In response to "No, Higher!"

Actually this is another post I've been wanting to share, but it seemed a good spot to put in a little response to comments from the post "No, Higher!" (where Avery went up on a boom lift).

Honestly, it never occurred to me to be worried or anxious. After reading the comments my first thought was "Oh, should I have been? Bad Mom moment?" But I decided I was okay after some thought.
Avery is a very safety conscientious kid. From seat belts and holding hands in parking lots, to strangers and so on. He's also had lots of opportunities (horses, tractors, 4 wheelers, etc.) where safety explanations are needed and perhaps that's why he's so concerned about it.
When we went to neighbor Rick's and he saw the chain saw sitting there he's the one who started explaining to me about how "it's very sharp and we don't touch it and when I'm big like Daddy I'll be very careful." So he knows he's way too little and even when he gets big he will still have to be very careful.
I then remembered that he started in on the boom lift too before going up. I can't remember if he rattled on about lift safety before or after Rick offered to take him up, but either way there was no need to worry, he explained it all for me.
I know I would have been nervous (I'm assuming I'm a good enough Mom here...) if Avery wasn't such a cautious kid, but I realized he never gave me the chance. :)

Now, on to something I've been wanting to post - definitely one of those occasions where lots of safety talks were had.
Over this last Christmas break when we were home in Oregon we went shooting. (You can just go up in the coast range and shoot into the side of a hill as long as you're on gov't land and not logging land - if you're familiar, think AxMen from the History channel, except we're further south than the bunch they film on that show)
Anyway, this was Avery's first experience. He absorbed all the safety stuff, was great, and loved shooting the .22 (with lots of help from Daddy of course).
It was misting horribly on us up there that day, so I was eventually fighting that with the camera lens, hence the fuzziness by the time Avery wanted to try and I took his pic:
You can see here the trees just below the slope are very hazy through the mist. Top to bottom shooting: Travis' sis-in-law Katrina, Travis, T's sis Angela and sis Megan. L to R trading guns are T's dad Ben and Angela's husband Shane.Now, going shooting is always fun, but it was a necessary trip this Christmas due to gifts received. Travis' Dad bought himself an AK-47 and then got one for his boys Travis and Kevin. Therefore, shooting trip scheduled. :)
----edit: Why the need for such guns, you ask? For ones like that, it's a entirely a fun thing, like for exactly this trip. Travis says there's no such thing as too many guns, and believe you me, between all those guys there are plenty! They've all taken gun safety courses, have gun safes, etc.
Oh, and the AKs are not full automatic, that's very illegal (Travis wants me to explain the difference:
full auto: you pull the trigger and rounds just keep coming out;
semi auto: one round per pull of the trigger with no cocking required, you can just keep hitting the trigger;
after that there's the different kind of actions where after each trigger you have to do something before you can trigger it again.)
The AKs can only be semi auto in the US so in the video below they're just shooting as fast as they can. So you actually could go hunting with them. A .22 wouldn't do a very good job of taking out a deer anyway, hunters use a larger caliber rifle. Travis informs me that the AK round would actually be a really good one for deer hunting, you just have to use a 5 round clip if you want to do that. Glad I asked him, I didn't know that part about using guns like that for hunting.
The guy on the couch not hoisting a gun is Shane, Travis' bro-in-law, and he already had an AK-47, so when we were done shooting Ben decided I needed to video the 4 AKs in a final shoot out, so here's that: Top to bottom: Kevin, Travis, Ben, Shane


Now, after all that, how about something sweet on a much softer side. :)
This was a bit of some plant poking it's way through the snow on the mountainside up there that day:

Ups and Downs

Thanks for coming Grandma Hunsaker!!

So Avery may have been plying like normal later the same day as surgery, but that doesn't mean it's been peachy keen non-stop from them. Never underestimate the power of drugs! We've been on a very clear 4 hour cycle of ups and downs related to the pain meds. I think we're finally over the accompanying fever as of last night, but that had been making the "downs" worse with some serious lethargy and general yuckiness. Even when the meds are kicked in and he plays like normal, we've found that he's still just not quite right. He's definitly more on edge and closer to meltdowns and so forth.
Sunday was 3 days post-op, so I was hoping this morning would mean we could move on from the drugs or switch to Tylenol, but you know that won't work when the poor kid is moaning from pain before he even fully wakes up...
So hopefully we can get past that soon...

Oh, and I don't think I ever mentioned one of the temporary side effects of this surgery... Avery has the nastiest breath you've ever smelled! It permeates. You can catch whiffs of it from across the room. Sitting with him is torturous especially since he's been breathing through his mouth! And he will have this for a couple weeks! I'll still take torturous stink-breath sitting nicely with me over frustrated fits tho...

Surgery Day!

Yesterday Avery had his adenoidectomy and his tubes put in. All went well, although the Dr. said Avery's tonsils were definitely bigger than he liked to see. He didn't do anything about it at the time because the recovery times are drastically different than just getting the adenoids out. So we'll monitor them for now.
Here's Avery modeling the clingy hospital gown:
His bracelets:
Post-op recovery. Avery was totally stoned. He was very lethargic and started passing out again after a little while:
Time to get the IV out and the oxygen monitor off:
I took 3 pics back to back, this being the first with eyelids at half mast, the second was 3/4 mast and the last was him knocked out. His eyelids had been half mast for a while and Travis had just finished buckling him up so I wasn't expecting to catch that!
When we got home, Grandma and Carson had gone shopping and had balloons, a tractor and a truck book waiting for Avery. Of course, this is Avery looking at them much later. When we got home he appreciated the balloons, but was still very floppy and just sat with Grandma and watched a movie for awhile. After about an hour he was up and going!
And I really mean going. He was back to normal in no time and outside playing! Which was a little weird since his pain meds were supposed to make him sleepy. Here's a couple of him yesterday afternoon:

Welcome Grandma Hunsaker!

Grandma Hunsaker is in town! Tomorrow's the big day for Avery, he's having surgery to get his adenoids removed and tubes put in his ears. I'm really looking forward to him being able to hear much better, but I know we might have some time where a lot of things are just too loud for him. (I remember it was that way for my sister, Morgan, after she had a hole in her eardrum fixed and she could suddenly hear so much more - at the age I was I remember being quite annoyed)
Anyway, Grandma's here to visit and help out. They told us some kids are back to normal right away after the surgery, or it could take 3 days, but still nothing major, so more than anything Grandma's a nice comfort visit. :)

The Cabes are in the New Era this month!

Check out my cousins Cameron and Jenna Cabe in the magazine New Era this month! Click "view" at the top to view it as a pdf and see the pics. It's not quite an up to date article as the project got put on the back burner when the person overseeing it switched jobs, so Cameron has since graduated and Jenna is now a junior with younger sister Julia now at the school as a freshman.

No, Higher!

Friday through Sunday our neighbor "Fireman Rick" has been cutting down a few trees that needed to come down. This has kept the boys pretty glued to the window and Avery fascinated when he would go out on the front porch to play. We like the new History channel show AxMen, and Avery loved this real life show. After getting back from church and putting Carson down for a nap, Avery and I went over to say hi since a few neighbors were just hanging out (the trees were finally down and much of the brush had been carted off.)
Rick was nice enough to offer to take Avery up the on the boom lift. He stopped a few times to check if Avery thought they were high enough... "No, higher!" Avery loved it. So of course I had to go get the camera. At some point I think Avery did say "okay, that's high enough" but he was quite happy there. Rick swung the bucket around and showed Avery how it extended, and they looked for things and how they were different from that vantage.
Avery also loves John Deere's (or any other tractor, big equipment, etc. - he just knows the Deere colors and logo) and has many times pointed out Rick's little one to us. After pretending to drive (and practically learning how to with all the questions!) Rick took Avery for a ride and even let him steer. After checking out how big the tree stumps were, playing with the big rope and figuring out how to maneuver the wheel barrow and cart things around in it, Avery even got a wheel barrow ride!
What a great time for Avery, especially since this kind of fun, until now, has only happened for him when we're back home in Oregon!
Thanks for entertaining him, Rick!

Goose Eggs and Muffins

Travis has a patient who lives on a farm. A while back she told him she wanted to bring him some goose eggs. At a subsequent appointment she did in fact bring him 2. Check out the size of these suckers next to a regular large chicken egg!
She told him they're worth about 3 chicken eggs.. So on Friday I decided to make some whole wheat muffins from a yummy recipe my Mom always used. That goose egg has a thick shell! I really had to whack it to break it. When I did, I couldn't help but wonder if it was really only 3 eggs! At least, the yolk seemed much bigger than that! It was very impressive.

Okay, so when I think "whole wheat muffins" I definitely don't think of Travis, but he really loves these too, (and they did turn out great with the goose egg) so I thought I'd share the recipe. (It's super easy)

Whole Wheat Muffins
1 c. oil
2 eggs
2 c. milk
2 t. vanilla
4 c. wheat flour
2 c. brown sugar
1 t. salt
2 t. baking soda

Sift together dry ingredients. Make a well in the center. Combine remaining ingredients and pour into the well. Stir just enough to moisten the dry ingredients. Fill greased muffin tin 2/3 full. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes.

My recipe doesn't say how many it's supposed to make, but my batch and a half made 4 dozen, and a single batch making 2 and a half dozen doesn't make that much sense, but there you have it.

It's just too bad Travis won't see his generous patient again for a month or so, so I won't be able to send along anything to share made with the eggs!

A Passing

My Great Uncle Albert passed away recently and his funeral was today. My cousin Cyndi made a great slide show for the service and I'm glad she shared it since I couldn't be there. It's always fun to see old pictures, and I don't know that I had seen many of what a younger Albert looked like! That was great. Plus it's fun to see my Mom as a girl in some pics. :)
Uncle Albert's Slideshow

Cows and Cars

Travis finished his last final today, so the boys (me too me too!) were very happy that he could be finished studying. This meant some fun outside with the boys and catching up on some TV.

So tonight we watched the recorded new episode of Simpson's from last Sunday (Travis, and now of course Avery, are addicts). In the episode Bart joined 4-H and had a red cow named Lou. At bed time tonight Avery informed us that he wants to get a white cow named "Moo Moo Cow" from the farm. Then he decided he needed 2 red cows named Lou. And "I want Mommy and Daddy to give me some money to get a cow from the farm, but we don't have money for a cow right now..."
Well, at least he knows things cost money and we don't have it...
:)

The outside fun involved Travis' Christmas present from a year and a half ago, a remote control Jeep. Avery likes driving it, but he loves chasing it and being chased by it.

The Chase:
Carson exploring the ground:Avery, like usual, hamming it up for the camera:

Kickin' Away

Last night Travis felt the baby kicking for the first time. We're 22 weeks now and I imagine Travis may have felt Avery and maybe Carson as well earlier than this since he was always trying to catch a kick, but with each pregnancy that anticipation slows down. This time took until I was sure I could feel a kick on the hand before reminding Travis he could try for a feel as well. Now that he knows he can feel the baby, he'll probably still need reminding to do so!

Asleep!

Earlier this week Avery didn't want to eat lunch, so I knew shortly after I put the boys down for naps Avery would reappear wanting lunch. I was expecting this and nap time was early enough that day that I was willing to put up with this. I got his lunch and since I didn't have to worry about Carson I headed for the computer.
When Avery called that he was finished, I was in the middle of something and asked him to wait a minute. After a little while I realized I hadn't heard him in a while and no wonder I forgot to go get him. So I head out wondering what kind of mess he's made in all that silence.
Surprise! He's asleep instead! And this from a boy who's in transition with whether he needs naps anymore! So I wipe his hands and face (with not a little vigor considering he was crusty by this point) but still he slept, so of course then I have to go get the camera. :)
I then had to carry him to bed and he only opened his eyes and became conscious enough when laying down to lift his legs out of the way of his blankets. Normally I can't shut their bedroom door during naps until Avery is asleep (he just wont allow it, and if he shuts it it's because he wants to make mischief) but on this occasion I could shut the door on my way out. Miracle.

"Meet Me In St. Louis!"

So I was really bummed about Skybus going under and taking my trip away. I didn't even think about driving until Travis (in much kinder terms) basically said he didn't want my moping about the house and would I drive if we got the boys a portable DVD player. Ohhh, well that might work... So I went, and surprised my Mom and Grandma who I didn't tell I would be driving. The drive down went better than any other drive we've taken there and the drive back was nearly as good as the first. Many thanks for that, and for the DVD player totally making it possible!!

We went to all 3 showings of Meet Me In St. Louis (the reason I wanted to go with my cousin Jenna playing Rose).

My aunt Darla does the majority of the costumes! This year especially was a feat because the woman who normally helps was unavailable and they added a grade school choir of 40 with 2 costumes each! Altogether there were 219 costumes, most of them done by Darla!

On the 3rd night we were in the front row and I took my camera and covertly took pics and a couple video clips. Here's a clip of the amazing Jenna singing.

Pic with Julia and Jenna:

All the Cabe kids are musical (their mom, Darla, is a great singer too!)
Chris was
-a von Trapp child in "The Sound of Music"
-a sailor in "Anything Goes"
-the goon Travis in "Footloose"
-and the Scarecrow in "The Wiz"
(and he plays the guitar and is an aspiring rock star)
Cameron was
-general chorus in "Footloose"
-a featured singer of the chorus in "The Wiz"
-the bookseller in "Beauty and the Beast"
-and Bud Frump (the boss' nephew - main part) in "How to Succeed in Business"
(and he plays the drums)
Jenna was
-general chorus in "Beauty and the Beast"
-a secretary in "How to Succeed in Business"
-now Rose in "Meet Me In St. Louis"
-and undoubtedly she'll get the lead female role next year since the girl playing Esther in "St. Louis" is a senior this year
This was Julia's first year and she was in the general chorus for "St. Louis"
The 2 youngest Cabe's, Sarah and MaKenna, also got to be in "St. Louis" because they needed a grade school choir for the Halloween scene and they were also used in a Christmas scene.

The 4 girls in the pic above are, clockwise from upper left, Jenna, Julia, Sarah and MaKenna.

Pic with my Mom after the show:


While at the show, the eldest cousins, Chris and Cameron, took turns watching my boys. Apparently one night Avery had quite a bit of apple juice and was crazy, so Chris or Cameron (sorry guys, you'll have to remind me who) taught Avery a new phrase...

"I had whiskey, and I'm a drunk"
PS. yes, this is a Member family, the Dad's a bishop... :)

Grandma Benjamin also had lots of fun teaching the boys new things, like break dancing...




Here's another picture I just really like of Carson hanging out with his Grandma Benjamin listening to secrets and getting some love :)

Thanks for all the fun Cabe's!Cameron, Chris, Sarah, Jenna, Julia, MaKenna

The Lush and the Fiend

These were from last night...

The Lush: Carson falls asleep on the couch before bed time (I love how he has one hand behind his head)...
The Ice Cream Fiend: Avery enjoys a treat (from an odd angle) as Carson snoozes...

Drawing from Chloe

My sister Morgan's little girl Chloe drew this lovely picture of our family for my birthday back in March. Now that we've spilled the beans on the baby to everyone, I can share this since it shows Chloe's then prediction for baby number 3! Notice she also thought girl. The dots in the mouths are the tongues AND uvulas! Very detailed our Chloe! Thanks Chloe, I love you!

News News News...

We've been at it again...!


All along Avery told us we were having a girl, and referred to "her" with all the proper pronouns... up until the day of the ultrasound. Then all of a sudden he was telling us "No, it's a boy." Even after we knew but before telling him, he stuck to the new boy theory. Thanks for keeping us confused Avery!