Christmas at NiNi & Big Jer's

Well today we went to my mom and dad's house to do the Christmas thing over there. My sister Ashley and her three kids; Morgan, Paul, and Matthew had come in from Tennessee. Her husband Tim had to go back to work so he wasn't able to partake of the joyous festivities. My other sister Amy and her two children; Lauren and Caroline also came over. First things first...Mom's table. This is a BIG deal at her house. That woman knows how to decorate a table. It's a Here is a pic of what it looked like.
It's a different theme every year.








After the great feast we went to the part the kids like best....opening presents. This is Nolan opening the new air soft pistol he got from Aunt Ashley.



The adults sat around talking while the kids played with the new loot. Ash is going to be in town for a while so I'm sure I'll have more to share.

Merry Christmas

All of us at the Craig house would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas!!

Had a Bad Day

Yesterday was the last day of school before the Christmas Holidays for the kids. I had to do a site change on Emma in my office that morning because hers was coming off. The kids started out with a school choir program and then back to their rooms for the class parties. I made sure that I was there for Emma's to count her carbs and make sure that she bolus' for them. Emma is bad about not pricking before she eats something. This to her is the worst part of diabetes, the constant pricking. When we are at home it Todd or myself that does it since she has to at school. Anyway, I counted up the carbs, as best as I could, and then went to visit Nolan in his class. In my opinion they waited way to late to let the kids out, I truly think that the teachers were happier than the kids! After the parties the kids and I went to look at a house that was for sale near the school. I'm always on the lookout for a place closer to work, you never know when God is going to put the right one in front of you. Well, about halfway through the house Emma kept saying that her stomach was hurting. She then started to cry to go home. I hurried through the rest of the house and went back to the car to check her blood sugar. She was HI = this means that it is so high the meter won't even register it and the meter goes to 600. (NOT GOOD) We hurried to the office to check her ketones (she is usually running some when her stomach hurt) and she was at .9 which was still in the mild range. We gave her a correction for a 600 blood sugar count and headed home. I checked her sugar again thinking she would have come down some because of the correction and she was still HI. The second thing to do is check the site to make sure that it is working. When I looked at it the cannula that is suppose to be up under her skin delivering the insulin had some out, this has only happened once before. I changed her site and checked her ketones again. This time she was 1.6. I got a syringe and gave her a shot of insulin the old fashioned way. It took two of these before her ketones went to 0.0. In the past if her ketones had gotten to 1.6 we would have been in the ER immediately. After having gone there twice before and spending no less then 6 hours, it's easier to see what we can do at home first and monitor her closely.

We are off to a skating party for a classmate today...later.

This is a picture of the cannula (it's wrapped around the needle and a little shorter than the needle) that goes into the booty. The ones that go into the stomach are longer. (I'll figure out one day how to make the pictures clear)



This is not a happy "Hi, how ya doin'?" This is a HI we hate to see when we check our blood sugars.

And Again

This time it was Emma's turn in the Dentist chair. We went today to have a baby tooth of Emma's extracted since it didn't look like it was going to come out any time soon. The permanent teeth around it had shifted it every which way but it hung on. Emma's tooth, once extracted, came with a cute pink treasure chest. I'm not sure if this is the difference between a Dentist and an Oral Surgeon, but there was a lot less fuss with Emma than with Nolan.

Well, we've got 50 states and capitals to learn before we get back to school in January...gotta go.

Holiday Fun

We have a lot of family traditions around the Holiday season. One of them is making several different cookies/goodies from when I was a little girl. Sour orange balls, bourbon balls, and chocolate covered pretzels are among some of them. For extra credit Emma could make something and bring it to the class. The requirement was that she did all of the measuring herself. She decided that the sour orange balls sounded good. This recipe only has 4 ingredients but we managed to mess the whole kitchen up in the process.



Ok, some of it was my mess. The whiskey goes with the bourbon balls that I was making. Here is the recipe if anyone is interested in making them.
Bourbon Balls
1 package (6 oz.) Chocolate chips. - melted
3 tablespoons Karo Syrup, white
1/2 cup bourbon
2 1/2 cups vanilla wafer crumbs
1/2 cup powdered sugar (10X)
1 cup nut meats

Mix together ingredients, let stand for 30 minutes Form into balls 1 inch size. Roll in powdered sugar or colored granulated sugar. Put in a covered can for 3 days before serving.

hint: putting more bourbon in the mix doesn't make it taste better (even if it sounds like it should). My dad also claims that the cheaper the whiskey the better.
The best way to get the vanilla wafer crumbs is to use a blender. I usually double my batch and use 2 boxes of wafers but i think one will do for a single batch.

This has always been a big hit with anyone I've fixed it for...my dad already has people putting in orders for containers!
Enjoy.

This is what the sour orange balls (left) and bourbon balls (right) look like when they are done.

I've sold out

Christmas...making Bourbon balls,  listening to Robert Goulet's Christmas album , and smelling the sweet aroma of the freshly cut Christmas tree (whaoo)...this is where the memory takes a bad turn. It is a sad dark day at the Craig house. I let Todd talk me into getting an artificial Christmas tree this year. I'm not quite sure how it happened, one minuet I'm as adamant as always about having a real tree, and then the next thing I know we are at Costco buying a FAKE one. I have always had real trees and felt sorry for those people who had to have the artificial ones for some reason. I love the smell of a real tree...it symbolizes the start of the Christmas season for me. Todd assures me there are ways to get the smell of a tree (some type of spray in a can and/or candles). I stopped by my favorite Christmas tree place and picked up their live cuttings to put around the house. I went in quick and got out quick so that they wouldn't ask me if I was buying my tree today. I feel like I have moved into a new world and I'm not sure I like it. The only trade off I got for giving up my live tree is Todd promised we could hardwood the stairs going to the second floor within the next two years. 

There's just something wrong about a tree coming with replacement parts!!!

Well...I'm off to see about a pine scented candle.

Dinosaurs in Alabama

My 3rd grader went on a field trip to the Anniston Museum of Natural History with her school this past week. Since Emma has started school I have had to go on every field trip to deal with her diabetes. Until this year I have had to ride the bus to and from said field trips,...not that I don't enjoy screaming kids and sitting on a seat that feels like it's padded with rocks. This year I have moved up to being able to ride in a car with other moms!!

A field trip may sound fun, and some are, but when you remember them from your own time in school (Moundville is still the same collection on grassy mounds) it doesn't hold a lot of mystery for you.

I was also dreading this field trip, I knew it was going to be a tough day at work and felt I needed to be there but I'm glad I went because I enjoyed the ride up with three other moms and surprisingly enjoyed the Museum as well. Once we got past all the "Night at the Museum" references from the kids, the displays were very informative. There wasn't just stuffed animals sitting around, they were grouped into groups that told about the different wing spans on animals and how they used them and why animals had different types of beaks. The Egyptian rooms was interesting...the kids loved looking at the Mummies, and of course the main attraction was the T-Rex named Sue.

(Emma, second from right, and friends ready for the Museum)

(Mummies)

(Sue, is the largest, most complete, and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever found. )

The Den

Well, we still have a few things to change...we are ordering our new chair this weekend and we will be able to finally move the old couch out of the room. We also need to hang some stuff on the walls, but all in all, we are done.
Recap...
I loved taking the base boards off the wall, ripping the carpet up, and taking down the bookshelves which I have hated since we moved in. Emma was sick during some of this and vomited on the carpet. I took my box cutter and cut that piece of the carpet out knowing it was going anyway...that is the ONLY way to deal with a mess like that!
We let the kids write on the floorboards while we were waiting to put the hardwoods in. They had the best time!

Anyway, this is what we have ended up with. The rooms looks and feels twice the size and it's so warm. I love spending time in this room.

It's DONE

Well, it took Todd and I (with some relief from my sister Amy) two days to put the hardwoods in Mom & Dad's house but it's finally done. It looks fairly good I must say. I however feel like Quasimodo because I'm hunched over from stapling for so many hours and I've had the urge to yell sanctuary.

This is what the room looks like...There is not enough money in the world for me to do the sanding, staining, and stuff so that will be done by another lucky person.

Fall

I love Fall. It has to be by far the best season. The colors that appear are better than anything you get in the 120 count box of crayola crayons. All shades of yellow, red, orange, and green. I have certain roads I travel during this time of year that offer the most spectacular sight. The view from the interstate looks like a Bob Ross painting. I can almost hear his voice in my head as I stare at the pallet of colors before me. "We don't make mistakes, we make happy accidents". He had a bushy afro and a soft soothing voice telling you to paint "happy little trees".
To look at him he reminds me of Kotter of "Welcome Back" fame.

Extraction

Extract
1 a: to draw forth (as by research) b: to pull or take out forcibly c: to obtain by much effort from someone unwilling

This is the word the nurse at the oral surgeons office sneered at me when I said that Nolan was there to get two teeth pulled. Let's think this through... two teeth are coming out and the lady thinks that it less scary to say extraction than pulled?

They lead Nolan into a room and the first thing he sees is an IV set up in the corner of the room. His looks like a deer in headlights and it takes me a few minutes to reassure him that he will not be getting the IV. The Dr. came in and after numbing up his mouth, literally took what looked like a miniature set of salad tongs and yanked the two teeth out.

Nolan did so good through the whole things he got to eat ice cream for lunch rent two movies and an xbox game! So starts our journey through the braces years!

Here is a picture of the teeth "extracted" from Nolan. He laughingly asked me how much the tooth fairy paid for teeth that had been pulled out; I reply that she just paid $159 to the Dr.

The Poem

Todd here (since you probaby did not recognize my typing). My child Emma has penned a poem that we felt blog-worthy. Enjoy...

Rain, a light shower or thunderstorm...

It rained and rained all day
We couldn't go outside to play
Bam! Crash! it was thunder
I began to wonder
I found a big leak
I was sad that it rained all week
The sun shown bright
I was sad because it was night
Maybe my dad could fix it
Plop plop I just had to sit.

by: Emma Craig

Seeing Dr. L

Today was Emma's 6 month check up with her Endocrinologist Dr. Latif. For those of you who don't know, Emma was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes a month after her 4th birthday. She has been on the pump for 2 years. Almost a year to the day, she was diagnosed with a Thyroid problem, and a year later she was diagnosed with a kidney problem. We now have all of these "under control" (whatever that means) and deal with things day by day. As you might have guessed, I get a little nervous around those 1 year visits.

Her A1C was 7.9 (an A1C is A blood test that measures the amount of glycated hemoglobin in the bloodstream over a 120-day period.) and they would really like it to be in the low 6's or even 5's. She had a trip to the ER 2 months ago and got sick a few days and ran very high blood sugar numbers during this time so the A1C was expected to be higher.

We are going to do an ultrasound on Emma next week to check on her progress in the puberty area. Emma seems to be heading that way a little earlier than we would like. We are also getting referred to an Gastroenterologist to check on why her stomach hurts so much. The three main issues she has are all auto immune related so we did have some test run and she came up negative for the Lupus gene (Thank God)!

There are times that she gets down about how much there is to do in regards to taking care of herself but most of the time she is a normal 8 year old doing normal 8 year old things.

Such as getting bored while wating for 4 hours in the Dr. office. This is the drawing she did.



This is our wonderful Dr. Latif who is Emma's Endocrinologist.

Deja vu

I must get the "fix it up" gene from mom. She has been updating and working on various parts of her house for years. My sister Ashley and I cleaned out their garage this summer and it took one of those 1-800-Got-Junk trucks and three trips to the dump to get rid of all the stuff.

Well, now she wants hardwoods through the upstairs of her house. On friday, my off day from work, I went to her house and took up the baseboards in the office, pulled up the carpet and tackstrips, as well as helping her take down the popcorn ceiling. I literally had to roll out of bed the next day.

This is the before picture. This was actually my room when I lived at home. The white wall is where she is having a custom build computer desk and shelves build for my dad.


This is what is looked like after I got a hold of it.


As for the ceiling...here are before and after.



We are getting closer to being done in our den, the baseboards go down this weekend so I'll have some pictures to share soon.

Hello HD

I need to back up a little and tell you what truely prompted this overhaul on the house. The T.V. in the den went out....nothing more, nothing less. The Boob tube goes and and all of the sudden replacing it becomes this thing that morphs into something between "While you were out" and "Trading Spaces". The new T.V. is a flat screen HD eye sore that of course no longer fits into the armoir that held the old one. Since the armoire is now out of the picture we have to find an HD T.V. stand. Once this is done the T.V. no longer "fits" right in the den where the old one stood. Since the armoire is moved and we have to find a new place for the T.V., of course we may as well go the distance and update.

The shape of our den is obiously from the LSD flashback the contractor was in the middle of. So the new T.V. will only look best in front of the fireplace.

I'm posting a picture of what the fireplace looked like before we started and what it looks like now. The sweet little girl in the picture is Emma. We were trying to give her curly/wavy hair by roling it in socks while it was still wet. It is a vast improvment over the orange juice cans that my mom used to make us sleep in...but that's another blog!

Fireplace before...



This is what we've ended up with so far...Looks like I'll have to find a new place to hang the stockings.

The Demolition

Alright, maybe it wasn't quite this bad...but it wasn't far off.

The next room we are tackling is the Den. The sofas have been with us since before we moved into the house. While the kids were still little, we decided we shouldn't get anything too nice...well, basically because good furniture and little kids don't mesh well. We've decided to reclaim the Den as our rightful hangout. We said goodbye to the sofa with the holes in it and faded fabric. Todd of course says that the couch has just gotten the feel that he likes, his butt cheeks have formed a permanent home on one of the cushions and the hole in the sofa is perfect for holding the remote.

Men!

Game Day

Nolan has been playing flag football this year and is loving it. He has become quite the aggressor, he says his favorite part of the game, besides scoring, is "taking down the quarterback". Yesterday was his last game and they won! This league doesn't have teams for 6th graders so I've been trying to find some others for him to join. He started taking karate about three years ago to help his vision/coordination and became a black belt two years later.


Emma has been playing soccer this year. She admists it's not really her thing but she hadn't tried it since she was 4 so she wanted to play. They did win their game on Saturday. She had really begun to get the hang of it and get aggressive. I kept telling her to lose her southern belle manners and take the ball away. She starts basketball soon but is still begging daddy to take guitar lessons.

The Office

My husband and I bought our house almost 10 years ago. I got pregnant with Emma right after we moved in so a lot of things we wanted to do to the house had to go on hold. Well, now we are ready. I tried desperately to find pictures of the offending rooms before we started our renovation projects, but ther were none to be found. Todd says we were protecting ourselves from the hideousness of the memories and so we must have not taken any pictures. I know my description will not do justice to the offensive nature of the rooms but here goes...

"The office" We painted it a very dark blue when we moved in. The carpet however was a tan color with a 12" border of hunter green around the edge. Why then would we paint it blue? Why not, the dining room was already painted the hunter green color and I guess we thought it would pull your eyes from the carpet if there was a bold color on the wall. The furniture was very oversized for the room and consisted of a full size desk, computer desk with hutch and a two drawer pull out filing cabinet. The kids loved the furniture size because all 5 (three neighbor boys also) could sit on the desk and chair while someone played the computer. Well, we did away with all of that.

Todd and I put down hard word floor, painted the walls a pale blueish green and bought black furniture (which size fit the space) and a new mac for daddy to play on.

The new office...

Just getting started

Hi Everyone,

I felt it was time to start blogging to keep in touch with all of our family and friends so far away. I hope to add to this regularly with updates on the house improvments we are in the midst of and updates on our lives.


Our Story...
I met Todd in high school through mutal friends. We dated 9 years and have been married 14 on our next anniversary. We have two wonderful children, Nolan who is 11 and Emma who is 8.

This is our life....