Flippin' freaking cold

Our cold spell is about to snap in the next day or so. With highs in the single digits and lows in the negatives, I've been holed up in the house with the kids since this weekend. In case you wondered what frost looks like inside your house, here are some examples.

On Saturday we took the kids to Caras Nursery for Madeleine to ride the pony, an event she remembers from a year ago when she wasn't even 2 yet! She was again delighted with Molly and Frosty (whom she renamed Wall-e) who took her around and around.

Parker and the Christmas alpacas.

We then headed to a Christmas tree lot to pick out a tree. Our live tree hunt tradition of snow shoeing and cutting down a fresh tree was put on the back burner when the risk of frostbite entered the equation. We still managed to find an acceptable tree and spent that night putting it up and decorating it while the kids slept. Actually, Justin sat, drank wine, and watched "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" while I decorated the tree but he cheered me and offered helpful suggestions :)

It was fun to see the kids' reactions on Sunday morning. It's been tedious convincing Parker that the lights aren't chew toys but he's slowly catching on. He's also perfecting the face plant move. No more black eyes though...his black eye has shifted towards hues of yellow and green. Instead he prefers split lips. If only his bottom half could catch up to how fast his top half wants to move!

His latest habit happens to be an obnoxious one: screaming, for fun. Madeleine immediately screams (crying) in response leaving me to dream of happier places while trying not to go deaf. And he's been watching too many dieting commercials because he's now insisting on having a liquid diet of soy milk and water. The exception is peanut butter Panda Puffs cereal. While Madeleine's personality has always been challenging, I never appreciated her willingness to eat almost anything as much as I do now that I have a picky eater. It's a good thing he's cute.

I'm off to put on my flannel jammies and snuggle beneath my down comforter for the night. Good golly I'm eager to see 20 degrees again.

Black eyed P and Maggie's heart

The last few days have been a bit overwhelming for me. First, Thursday night Parker did a face-plant into the coffee table, hence his new nickname of "black eyed P." The bruise has gotten darker every day leading to more stares as we venture out in public.

Friday morning he slipped and bashed his face leading to a pretty bloody lip. He's managed to not get hurt during the last 24 hours so I'm hoping he's able to stay injury free for a bit.

And then there's Maggie. We have some sad news. Yesterday I let Maggie outside to go to the bathroom and after about 10 minutes without hearing her scratch to come back in (it was 15 degrees yesterday and she HATES being cold!) I discovered that she had collapsed in the backyard. I ran outside to find her having difficulty breathing and she was only semi-responsive. She refused to get up and I couldn't pick her up from the position she was in so I checked on the kids and called Justin and asked him to come home.

While he was on his way, Maggie perked up a bit and I was able to get her inside and she ate a biscuit which made me think maybe I had overreacted. And then a few minutes later she was again immobile on the carpet unable to pick her head up with her chest heaving for air. By the time Justin got home we thought she would die on the way to the vet.

He rushed her over there (our regular vet was closed for the day) and they said that it seemed like a heart problem and they wanted to do an EKG and some ultrasounds. We received a call later in the evening saying that they couldn't regulate her heart rate and wanted to keep her overnight to give her more fluids and try other medications. I was able to visit her at 7:30 and she seemed to be herself which put me at ease. However, when I went to pick her up this morning, the doctor told me that her heart condition is being externally caused, meaning she has a tumor somewhere. Of course he gave me the option to move forward with more invasive procedures to find the tumor and possibly remove it but I just paid $483 to find out she had one. I wasn't ready to pay another $480 for them to tell me where it is and there's nothing they can do about it.

So essentially, Maggie is dying...it's just a matter of time. We currently have medication to give her twice a day to keep her heart rate as steady as possible but the tumor could cause organ failure or heart failure and we don't know how long she has because we don't know where the tumor is or how severe it is. The emergency vet will fax over the paperwork to our regular vet on Monday and I'll get her opinion (which I trust without hesitation). We do know that if we hadn't taken her in she would not have been able to sustain that heart rate for more than a few hours. We are incredibly broken up about this because if we had waited she would have died but now we don't know when she will die or what her quality of life will be in the meantime.

Of course the kids don't understand and Madeleine just keeps asking me why I'm sad. We've told her Maggie is sick and we need to give her lots of love but she has no concept of death (thankfully). I hate this part of loving a pet so much.

Shameless promotion

An article appeared in the Missoulian today about a local guy who is one of four finalists in the Bud Light tailgate approved contest. I'm not a huge tailgater but I do love his idea (would work great for picnics, etc.) and I do love beer. So if you want to help make a Missoulian famous (it'll take me a few more years to earn that status), go here to vote for the Tummy Table. If you want to read the local article about him, you can read it here. Thanks for helping put Missoula on the map!

Grateful

Thanksgiving morning greeted us with frost-crusted grass, fog covered hills, and patches of blue sky. Well worth the work: heart attack potatoes

She loves pie.

Getting some fresh air before dinner.

Thanksgiving was a quiet affair in the Cline household yesterday. I spent most of the day cooking while Justin and the kids played. Madeleine enjoyed three Thanksgiving traditions that I always remember: the Macy's Day Parade, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and pumpkin chiffon pie! She loved watching the balloons (especially Snoopy) and kept asking when Snoopy would be back on during commercials! And while she enjoyed the pumpkin part of the pie, she kept saying, "I need more [whipped] cream!"

Parker loved tasting all of the new food and didn't seem to suffer any side effects from the dairy in it so we may be crossing that hurdle. We'll try again today and see how he does tonight.

I ventured out at 5:45am to mingle with the other crazys in Walmart. There's really only one thing I wanted to get the kids for Christmas and W had it cheaper than I've found used ones on Craigslist so I forced myself out of bed to buy it. The helpers at W loaded the last one into my car so it was a successful trip (you'll have to wait until Christmas to find out what I got).

We moved into our house exactly one year ago this weekend. To reflect and see that we've been blessed with this lovely home, ridiculously cute and entertaining kids, a stable job, a great town, good friends, and supportive family, I don't think we can imagine life getting any better. We are richly blessed and hope that next year we can share this day of thanks with some of you!

Proof

Jen and me
Tom, the dj, telling me to hold the microphone closer while singing. Silly Tom...he thought I wanted people to hear me! Beth and Jen weren't rocking out as hard as I was. I'm hardcore :)

Surrender

The album with this song on it by Cheap Trick came out a year before I was born and yet somehow I still managed to rock out and almost go hoarse singing along with our friend Stefan as he performed it on Friday night. It was also the song stuck in my head when I woke up Saturday morning! Holy cow did I have fun!!! The pictures are still on Stefan's camera as I forgot to put the battery in our camera before leaving the house so you'll have to wait to see me singing my Boston/Scrubs tribute of "More than a feeling" and enjoying a beer (or two or three). I was really touched when the whole group got up and sang "Happy Birthday" Beatles style. So to thank them appropriately, I danced solo in the middle of the dance floor with all eyes on me. Rumor has it that I didn't make a fool out of myself but I don't really care if I had...it was worth it :) I was apparently dancing well enough to get asked to dance by some middle-aged bearded man who kept telling me to "relax" and "let me lead." It would have been rude to say no to him but it was almost too awkward having Justin taking pictures of me dancing with another guy! Again, that picture will be posted as soon as I get it. I want to thank Jen, Stefan, Beth and Cody, Walt, and of course Justin for making that such a special night. Wednesday (my actual birthday) will be much easier to celebrate knowing that if all else fails I can still feel 21 at 30 by going karaokeing at Harold's!

Festivities

While my actual birthday isn't until next week, tonight is our official night to celebrate. Justin and I are going out to eat while Jen watches the kiddos and then we'll come home and put them to bed. Our realtor will then be coming over to housesit/babysit for us (he gave us a free night of babysitting along with a gift certificate for dinner as our housewarming present and we're just getting around to using it) so Jen, Justin and I can meet up with 10-15 other friends who will be tearing it up karaokeing at Harold's Club. It should be a raucous time full of singing and dancing! No one gave me any song suggestions so I'll have to stick with the tried and true Bon Jovi's "Living on a prayer" and maybe Boston's "More than a feeling." I'll hopefully have some pictures or maybe even a short video to prove that we welcomed this decade of my life in with style.