett's Fourth Birthday

Garrett turned four on July 16th. He was very excited to turn four and as we went to bed the night before, he knew that because he was born at 12:16am, he would officially be four before he woke up. As he went to bed he asked at least ten times, "Am I four yet?" After many "No's" he did wake up at around 3am and I could finally say "yes". We celebrated with Bob's mom, Jenna, Zane, Mikey and Emily. Here are some pictures. Note that Lia is uninterested in the gift opening and cares only about the placement of the children's chairs:)

For our Alaska Friends

Just a quick one, I wanted to include a couple of pictures from our very good friend, Cory Cook's wedding in June. In typical Cory style, we walked in and there he was making coffee, not even dressed yet, though the wedding was set to start in a few minutes. We chatted a bit, and unknown to Bob, he was the best man and we were at the head table. Bob even came up with an impressive toast on the spot. Hee hee! Cory's wife is wonderful and perfect for him. They are both moving from Vermont and have teaching jobs in New Hampshire. I thought that those of you who know him would enjoy some pictures.

Home for a few days

We have been at our cabin for most of the last 2-3 weeks. Lia is loving it. We start the day by going for our morning walk, followed by lounging around the lake. Lia loves being outdoors and playing in the sand. She likes the water, though it has been a little cool. I am pretty happy with my exercise routine up there, I always walk around the lake once (4 miles) and I have been also trying to ride around the lake in the evening, though I may need to get a new bike seat if I want to keep that up. Hee hee!

I brought Lia and Garrett home for a little break on Monday. We had a very odd day on Sunday while at the Traverse City Cherry festival, starting with waiting two hours to eat breakfast at The Omlette Shoppe. Yummy, but not worth waiting for two hours with three small kids. Then as we went to watch the air show, an older woman passed out next to us. While she seemed OK, she was very disoriented and against her urgings, I called 911. She was not happy, but she wasn't with anyone and I couldn't just leave her like that. Then, Bob and I seperated for a moment so that he could watch the rest of the airshow while the kids and I looked at the crafter's booths. He thought I was going to meet him at the car. HA! The car was 2 miles away and I had all three kids. That was not my intention. After walking back and forth for an hour looking for him, I realized that he was nowhere around. He had my cell phone, my money, and the diaper bag. Great. So we made the long trek back to the car and sure enough, he was there. What an odd day. So I was crabby and the kids were crabby, and it was time to come home.

Bob and Caelan stayed until Thursday and we will hopefully go back there on Monday.
Here are some pictures.
Lia and I walking on the beach
Garrett and his friend, Amelia, at a park.
The "other" side of Garrett...
Caelan and Jenna on the jet-ski's
Morning family photo (Garrett has since gotten a hair cut)
Garrett's early b-day present- a pedal tractor which replaces last year's model.
Dancing on the beach
Bob's big fish
Caelan jumping at the festival

Cousin Lukas and Lia at the beach. Luke is 10 months younger than Lia.
Jenna, Caelan and Emily (of the Silva 4)