All my life's a circle

Here we go 'round the mulberry bush .... I am once again staying in Langdon taking care of three active little boys and sleeping on a couch. The boys all had a stomach bug last week and, naturally, Rebecca got it, too. But Rebecca hasn't been able to shake it. A visit to emerg on Tuesday confirmed she was struggling, but the doc sent them home and told them to 'stay the course.' Yesterday Linda was faced with a listless baby, yellow-grey in colour, sunken fontenelle, and sunken dark eyes. Anything that went in the top came out the bottom in a matter of minutes. Back to hospital and after one look at her, out came the IV needles, monitors, blood work ... The whole nine yards. Diagnosis: severe dehydration. (duh ... Lin knew that the day before!) It took four tries to find a vein that wasn't flat for the IV! So, not surprisingly, Rebecca is having another extended stay in hospital for the 3rd time in her short 5 months here. In fact she just turned 5 months yesterday. As of this morning her colour was coming back to normal and she was at least interacting with Lin again. But(there's always a but) her potassium, electrolytes and bicarbonate levels are still too low. She has had 9 needle pokes in the last 12 hours and currently has three IV fluids being pumped in. Poor, sweet little girl. Please keep her and the rest of the family in your prayers. Oh ... And pray for energy for me! These are active, noisy little boys!!!

Spring Vacation

We are nearing the end of a 3-week spring holiday.  I spent the first week in Sioux Falls celebrating Mom's 80th birthday.  It was a fun, relaxing time and I got to see all of my siblings!  Nice!  While I was in SF, Harry was in Montreal at a Judge's thing for a week, then in Toronto to present at a symposium at the Institute of Christian Studies  (a Christian graduate school).  He stayed 2 extra days to hang out with Dayna and Rob.

We let everyone think we were out of town for the next 2 weeks while we were in fact having a "working stay-cation".  What have we done in the last 2 weeks?

1. Cleaned out the basement storage area and did some bi-annual purging.
2. Cleaned out the garage and did some major bi-annual purging.
3. Did a complete clean-up of the yard and garden beds: Took down some rickety old dividers.  Put up a new bird house (thanks for the birthday gift, Linda!).  "Vacuumed" the backyard turf.  Cut the front yard grass.  Sifted out the sandbox.
4.  Planted the vegetable garden boxes.
5. Created a "Man-cave" in the garage for Harry.
6. Shopped for the Man-Cave.
7. Shopped for some new patio loungers.
8. Gutted the dining room.  Painted the dining room

Tomorrow we will begin to reassemble the dining room and decorate it.  And then we are done.

We have sore muscles and aching backs and cuts and bruises.  :-)  But, the spring cleaning (except for the kitchen, which I will attack sometime in the next 2 weeks) and bi-annual purge is done.  And ... Harry has free weekends to golf for the whole summer!

The Man-Cave

Harry schooled the boys in what you do in the Man-Cave:

Watch sports

Drink beer

Fart and burp

Take naps

Jacob made sure Linda and I knew that we are girls so we can't go in the Man-Cave!  Ha ha ha!!