Turkey Trotters

The Turkey Trot has become a tradition for our family. I am so thankful to my friend Heather for introducing me to it 6 years ago. This is a race, on Thanksgiving Day, that she had done for many years and asked if I wanted to join her. I was excited to try so for 4 years we met and walked (fast!) together and chatted about, well, everything, but it always included plans for the holiday and was fun adult girl time for us. Last year I was so disappointed because they moved and I lost my trotting buddy. But...I was able to call my sister Tracy and asked (begged:) her to join me. She did! And we had a great time. So this year we recruited more trotters. After some last minute juggling (she had some sick kids) we ended up with Hannah, Tracy, Emily and Sadie, me and Zach (who also trotted last year). It's an interesting picture taken by Lexi. Thanks Lexi!

I almost forgot. Zach got a slower time then he wanted to. It's a good learning experience to go out and run without training and then not do as well as you think you should. We were both glad that he learned this at this time and not before his first track meet.

Hannah ran with us for awhile and then decided half way through to take off and beat us by about 7 minutes. Go Hannah! Emily stayed with us until the last four blocks and then sprinted to the end. I made my goal of jogging the whole time and sprinting at the last half block to see if I could. Next time I'll take off a little sooner to see if I can do even better. Tracy made her goal of jogging the entire time without walking, even at the end when she was very tired. Yea, go Tracy! We finished in one hour and 2 minutes. We'll see what we can do next year!

Carpetball Characters

The other night, our neighbors across the street came over and shared our fire. It was a gorgeous night and we had tons of fun. This is their daughter Amariss and the little head you can barely see at the other end is Leah.

They were so cute. They can barely see over the edge but they sure enjoy throwing the balls back and forth.

These are all the pictures I took but we had a ton of fun. Mr. Aaron is such a goofball and the kids absolutely loved playing hide and seek and duck duck goose with him. He really knows how to engage all ages. No wonder his youth group kids love him.

A Bunch of Animals

Since Leah and I were with the Chervenkas all day long, she suggested we go to the zoo. It turned out to be a beautiful day and Leah loved seeing the animals. Here's our version of a bunch of animals. It was good to be able to get out of the house!

Heather has very, very well behaved children but she was feeling a bit overwhelmed after the week she's had. I was happy to help her waste a couple of hours.

We started in a rainforest exhibit where exotic birds would just walk across your path and it had a cool waterfall. Leah couldn't get over the water. It's a new word so she pointed out the word over and over.

The flamingos were cool and very pretty and bright and I pointed them out to Leah. She pointed and said Water!

Maaaaaaa.....

The three amigos.

Can you tell that moose baby girl is actually 6 months younger than Tyler?

I figured these were Leah's favorites because she can actually say Giraffe! but she probably said Giraffe over and over because there was no water to look at:)

Thanks for the fun day at Blank Park Zoo!

Iowa Junior Honors String Orchestra Festival

Talk about a talented kid. This is the Junior version of All-State (which I didn't realize until we got there). He was the only one that Mrs. Hartmann recommended to try out from Walcott School. She told me they have to be at "a certain level" before she can nominate someone. Last year she didn't have anyone.

Yesterday, we left after Dave got home to drive to my friend Heather's house in Des Moines. They moved there last year so this was the perfect opportunity to see them. Leah and I hung out there while Zach was practicing all day. Thanks, Heather!

The concert was awesome. It was amazing to see the skill level of these junior high students. The best part was that Zach had so much fun. He couldn't stop talking about how fun it was to hang out with everyone and play the music that they had to learn. He's not usually excited about all that work.

Cast Off

Leah's cast is off! She got it off on Friday. She was super good while they sawed it off. The guy called in the x-ray tech for back-up just because you never know how a baby will do with the noise, etc. The tech was awesome. I was already impressed with her from previous visits but even more so this time. She brought in stickers and started talking to Leah about the stickers and putting them on her and she never had a chance to be scared. She looked at the saw nervously but was way too distracted with the stickers to be upset. I was so thankful because I couldn't do much to distract her since I was holding on to her. The staff couldn't praise her enough for how well she did.


Side note on the tech: she grew up in Walcott too and when I saw her the first time she said Weren't you a Knutsen? And I said Yes, weren't you a Rolfs? Kind of funny we didn't really know each other but knew the family. She was the age of my older sisters, I think.



Leah's doing really well with her cast off. The first day she wasn't sure what to do and kept it down to her side like she forgot she could use it. Now she's fine though. I'm so happy I can put her cute long sleeve shirts on her again. She's got some sores on her arm from itching after the cast came off and one in between her fingers where her pinky was folded over her third finger for three weeks, but after those heal she'll be completely fine.
"Look Mom, no cast!"
This picture is for my dad. You know you're a negligent blogger when your family has to remind you to do updates.

A slight misunderstanding

I worked at preschool today for my mom who had another stent placed 2 days ago. There was a little girl there who brought in a 'game' she had made. It was a piece of paper with pictures drawn on it and she had written the letter that each picture started with. Sue (my MIL) and I couldn't really figure out what the game was but Lanie insisted we needed to find the objects around the room. Since the first one was 'moat', Sue was pretty sure this game wouldn't work. Finally we suggested that Lanie be the first one to find a moat in the classroom. She happily went out in the hall and asked for a teacher to follow her to the room across the hall (since they can't go out there alone). I stood in the hall and watched as the four little girls ran across the hall and I could hear them tittering "Where did it go?" "It was right here." "Here it is!" Lanie came out to the hall and said "I found it!" I was like oh. Oh my. Yes you did. Maybe you should go show that to Mrs. Huntley. To which Sue started to say, in disbelief, "What do you mean?" "You can't tell me she actually found one over there." Lanie came around the corner proudly displaying the remote! I thought Mrs. Huntley would fall off her chair laughing over that.

Update on THE CAST

The saga continues. When we got the cast on two weeks ago today, we were told to come back in one week to get x-rays to make sure everything was healing correctly. We did that last Thurs. Her doctor is Dr. Lindaman but we didn't see him either time, we saw his assistant, Dr. Earel. Dr. Earel said the x-ray looked good, he would show it to Dr. L and we could make an appt. for 2 weeks to get the cast off. At the appt. desk, the first date they could get us in was the 18th which would be three weeks. Later that day, I got a message from Dr. E saying that Dr. L wanted her to come in the next week to get her cast off and a new one placed because it looked loose. So we went in on Mon. and actually saw Dr. L who said the cast looks way too good to replace. Let's just get an x-ray to check it. Our appt. was at 2:15. At 3:15 he walks in and states that the cast is great and the bone looks great and she can come in next week to get it off. I asked him if it was a mistake that we came in that day, maybe I misunderstood. He said oh no, that he was the one who wanted us to come in to get checked because of the x-ray. (The disadvantage, obviously, of the doctor in charge not actually being there to look at the cast at the time of the appt.) I guess the good thing that came out of the appt. was that we now have an appt. for the 13th to get the cast off instead of waiting until the 18th. I was a little disappointed we couldn't get the cast off though. For one thing, we decided we would get a purple cast this time. For another thing, I couldn't wait to be able to wash her little hand. It was getting really dirty and stinky. (Hard to wash because her fingers are overlapped in there.)
So now we have an appt. for next week to get another x-ray (her fourth set) and hopefully get her cast off for good. She has been a trooper though. She's figured out how to use it almost normally. And so far she hasn't hauled off and hit anyone with it!

Zach's Halloween Concert

Zach played in the Halloween Concert at school last Friday. It was for the K - 5th graders so we got to see Lexi and Trey there.

Nice halo right? My pictures were all really blurry because I was holding Leah. She was really good while we were there but I had to hold her the whole time. She's kind of a clingy little thing in public.

The kids played really well. The lady in white is Miss Robin. She acted as the MC for the day.

This is Mrs. Hartmann. I didn't get a picture of the front of her but she was dressed up as her cousin Bubba. Miss Robin made a big deal of not being able to find Mrs. Hartmann when 'he' showed up. I thought they were hysterical but the kids were all like huh?

All the kids. Lots of black and orange...
Even though the picture is blurry, it shows the difference between Lexi and Trey. Lexi didn't stop looking at me the entire time. She wasn't noisy or talking, she was just really excited to have her mom and sister there. Trey (after the initial "Mom!" when he saw me in the hallway), didn't even look at me once while we were in there. In fact I'm pretty sure he was pretending I wasn't there. Reminds me of his brother. Although I will say that lately, Zach has been doing better at that. This time, after the concert was over, he came over and held Leah for a minute and didn't pretend I didn't exist. It's progress.