A Christmas Miracle?

I am still trying not to get my hopes up on this one, but I do think that it could be a Christmas miracle. Let me start at the beginning...

I took my one hour glucose test last week on Thursday. (Yes, the test that I failed in both previous pregnancies). I was fully expecting to fail again. If you fail the one hour test, you have to take the dreaded three hour glucose tolerance test. My record is 1-1 with the three hour test. With Ellie, I failed it. With Nathan, I passed it. So, I was preparing myself for the fact that I would undoubtedly fail the one hour, and maybe I could eek out a "pass" on the 3 hour again...
So, I gulped down the nasty orange drink (and for the first time, I didn't get light-headed or nauseas after drinking it...). I went in for my appointment and made sure that they didn't draw the blood until one hour had passed to THE minute (with my experience with blood sugar...every minute counts!). Considering my history, the doctor almost made me skip right to the three hour, but I convinced him to let me try the one hour. He said they should have the results back by the end of that day or the next day and that they wouldn't call unless I "failed." He added that if I didn't hear from them by Monday or Tuesday (today), I could assume that I passed. No phone call. Either they forgot to call me, or they are letting me enjoy Christmas with my sweets, or maybe... just maybe...it could be the greatest Christmas Miracle of all!

The first Omaha snow

I know, I know...Chicago has had a ton of snow already this year. Plenty of shoveling has already occurred there. But, here in Omaha - we experience our first snowfall of any significance this week. On Thusday night, we had the ice / sleet / wintry mix stuff followed by 3 or so inches of snow. I had a few interesting revelations as I watched this "storm" unfold...
1.) Omaha does not believe in using salt on the roads (or they refuse to pay for any). Instead, they come through and pour sand and gravel on top of the snow. What does that do? Absolutely nothing, in my opinion, other than make the snow brown.
2.) Omaha does not much believe in plows, either. This snow occurred 48 hours ago -- and I'm not kidding when I say I have not seen a single plow yet. No kidding. Parking lots are not plowed, our subdivision is not plowed... just packed down snow turned to ice from cars driving on it... with sand dumped on top of it.
3.) I don't know if this happens every time, but most schools in the area were closed for the following day before the first snowflake even fell. It's like this town doesn't know how to deal with snow, and they know it - so the whole place just about shuts down. Even ellie's preschool was closed... she was bummed - it was the day of her holiday program and party. The "chicago girl" in her couldn't understand why they could have school at 10 am when the snow had stopped at 4 am... it was puzzling for us all.
4.) We may need to break down and buy a snowblower -- the three car garage is all fun until you have to shovel that whole wide driveway! (OK, Frank has done most of the shoveling this year -- taking pity on the pregnant lady, I guess.)

Now the snow is done (but the memories of the packed down ice mixed with sand will linger on until May, probably...) and the weather has turned to bitter cold -- below zero for the next few days. ugh.

The kids are still all jacked up for Christmas! It truly is the day that the entire kid year revolves around, and it shows. I think this is the first year that they are BOTH aware of what's a comin' -- very fun...

Have a great week - Merry Christmas!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

We are (mostly) recovered from our bouts of strep throat (ellie), croup (nathan) and remnants of both of those "landing" on Frank and me. We have spent a lot of our spare time recently gearing up for the holidays. Ellie is beyond excited... very into the whole Santa thing. She's got a lot of questions, too... and not growing up with Santa myself, I'm not sure that I even know the whole "lie" -- it's a bad combination. She's a sharp cookie - I figure we've got like one or two years tops left with her "believing." And Nathan is still blissfully unaware... no list of "I wants" and he'll be happy with whatever shows up under the tree. His big thing this season is "ho ho ho...happy halloween." He's always at least one holiday behind. He didn't stop with the "happy mother's day" until like September - gotta love it.

We got our tree last weekend. Not at a real nursery -- at Lowe's. It's not our finest tree, but it'll do for this year -- and the price was right -- $35! We were paying like $75 or $80 in chicago from a local nursery. Between the Omaha factor and the Lowe's superstore factor, we got quite the deal. Sure, it's decidedly not as fresh, but whatever - we only have to leave it up for a few weeks. We will likely "take down" Christmas on the 26th anyways, so it doesn't have to last long. The kids had fun decorating the tree and seeing all of the ornaments again. I love the lower branches the best -- most of them have like 4 or 5 ornaments each - all clumped up together :) We didn't even "fix" it -- sort of sums up the tree trimming experience this year.

This morning we went to the club (la dee da) for "brunch with Santa" -- it was fun. We don't go to "fancy" places to eat very often. Ellie got a kick out of dressing up and putting her cloth napkin in her lap. Nathan was absolutely tickled to be drinking apple juice out of a big fancy wine glass. Both kids were happy with the "buffet style" set-up -- eat as much of whatever you want and don't choose anything you don't want. Ellie was also surprised to see the huge table of desserts. I mean, was this a dream come true? Unlimited waffles and bacon...and then a chocolate brownie? Santa and Mrs. Claus were just kind of fixed by the front door. Neither one of the kids was too interested in sitting on their laps, but we were "allowed" to take one photo (the one above) if Frank held nathan and ellie could just stand next to Mrs. C. Good enough... brunch with santa...it's a wrap.

Hope everyone has a great, stress-free week!

Back home again...ahhh!

We have been back (for almost a week) from our trip home for Thanksgiving. The whole family drove to Glen Ellyn on Saturday (11/22) -- even though Frank turned right around that night and flew back to Omaha... I guess that's a price we had to pay for going to Hawaii in October - no more vacation days for Frank! So, while Frank was back here working and tiling the upstairs bathrooms (no joke! that guy is motivated... and the tile looks amazing, by the way -- a big upgrade from the linoleum that was there, for sure!), the kids and I were "playing" in Illinois. The time in Glen Ellyn consisted of a lot of cousin time, a lot of Grandma and Papa time, a shopping trip with just me and Meredith (super fun!) and even a trip to the newly opened Too Toots restaurant in town -- a whole train themed restaurant. Nathan was in train heaven - the most well behaved he's ever been in a restaurant since Cheeseburger in Paradise. There was no live music, but trains might be even better when you're a 2 year old boy!

We also got to spend a couple of nights at the Hilts house - two nights of fun "sleeovers" for the cousins - complete with videos and popcorn - who could ask for more? We also had the annual "cousin" photo taken - they all did great - smiles all around (and from 4 kids...that's no small feat!). We did the traditional "double" thanksgiving on Thursday -- noon meal with the Dykstras in Michigan and afternoon meal with the Williams' in Cary. (This was the official "switch-over" point in the week - packed our bags and stayed in Cary for the rest of the weekend...)

The time in Cary also was very realxing - lots of visiting, lots of eating and even more shopping. Frank and I even had a date while we were there (awesome!) and we spent the evening eating (of course...Houlihan's - a sentimental favorite of ours...) and yes, more shopping. It was after this evening that Frank looked at the back of the car and decided we had better not make any more purchases in illinois or we would never be able to haul it all back to nebraska -- needless to say, we made a good dent in the holiday shopping, which is a good feeling!

It was great to be "home" for longer than just a weekend.... (Our families might say otherwise!) I am already looking forward to Christmas time -- we'll do it all again, and Frank can be there the whole week! Well, hopefully without driving through the hours of snow in both directions to and from Chicago -- seriously - I-80 in the snow is no fun at all!

I am always most homesick right after we get home...good thing there's this whole Christmas thing to keep me busy for the next few weeks -- we don't even have our decorations up yet - we are slacking! We are using the excuse that we came home to Ellie coming down with strep throat and the rest of us just feeling generally crappy -- we'll get the tree up this weekend, hopefully!