Thank you priceline!

Thanks to Priceline.com, we stayed in an awesome hotel for $60/night!  Here's the view from our room:

Inside the room was pretty "suite" too. LOL (I'm such a dork.)  In any case, I didn't take pictures of that.  I got a few of my adorable kids playing on the luggage cart though.  Sigh...

(Great) Grandma Revenaugh

Grandma Revenaugh was the kindest, gentlest, soul I think I've ever know.  On Nov. 10, Dad called me to say that she went home, to be with the Lord, to finally rest and be at peace, perfect in body and in mind.

Grandma, I miss you so much, more than I thought could be possible.  I love you so much, and I'm so happy that you are in Heaven right now, but I'm so sad for all of us.  The world lost an angel yesterday.  I love you.

This is the slide show I put together for Grandma's visitation. I'm so happy my dad had so many pictures of Grandma throughout her life.  Even better, was that he had them on the computer, ready to be uploaded.  Thank you to everyone who sent me pictures to put this all together.  It makes me sad to see how in Grandma's time, they only got out the cameras for special occasions.  I feel like a great deal of her life is documented by Easter and Christmas pictures.  Nowadays, I feel like I have my camera out for everything little moment and I take a million pictures of it.  I'd like to say sorry in advance kids for the amount of pictures you'll have to sort through in an effort to put together something nice for me one day! :)

This is 3635 Valley St.  I took this picture when we were just in Omaha for the funeral.  Grandma and Grandpa built this house and raised their children here.  This is the house that I will always picture in my mind whenever I think of Omaha.  This is all of my Easter egg hunts took place and where I anxiously awaited Santa filling my stocking.  

Our trip to Omaha went pretty well.  It was a whirlwind visit, even though we were there for 3 days/2 nights.  When we were kids, I'd always get choked up about leaving, but I'd tell myself, "I'll see everyone again at __________."  I'd fill in the blank with Christmas, Easter, Memorial Day, or whatever trip was planned next.  It's not the same now.  I leave now and think, "I don't know when I'll be back again."  I'm going to try to make it up there once a year, maybe each summer or something.  That way I can visit with family and the kids can see a place that I always loved.

I did see a lot of family on this visit, but I feel like there's never enough time to visit with everyone or to visit long enough with people.  Looking back, I was around so many people, but I didn't take a single picture of any of that.

I have no way to close this blog post.  I feel the same as I did at the cemetery when I tried to take those first few steps away from Grandma.  Why are the first few steps the hardest to take?  Why do your feet feel so heavy like you can't walk?  Maybe because in walking away, it's an acknowledgement of the actual, real finality of the situation.  I've had many of these moments this week from Dad's phone call to the visitation, to laying a rose on Grandma's coffin.  I expect (and hope) that the end of this post will be the last time I have this feeling.  And so, since I have one million things to say, but no words to say them in, I'll just leave it at that. I love you Grandma.  Thank you for all you gave to our family.  I'll miss you. 

Halloween 2012

Rapunzel and Pascal wish you a happy Halloween!

Phobia

Oh gosh....I may have just given my daughter a phobia....

Ella was playing and alerted me there was a spider in the house. "I have to save my children!" I thought to myself, grabbing the fly swatter. Ella was running behind excitedly saying, "I GET TO KILL IT!  I GET TO!"  No way was I going to let my little girl get close to this creature!  I instructed Ella to grab a tissue for me. This was no ordinary spider, but Halloween prank-sized. I was set in position when it happened.....

It fell off the wall and crawled insanely fast towards us. As I lunged to protect Eli from this arachnid, I heard a scream escape my lips, only to be echoed out of Ella's mouth.  This was not a small "ah!" scream, but rather one from a horror movie, so loud and long that my throat began to protest in pain!  As I'm smashing the tarantula to smitherines, legs are falling off, limbs are being cast aside, I'm repeating, "This is SO gross!  It's disgusting!"  and in the background, I can hear Ella repeating everything I'm saying.  That's when I realized....

I've worked so hard for nearly four whole years at not freaking out about a bug in front of her.  Here she was poised to kill the spider herself, and what did I do?  Not only force the job on me, but now I've totally freaked her out about it!  Great!  Mom of the year?  Doubtful.  Oh well, I guess this phobia probably would've happened for her one day anyway....

Here are some pictures of the kids in happier moments...

watching baseball

sleepy time

I know this is terrible quality, but it was adorable--
As soon as the baseball game came on, Eli begged to sit by Nick.  Then he watched the first 3 innings, clapping the whole time!
When he saw me take the picture, he started pointing to the TV excitedly saying, "LOOK!" followed by a bunch of baby gibberish.  It was too cute.  That's my boy! :)

Ella's Birthday Party

For her birthday, Ella wanted to have a Tangled (Rapunzel) birthday party. She also wants to be Rapunzel for Halloween, so I figured we could somehow combine these themes.  (In fact, with her birthday so close to Halloween, how has it taken me this long to figure it out?!)

Ella dressed up as Rapunzel.  At her request, Eli is Pascal (Rapunzel's chameleon and only friend).  The other kids got to play princess dress up as well.  Brady had a knight's costume, but he was a little bashful about wearing it.

We had such a great time.  And now, my baby girl is 4.  How have four years possibly gone by so quickly?
Yesterday, Nick took the kids to Jack in the Box for brunch.  (BTW, Ella finds the concept of brunch to be hysterically funny and that Daddy must be mistaken!)

I was a little bummed that I didn't get to be there when she woke up in the morning.  But I decided to make the best of it and do something fun when she woke up from her afternoon nap.  I blew up a bunch of balloons and put them all over her bed.  When she woke up, she asked, "Oh my gosh!  How did these get here?"  It was so stinkin' adorable!

For dinner, Ella requested buttery spaghetti noodles and some pineapple.  So that's what we had and she ate it like a queen!  We also played with play dough and finished a puzzle.  It was a great time.  Ella got 2 bedtime stories last night, one that she picked, and then one I picked, "The Story of You."  Nick and I cuddled her in our bed and told her all about the night before she was born, how excited we were to finally meet her and how we could hardly wait to become Mommy and Daddy.  She loved it.  I want this to be a birthday tradition.  My favorite part was telling her the first words Nick said when he saw her, "Look babe!  Look!  Look at how beautiful she is!"  and how I was crying uncontrollably and repeating, "Thank you God! Thank you!  I love you so much Ella.  I love you so much."  And how soon even the nurses were crying with us.  I love my girl, and I can't believe that day that is so very clearly etched in my memory was already four years ago.  It's so fresh it can bring tears to my eyes as if I'm in the hospital room again.

Ella, you are so special to me. <3

A few weeks ago, I made Ella a slideshow of all that we did this last year from Oct. 2011-Oct. 2012.  I worked really hard on it and it makes me cry.  I wanted to share it with everyone at her party....and then I forgot. :(  That isn't the point; I know the point is for Ella to be able to watch it when she's older.  In which case, Ella this is for you.  I cry every time I watch this, especially during the first song, so perhaps get a tissue.

Eli Walking & Covered Bridge

Last week was a super hectic week!  I had parent-teacher conferences on Wed. and Thurs.  These kept me busy in St. Charles from 7:15 AM-8:00 PM both days.  When I got home, the kids were ready for bed and I was exhausted.  I had to pack up on Tuesday night because Kristin and I left town on Thursday after conferences to head to Indiana.

We went to the Covered Bridge Festival with Brandy Nieters and Krystal (Smelcer) Blattner.  We rode down there and met up with Nick's mom, Aunt Jody, and a bunch of other campground ladies.  There were 12 in our group total.  It is a giant festival/flea market/craft bazaar the size of a town.  It's HUGE!  We went up Thursday night and slept.  Friday, we shopped all day and watched Game 5 (IT WAS AWESOME!!! COMEBACK OF A LIFETIME!!!!).  Then we left Saturday morning.  Normally, we would stay Saturday and shop, but Kristin and I were really missing the kids after last week.  We were gone for a day and a half, and had a blast.

In 16 months, I have been gone roughly a day and a half.  36 hours.....and Eli started walking while I was gone.  Are you kidding me Eli?!  I was incredibly sad to miss this big event.....  Here's a video of him that night:

I really cannot believe that I missed his big moment!  However, I am trying my best to focus on his success now.  3 days after learning to walk, I got an awesome video of Ella and Eli dancing in the kitchen to "Pontoon" by Little Big Town.  (Dancing is one of their favorite activities after all.)  I have tried my best to post the video here, but for some reason I can't.  It's on my Facebook page, so you can see it there, but kids, in the future if you're reading this, thinking, "What is Facebook?"  Sorry.  Rest assured it was an ADORABLE video of you guys. <3

Also, last night, I found him kicking a balloon all over the kitchen!  I guess he was really ready to get going. :)

How Did I Miss Omaha?!

As I was just looking over my blog, I realized that I didn't write about our trip to Omaha.  We weren't able to make it to Devon's baby shower, so we went up in mid July.

Kristin, all four kids, and MeMaw squeezed in my mini van (or "swagger wagon" as we call it in our family) and we headed up there for a few nights.  The day we arrived, it was Uncle Mike's birthday.  We went out to dinner to celebrate.  I don't think I got a picture of Uncle Mike when we were in town.  Here he is walking Devon down the aisle last October.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel and the kids got to unwind a little after a long day by playing in the pool.

The next day, we went to the Omaha Zoo.  Here's a picture of the girls near the front of the zoo.

The zoo has a really awesome aquarium.  It's probably the coolest one I've ever been to; it was definitely the largest.

 Uncle Mike knows someone who works at the zoo and he called her to say that we'd be visiting.  Here are some pictures of the strings she pulled for us on our "back stage" tour.

We got to visit the giraffes in their shelter.  This one is Sammy.  Notice a mommy and baby in the background.  They were too scared to come over to us, but Sammy was loving all the attention and treats we gave him.

Yes, that's correct....it's MY hand you see feeding Sammy right now.  Ella was too frightened to feed him, but Reagan and Brady got to feed him as well.

It was really neat getting to hand feed the giraffes and see them so up-close.  After that, we went to see African penguins.  The zoo was a really neat experience for all of us.  Here are some pics from the acquarium. 

Later we went out to dinner at Cheddar's, a restaurant I LOVE now, and then took the kids back to the pool to swim.  I was creeped out by a man who came to the pool, so sorry kids, but Mommy/Aunt Carla made you get out after only 15 minutes of fun and bribed you with a "surprise" to go back to the room.  The surprise was a bath, and then we had to figure out a real surprise...wait!  There was a little shop next to the lobby.  How about ICE CREAM JUST BEFORE BEDTIME!!!  It was so special and the kids thought it was a real treat instead of just a bribe away from the pool. 

The next day, we went to visit my Grandma Revenaugh in her nursing home.  This was not a pleasant experience, but it went as I expected it to go mostly.  I knew Grandma wouldn't recognize any of us, especially without Dad.  However, my plan was to try to tell back to her MY favorite stories she told me growing up.  I figured she MIGHT remember something from her childhood, and if not, then it'd be nice just to reminisce about the stories she used to tell us.  I also brought pictures of Eli's birthday party.  Last resort, without fail, was Ella.  She's a talker, so I KNEW I could lean on her to carry the conversation in awkard moments, right?  Well pretty much.  That was the plan...here's how the visit went: we found Grandma's room and asked that someone bring her to meet us in a dining room-ish family area.  Just as she's being wheeled down the hall, both girls decide they MUST use the restroom at once!  I wasn't even going to be there for the hellos.  The bathroom trip lasted about 5 minutes.  When I got back, Kristin had already gone through all the birthday pictures with Grandma.  What? Are you kidding me?  Where was her conversation story? Apparently, conversation was awkward and she was desperate, so she pretty much went through all of her ideas very quickly.  It was as I expected, Grandma didn't recognize us.  That's okay, I can deal with that.  I talked about my memories of Grandma's stories.  She remembered some, or acted like it maybe.  The kids made it hard to carry on conversation though.  But I was right about Ella, she talked and talked and talked.  There wasn't really a moment of silence.  Eventually it was time for ust to leave.  We wheeled Grandma back to her room.  I wanted to help her in, but an orderly said she'd handle it.  She turned Grandma to face us.  We gave her hugs goodbye and told her we loved her.  And then the moment that will never leave me, we walked away.  Kids, I don't know if you'll understand until you have to do this; I'm not sure that I can describe it.  It's just the feeling of leaving, of walking away from someone you love.  The feeling was very similar to leaving both of you as babies for my first day back at work.  Logically, you tell yourself, "I gave hugs and kisses and said, 'I love you.' I am coming back."  But the logical part of my brain is never what wins over the emotional part; it's the fear of walking away and thinking, "But what if something happens before I come back?"  It's a wretched feeling and one that I can never shake.  I walked away, crying, trying to hide it from the kids to avoid the endless questions that would follow.

Afterwards, we met up with Aunt Nancy and Uncle Mike one last time for lunch before heading home.

All-in-all, I think the trip was a major success.  I had a great time visiting everyone.  As always, I just wish we'd had more time to visit with everyone.  <3