Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Sugar Cookies

I get excited every year for Christmas.  It's my favorite holiday and I enjoy it even more now that I have children.  This year I was deciding what kinds of cookies to make and thought I would keep it simple to sugar cookies, peanut butter blossoms, and chex mix (OK not a cookie, but it tastes super good!).  As I started to make the sugar cookies I had visions of what they would look like.  Beautifully decorated sugar cookies with detail on them that looked too good to eat.  I was so excited to start on this project I could hardly wait for the dough to harden in the fridge! 
what the sugar cookies were intended to look like

How the cookies turned out.
Well I started to make the cookies into shapes with my kids help, there was a little stress starting as my kids are little and tend to want to touch everything and not give me 5 seconds to do what needs to be done in order for them to make the cookies.  Once we cut out all the cookies, my boys were excited to frost them, but how could they frost them with the vision I had for these sugar cookies??  I got out my cake frosting bags and tips and started to frost the cookies, but much to my dismay, they weren't exactly turning out Pinterest worthy.  Instead they were looking like blobs on top of blobs on my cookies and my kids were not involved.  My oldest asked, can I put some sprinkles on the cookies?  At that point I realized, wow what a waste of time trying to have beautiful sugar cookies because I was missing out on an important memory with my boys.  At that point it was no holds bar!  Sprinkles everywhere, TONS of frosting, designs, etc...I have to say, THESE are the most beautiful sugar cookies ever and the memory that my kids and I made was priceless.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Saturday in the park...

Ok not really.  More like me cleaning the bathrooms in my house.  It's actually a pretty annoying way to spend my Saturday morning.  In 2010 we hired a cleaning lady.  I had an ectopic pregnancy and ended up in emergency surgery to save my life.  I was having a hard time coping with everything and thought if I got a cleaning lady that would take some stress out of our lives.  Well long story short, she sucked.  Legit sucked as a cleaning lady and probably should NOT clean houses for a living.  We finally got rid of her and now I can't convince my husband to hire another one.  Annoying... 

Monday, October 28, 2013

hmmm where does the time go?

As I looked at my blog post I realized, its been a long time since I've updated!  I was reading some of my old posts and it flooded my memory with everything we went through with our little Lucas.  All the uncertainty that I wrote about is now a distant memory.  It's hard to believe all that we went through with our children in the year of 2012 and at times I wasn't sure I would make it.  But through faith and trust in God we made it through and now can look back on those times and realize just how much stronger we are because of it all.

I am currently in my 13th year of teaching middle school.  That's crazy that I have been teaching that long and still love what I am doing.  The kids are great and I blessed with another great group of 8th and 9th graders.

Andrew is loving 1st grade.  He is a sweet little boy and is doing very well in school.  He told me today he wants to be an archeologist, no wait a librarian because I love to read.  I said that's great as I used to be a librarian Andrew!  He LOVES math (clearly gets this from his father) and is making some nice friends at school.  Andrew played Ankeny Junior Football this year and had a great time.  He learned a lot, made some "tackles", receptions, and even a few touchdowns.  Now he's playing basketball and so far he's enjoying himself and his teammates!

Jacob is in four year old pre school at our church and LOVES it.  He is really coming out of his shell at daycare with his buddies and seems to enjoy school and daycare.  Jacob also played his first year of flag football through i9 (Andrew played 3 seasons with i9) and he had the best time.  I can honestly say that for four years old, he did a pretty good job.  They had the 4 year olds playing with kids who were 6 and he stood his ground!  He made at least 2-3 flag pulls a game, did a great job blocking, and even made a couple touchdowns.  Most importantly, he had FUN!  He will play basketball through Ankeny Parks and Rec this winter so we are looking forward to watching him play!

Lucas, well this little guy is 2 1/2 and is crazy as ever.  He is enjoying daycare, driving his brothers crazy and tries to make us laugh.  We are working on potty training, but it's not as easy as I thought it would be.  Andrew and Jacob were pretty easy to potty train and Lucas is being stubborn.  He has gone a little bit int he potty, but not consistent.  I am SO OVER changing diapers and we are READY for him to just start going more regularly!




Sunday, February 5, 2012

Lucas' Caring Bridge Site

Here is Lucas' caring bridge site http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/lucashaase Until after his surgery February 15, I will be keeping this up to date.  Please check this for updates on our baby!!

Thursday, December 22, 2011

update 12/22/11

Hello everyone!  Not sure where the time goes, but it looks like I have been a bit neglectful in my blogging updates, so here ya go.

Andrew's surgery was on Tuesday and praise God our prayers were answered.  Everything turned out better than expected and his parts are where they are supposed to be!!  He did a great job and has been such a good patient!!  Grandma Pam has been at our house tending to him the past couple of days and we really appreciate that, so we don't have to miss more work.  I know some may judge me for working outside the home, but the only one who can do that is God, and this is what works best for our family. 

Jacob's tube surgery is scheduled for January 3rd and hopefully everything will stay put this time!!  Poor guy has had an ear infection that will not go away, so I am hoping this will get rid of it.  Other than that he is our little stinker and keeps us on our toes.

Lucas is still our happy little guy despite all of his medical issues.  On December 6th we met with the craniofacial team in Minneapolis and were very impressed.  So much so, we scheduled surgery for January 30th.  We are going to Dallas next week to meet with the craniofacial team down there to make sure we are making the right decision by Lucas, but we are confident we are doing right by him.  I am ready for it to be over and for all to settle down for a bit in our home.  I am going to take him to the nephrologist (kidney specialist) tomorrow for his three month ultrasound and check up, and we are praying for good results with this as well.

 

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Thursday

I have found that I am not a clever blog title updater.  I just don't have the energy or cuteness to come up with titles it seems.  So since it's Thursday, I thought, hey let's call this blog post Thursday (it's like Billy Madison said I wanted to color the duck blue because I've never seen a blue duck).  ANYWAY!!!  Here is the latest on our kiddos:
Andrew is scheduled for surgery in DSM on November 30th.  So now its the waiting game for that.  We also have an ENT apt for him on the 22nd to get his ears checked out in case he needs tubes again.  We have been watching this for awhile and I hope he won't need surgery again for this either.

Jacob: We meet with the ENT on the 22nd as well to see the status of his tubes.  So we will know (maybe) at that point what we will do about his ears.

Lucas: We are going to MN to meet with a specialist there December 6th and then December 29 we have an apt scheduled in Dallas to meet with the specialist there.  At that point we will decide who we will go with and when we will preform surgery. 

So that's the latest.  I am so ready for Thanksgiving.  I hope to relax, drink a beer, and maybe squeeze in a nap.  Oh and eat some turkey, but that comes after the nap.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Sunday's update

I supposed I should have updated this sooner, but life gets away from me and I hardly have time to breathe it seems!  I heard back from Dr. Fearon in Texas, and from the pictures I sent him of Lucas, he states he is a candidate for surgery.  So now comes a lot of questions about what John and I are to do.  We have to make a lot of decisions fairly quickly as Dr. Fearon likes the surgery done by 11 months.  He will be 8 months tomorrow, so we have a lot to do in a pretty short time.  I will keep everyone posted on that. 
I am going to meet with Andrew's surgeon tomorrow and will have some questions for him as well.  His surgery is scheduled for the 30th and I hope and pray all will turn out how its supposed to.

On a more fun note, my parents are here visiting providing John and me a much needed break.  We went to the Hawkeye game yesterday with Paul and Emily and cheered the Hawkeyes onto victory against Michigan.  yes I know I am from MI, but I wasn't a big fan when I lived there, and its much more fun being a Hawkeye fan anyway :-)  We had a great time and are already looking forward to next season!!