what a day!

Wow, it was one of those days!
I didn't have a huge list of things I had to do today. I was actually thinking of doing a few jobs that normally get put on hold, and then maybe taking the children to lunch with their "book its". So it was going to be a slow day for once. Well life never seems to go that way for me. It's ok, because I do like to be busy, and if life does slow down too much, I tend to create projects or something that pretty quickly creates busyness.

So 8 am I get a call from Sherry that her client is in labor. Well it was a good day for me to be able to leave.
I got to Bonner's about 10 and the mom was moving right along. The dad was doing well as a coach, so Sherry and I had lots of time to visit and catch up. I was really looking forward to this. I think that's one of the things I love about midwifery. It gives you a good excuse to put everything in life on a back burner, and just have some time helping someone with pain, serving them, and sitting around visiting with friends. What a fun job! Everyone knows that babies being born is a high priority and life can be put on hold for a day. For instance the real estate lady called and needed papers signed, but when I told her I had a mom in labor, she figured out a way we could do it with a quick fax. Babies take priority! So it gives me a break from normal stressful life and puts me in another world for a few hours.
So in between checking heart tones, and keeping mom comfy, Sherry and I discussed a thousand different ways to make the job of midwifery a money making proposition, (which it's really not), or churches and their problems, or teen agers and how we wish we could just sleep until they are past this stage, our grown children worries., and running large households (sherry has 12 children)
It was about 1 or 2 pm that she was already dilated to 8. But when hours were passing and their was no change, and labor was slowing down, we began to wonder if we had a stuck baby. Since we were 1 hour from the hospital in either direction, we thought it best to transport rather then waiting till we had a baby in distress.
Well without giving too many details and breaking confidentiality, I will end it with saying she had a C section, about midnight. Baby was not going to make it through her pelvis. 150 years ago both she and baby would have died, but it's so nice we have hospitals for the few times it's needed.
Sherry dressed up to go into the C sectionhe last time I transported to this hospital it ended in a C section too. That trip was a bit more exciting though. Our "scary" birth, to say the least. It was a home birth way up by the Canadian border up from Bonners. Making a trip to any hospital that could help us was 90 min away. Birth was going great. Mom had dilated to 8 and FHT were fine. For some strange reason after only 10 min of checking baby, I checked again. What I found was FHT of 70. Changed positions, but this drop was in between ctx. No difference no matter what position. Then I couldn't find heart tones. ( thats a scary monment!) When you are in this situation you have to decide how much time you want to take looking for heart tones, or getting on the o2, or seeing if you could deliver the baby in less time then it would take to get to the hospital or do you just want to jump in the car or do you call an ambulance ? It's a terribly long drive without knowing how baby is doing! By the way this was one of my 1st births of being without supervision.
This is a classic example of how someone could easily loose their baby with an unassisted birth too. Everything looked really good, she was dilating fine, but it was a cord issue. So we stopped in the Bonners hospital, and all they could do for us was get us a ride in the ambulance to Sandpoint. It was nice though to stop there so we could hear FHT, get an IV in her. The heart tones were there, but still dipping seriously at times.
So we ended up in the Sandpoint hospital and within 10 min they had the baby out. She had a very, very thin cord. It was like a pencil. This couple is always telling people I'm the best midwife, but I'm sure any midwife would have done the same thing. I'm just glad they had a midwife, and they have a beautiful little girl now.
So back to my day:
I left the hospital about 1 am. I am of course very very tired, and of course I am seeing deer almost constantly, I hit 2 snow storms where you could hardly see the road, I saw oodles of Elk. One time there was a whole herd right in the road. We also had to throw in some fog on this dangerous drive home.
At least the roads weren't icy!

My keep alert drinks: I got one cup of coffee with a packet of hot chocolate in it and one cup of green tea. It worked too, enough caffine to keep me awake.
So I got home at 3 am to that very familiar horrible smell. A skunk must have been under or very near our house again. Oh it's so bad that it hurts your eyes and makes it hard to sleep. Yuck!
So then I climb into bed, but I'm quite awake from coffee and adrenalin.
Before you know it, it's another day starting again where I left off..............

crazy weather/ garden time?

It's beautiful and sunny today. Yesterday we had a huge snow storm. We still have snow covering most of the ground. In some places there is a foot of snow still and then where the snow plow made a pile it's still 6 feet high. I wonder if it's not going to sill be there end of April. I remember at Martha's wedding 1996 the yr we had another snowy year. We still had patches of snow in April. This yr seems like it will be more then patches.
My car smells like rotten milk!
I know that smell well! Why do I know that smell so well? Too much experience with that one. The most memorable time was being at the Chupps house on Pinkham road. We were getting some fresh cows milk from them in a gallon jar. Their drive way was a steep hill up. The milk jug being in the middle of the 2 seats in the VW van, when we went up the hill the jug tipped, lid came off and the milk spilled not only all over all the carpet, but all into the heater too. It was awful! We never really did get the smell totally out.
Well I better go clean my car. I'm hoping it's not spilled milk but just a glass of sour milk that I can just throw away.
Well this sunny weather makes me want to plant a garden again. Every year it's a waste of time. Nothing really grows. But this year I have an idea. Last year Michelle Martin grew a very small garden and had tons of vegetables. We all asked her "how did you do that?" She said in that little plot she put 3-4 bags of some sort of fertilizer. Well this made me realize that the reason my garden never makes it, is because the soil is sand and washes the nutrients away plus all our big trees have roots that eat up what ever they can get. So my idea this yr is make some raised beds, and use a bunch of fertilizer. Plant less but concentrate on getting more from what I do plant. I'm always wanting to garden this time of year, we will see if this ends up a better year for us. With the price of food it would be great to grow enough to save a few bucks.

day by day

Kendra and James made the cake together this time. Here is a picture of their master piece! They both love cooking. I have so much fun teaching them too.

This is going to be a very impressive skill for James to have. I know Michael has surprised some girls with his baking ability. Teaching them how to make a pie or cake from scratch.The ice cream creations!
Rick bought ice cream ("for the children"lol) He has a terrible addiction to ice cream. It take great effort for him to stay off it, but once in awhile, "the children need ice cream"!
Well they made these wonderful creations. Miriam gave me a ice cream Sunday set for Christmas, and it makes the nicest looking Sundays.

Gina is home for spring break. I caught her off guard with the camera.
Gina decided to doll Monica up. She played with her hair and had fun being a photographer.
Kendra and Nettie are spending their spring break with me. We have had a great week. Kendra was explaining why she likes it up here, "the trees, and no neighbors squished right up against each other, fresh air, and a big house that's clean" (clean! At least she thinks so! :)
Makes me glad we live up here.
Sometimes we get tempted to move to Kalispell since our children are all moving down there for work. But it's nice to have a wonderful place that they can come home to, or grandchildren can come and see us . It make it special.

tired tonight

I was sleeping very soundly at 1:30 am when the phone rang. It was a mom with twins. She is only 33 weeks and having contractions. I had to ask her to hold on a minute while I took a few deep breaths to wake up. It's hard to be so logical and remember everything when your sound asleep. I told her to try drinking a few glasses of water and take some calcium magnesium and try to sleep. I prayed on and off through the night, and praise the Lord, it all stopped.
So today I was determined to change my bedroom around. I do this every once in a while. I suppose I do it more because it's the best way to clean my bedroom. When I'm done it's really clean. There are really only 2 ways to put the bed in this room. I've lived here in this house for 19 yrs. I've had 4 of my children in the bedroom. It's funny how when I think of their births I can always remember which direction the bed was in at the time.
So it's done, and it feels so good to have a nice clean bedroom, with a fluffy king size bed. KING size!!! If we only had a king size bed when the children were babies and little enough to climb in bed with us. No we had a double till about 7 yrs ago when we got a queen. Then a couple of years ago we got this King bed. It's so roomy, almost too much room.
I painted my bedroom a couple of years ago. I didn't mean for it to be pink. I just wanted a tint to my white. But it's pink. I figured I would add a reddish maroon with some glaze, so the pink will be the back ground color. But it's been awhile and it's still pink. Well it does match my comforter and I got some deep red towels for the bathroom too. I guess I really don't like painting!

Catch up time

This is our basement. It's not a nice basement, so I don't usually show it off. But I thought for memory sake we should have some pictures of it.
This is the Pellet furnace with James on top of bags of pellets. It's been great to have a furnace. A thermostat! Such a life of ease!!!! :)
We still have to get pellets (in my van) and keep the furnace loaded up (it holds about 5 bags and eats about 1-2 bags a day) But it's soooo easy compared to wood. We buy pellets for $160 a ton. It looks like we will have used 5 tons this winter. We still have to use some electric heat upstairs too. Our electric bill is about $170 a month. Outrageous isn't it! We only pay about .05 cents a kilowatt here too, so it shouldn't be so bad, but ....



This is Mark my very Italian looking son, eating a favorite Italian meal. My kitchen turned out pretty Italian looking too so it all fits well!I got ground beef on sale this last week. I actually bought 85 lbs of it. I fried up a bunch and put it in the freezer for tacos and such, and then I made 10 lbs into meat balls and meat loaf. We ate half the meat balls one night and I have 2 meals in the freezer. My children LOVE meatloaf. My older children didn't, but this bunch sure does. So I made 2 loafs for one dinner. It's pretty fatty ground beef too so I have to plan on shrinkage too. I put many 2.5 packages in the freezer and I hope this will last a little while!



It's been so long since I've had a chance to get on here so I have lots to catch up on.
I get so busy, stressed, and running around trying to get priority's straight. Do I really get much done? I hope so, but some days I just am recovering from the other days.
So whats going on?
Well just life and a little more.
I've been taking "financial freedom" classes every Thur night. I've really enjoyed them. I certainly don't have freedom from financial worries but at least I'm enjoying the class! I actually worry a lot about money. I do have to wonder if this is just my personality or if there is really need. We have a nice steady income for the last 3-4 years. Rick is a manager and tech support at an Internet company. We are thankful for a job, as in this small town it's really hard to have work. But I guess we are still on the poverty level according to the government. Maybe according to me too, unless I compare with other country's. Then I see how terribly rich we are. Well if I can ever get out of debt and stay out, maybe it will be easier to make it on our pay check.

I have been working on real life monopoly. I always loved monopoly was I was young. I was really good at it too. I wish I could be good at monopoly in real life. So I just bought a little house, it hasn't closed yet. But it's a little 2 bedroom house with a huge bump in the middle of the house. The house is so uneven that one end of the kitchen table is on the floor and the other end has about 2 inches of shims under the other side. Can you imagine eating dinner in a house like that! Well, I had to get an engineer, a house mover, and lots of estimates etc to find out if this house was going to be fixable and pay. We rephrased our deal many times. I ended up buying the house for $69,500. It's going to cost me about $3000 to fix it and that includes fixing drywall that gets messed up, plus insulating an area under the house that doesn't have any. The only other thing I will have to do to fix up the house is put a shower in it and add some kitchen cupboards. It has a beautiful claw tub bath tub in it. But it has no shower, so I will get one put in. I would like to add a dishwasher and some base cabinets too. After that I'm hoping the house will be worth at least $90,000 or maybe even $100,000. I will have to decide if I should turn around and sell it this summer and make a bit now (to help me get out of debt) or should I hold on to it for a yr or two and make more. Monopoly!

So I have also been working on Mishael and Cody's house. Not really working on it, but being the contractor. I enjoy that part too, but I have lots to learn and it's very time consuming. We had an electrician that was doing a bad job, plumbers that were fast and did a great job, drywall put up that had to be taken down 3 times! Well we are putting it up for sale this week without it being quite done. but the money I had to help them is gone, and they moved to Kalispell. Hopefully they will still make a good amount and I also will get a good return on the money I loaned.
So besides playing monopoly, I have midwifery, homeschooling, being a good mom and wife. Plus all my grown children . Grown children still take a lot of time, either on phone just keeping up, encouraging, advising, or asking advise, or if they need rides, or help with something plus there are birthdays. Lots of birthdays! We are all still involved a lot in each others lives. I love that our family is so close.
I got a home school CPR and 1st aid class together this week. Here they are practicing on their dummy's in this picture. I was happy they all picked it up really good.

Monica in her new glasses. Isn't she cute!
Midwifery has picked up business again. I have about 13-14 mom's now. My Wednesday appointments are getting to be a very full day!
Well a little catch up time.
I'll post pictures of houses as soon as i get some.

James

James is such a funny boy. He keeps us smiling. He's almost 9 now. He's growing up so fast.
In this picture he "died" because I cut his show lace. His shoe laces were so long he was tripping over them. But for some reason he liked his shoe laces long. Well I took out the scissors and took a good bit of shoe lace off. Poor James fainted immediately to the floor and was as if dead.
So dramatic!!!!

Visits

Paul and Hans got to come up for a visit last weekend. The Uncles and Nephews love being together. They are the closest friends.
Paul, Mark, Hans and James.


We also had Chris White visit. Chris is a friend of Ricks from Jr high and high school. The stories are great when Chris comes to visit. I made a pizza dinner, and this was one creation with a bit of spinach on it. It was surprisingly good. I am really surprised about how many places you can eat spinach.

Gareth

Well we are going to miss Shell's visits. Her and Cody moved to Kalispell, but lately they have been up every week to work on their house, so we have still been seeing them quite a bit. In fact Mishael and Gareth stayed all week. She accomplished quite a bit on their remodeling project. It's fun having Gareth around. He is a really good baby. Walking around now and as sweet as they come!

Jon and Monica

Monica and Jon passed hunters safety!!!!

Sherry gave me some great sausages. They are really good. Maybe we can have some extra meat next fall!
Jon is really into skiing this year.
He has the helmet and goggles to hopefully stay in one piece. Unlike last year with a broken nose.

Chiffon cake

James 8 yrs old made a chiffon cake

Mark 10 yrs old, made peanut butter bars

This morning I was working on the computer when James came in to ask me something. Most of the time kids ask " can I play on the computer" or "can I go outside and play" But James says, "can I please make a Chiffon cake" James is 8 yrs old! As you can see they turn out great. This is the 3rd time he has made one.
Mark made Peanut butter bars! yum.
I love Chiffon cakes. I feel like it's a pretty healthy dessert too. It has about 10 eggs in it. No butter, a little oil, but it's pretty low in fat, and it's got the protein from all the eggs. So for cake, it's a good one.
So James has learned to separate eggs, they have all learned what soft peaks, stiff peaks etc are.
This is one thing that I've noticed about homeschooling. When they were in school no one wanted to cook. There just isn't the time. They come home from school at 3:30, we clean house and everyone wants a bit of free time. I cooked dinner and they did very little cooking. With home schooling there just is more time to learn real life, cooking, projects. Jon learned drywall and taping this year. We've also been going though a scenario with Jon. 15 yr old will often say stuff like "I'm going to move out when I'm 18". so I said, lets go though the steps. How do you move out? How do you get a job? How do you get an apartment, pay bills, etc.
It's been an interesting school yr. Not very typical and not what I planned exactly. But everyone is defiantly learning and that's what is important. Anyways, any son that can make a chiffon cake will be very impressive to any wife.