School is in the air...

Another full & productive week in the Strawn home, somehow I wonder where the energy comes from! I think we feed off a now 4-year-old & almost 2-year-old in that department.

Lars has been up almost every night this week, fussing & crying about something. He’s been off of dairy & peanuts for a couple weeks now and I’m filling him up with so much fruit, as that’s about all he’ll eat now that he’s allowed. I’ve spent some time on the net searching, begging friends & friends-of-friends for dairy free recipes & suggestions. I’m starting to get a little less panicked about getting up every day!

He’s been receiving Occupational Therapy twice a week already & on Monday, we meet with the school’s team to see what else, if anything, he may need to get caught up to a normal 2-year-old. Whatever ‘normal’ means.

Meanwhile, our grocery bill has sky-rocketed with all these specialized Soy & Rice foods & fresh fruits that I’ve been browsing for ‘stay-at-home’ mom jobs online to make extra money. So far, everything I’ve found looks like a scam, so I’m steering clear until we’re really desperate! As my father has always said, “If it looks too good to be true, it is.” Once a cop, always a cop.

Eden is a week into being 4 and she is showing all signs of a pre-schooler. She loves her new bag from Aunt Janet and has it all packed and re-packed. Lars follows her around pushing the toy car and carrying his own make shift bag and has started wearing her old pink shoes, which looks so funny, but adorable all at the same time.

Friday night was the last regular race of the season for Eden & Daddy. We made pizzas here at the parsonage & sent them on their way. That means Friday night was also Mommy’s last night to herself for a while. The silver lining to this story is that hockey season is right around the corner!

I spent a fair amount of time in the evening this week working on the last lesson plans of my EMT class. I have one month left and am only dreading the lesson on teaching bio-terrorism tomorrow night. I know so little on the subject, and I’m sure my IP address has been flagged by Homeland Security because I spent several hours looking up different types of incendiary devices, dirty bombs, small pox information, Q disease facts and the like. Not to mention researching important dates of such incidents like Columbine, Waco, Oklahoma City & the obvious one of 9/11 in their relationship to heightened security. It was quite unsettling, but informative, none-the-less and something we in the EMS world need to be prepared for, even here in Western Nebraska.

Speaking of emergencies, Lars gave us a scare this week when, while at the park picking up Lexi & Kyra from school, he toppled off the picnic table bench and cracked his head on the table on his way down. I picked him up and cuddled him and he stopped crying almost immediately. I asked the girls if they wanted to stay and play or if they wanted to walk back to the house. They all agreed it was too hot to play and as we were getting in the stroller, Lexi said, “um, Sarah, he’s got blood on his head.” I pulled my hand away from his head and a faucet opened up. There was blood everywhere, and the more I tried to see where it was coming from, the more restless & uncooperative he got. Soon, his soft blond locks were a sticky shade of red and people were walking by on the side walk, “Do you need me to call for an ambulance?” I’m thinking, “No, I’m two blocks from the hospital and I’m probably the only EMT who would respond this time of day anyway, but thanks.”

Instead, I called Al, who happened to be working from home b/c they had shut off the electricity at church that day, told him to grab a bottle of Sterile water & a towel and drive up to the park, which he did immediately. By the time he got there, Lars had blood down the back of his shirt to his diaper, his hair was caked in it & my neck & face looked like I’d butchered a pig with my bare hands. I climbed in the front seat with him & we drove the two blocks to the Emergency Room.

As I suspected, it was more blood than foul and we went on our merry way after finding the source of the leak. For the next 24 hours, Lars grabbed his head and cried, ‘owe-ey’ over and over and over again. Every time he touched it, it would bleed, but I couldn’t really put a band-aid in his hair. Unfortunately, he won’t take Tylenol, or any other medication for that matter, so we had to endure the pain together.

There is really nothing new under the sun, is there?

I picked up two new piano students this fall and they started on Wednesday. What a hoot the 6-year-old is. She’s a real spitfire and was tinkling up and down the keys, singing made up songs while she played. Her older sister is a bit more shy, but also has an ear for music. I think they are both going to be a lot of fun.

On Friday, I started out early in slicing up pickles to can and freeze. Al also picked up his level and power screwdriver & began building my pantry. In my excitement, I hastily removed all the piled up boxes of stuff that was in what used to be a coat closet and let him get to work. Both kids helped both of us and we were constantly tripping over brooms, babies & blankets, not to mention, each other. He finished the pantry before lunch and I started in on the 12# of tomatoes that needed to be put up. He got Eden down for a nap by sleeping on the couch with her, and I had the kitchen to myself, as Lars was still sleeping. Since it was race night, I got the pizzas going just in time to realize the afternoon was gone and I was bone tired.

Douthit’s came for pizza and after everybody else left, Laura & I got to sit down in two nice comfortable chairs and, as they say in Australia, ‘have a yarn’. It was nice & relaxing, as was the rest of the evening.

Saturday was somewhat a day of rest for me. The preacher was gone all day for an LWML zone conference & visits and so I didn’t have to pay attention to lunch time. Lars took an early nap & Eden was unusually quiet and co-operative. I got some bills paid, the desk organized, toys picked up, laundry put away, kitchen floor washed, items to sell listed on craigslist & some dairy free websites easily marked & the camper packed & almost ready to go away Labor Day Weekend.

We spent Sunday afternoon in Sidney teaching a First Aid class, which was an all day affair, and ended up having dinner with one of the other pastor’s family. His family had a dog, which Lars loved, and a Cockatoo, which Eden loved. I loved the couch, which is where I sat until I was nearly asleep!

Good week to you all~

Birthday Girl

Our little girl is four years old! And I know exactly where the time went, so don’t even ask. It starts with diapers and bottles and endless nights followed by early mornings, continues on to solid food fights & potty training. Then, suddenly, it’s off to pre-school in a week.

I spent Friday making a birthday cake for Eden. I wanted it to be dairy-free so that Lars could enjoy it with us, and for the most part, it was. He just can’t eat the race track portion of the field. Everything else was fair game to all. While I made homemade ice cream for the majority of us, I whipped up a strawberry banana sorbet for him. The cake turned out so cute, I felt like such a good mom!

Saturday, we waited anxiously for daddy to get home from work to hitch up the camper and take us to the lake for swimming, campfire food, cake & presents. We got to the lake in the middle of the afternoon and while Daddy sat on the beach with an unhappy Lars, Eden & I took the inner tube out to swim. The water was perfectly refreshing, with a few boaters on the pond to give us some ripple effect.

The Douthits came to join us soon after, and we grilled out burgers and dogs, called 911 to report a big fire across the lake, and continued on to the presents & cake. All in all a productive day, I’d say.

Among Eden’s gifts was a school bag, fresh made from blue jeans and decorated with the remnants’ of her favorite T-shirt from last summer. As she has done for hundreds of children before, Aunt Janet made a pre-school bag for Eden.

For the sake of sharing a sentiment, I still have my blue jean bag that she made for me when I flew with my mom to Texas the year I turned four. Ahh…memories

The rest of the week was spent taking care of Lars. I thought we’d see a miracle once we took him off of dairy, but it seemed to get worse. He cried in the night every night and whined most of the days, clinging to Mom at every chance he could. It’s exhausting to listen to and even as I type, he’s sharing a chair with me, crying and climbing up my back, hoping for a piece of lap.

On a positive note, we are hearing more babbling sounds from him that seem to almost make a phonics sound at times. Eden got a pirate card from Grandma Great and when she said, “A pirate says ‘arrrr’, Lars repeated her ‘arrr’.” (It’s our favorite Backyardagains episode of all time, so he has heard it before, but it was still cute).

Because his fine motor skills evaluation averaged out to a 15 month old baby, he started Occupational therapy on Friday and will continue with that one day a week. Still waiting on the rest of the results to come back from the school.

School has begun here in the west, and I have begun piano lessons again. I picked up two new students this year, so I’ll be twice as busy, but I enjoy it. My EMT class will finish the end of September, so the next month is going to be very busy with Sunday School Music beginning, as well as Confirmation & Mid-week. I’m not ready for summer to be over, but I am enjoying the harvest from my garden.

Since I spent Saturday fooling around with my family, I need to get some serious laundry and lawn mowing done today before the preacher heads to the nursing home. Anybody know how to clone wives?

Got Milk?

One word to describe this past week would be ‘Overwhelming’. I realize this may be a bit of an exaggerated response to something that people face every day, but really, I’m allowed to feel whatever I want, so that’s the word.

Lars’ allergy tests came back late Thursday and he is moderately allergic to peanuts and severely allergic to dairy. Unfortunately, that’s about all he eats. Peanut butter on graham crackers are out. Peanut butter sandwiches, out. Chocolate, Crackers, processed meats, deli meat, cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese, granola bars, pudding, ice cream, lactose free goodies, cake, sweet breads, donuts, cookies, commercially processed foods of almost every variety, all out of the question. After two years of life, we’re quitting, cold turkey. Did you know almost every variety of hot dogs are made with a form of dry milk? That’s out, too.

I checked a website with 990,000 foods and, after checking the box “dairy free” and “peanut free”, it shot me back 337 foods that he could have. That’s comforting. Really.

Being not quite two, he’s got to feel like he’s being punished for something and it’s really awful to take the yogurt container from his death-grip and say, ‘No, Lars, you can’t have this anymore”. It’s awful.

My first thought was, “Call Laura, get an announcement put in the bulletin: Nobody give any food to that adorable little pastor’s kid.”

My second thought was, “What am I going to do for pot lucks?!” “What are we going to have for Eden’s birthday next week?!” “What am I going to do for our picnics in the park?” The whole point of a potluck is that you have no idea what’s in the food or who made it, it’s all a surprise. Who doesn’t have cake and ice cream on a 4 year old’s birthday party? And what else do you take on picnics but sandwiches, yogurt & cheese and crackers, NONE of which he can have!?!

So, yes, I guess ‘overwhelming’ is maybe the right word to use.

After 24 hours, things seemed to look up a bit. We went to the local grocer, and, as a bonus to living in a small town, talked to the manager who immediately looked in his catalog for the only kind of soy milk Lars can drink. He caught me downtown later that evening and said, “I got it ordered, it will be here Monday.” I was so relieved and so thankful that he took the time to do that for me.

Also spent today looking on the store shelves for foods that he can eat. With all the food allergies that people have now, food producers have to list whether or not dairy (along with 8 other common allergies) is an ingredient in the product. This makes it so much easier to spot, and, after about 30 minutes of shelf reading, we came away with about nine milk free items including a Mexican biscuit, apple cinnamon rice cakes, pancake mix, pumpkin granola bars from Kashi & a kosher form of Saltine crackers from Shurfresh.

This coming week, we will spend time with the speech therapist from the school district that will evaluate his speech, and figure out where to go from here to get him talking. Wish us well!

The rest of the week was fairly normal. I taught Monday and Wednesday night and he had a couple meetings on Tuesday night. The church building project is coming along nicely, with the glass doors and cross window put in Friday afternoon. It is beautiful and I’m so happy to see all the natural light that’s going to be in the new portion.

The preacher and I took Thursday night to ourselves. We got a sitter and grabbed the scooter to tool around the lake and around town, then went out to supper before going to Mark & Laura’s to pick some yummy sweet corn.

Eden and Daddy went to the race track on Friday night and watched till the end. Eden reported back to me that ‘the girl’ didn’t win the go-kart race, therefore, she didn’t go to the pits to hold the trophy. It’s cute to see that a near 4-year-old already has favorites on the playing field. More devastating to her was the fact that her Capri sun didn’t have a straw, so she had no way to drink it.

In other news, I’ve been so busy with life around here that I failed to empty the bag on the vacuum cleaner and, apparently, that’s a problem. It got too full, back filled and froze the motor. Al took the whole thing apart, but it was no dice, my 8 year old Hoover found its way to the dumpster. We salvaged all the nuts & screws, as well as the cord & a few other odd parts, but had to dip into our pockets for a new one. I haven’t tried it yet, but for $150, it better be good to me for another 8 years.

The Stallion has left....

Another late night last night, which is why my blog is late two weeks in a row. Please do forgive me, yesterday was a long day right from the get-go.

We started at church, where Eden sat fairly well the entire service, following along in the hymnal with the liturgy and hymns. Once we got to the readings, she stared at the insert for the OT and Epistle lesson. By the time the Gospel came around, she was done, handing me the insert and said, "Ok, I'm done listening". At least she's honest.

Lars, on the other hand, was a handful from the first hymn onward. He wasn't noisy, just busy. Really busy. And since our pew is so long without anybody at the other end (yes, it's OUR pew), it's hard to control both ends. However, sitting him on my lap is sometimes a curse, b/c he sees daddy and wants to go up and sit with him, which is what I fought from the sermon on. Thankfully, he was quiet and I had a hold of him for the most part. Standing during the last hymn, he finally wriggled free from my arms and landed in the pew in front of me. I would rather have busy than loud.

The preacher's folks left early Saturday morning on their Stallion trike for the long trek back to Michigan. They had been here the better part of two weeks, and Al & Dad were able to get many projects done around the house. As the photos show, they replaced heavy sod from the city's water project back into our front yard, they built a frame for the shade sail and put that up over the deck. They went for a truck load of gravel for the muddy space underneath the deck. Though it was a lot of work to wheelbarrow it in one at a time, that transformation was a huge benefit, and I wish we'd have done it sooner. The old sandbox was taken out and the rotten boards tossed out in the dumpster, while a new, much bigger box was built. It's now 9' x 5' and holds both kids, AND the dog, which was the major flaw with the old one. After it was built, we went to Gering for a load of sand and spent the rest of the day hauling sand. Since we'd had practice with the rock, the sand was nothing.

I hit a few garage sales on Friday & Saturday, looking for canning jars. I didn't exactly hit the jackpot, but did end up with about 25 quart jars, so that's a lot of tomatoes that I hope to fill in the coming weeks. Unfortunately, two of my plants toppled over in a light hail / heavy wind storm this past week and I spent an hour trying to tie them up to the fence and re-post them. While hammering in a wood post, my right arm got tired so I switched to my left. That was a mistake, I missed on the first hammering and it landed right on the top of my right hand. I have a very circular bruise there now. Just hope it was worth it in the end and that I have red tomatoes very soon.

Al & father took the trike to Sturgis on Thursday, since you can' t come this far with a bike and not go to Sturgis when it's the week of Sturgis. They left early in the morning and drove all around the Black Hills, hit Main St. of Sturgis, and drove home, arriving back around bedtime. They seemed to have a good time. I was really wanting to go with them and camp out, but it didn't work out that way.

Lars has had another crabby & fussy week. Went with Al yesterday after chruch to an Ordination/Installation in Morrill. While he was at the service, we went to the city park to play, but Lars was not in the mood and cried the whole time. Finally, he crawled back in the car and sat in his car seat until Eden was done. I had to stop at a store in Scottsbluff on the way home and that, too, was a mistake. Lars cried the whole time and tried to abandon cart several times while I had my back turned. Al was napping the car with sleeping Eden. Then, once we got home, Eden was wide awake and up until after 10:00 p.m. It was just 'one of those days' and I'm so thankful to be a stay-at-home Mom (more or less) so that I can accomodate my ornery children and get stuff done when they sleep in!

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. I finally got a taste of driving the stallion around Bridgeport on Friday, chauffering the FIL (father-in-law for you who don't text) around the Lake, out to the rocks south of town, and to the grocery store, where we met several people who came over to check it out. I was cool for day. Well, part of a day anyway. It is very fun to drive and I told him not to wreck it b/c I wanted it in the inheritance. Apparently, Al told him the same thing a day before!

I have photos downloaded from the week and will get to uploading them right after I feed my kids breakfast. Eden has been wanting pancakes for three days, so I think today is the day. Now that the folks are gone, I have a lot of house work/ desk work that needs to get done and oddly enough, I have the ambition. Let's see if my children cooperate.

This is late, but don't ask why...


It took me until about Thursday morning to feel like I had gotten over this summer cold I acquired last week and I’m still coughing up crud and sleeping in just about every morning. The sleeping in is nice.


On Monday, Lars’ runny nose had gotten somewhat out of control, so in my infinite wisdom, I decided to give him some Benadryl that evening to try and sleep. Mistake. Simply put, the boy doesn’t take medicine and some day, Mommy will learn. He choked on it, made a horrific coughing sound, and threw up all over me and my newly showered body. I was not happy, so he’s had a runny nose all week and been somewhat cranky, but he too is feeling better now.

Eden had her last week of Kinder camp this week. I was hoping the center would make up days next week that they missed earlier in the summer, since we’d already paid for it, but they did not. So, she enjoyed her last day, making a puffy paint T-shirt to commemorate her summer of age three, which is soon to end, I’m afraid.

Wednesday afternoon, Pastor came home to get the children in the Ford, as they were going to a ‘planting party’ at a parishoner’s house out of town. Meanwhile, I had about an hour to pick up toys and study my notes for my lesson that evening. As I sat down to the computer, this strange blue thing drove by my house. As I stared at it with a crinkled face, I thought immediately of the movie ‘Bednobs and Broomsticks” and the strange motorcycle/automobile that Angela Lansbury drives when she’s not being a witch on her broomstick. Then it hit me, Al’s parents have arrived, a couple days early. Surprise!

A little stiff after many hours on a trike, the wind blew them in to sit down. Since Al was gone and I was just leaving, they made themselves at home and relaxed a bit. I pointed to the empty fridge and told them to help themselves, or go out to eat. They opted for number two, probably because once they stepped onto the kitchen floor, their feet stuck like glue to the unwashed, sticky, not-really-fit-for-company floor. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to mind it.

Went to Gering’s farmer’s market one evening, and picked up a head of cabbage, some squash for Ke-bobs, as well as fresh cilantro for my fresh salsa. Since the community garden is coupled with the market, we walked through the garden and greenhouse, as I deadheaded for seeds for my own garden! I think it was worth the trip. We also took the kids out to supper, which is a treat, as we don’t often take them to restaurants. Both kids sat well, coloring their sheets. The place even had puzzles to do, it was great. While they tackled their respective bowls of cottage cheese, the rest of us had a fairly nice & uneventful meal.


One morning this week I washed the kitchen floor. At lunch time, I reached up into the fridge for something and knocked the left over chili from the top shelf, sending it crashing to the floor and breaking open the container from the bottom. Chili makes a big mess when it’s on the clean floor, sliding glass window, blinds, cupboards, stool, island and rug. I was not happy, but, being the every conscious clean wife, I immediately cleaned it up. That evening, we went grocery shopping and I bought a 12 pack of coke, something I contemplated at the time, but splurged for. As Al walked it into the kitchen, it began dripping from an exploded can inside the box. There goes my ‘clean’ floor again!

Sunday afternoon, we travelled to Crawford for an Ordination/Installation service. The kids and I walked around Ft. Robinson in the 95 degree heat and then went to the nice, shady City Park before heading to the church for supper. It was a long day in the car, but the views on the drive are nice.

Since the grandparents have been here, we’ve acquired a new sandbox, which was much needed, as well as part of the frame for hanging the sun shade above the deck. Also, got a truck load of rock & sand unloaded for underneath the deck, which had been neglected and was filling up with water & mud with all the rain we’ve had. So, it’s been nice to get a few things accomplished.

Will try to get some pictures up in the next day or two….