Our 100th post -- with news to share

Unfortunately, it isn't the good kind of news to share.

For the last month or two I have been struggling a bit with a complication of the twin pregnancy called placenta previa. Basically the placenta attaches over the cervix in a bad location. Most often it moves as the pregnancy continues and the uterus enlarges. However, with the twins, I have TWO placentas and both placentas overlapped in the previa position, making the pregnancy complicated, and labor dangerous to both me and the twins.

Then on Thursday Aug 28th, I woke up at 4AM having contractions (which at 18 weeks is extremely early) and by the time I got to the hospital I was in labor. Due to the previa they couldn't do anything to stop the contractions (because of risk to me).

I was fortunate to be at an excellent hospital and under the care of an even better specialist. I was unfortunate that this all happened in Michigan while I was away at work and by myself. I was in the Operating Room for about 4 hours, but after all of it, we very sadly lost both of the twins -- one boy and one girl, just as Megan predicted.

The nursing staff and doctors were all very kind, and I think that they really felt for me especially since Chris was in Texas trying as quickly as possible to get to Ann Arbor. He called twice, and they actually brought me the phone in the OR so that I could talk to him. My surgeon said that was the first time he operated on someone who was on the telephone.

I am back home now, still recovering. Due to the previa, I lost a lot of blood, so that is primarily what I am recovering from now. That, and a lot of sadness at the loss of our kiddos. But Megan is great, and is really helping us through this. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers as we work through this.

Chris, AnnaLisa and Megan

New swim goggles

Megan had been wanting some swim goggles, after using a pair of goggles that one of her friends had at the pool! Today we got her a pair. Apparently, they are useful for more than swimming!

Maybe it helps too, that she watched a lot of Olympics over the last two weeks, and really enjoyed the swimming events -- which she called "Racing in the water!" "Look mom, they are racing in the water!"

Making Marinara

MMMMMmmmmmm. Homemade marinara. We made this in April and just recently ate the last of it, so it was time to make it again. Chris and I took a cooking class when we lived in Midland, and this was one of the first lessons. It has been a favorite since then, and now everytime I seem to make the pot of it bigger and bigger.

Note: I am pretty much now limited by my pot size unless we invest in something bigger! So this begins with a trip to Sam's or Costco. There, you buy

a huge bag of baby carrots (3 lbs or more)
a huge bag of onions
A huge bag of celery // I prefer celery hearts
Olive oil
Spices (trust me, you need this size!)

and then the large industrial size of canned tomato products. This recipe has
1 can tomato paste
2 cans crushed tomatoes
1 can diced tomatoes
2 cans tomato sauce
and I think I should have bought a second can of tomato paste. But who could really imagine using that much tomato paste!

So you start by getting out the food processor and chopping up all of the onion, carrot, and celery. You add this to a LARGE pot on the stove, and saute in olive oil with some garlic (I use about 1/3 to 1/2 jar of the minced garlic since I am too lazy to chop this much garlic!) You cook the mirepoix 10-15 minutes (depending on how well your burner heats a crazy sized pot).

Then we transfer everything outside to our propane burner. Here you open and add all of the tomato products plus lots of spices. I use fresh basil and rosemary from our herb garden PLUS a small bottle of dried Italian seasoning, some salt, a little bit of sugar (about 1/3 cup sweetens up this whole pot!) and/or individual bits of oregano and thyme to taste. Cook for several hours. I quit when I can't keep it from sticking! Then portion into small containers or ziplocks (once cool!) and enjoy. We heat this back up for spaghetti, lasagna, etc. It makes an excellent sauce for pennies compared to the jarred pasta sauce (and this tastes so much better!) Freezes quite well!

Note: If you keep making the recipe bigger, you will run into a problem that you don't have aspoon long enough to STIR the pot. This leads to my husband having to get the saw out in the garage and cut me a pice of wood (an extra clothes rod) long enough to stir the pot! Odd but effective. I think by next time, we will try to have an upgraded stirring device!

Just a Swingin'

These are a few of the videos that I found on my lost camera... These are from the 4th of July when we had just gotten Megan's swingset. The music is compliments of my neighbors, and their outdoor pool stereo system (which we aren't always so fond of...)

Megan swinging on her new swing.

On the MegaRider

Climbing up the ladder

Cousins!

This weekend, Megan visted her cousins and went to see baby Lily's baptism. Megan and Lauren had great fun. They swam in the hotel, painted, colored and then ran upstairs to plot and do who knows what! They had a lot of fun together.



Megan also got to see her baby cousin, Lily, who she just adores. I think she would be happy if we just let her play with Lily all day. She gets blankets for her, pats her, and wanted to put her in all the baby toys (exersaucer, swing, etc) just like a baby doll!

A House of Olympic Addicts

So we have been watching a lot of Olympics. Since we rarely watch mucch TV in the evenings, Megan has found this to be a special treat. She gets her blanket and either snuggles into the couch, or in with Mom or Dad. Her favorites are of course the gymnastics, as well as swimming (known to Megan as "Racing in the Water!")

Megan goes to a 40th birthday party!

In July, we went to our friend Dave's 40th birthday party! Megan had a great time at the restaurant, and really thought the Yoda cake was incredible. Although she was a little traumataized once he was served. She kept asking -- "Where'd the head go???!"

Here is the YODA cake pre-serving....

Megan even got her own party favors which she had a grand time with in the car!

I found my little Camera!

Finally! I found my small travel camera! And amazingly I found several picture events on it. So I will be uploading a few of those over the next day or so! Yea for cameras!

Where's my camera when I need it?

I mean -- really! For those of you who know our house, we have ridiculous volume of cameras and camera equipment, yet today I missed three adorable pictures. Twice I went for the camera, and Megan got wise and quit. So since they were so cute, I will leave this to your imagination, and then work at doing better this week at capturing a few on camera.

Photo 1: resembles a photo up top in the header, just age Megan forward one year. We went to the craft store yesterday to pick up some goodies, and I got face paint (grease pencil type). So today, for fun, she got a red nose and whiskers. Daddy told her what a cute cat she made, and then for the next two hours, she said little other than "Meow". We went to the store, and she meowed for people admiring her "cuteness." She INSISTED that I redirect the rearview mirror in the car so that she could see herself, and preened and meowed at herself all the way home!

Photo 2: Absolutely hysterical. Chris saw this, and came and got me, and I almost fell over laughing. But some camera issues (wrong lens, etc) took precious time to change, and I missed the photo op. Megan was going potty on her little girl potty. I have included a sample image from the Boon Website of what the potty looks like. Note: this isn't Megan though. This little girl has WAY more hair than Megan!

So Chris went to go check on her, and then came and told me I had to go see. She was perched on her potty, sitting just about like the girl in the ad above. However, she had in her lap a magazine (I think it was a digital photo magazine, not sure -- but definitely one of ours) and she was sitting on the potty reading a magazine! She stayed perched there for a little while just turning pages (really until she caught me trying to get her picture!) before she declared that she was, in fact, "done!" Everyone always says she looks like her Daddy! [grin]

Photo 3: really more of a VIDEO OP that I missed. Megan and were watching women's gymnastics tonight. Since she has been going to gymnastics now once a week, she was very interested. She would watch and even once told me that was her on screen. Then she said she couldn't do that until she got "older." In the middle of this, there was a funny gymnastics commercial that came on for 24-HOUR FITNESS -- I couldn't link the video directly, but if you click on the link here it is the "24 fitness TV 3" link at the bottom right. Basically it is a play on the gymnastics finish where you throw your hands in the air.

As soon as she saw the commercial, Megan began hopping and throwing her hands in the air like a little gymnast. For some added effect, she did a few sit bounces on the couch, and then threw in a few "ta-da!"s for flair. I was laughing again. But here there wasn't much of a chance to get the video camera out.

Megan's new BIG GIRL room

We finally got Megan's new "BIG GIRL" room all set up, with her
new big girl set of furniture and everything. So thanks to our friend
Dave as well, for helping pick up and move this furniture to our
place (since I, of course, just can't help with any of that!)

We are still deciding how to decorate the walls, but this is a view of
Megan's new room from the doorway. We took it with a fisheye
lens to capture the whole room in one shot, but it does sort of give it
the fish bowl shape -- it really is a rectangular room!