Isabel in the Wars Again....a Broken Leg

Once I posted that comment last week about letting her fall, I may have jinxed Isabel. From the excitement this week of Isabel’s first steps video, to her black eye, she has now added another twist.

Yesterday, after climbing on a chair and subsequently falling, she landed awkwardly and broke her leg. Lynne took her to the emergency room and an X-Ray confirmed this. She currently has a temporary cast on but tomorrow she will see the pediatric orthopedic surgeon. Life as a parent goes on…

 

 

 

 

Isabel's Black Eye

Isabel picked up a nice black eye over the weekend! I must state for the record that this was not accrued or associated with my previous post, the videos where I let her wander off on her own:)

This was a simple non walking related incident, she climbed on our small trampoline and came down hard from it on the side of her face! Unlike Anja, she wants to climb everything. If it exists, she wishes to be on top of it!!

Today we visited our local state park, Prophetstown State Park. Funny how one always visits stuff when away and never ones local attractions. We were guilty of this so we took a spin out there this morning. It has the Indiana native prairie grasses as its focus so it was quite different.

Have a good week everybody!

 

 

Isabel Walking

I have finally got a few short videos of Isabel walking. They are short so it shouldn't take that long to load. In the first, Isabel is walking from Kristina to Lynne and Anja and in the second, well, she thought she was going to be caught by her obviously unreliable Daddy....

Week's Vacation on the Bike

This last week was our second week of vacation of the year. We decided to stay at home and try doing some fun stuff together. Kristina came to work last week so she was looking after the girls (Kristina, thank you, I'm sure it wasn't easy last week with us hanging around).

We intended doing a bike ride each day but our plans were slightly thwarted earlier in the week with Anja's sickness.

My last post indicated that we were waiting for the results of a mouth swab to confirm Strep Throat. Well it was negative so the next day we trotted back to the doctor to sequentially pursue a urine test in the morning and a chest X-Ray in the afternoon to evaluate whether she had a bacterial infection in either her urinary tract or lungs. Neither as it turned out, but she was still spiking a fever well into Wednesday, after which it mysteriously abated. So after almost a week of fever and several doctor visits and tests, it was viral and passed in its own time, after lots of fever reducing medication.

We were able to get back to some relaxation on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, did a few 40 mile rides together. All told I managed to cycle 197 miles through the back roads of Indiana over the week (Lynne took Friday off). It was lots of fun.

Also managed lots of smaller chores during teh week...dentist visit, haircuts all round, trip to the bank and local health authority to collect Isabels birth cert and lots more..even got to read the paper each day.

The picture below, one of my favourites, is from a bike ride event we did in 2003 in Bloomington Indiana, The Hilly Hundred, before the girls were born. We did a lot of biking together back then so it was nice to be out on the roads together again this week.

 

Weekend Update

Isabel is now walking. I don't really have any photos of her doing this yet since she's not exactly running around the place. She will take very deliberate steps between two people with outstretched hands. She can easily accomplish 5-10 steps before she inevitably comes crashing down. She is so excited when doing this, it's so much fun to see.

Anja is sick, I had her at urgent care this morning. She has had a spiking fever all weekend in addition to complaints of a sore tummy and mouth. Her throat has been swabbed and the results of this test await before we pull the trigger on treating Strep Throat tomorrow with antibiotics....life goes on!

We had Steef, Ginette & Marissa over for dinner last night. We had a great evening, the weather was perfect, we simply sat outside and chatted about life and the kids of course. Marissa is getting so big and so aware of her environment. We enjoyed the evening guys, thanks for coming over. I just noticed that they had posted lots of excellent pictures from the evening on their blog

We all spoke with uncle Davey this morning. I installed Skype again yesterday in anticipation of catching him online and sure enough this morning he was sitting in a wireless area in Cairo. We all got to say hello, he even saw the kids since we have a webcam with a built in speaker. It was great to speak with him, it was funny having him recount the story of how they were conned yesterday. You can get all the details on their blog.

 

 

 

 

Yellow Themes

Shown below are a few pictures that never made it to these pages from a few weeks back.

Not much going on this end. Lynne is travelling today, left at an unholy hour this morning and will not return until after 11pm tonight. A one day business trip to the East coast is not much fun, and she will do it again this Friday!

Davey and Sam landed OK in Egypt, be sure to keep an eye on their blog as they tour the world (there is a link in the sidebar).

Sheri - I will ask Lynne for the Blackcurrant jam recipe, however, I'm pretty sure it's as simple as: 1-1.25lbs sugar for each pound of fruit. Then she added about 1 pint of water for the 4lbs she made into jam. This was boiled for about 1.5 hours and then jarred up!! That's the rough outline anyhow!!

Hope your week is going well everybody!

 

 

 

 

Jam from the Garden

Lynne, our house Martha Stewart, was busy making jam this morning (and this was all before 8 am). Yesterday she picked 2.5lbs of blackcurrants from the garden which were added to the pound from last week. Delia Smith was consulted, she is a famous English cook who has published several classic cooking texts, and quite a few pots of Blackcurrant Jam were ready before I had even finished my morning coffee (by which time she had also whipped up two batches of banana muffins (yum), using another receipe from no other than Delia!!

 

 

 

Back From Holiday!

We made it back in one piece from our holidays. It was relatively relaxing, the weather was very nice, the cabin we stayed in was perfect, thanks again to Liz and Phil for allowing us to use it, and we had a good time. Given that Isabel still needs two naps a day, we really didn't or simply couldn't do much other than take a visit each day to a local state park. There were three in the area and we visited two. We got to take a short hike, enjoyed the parks, had picnics, played on their jungle gyms, went for walks and went swimming. We also did a lot of sitting around, Lynne read her book and Anja and myself watched a few movies!

Back to the grind now for another week, then we get to have another week off. Nice!!

 

 

 

 

Going on a Trip

Most of you already know, there will be no further blog entries this week, we are going out of town on holiday. Probably return Saturday. Taking a few days in a lake cabin, Raccoon Lake.

Shown are a few pictures from the last few days. The picture with me and the girls was taken by Lynne Saturday morning sitting on the front step "watching the world go by"!

Hope you all have a great week.

 

 

 

Happy Independence day!

Today we have one of those rare days off in America. It's Independence Day or 4th of July as it's more commonly known. To all here in the US, have an enjoyable day, to all others hope your day is going well.

Traditioanlly, not much is done on the 4th of July. Normally have some friends over or visit friends to have a BBQ and of course fireworks in the evening. We are going for a bike ride this afternoon.

 

Summer Holiday / Vacation

It's official, we are now on holiday for 10 days. I know you Europeans will think that is a short time off but for us here state side it's quite long. We will return to work for one week but have the following week thereafter off also. So not all doom and gloom. We are going to try relaxing over the coming days. Like last year, we will be going to Racoon Lake next week but more on that later.

We also wish Kristina a great holiday, a well deserved holiday!!

Shown below are our raspberries. We are picking a bowl like this every other day right now and they taste great!!

Enjoy!!