Long Time No Posts

Wow I can't believe how long it has been since the last time I have posted on here. So much had gone on. Our oldest is now 6, if you can believe that and our youngest is 19 months old! Boy does the time fly. Most of my time is taken by my boys. Not only am I a SAHM I am also now school teacher as we are home schooling the oldest. He is currently doing 1st and 2nd grade work. :)

Also on the agenda is processing and spinning alpaca fleece for a local alpaca farmer. I thought that this would be a one time venture, but she was so pleased that she wants me to continue to do it for her every year!


Currently I am nurse to my 2 little guys as they both have the flu now. We have had a very bad year for sickness here. It all started in October when were were all at the KY Wool fest. We all ended up with a stomach bug and have been getting sick with everything that is going around since. I am hoping with the warmer weather will come the healing of our immune systems so we can finally be on the mend.

I have been knitting a few things here and there, but mostly been concentrating on spinning all that alpaca. It is like a bit of heaven getting to play with all that and get paid for it in the process. I am excited to see it all form the upcoming sheering!

Better get back to spinning. I am hoping to post more often as it has been far too long and I always enjoyed having my blog. I will leave you with a picture of some yummy alpaca batts. :)

Still Alive & Hoosier Hills Fiberarts Festival

Yes folks, we are still alive in our neck of the woods. Sorry it has been so long since I have posted. It has been a busy time to say the least.





Some of you know that James has been sick off and on since Christmas. He just never seemed to get better after each bout with a virus/cold. We seemed to be going to the Dr. every time I turned around. They did blood work that came back perfectly fine, then there were stool testing and that came back fine too.

Finally the Dr. said that it was beyond what he could do and told us to head to Children's Hospital and he would call ahead so that all the sign in paperwork would be done for us. We arrived around 6 that evening in the ER.

After going through Dr. after Dr. they couldn't diagnose him and said that they would like to admit him and wanted to know if that was ok. Ummm yeah it is ok. I wanted my baby well. I know what they were driving at. They thought that we were starving him. He was so skinny. You could see his ribs, hip bones, spinal column, etc. Everything that he was eating should have made him as big as a barn (chicken nuggets, french fries, mac n cheese, etc.)

We finally got a room at 1 am and settled in and got James to sleep around 2. The team of Dr.s assigned to him were in bright and early that morning to see him. More blood work and tests all came back normal. They called in the Gastro. Dr. (told that he is the best you can get) and he said that he thought he had _____ the first time that he looked at him. We all thought that he was crazy even the normal rotation Dr.'s didn't think that was it.



So there was more blood work to be done. We had to wait for that to come back to get a diagnosis. Also there was a biopsy test to be done later in the week.





All in all we ended up spending a week in the hospital. I can safely say that if I ever had to take James to a hospital again it would be Children's. They were so great to him and us. I was very happy about the care that we all received.

After the blood work came back and he had his biopsy (that was so hard to watch them put him under) the Gastro Dr. was right. He now has a diagnosis of Celiac Disease.

Celiac Disease is an allergy to gluten (wheat and derivatives). It is amazing all the things that gluten is in. Not only is it in food, but it is also in cleaning supplies, make-up, sun screen, tooth paste, soaps, ect. We have had to clean the house out and start over. It hasn't been easy that is for sure. When you are used to paying .99 for a bag of pretzels and now they are $8.00 for an even smaller bag it puts a real strain on the wallet. We have found a few ways to save money, but it is still much more expensive than the "normal" food. We have all gone gluten free since cross contamination is a big concern. It is so easy to accidental put a spoon too close to another one and contaminate his food. Since we have been eating this way I have been feeling better too, so I have been told that I should be tested as well.

Here are a few pictures just a few weeks after he was out of the hospital. Before he would have never stood by himself (we had to carry him every where) or smiled (he was so sad and pathetic).

Don't worry the portable potty seat is clean. LOL


Jame and Kevin fishing at the Grandparents'


It is so good to see him feeling better, but man does he have the energy. He will go non-stop all day without a nap and still be going strong at 1 am. He exhausts me. LOL He is getting better every day. I am excited to see what the Dr.s think at his next check up. He looks like he has gained weight. You can't see the bones like when he was in the hospital and his cheeks have filled out. I just hope that he continues to progress.

In my "spare" time I have been dyeing yarn and rovings and getting things together to head to the Hoosier Hills Fiberarts Festival. With the events that I just listed, I have been behind several weeks according to my original plan. It doesn't look like I am going to get done everything that I had wanted to, but I am not stopping until I have to.

I have been told that there are aprox. 80 vendors this year! I had a great time last year. There is supposed to be a Ravelry meet up as well and they have buttons at the welcome booth that you can buy so people know who you are on Ravelry. I know from last year that there are lots of pretty things that just have to come home with you. :)

The things that I will have include hand dyed yarns and rovings (some yarns in self striping and some in variegated), wool wash and scour, paper quilled sheep, and a few other things that you will have to come to see. I will be in McGill Hall, the one with the white lattice work booth (hopefully that is - if Kevin can get it finished to his liking before Friday). I am hoping to get a few pictures of some of the things that I will have. With today's thunderstorms they might not be the best. :(

If you are planning on coming and would like to sit and spin, knit, talk or what ever let me know so that I can bring a few extra chairs. I hope to see you there.

The dates and times are .... Friday June 6 12 - 7 and Saturday June 7 10 - 6. I have been told to use Google map because Mapquest has them in the wrong location.

So tell me what you all have been up to. Unfortunately I haven't had time or been able to keep up with blogs. I have been thinking of you all. I hope after Hoosier Hills things will get back to "normal" and I will be able to get back to my normal blog reading and posting. So please let me know what you have been up to and how you have been doing.

Hope to see you this weekend.

Drive By Posting

I can't believe it has been over a month since I posted last. Thanks to all that have commented and sent emails wondering how we are doing. We all so appreciate it.

James and I are better from the nasty ick that has been going around, but now it seems like something else is trying to get ahold of us. James has been acting tired for a few days and has said that he isn't feeling well. Now I have a soar throat, but just on one side. It is nasty painful to swallow. My glands aren't swollen, so I don't know what it is. I just want to get well and stay well. I don't know where it is coming from. James and I don't go anywhere. *Sigh*

I have been knitting and will have 3 pair of socks to share with you once I get pictures of them. 2 pair are of a "normal" length. The other pair is a thigh high pair I made for my SIL. Nothing too exciting, but it is knitting none the less, right?

I have also been spending many hours getting my dyeing area organized and ready so that everything will run more smoothly. I am really liking the look of it. Kevin is going to build some little shelves so that I can have little houses for all my dyes. I have been dyeing up some sample swatches and the real things will be next. I have some new colorways for the spring and summer seasons that I am quite happy about.

Speaking of dyeing.... I have something exciting that will be happening to my yarns. I will reveal that later. I am very excited.

Sorry that there are no pictures on this post. Hopefully I will have some for the next one and it won't be over a month before I post again. ;)

Can I have a Do Over?

Thanks to all that have sent me messages checking up on us. Here is what have been going on the past month and then some.

At the beginning of January James ended up sick. We believe that it was from taking him to the Cincinnati Museum Center. He had gotten family passes for Christmas and so we decided to take a trip there while Kevin still had time off from work. It came back to bite us in the butt. A few days later he came down with a head cold. Guess I am glad that I put off having his Birthday party until later in the month. That was a week plus that I had a toddler completely glued to my side. He refused to go to Kevin at all! I even had to take James to the bathroom with me.

Next came the chaos of trying to get down all the Christmas decor and to get everything together for James' party. He wanted Thomas the Train is year, so I had to go to the party store to get the stuff. No running to the big box stores for this one. Then he decided that he wanted a pinata. Of course the store that we were at were out of them so we had to go across town to get it. I have to admit that it is pretty cool. It was a pull string pinata. If you have never seen these essentially they are made for little kids where there are a bunch of ribbons attached to the bottom. The kids take turns pulling a ribbon in hopes that it will open. There is only one ribbon that will open the door on the bottom. So there was the making out of all the invites there was the cleaning of the house.

Cleaning seemed to take forever. It is amazing how you can get comfortable with all the stuff around you. Then when it is time to have a party you look around and realize that the house is trashed and it is going to take forever to get it all cleaned. Which it did take forever. I kept finding things that I wanted to do. The house did get clean in time and I am hoping to keep it that way.

The Birthday party was a big hit for James. He had a great time and got so much stuff. He had a pile of clothes up to the top of the arm of the chair! The poor child. ;) He of course got a nice selection of toys too. Sadly the MIL wasn't feeling well, but more on that later. So after the party was the next few days of clean up. Why is it that you find plates and cups days later no matter how hard you looked for them the days before?

Then on January 30th I went out to feed and watter the rabbits. The French doe was happily hopping in her cage. The English buck on the other hand had passed away some time that night. :(. He was fine the day before, so I don't know what happened. After reading on Ravelry and talking to some people there were many that died that day or within a few days. Kind of odd. I so miss him. He was so soft, cuddly and sweet. Yes they were in separate cages, so there was no foul play on the doe's part.

Remember when I said that my MIL wasn't feeling well at James' party? Yeah well she shouldn't have come because James started getting sick again a few days after the party. Now he has given it to me. It is some sort of upper respiratory thing. The cough is what is the killer. If the cough would just go away it would be so much better. So not only am I sick, achy, fever, cough, etc. so is James. That means he clings onto me so I can't even take a nice hot shower to hopefully feel better. Now Kevin is saying that he thinks that he is getting it now. I sure hope not. James is bad enough to deal with sick, Kevin is horrible! I hope that this goes away soon. I am exhausted and just want my life to be somewhat normal again.

Sorry for the unhappy post, but I wanted to let you all know where I have been. I have over 500 posts to read, so I will try and read them all, but I probably won't have the time to comment. Just know that I am reading and thinking of you all. Hopefully the next post will be soon and much happier.

Craptastic

Did I quit blogging? No

Sorry folks, I have been having a bit of a craptastic time lately. Not only in my knitting, but also in my personal and not so personal life. If it could go wrong it has. Heck it it couldn't go wrong it went wrong.

Computer is on the freaking fritz again! I am only able to run in safe mode so it has to go back to the shop again. UGH!!!

I haven't been to a Monday night knit night in over a month and it doesn't look promising for any in the near future. Kevin has picked up a second job. You would think that I would be happy that we will have more money, but I am quite upset by the hole thing. I feel terrible that he wants to work another job so that we will have mad money and we can do the things that we want to, to the house. I just wish I could pull in money, but staying at home with the kid doesn't seem to pay with cash flow. He will be working evenings at the second job, so I won't see him at night or have him next to me sleeping until the weekend. I will get to see him in-between jobs, but that still isn't the same as having him here at night with me. I know it will all work out and he is only part time, but it is going to be a hard transition that is for sure. Looks like a Sunday here and there a month might be my new Monday nights (hint Susan).

I haven't been doing much in the way of my knitting either. I have been working on a pair of socks for my cousin that seem to be never ending. I do a few rows then put them down to do something else. I just can't seem to knit on them for any length of time and I don't feel like starting another project. So I am slowly chugging along on the socks.

This past Tuesday my Mom called me in tears. Her 10 year old Golden Retriever has cancer. She wanted to know if I could take them to an Oncologist on Wednesday to have her checked out. With where the Oncologist was and my Mom's state of mind I knew she wouldn't be able to drive it. I called my MIL to see if she could watch James and she so graciously came to help. Wednesday came and it was a nasty rainy gloomy day. I was hoping and praying for good news, but all the news that she could give us was bad. It wasn't just bad it was horribly bad. We were told that if they did surgery and the dog lived through the surgery that it would only give her 3 months at the most to live. My Mom was a complete wreck and I was trying to be strong for her. We were told that the cancer had attached to blood vessels and that she was bleeding internally, it isn't painful to her, but one day Mom would find her dead and it wouldn't be long. With my Mom living alone since my Dad passed she said that she couldn't handle coming home from work or waking up one morning finding her dog dead. So she made the terribly hard decision to have her put to sleep. I had to call and make all the arrangements with our normal vet. Sadly we made an appointment that evening at 3:30. So I called my MIL and told her what was going on and she said that she could stay as long as I needed her to. So I stayed with my Mom since I was going to have to be the one that drove them to the vet. From 11 am to 3 pm the poor dog had gotten much worse. Her bark was really weak and she didn't move much at all. I would have been very surprised if she would have made it through the night. At 3:15 we reluctantly got into the car to head to the vet. I felt extremely sick to my stomach, all my muscles were tight and I just really didn't want to have to do this, but I knew that it was the right thing to do for my Mom and the dog. My Mom said her tearful goodbyes and I led the dog back. My Mom didn't want to go back because she didn't think that she could handle it, but she didn't want her to die alone. So I told her that I would do it. Not that I really wanted to, but I wanted the dog to be as relaxed as possible and I wanted my Mom to feel better knowing that someone was there with her. It was actually very peaceful. Not saying that I was happy about it or enjoyed it, but I am glad that she went peaceful and didn't have to suffer. I had tears streaming down my face the entire time, but I am glad that I was there for the dog. I stroked her head and talked to her the entire time until the vet said that she was gone. It has been so hard these past few days knowing that I was the one that drove them to the vet and took the dog back. I am an animal lover and to have to do something like that just kills me. My heart is still breaking and I am sure that it will for some time to come.

James has been sick for the past week now. He has the lovely running like a faucet nose, watery eyes, sneezing, coughing and all those fun things. So I have been trying to get him better too.

I need some sort of calming day or something. Man do I need that spinning wheel.

I promise you all that I am trying to catch up on reading all your posts. I have over 100 to go through and I am not sure how long the computer will decide to keep running for me. So I want you all to know that I am thinking of you and I wish that this would have been a happier post. Hopefully I can get down to the computer repair shop and get this thing fixed then I will have some pictures to share with you.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Easter and a good Friday the 13th.