Our lizard laid an egg..

Some of you know that we adopted two anoles after Ryan's 3rd grade class finished their study of them at school. Well the other day I walked in to look at them and they were mating. Yikes!! Well, yesterday Lizzy laid an egg. It will be interesting to see if it hatches. From what I have read she can lay up to 10 eggs over the next several months. hmmm, anyone want a lizard?

Surgery and my new friend Spongebob

Well, I had my surgery on Friday and it went well. We ended up only needing the lesser of the two possible procedures, so that was good. It turned out there were two areas along the nerve(one above and one below the elbow) that had band like restrictions. The doctor clipped those out and hopefully now things will get better. The procedure lasted a little less than an hour and I was home less than 4 hours after I left. The doctor set me up with a fancy foam block to help with protection and elevation. Here is a lovely picture. The kids have taken to calling my foam block "Spongebob".
I have been pretty sore today and didn't sleep well last night. Hopefully tonight will be better.

Milestones

This week we hit two big milestones in our family. It is really wild to think that we are doing so many things for the last time. I was really happy to potty train my last child and say goodbye to diapers. I was glad to get rid of bottles and happy to be done with sippy cups. The crib and changing table were a little hard to put away, but that has been a while ago now too.

This year we are in our last year of preschool. Tear tear. We have been at Community Preschool for 7 years now. I LOVE the teachers and the sense of community there. I have worked on the board for the last 4 years and have really enjoyed the time spent with the ladies there. But...yesteraday, I registered my baby for kindergarten. Milestone #1: our final kindergarten registration. (more tears) Well to be totally honest, I am quite excited that I will have more time for myself.

Then today, Milestone #2 was teaching the last of our children to ride a two wheel bike. Kyle took his own training wheels off his little bike and wanted to ride it. Since it was such a beautiful day (70 degrees) I decided to go ahead and take him out. And he was off. Here are a couple of pictures.

Surgery...(and more)

Well, I went to the orthopedic surgeon again last week and he said I am going to need surgery to figure out what is wrong with my ulnar nerve and to fix it. If you want to know the history of what has been going on, you can read about it here and here. Apparently even after 3 weeks of complete immobility and rest in a cast, there was still no improvement. So he is going in. He will make an incision at my elbow and hopefully just have to do some roto rootering there in the nerve canal in my elbow. It could be bone causing the problem, it could be muscle, or even scar tissue. He will clean it all up and if things look good, that will be it. It he can't see a reason for the problem, he will instead do a transpositional surgery. That means he will actually remove the nerve from the groove in the elbow(think of your funny bone here) and reposition the nerve on the inside of the bend of the elbow. This will involve attaching the nerve to those muscles and will be a more difficult recovery. Personally, I am hoping he just has to roto rooter me. Then, after surgery, I will have another 3-4 weeks of immobility before I can start physical therapy. I just hope it all works.

On another note, we had a great weekend this week. Mike's sister Jen and her husband Matt and their two cute little kids were here this weekend. Jen and the kids will be around for 2 weeks, but Matt went home to work today. We had a great weekend. Pete, Mel, Kensie, and Eric came up to hang out, and Kari and Deron came over too. We spent a good portion of the weekend at Mike's parent's house with everyone else. On Friday Night, the adults, minus Mel, went out for dinner at Red Robin...YUM!! It was really nice to visit without all the kids around.
Then on Sunday after church, we all got together to start cooking food for our Superbowl party. We had more food than I have seen since at least Christmas! We had all kinds of appetizers. Veggies and my famous cheese dip, buffalo wings, pinwheels, bacon wrapped water chestnuts, rotelle and sausage dip, spinach and artichoke dip, stuffed mushrooms, chips, popcorn, not to mention all the desserts. Needless to say, I ate way too much that day and felt sick later on. We watched the game, some cheering for each team, and had a nice time just being together.

We also found out that Mike's sister Kari, who is expecting a baby in June, is having a little girl. We are so excited for her and Deron. I am especially excited because they live so close to us, I will get to be the Aunt that spoils her rotten. This will be the third little granddaughter born to David and Bjorg in a year. How fun it will be as the three of them grow up. It reminds me a bit of 13 years ago when the older 4 Sims siblings all had baby girls within a year. It's so fun.

Anyway, the kids are all doing great so I guess that is all for today.

P.S. If you haven't been over to my Digital Scrapbooking blog this week, stop on in. I have a super cute scrapbook kit I am giving away free all week. People are really liking it. I have had over 117 downloadson the papers just today. Yeah me!

A weekend getaway without the kids

It was wonderful, need I say more? Probably not, but here are some pics and a summary of the weekend Mike and I had in Vail.

We arrived in Vail in the late afternoon. The roads were a bit messy and it was snowing so we were glad to arrive safely. Once we arrived we learned that the next day there was forecasted 12-1 inches of snow in Vail. Yikes, we had only driven up Mike's car, what were we thinking. We left a perfectly good 4 wheel drive suburban sitting in our garage. Oh well. Thank goodness for FREE public transportation in Vail. We left the car in the parking lot the whole weekend.

Friday night we grabbed some Oriental food for dinner. It was quite good and then we hung out in our room for the night. I think I fell asleep about 8:45, it was so nice to just relax and not have to worry about the kids.

On Saturday morning we woke (about 9:30 am) to about 6 inches of fresh snow. Yeah! We had some breakfast and then headed out for our snowmobile tour. It was still snowing and so beautiful. It was almost 40 degrees so it was really a nice day for riding. We geared up for our ride and then headed out with our guide and 4 other people. Here are a couple of pictures from our ride. The ride was beautiful. We rode through the aspens and through the pine trees and saw some beautiful scenes. It was soooooo much fun!!!

After snowmobiling we went back to our hotel and then hopped on a bus to go explore the villages. We took a ride up the Gondola in Lionshead Village to the top of Vail Mountain. It was beautiful, though visibility was not so good(because it was snowing) and we couldn't see much from the top.

After the ride back down, we headed over to Vail Village and explored the cute shops and hit a Mexican restaurant for dinner. We had yummy fajitas. The downside was that all 3 tables around us were full of kids. One group had a baby that cried almost the whole time we were there. So why is when we leave our kids home we are surrounded by everyone else's?

Next it was back to the hotel for a soak in the hot tub and a sit in the sauna. It was so relaxing except for maybe the kids that were splashing around in the hot tub. Once again, we left ours at home so we could relax without kids. Oh well. We headed back to our room for a quiet movie all by ourselves.

After sleeping in again this morning, we decided we needed to pack up and head out since it was snowing again. We wanted to get out of town before the roads got too bad. We headed out about 10 am and it took us 2 hours to go what would normally take about 45 minutes. The roads were snowy, slick and it was snowing really hard. Visibility was low and chain laws were in effect. We took it slow and arrived home safely about 2.

It is truly amazing that the time went so fast. We had a great time and enjoyed some time off from the kids and the house. Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Sims who made it possible for us to go.

Random Photo Blog

Here are some random photos taken over the last few weeks. And here are a couple of pictures from Jakes Birthday party last week. It was so warm outside I took all the kids out to the park to run some relay races.

Sky Blue Orange

I was sitting here in my office tonight and happened to look out the window and this is what I saw. I hurried to grab the camera and catch it to share with you.It reminded me of my childhood. Whenever we asked my dad what his favorite color was, his answer would always be "Sky Blue Orange." We would laugh and say that there is no such color. But here tonight, I am reminded of the beauty of the setting sun where there is proof that sky blue orange definitely is a color. And isn't it a beauty!!!!!

Thanks Dad!