Happy Mother’s Day!

I hope you’ve had a wonderful weekend, especially if you’re in the US or Australia or other places where it’s Mother’s Day weekend.  We’ve had the very best Mother’s Day Weekend, courtesy of this:

TheFirstChild is now Dr.FirstChild and it’s been a fun and emotional weekend.  We all gathered for the looong graduation ceremony and then SweetiePie treated us to a wonderful lunch back at their apartment.  She did such a great job preparing all the food and cute Dr./Graduation decorations.

She served Ham and Turkey Croissants, veggies and dip, ugly bean dip, a hot chicken dip, mini cinnamon rolls, oatmeal raisin cookies, and a decorated cake.

She thought of everything — right down to a champagne toast to celebrate the new graduate.  It was all delicious and hit the spot.

At the beginning of Med School, just after the white coat ceremony, I posted the picture below of SweetiePie and TheFirstChild.  It was the beginning of their journey and I love that picture because I’d inadvertently caught the construction sign in the photo.  It hardly seems possible that the construction phase is now over.  SweetiePie and TheFirstChild probably don’t share our disbelief — it was long and grueling and I’m sure they’re glad it’s over.  They’ve taught our little family a lot about hard work and perseverance and it’s been amazing (if not painful at times) to watch.  A few days ago, TheFirstChild posted on his facebook page and said “As of this very second, I AM DONE WITH MEDICAL SCHOOL! The first thing that comes to mind is that it was slightly more difficult than I first anticipated.”  He’s a funny guy.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how proud we are of our little chicks.  And, after last fall, how lucky we felt that all of our local family was together to celebrate the reward for all of their hard work. I sure do Love these boys.

I am One. Lucky. Mom.

Happy Mother’s Day!
XOXO,
Anna

Dodged a Bullet

Phew!  It’s been awhile since I’ve posted — thanks to all you sweet invisible friends who have checked in on me.  They say, “Into every life, a little rain must fall” and here in ThimbleannaLand, we’ve had a Monsoon.  We’ve been on a roller coaster ride through Hell in the last two weeks and I’m hopeful and cautious to say “Every little thing’s gonna be alright.”

On October 11th, I took BigDaddy in for a little procedure and his heart stopped — which landed him in cardiac intensive care for two weeks.  If you’re a long time reader, you know that BigDaddy is the heart of our family.  He’s funny with a huge heart and we all adore him.  The first week was up and down and full of tears and after 30 hours off of the vent, he ended up back on it.  Then, the second week was even worse — capped off by calling the kids home and being assigned a palliative care doc.  It seemed that we spent a lot of time trying to convince medical staff that just because you’re in your 80′s, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have some life left in you.  MyDadLovesMeBestSister and I decided we should write a book about the experience — I’d like to title it, “Bucking the System When They Already Think You’re Dead”.

BigDaddy is finally out of ICU and making slow, but sure progress. We couldn’t be more relieved — and thrilled. MyDadLovesMeBestSister and I spend all of our time either at the hospital or eeking a few hours out at our jobs. We were sent an angel in the form of Aunt Annie.  She’d had an already planned trip and her plane arrived just two hours after BigDaddy’s ill-fated procedure.  She ended up extending her trip and we absolutely couldn’t have done it without her.  She was such a huge help and support to MeMum.  She left yesterday and we miss her already.

Anyway, there hasn’t been any time for blog reading or posting.  There has been hospital room sock knitting though.  Maybe I’ll take a picture of new socks on a hospital bed LOL.  The next few weeks will still be sparse on-line — we’ll be concentrating on helping BigDaddy get well and back home.    I hope you’re all having a beautiful fall (or spring if you’re down under) — it looks like it was gorgeous here — as viewed from hospital room windows!  ;-D

XOXO,
Anna

The Weekend

Well…did you all have a good weekend?  We had a wonderful weekend — we headed south for three days to attend TheSecondChild’s MBA graduation.  As he says, now he’s a Master.  So, I should probably change his name to MasterSecondChild LOL.  It was a fairly small graduation ceremony (compared to his undergrad event)– mostly advanced degrees, since it’s out-of-cycle for undergrad degrees.

Thursday night was the “Hooding Ceremony”.  Each school held it’s own ceremony for the grads.  The hoods are all different colors too, depending on the area of study.  In MasterSecondChild’s case, the tan is for the business school and the red and blue are the university colors.  It was funny to see everyone after the hooding ceremony, ’cause no one knew how to arrange the colors.

They were all fixed by graduation though and everyone was properly folded.

So, it was a great weekend with lots of good food and fun.   We had fun fixing a few things that had to be fixed around his apartment and just being parents in general.   It’s always exciting to see your child’s hard work pay off too, and we’re very proud of our littlest Thimble.  Er, MasterThimble.  All good things come to an end though, and after I accidentally locked the young Master out of his apartment — oops! — I think he was probably ready to see us on our way LOL.

And this is what we saw upon our return … the thief has been discovered.  Caught in the Act!  He’s a brazen little Chippy — sat and ate that whole tomato right in front of me.  Luckily, we’re having a bumper crop of tomatoes, so there are plenty to go around!

Ooooh, before I go, I’ve been forgetting to mention the Aurifil block of the month!  Run on over to the Aurifil page and see the fabulous August block — embroidered by the famous Bari J.!  And don’t forget to check out the flickr group — there are lots of beautiful blocks being shared!

Ok, Peeps, have a great week!

XOXO,
Anna

Color Me Bob

Whew!  I hope you’ve had a good weekend.  We’ve had a great weekend here in ThimbleannaLand.   Yesterday we did The Color Run.  It was Super Duper FUN!

Here’s the motley crew before the race.  Looking all clean, happy and innocent.  Ignorance is Bliss.

It was a perfect weather day.  A little cloudy and breezy and not too hot.  Here’s a shot about 2/3rds of the way through the run, looking into Indianapolis.  You can see how crowded the run was.  The red flags on the bridge are where they had a color station.  Every kilometer, they had people positioned to spray color on you as you ran by.  See the dust cloud?  It was dusty at those color stations!

Then, at the end of the race, everyone throws their color packet into the air.  Here’s SweetiePie giving her packet a toss.

And here’s the crowd.  SweetiePie took this picture — my shots of the final blowout didn’t turn out — (so sad!)

It’s a big, fun, messy business.

Here’s the aftermath.  Everyone is still really happy, but no longer clean.

As usual, CrazyBIL kept us entertained.

He’s such a goofball.

There were 10,000 runners.  The race was amazingly well organized.  They had water for everyone at the half-way point and again at the end.  I tried to make a water fountain like CrazyBIL, but I ended up with water all down the front of me.

If you ever get the chance to do the Color Run, you should do it.  You don’t even have to run — I was amazed at the number of people who walked.  We all ran, some WAY faster than others LOL.  And, sadly, TheFirstChild wasn’t able to run with us, but he photo-bombed us instead.  That’s my boy!

Now, I’m off to finish a birthday cake for BigDaddy. (Btw, we named our team Color Me Bob — in honor of BigDaddy. He’s the original runner in our family and today is his 81st birthday.) Happy Birthday BigDaddy!!!
XOXO,
Anna

Gingerbread Houses 2011

So? How’s that relaxing in-between week going? I’ve had a chance to read just a few blogs and it looks like lots of you are reading, resting and making plans for the new year. As it should be! We’re managing to lie around and play with Christmas toys a little, but mostly it’s been busy. Today will be the third (and last!) day of painting in MeMum’s kitchen — you may remember that I did the cabinets a long time ago, but the ceiling, walls and trim were never done. Finally, we’ll have that big job out of the way.

I’ve also had time to weed through the many pictures of the annual gingerbread competition. We had a wonderful time again this year with lots of laughs. I’d like to congratulate my cute little family this year — we didn’t have one. single. collapsed house. WooHoo! They’re becoming real pros at the construction. There were lots of groovy little details too — several of which I don’t have good pictures of because you have to remember to take them before the roofs go on the houses.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I proudly ( ;-) ) present to you the Houses of 2011:

Team 1:  SweetiePie and CuteNiece1. Santa’s Workshop.  SweetiePie is a real pro with the icing and this house was adorable.  They have Mr. and Mrs. Claus out front and a super cute elf workshop to the side of the house.  All the elves were at their stations working away.  (The icing on the bottom right pictures says “Elves enter here —>”)  I loved this happy cheerful house!

Team 2:  CuteNiece2, CuteNephew, and BigDaddy.  With BigDaddy on the team, we knew it was going to be pretty funny.  They decided to do TheFirstChild and SweetiePie’s future house.  The house where they have a bunch of children.  The house that is falling apart.  The front door is off of the hinges, the roof is cracking and one of the unruly children has started a fire at one of the corners of the roof.  CuteNephew very cleverly carved the burned portion of the roof and then held it over the stove to get the charred look.  The other unruly children are climbing on the roof and have crashed the family car into a tree.  The created a pretty cute interior too — there’s a beautiful striped carpet and big screen tv (bottom right picture).  And, of course, TheFirstChild is parked on the sofa watching that tv.

Team 3:  TheManoftheHouse and TheSecondChild.  This was the team that started the trend into irreverent houses five years ago when they made a frat house.  They decided they should finally clean up their act and make a church.  Being an all-male team, they were a little spare on the frosting, but they had some clever touches.  We all wanted to know why the people were squished behind the bench.  Don’t be silly — they’re kneeling and praying.  I love the little bell in the steeple!

Team 4:  MyDadLovesMeBestSister and CrazyBIL. CrazyBIL is a physical therapist so they made a model of his clinic.  The small touches to their clinic were SO cute.  They had workout tools everywhere — I loved the dumbbells and the pile of broken crutches behind the clinic.  They also included a parking lot to one side of the clinic, and my very favorite touch, an outdoor yoga class (middle picture) to the other side of the clinic. Their proudest touch was the lighted candle inside — CrazyBIL created an open chimney so that the candle smoke could escape.  Unfortunately, after awhile, the gingerbread started to get soft so we had to blow the candle out to avoid a cave-in.

Team5:  TheFirstChild and Me.  We stumbled around trying to think of something that would have most of it’s contents outside of the house.  We finally settled on a tree farm.  Which sent TheFirstChild (and the rest of us) into fits of laughter remembering an old high school tree farm joke.  So, we iced up the house and planted trees everywhere.  Then popped in a few tree-shopping families (one with a candy cane sled).

Great fun again this year!  We held our traditional vote.  Can you guess the winner?

Team 4′s Physical Therapy Clinic came in third, only lagging by one vote.  Then Team 1′s Santa Workshop and Team 5′s Christmas Tree Farm tied for first.  So we had a run-off.

Ta-Dah!:

Go Team 5!!!  We only beat Team 1 by a vote and I really think their frosting work was superior.  Plus, I think we won due to all the memories and laughter this house generated.

So, that’s it for this year.  I can’t believe how quickly the year has passed.  I probably won’t get back here for a few days so I’d like to wish all of you a Very Happy New Year!  Stay Safe and Have Fun!!!

XOXO,
Anna