Merry Christmas!

getting ready for Christmas

He said he didn't want to help, but grudgingly agreed to help cut out three sugar cookies. He ended up helping out a lot longer. Maybe it was all of the cookie dough scraps I let him eat.

Not such good news for me...

I went back into the MRI again this past Monday to see if my recent episode really was an episode... I don't mind the actual MRI much anymore. I am in there about 90 minutes. This time I brought my own CD to listen to. If you haven't had an MRI, let me tell you that it is very loud, so you don't really hear it all that much, but the little bit that I could hear it was nice. It isn't the most comfortable place. As my head is taped down and caged in, so it won't move and there is the part about getting dye injected...but it is 90 minutes of laying down with nothing to do, but lay there.

They rescanned my brain and upper spine. No change on my spine, but there is one new lesion/scar in my brain. So... along with my recent symptoms, this is proof that I actually have active MS. I will be seeing my neurologist in January and starting treatment then. There is no cure for MS, but you can take shots to help slow down its progression and lessen the number of episodes that you will have.

The next step, learning how to give myself injections. Dad did it, Mom even did it, I sure can do it too!

Our Tree is Finally Up

Now we just need to add the decorations and finish all of the wrapping. It's not like we have anything else going on right now. :)

Deep Thoughts By Isaac

Here are 3 ways to identify endangered animals in the future (once they are gone):

-see them on the game fizzball (it is a game that has a lot of different animals in it)

-see old commercials that had them in it

-zoo animals figures


*he said this while watching commercials

Happy Birthday to Me!

Thanksgiving

I hope that everyone out there had a wonderful day surrounded by loved ones and could reflect on the many things you each have to be thankful for.

We enjoyed a small, but very nice Thanksgiving with my Mom. We were able to spend a few days together and even helped decorate a bit for Christmas.

Looking back on Halloween

We had a fun Halloween party out at the farm again this year. There were all sorts of games, good food and costumes (they were required) :) Can you figure out who the masked people are?

awhile again

Wow, it has been more than a month. Sorry about that. I will try to get some fun pictures up here soon, but tonight it will just have to be words with a few updates.

-I am now back to working half time. I will miss working the after school care job, because it was great planning the activities and working with the kids. However, it is a good time for me to have more time for me.

-Isaac got his first quarter report card and it looks great! He might need to try a little bit hard to listen better to those early morning specialists or maybe we need to give him his pill a bit earlier in the morning to help out with that.

-I have been up to my Mom's a lot to help her out since her surgery. She is doing well and should be returning to work in another 2 weeks.

-Ever since my mono, my MS symptoms have been acting up. Then they started progressing. Only time will tell if this is another episode...

-With one of my free afternoons, I will be helping out in Isaac's class each week. I am excited to see what his classroom is like and I'm glad that I can help his teacher out.

Deep Thoughts By Isaac

"My eyes are tingling, so I know it is sour."
-talking about eating wild mulberries

"It's dangerous to plant seeds...when you are doing it from the car."
-he was throwing "helicopters" from maple trees out the car window as I was driving and one flew back in and hit him in the head

Starwatch class with WCCO's Mike Lynch

We had the opportunity to attend a great class- MN Starwatch with WCCO's Mike Lynch. It was for families, so all three of us went. He brought three huge telescopes, so we were going to be able to look at amazing things, unfortunately it was rather cloudy so we looked across the highway at the water tower instead. There were brief breaks in the clouds, but not long enough to be able to focus in with the telescopes.

With all of that being said, it was an AMAZING class. Mike Lynch is a wonderful speaker. He gave us wonderful information and kept even Isaac's interest. I do have to mention that he learned Isaac's name very quickly when we were outside by his telescopes. When I was substituting it was always the students that misbehaved whose names you learned first, so that was on my mind. Isaac was moving around a lot and asking a lot of questions (just not always when he should have been). Mike later said that he thought that Isaac was very smart for his age. And he did let Isaac and no one else use his $100 laser pointer.

Isaac with Mike Lynch

It has been awhile

Sorry it has been so long... I think most of you know that I have been rather sick with mono.

I learned that it is not true that you can only get mono once. I had mono in college and now about 14 years later I have it again. I guess it is a different strain this time. I have no idea where it came from. I don't know anyone else that has it and I guess it will remain a mystery.

My doctors only advice was to "listen to my body". My body told me I was tired all the time. Was I supposed to take off from work for weeks? So I continued to work full time with night time meetings most every night. That was not a wise choice. After two weeks, I felt A LOT worse. The tiredness that I had felt before was nothing to what I was feeling at this point and my spleen and liver started to swell quite a bit. SO, I did take some hours off of work for a full week and canceled all nighttime and weekend commitments. (sorry for the birthday parties that I missed) I know, I should have taken actually days off. It was hard for me to know what to do. This past week I went back to full time with just a couple extras. I am feeling a little better...still a bit tired, but a lot better.

What a day...

Part of my job as the After School Care Coordinator is to make sure that all of the children arrive safely to our location. If they don't arrive, it is up to me to figure out where they are and make sure they are safe and accounted for. It has happened a few times that a student has taken the bus home when they were supposed to stay after school or that they missed the bus to our building. It is stressful when this happens, but we usually solve the issue rather quickly.

Today was a different story, because today it was Isaac. Isaac didn't get off the bus with the other kids. I tried calling his school to see if he was there and I couldn't get through, so I went to the office and the secretary called the bus company. They verified that everyone was off the bus and sent a call out to all of the busses to see if he was on any of them. The whole time I kept trying to get through to his school with no luck. I was also trying to call home just in case he walked home and let himself in. We finally got ahold of his school and he wasn't there. So, I decided that it was best for me to drive home to check it out. I had to let my staff know that I was doing that first. Did I mention that it was the first time that my boss had stopped by the location to check in on things? She is a wonderful boss and she said she would stay there to help the staff out until I got back. By the time I got home my cell phone rang and it was my boss telling me that Isaac just walked in the door and that she had no idea how he had gotten there. I got back to the school as quickly as I legally could so I could find out what had happened. Isaac was distracted on the bus and had missed the stop. He didn't know what to do, so he got off with a friend and went to his house. From his friend's house he tried to call us. The friend's mom eventually dropped Isaac off at school.

In all, Isaac was missing for about 30 minutes. I tried to remain calm, but was on the verge of tears the whole time. Although Isaac did the best thing he knew to do at the time, I let him know that if he ever missed his bus stop again, that the bus driver would bring him back to the bus stop at the end of the route and that he shouldn't go to a friend's house. Another thing that I hadn't thought of telling him.

An entry from Isaac

My Dad and I went to the Minnesota River. We saw two turtle sitting on each other and then they swam in the river. The turtles were sitting on the logs when we saw them. And I found a bunch of shells.

First Week of School

We survived the first week of school!

Isaac has been walking to school in the morning and that has gone well. For now, we are walking with him. He had so many questions before school started and seemed quite nervous. I wasn't quite sure that he would willingly walk into school, but he did. And each day he has said that it was a great day.On the first day of school, we planned that I was meeting him at school to walk home with him. My one mistake was that I did not plan a meeting spot. I suppose I just thought that Isaac would come out the same door that we dropped him off at. That is where I was waiting and waiting...he didn't come out! I spotted the teacher and she mentioned that he went out the door on the other side of the building. I ran up there to see if he was waiting, he wasn't, and then got home as quick as I could. He had walked home himself (just 3 blocks) let himself in with the house key we put in his bag and tried to call Dan at work to let him know that he was home alone. When I walked in I told him that I had been waiting at school and he asked me if I was worried. I answered, YES! I asked him if he was worried and he answered, no and told me what he had done. He handled himself very well and we talked about how we should do it different the next day.


After the first two days, he began riding the bus to the other elementary school where I am coordinating the after school program and will be working after school everyday. He even completed his homework on the bus so that he could play for the rest of the night.

My week was incredibly busy getting ready for the after school program. I put in long busy days, but it paid off with the program getting off to a good start. I should be able to work more "normal" hours in the coming weeks now that the program is up and going.

More information about Lori's jobS

Did you catch that? I did say jobS. In addition to my most recent new job as Programs Assistant, I have also taken on the roll of the After School Care Coordinator for a couple months while the current coordinator is on maternity leave. It is nice that I will be working with children. We have fun themed activities and snacks planned for them each day. There is a staff of Gustavus students that come in and work and also an adult assistant (that I helped interview and hire). So, I am not alone with these kids like when I was subbing.

Also, I decided to sell Mary Kay products. I like them and a couple people in my family use them too. I don't plan to aggressively sell it, but am happy for my discount.

I am just starting to wonder how it will be for me to go from subbing an abnormal schedule of maybe an average of 2 days a week to working full time. I willingly agreed to take on these jobs, so I shouldn't complain, but I sure get tired some days.

Isaac gets DUNKED!

There was a block party at our church last weekend. Isaac and I went with our friend Jason. Isaac had a lot of fun playing the games and winning lots of prizes. He kept winning the biggest prize on the wheel of fortune of a $5 gift certificate to various restaurants in town. We went through a lot of tickets to play so many games, but with all of the prizes that he won, I would say that we came out ahead.


The fun didn't end there. Isaac wanted to go IN the dunk tank. And I guess we had connections. Jason's girlfriend, Erika, who was in the dunk tank in the previous picture was sort of running the show and she said he could go in. He got cold feet (in two ways-the water was very cold) and almost didn't go through with it. Erika stayed in the tank with him and he went partially down once and decided that was enough. Thanks Erika for letting him experience that! And thanks to Jason for all of the great pictures!

The end of summer

Summer is almost over and school starts in just a few days. I don't know what I think about this. For me it means I will start working full time for the next couple months. For Isaac it means he will start 3rd grade at a new school and most important to him, he will be walking to school. He had an open house the other night. We got to meet his teacher, bring in his school supplies, look around the building and have pictures taken.

A NEW CAR!

As most of you probably know we have been needing to replace our white Subaru Outback for awhile now. It got to the point where we couldn't trust it to keep running if we drove it out of town... Last night we finally bought a new car and what better car to replace it with than another Subaru Outback. This time we bought a black/gray one. I wanted one that looked a bit different than our white one and I don't think that it could look much more different.

Dan driving it for the first time-off the lot. (it was in the showroom)

Special Visitors

During last weekend we had a couple special visitors: my nieces Kathryn and Kaylah. They hadn't been here overnight for awhile, so it was quite an event. We all had a very good time. Well, I'm not sure how it made Dan feel about wanting more children :) It is just very different to suddenly have a family with three children. They had our wonderful babysitter part of the day on Friday when I went to work in the morning. We went swimming at the outdoor pool. We spent some quality time with our guinea pigs. And most of all we just enjoyed being together.

More Pictures from the Lake Superior Zoo

Deep Thoughts By Isaac

Isaac's theory on distant space travel:
(which he just blurted to me out of no where)
"I know how we can get a person to another galaxy. We need to put a pregnant lady on a spaceship. The ship will have training things, so the baby can learn and be ready when he arrives all grown up in the new galaxy."

When I asked, what would happen to the lady, he said, "they will need to have another ship come and pick her up."

-----

Upon discovering a dead gopher on our driveway and breaking down crying:
"I wonder what happened to it: maybe a cat got it, or a bird dropped it or it was sick. All of those things are part of nature, so... I guess it is okay."

An Important Stop on the Way Home

On the way home from Duluth, we made a stop in Sandstone to visit my Grandma. It was around supper time when we stopped and Isaac was SO impressed that she had set out an assortment of food for us. When she mentioned what she had and asked if any of us would like a bite to eat, he surprised us all by being the first to get up off the couch. We had a nice visit, but had to be on the road sooner than I would have liked, because we had more driving ahead of us.

Guess where we went?

Did you guess it yet? We were recently in Duluth, MN.



We went with David, Julie and baby Rylan.

Isaac enjoyed taking hikes on the rocks with the guys. I didn't quite realize that he was pretty much rock climbing!

Isaac enjoyed having time to play with his cousin Rylan. Our cabin was full of excitement, especially when Rylan started crawling while we were up there.

Dan enjoyed spending some time biking with his brother.

I enjoyed just having time to enjoy being with family and to enjoy the beauty of the scenery around us.

Besides Canal Park, we spent some time at Gooseberry Falls. The water was low so you could walk straight across to the other side without much problem. (what a pose!)

We also went to the Lake Superior Zoo. The Zoo was alright. I think we enjoyed the petting zoo and the "non-zoo" animals the best. There were geese that wandered around the zoo from enclosure to enclosure that had cracked corn for them to eat. They would let you get pretty close. The funny thing was when they used a little stone bridge to cross a creek.

Tubing

Kathryn AND Kaylah tried tubing behind the boat for the first time this year. It was fun and for the most part went very well. We had a little trouble finding the right slow speed to go at without filling the tube up with water. They did not like when that happened. We took a little swim in the middle of the lake to help with their anxieties about if they were to fall off of the tube. I don't know if that did any good as Kathryn was mostly afraid of the sharks in the water. :)

Back From the Cabin Again

We had a great time at the cabin. This time we were there with my family. I will share a couple quick pictures with you now and will try to post a longer update soon.

Before and After

It has been a long time since Dan has had a hair cut...

Isaac's Animal Birthday Party

Isaac had an animal birthday party with family and friends. We hired Charlene Bradley who brought her Zoo to You Program. She showed us different animals, told us interesting information about them and we got to touch almost all of them. Isaac's favorite animal that she brought was the bearded dragon. It seemed like everyone enjoyed it. And best of all Isaac had a great time!

Looking More At Our Trip To The Cabin

We drove to Park Rapids for a day. We visited the Soda Fountain, both candy Stores and Summerhill Farm. We also drove out to Lake Pickerel to see the recent tornado damage.

Many pictures were taken of meals. One time the camera, that was set on a timer, started to slide down. As Isaac rushed up to catch it, the flash went off and took a picture. We were all surprised later when you could see all of us in the picture.

We spent time at the lodge playing games, eating ice cream and making a really neat craft project.

Isaac's project is on the left and Lynn's project is on the right. The whole project started with a nature walk where they gathered the flowers and leaves. A few days later after they were pressed they prepared the boards and glued the items on.


The weather was a bit cool, but Lynn and Isaac still has some fun on the beach.

And of course we had Yoda and Rafiki with us. I think they enjoy being at the cabin, because they get to spend more time with us.