Pediatric Cardiologist

This morning we go to the pediatric cardiologist specialist called an electrophysiologist. The appointment is at 9:30. Princess is a bit aprehensive.

During her Periodic Paralysis episodes, which are mild, her heart goes into an irregular rhythm. As soon as her potassium level is returned to normal, her irregular heart rhythm goes away and the regular rhythm returns.

This causes concern because she is having multiple Periodic Paralysis episodes per day. We closely watch her and are able to quickly catch the episodes and abort them; however, she is still experiencing several per day.

I will update when we know more later today. At least I hope we know something preliminary today.

Non-Stick Pasta

In the spirit of all things that "work", I am posting this for Works for Me Wednesdays at Rocks in My Dryer.

This is probably something you already know, but I discovered how to keep my pasta from sticking together ... non-stick spray oil. After cooking and draining the pasta, I sprayed the pasta with butter-flavored Crisco and tossed it to cover the pasta. It's low fat and low calorie! Works for me!

How Nerds Watch Football

This is how you watch college football ... nerd-style. Each fan has his/her own laptop. We may be nerds, but we have some seriously great surround sound and HD viewing of our beloved teams.

Go, Red Raiders! We will hit 'em, we will wreck 'em, hit 'em wreck 'em Texas Tech and the victory bells will ring out!

Monk Day

Princess is studying the Reformation period in school, thus, they are celebrating Monk Day this week. Here is the costume I made this weekend.

Shhhhh. Don't tell anyone that we used the McCall's pattern "the grim reaper" for our Monk costume pattern. :)

sick

It's a weekend to be sick, evidently. I did accomplish something yesterday. I made Princess' costume for school this week. I'll post a picture later.

Photo Fun

Mary suggested finding the photo folder on the computer and selecting the 6th folder and the 6th picture.

Down memory lane. Here we are on the first day of preschool. I think she's attempting to hold 5 fingers up for Mommy's camera. See how her arm is sort-of rounded from the elbow to the wrist? She broke her arm around the time this picture was taken and the doctor assured me the arm would straighten. He was right, but it took a long time to straighten.

As I sit here, I realize that this was half of her lifetime ago. She will be 10 in 5 weeks. The time does fly. The old saying is certainly true, "The days are long, but the years are short!"

UPDATE: She's only three in this picture, not five! What was I thinking?

Pediatric Electrophysiologist

I am a blogging wonder today. This is my third post.

Our sweet pediatrician sent a referral to the pediatric cardiology group. By the next morning, they called to schedule her appointment. We have an appointment with a pediatric cardiology specialist called an electrophysiologist. Princess has her appointment on Wednesday morning.

She has been in the nurse's office almost every day for the past two weeks and sometimes twice per day. The nurse checked her heart beat today and sure enough, she heard that irregular pulse. It's like there is a regular rhythm to the irregularity. Weird.

This morning I was also having heart pain and King said it sounded like I have an extra beat or something. Bless his heart. He's not a cardiologist. I probably should have my heart checked as well. Princess first.

Date Night Redeemed

We had date lunch today. We ate outside on a patio and it is a beautiful day! Great conversation, good food ... good times.

And then we bumped into The Undertaker. I had heard that he lives in the 'hood, but I'm the worst person with famous people. I really don't care about anyone's wealth, fame or lack of one.

And, I'm so not the fan of wrestling or else I would be impressed to be in the same room with this guy. Having said that, I was impressed. His stats say that he is 6 feet 10 inches and 300 pounds. That sounds small compared to how I perceived him at lunch today. The dude is huge. His tatooes alone must have weighed 50 pounds.

Anyway, good times. And, we ate Mexican food this time. :)

Date Night (Burping mentioned)

Tuesday night was highly anticipated. Our babysitter arrived and we were out the door within minutes. We decided on our local Chinese food establishment for our nourishment as they have great service, it's quiet, not too expensive and the servers are attentive without interrupting. We had a myriad of fun topics to talk about over google eyes. Tuesday nights are a highlight of our week.

Not. Last. Night.

First, we were seated beside an older couple who had evidently arrived moments before us, so we were on the same service schedule (drinks, soup, egg roll, entree, etc). Second, this older, heavy man had a burping problem. Third, King and I quickly got off on a bummer of a conversation that needed to be talked about, but was unpleasant.

So, here we sat. We talked and (BURP!) and we talked some more (BURP!) and before long, King got this look on his face and started smiling. (BURP!!) I lost it, ya'll. I got the giggles so bad and seriously, we are sitting like 2 feet from their table. No one else was seated near our tables, so they heard our conversation and we heard their conversation, what little there was between burps. I headed to the powder room to extinguish the giggles. As soon as I sat down again at the table, BURP! (eyes rolling)

So, the nail in the coffin was the waiter. I think he must've been the patriarch or something. Toward the end of our meal, he started talking incessantly to us about centering yourself and all that matters is your happiness, and halloween is coming and the ghosts like beautiful weather, and ON and ON! He even talked about how the nose is centered on the face. (eyes rolling)

Ya'll. It was just a bummer of a date night. I can't wait for next Tuesday. And we are NOT eating Chinese food.

Organizing Stuffed Animals

We have an unbelievable quantity of beanie babies, Webkinz and all manner of stuffed creatures. Princess loves 'em. So, I bought a shoe organizer and matching hamper at Target to organize her collection. The small ones are cuddled together on the back of her bedroom door and the other guys are cuddled together in the large wicker basket in her closet. Stuff 'em in the pockets or squash 'em in the tall basket and she's done. Works for me! (Check out WFMW at Rocks in My Dryer).

Doctor's Office

I picked up Princess from school at noon because she was in another low episode and the nurse detected a strong heart murmur. She has never had a murmur before, so we went to the pedi this afternoon to check it out. During the low episode at school this morning, her heartrate stayed over 100 bpm and was irregular. At the pedi's office, her heartrate was regular, no heart murmur, blood pressure was fine. This very interesting and makes me hope we can get into the electrophysiologist soon.

Early Bird

Princess found this abandoned nest this weekend.

Early Bird

Oh, if you're a bird, be an early bird
And catch the worm for your breakfast plate.
If you're a bird, be an early early bird-
But if you're a worm, sleep late.
by Shel Silverstein

The Challenge Has Begun!

I have begun my Abdominal Bootcamp. If you hear a scream about 5:30 a.m. CST tomorrow, you'll know that it is simply the little Queeny-weenie sitting up in bed.

We did a bit of organizing on Saturday

Remember my pantry, dishes and shelf paper project yesterday? Dixie was underfoot the whole time, so I had to take a picture of Mommy's Little Helper. Isn't she cute?

Princess finally put up her posters! I thought she did a great job. This collection so defines her.

While organizing and cleaning yesterday, we got out the cool weather accessories. Princess found my driving gloves. When she was 4 years old, Princess would put my gloves on her feet and pretend to be a chicken. Thus, I present to you ... Chicken Feet.

Mish Mash of Thoughts

Friday was a very busy day. Pardon my absence. Today King has gone dove hunting and Princess is at her sewing class.

What am I doing? I have a college football game blaring in the background and I am simultaneously: organizing the pantry, unloading the dishwasher, putting shelf paper in my kitchen cabinet shelves, loading the dishwasher and doing laundry.

Then it hit me ... thoughts of you, my dear reader. I thought I'd see what you are doing. Are you having a good weekend? I hope so. I live for the weekends. I purposely schedule restful weekends. As evidenced by my above paragraph, it's not that I do no work, but I at least do work on my schedule. That's so nice.

The past couple of months (maybe three?) there have been many emotional topics that King and I have been working through as a team. These decisions are ones that we made together and are remaking. I can't get specific, but suffice it to say that there are more than two and less than six big decisions that we are making right now. Sometimes we sleep well and sometimes, we wake. He woke up at 1:00 this morning and then came back to bed around 3:00. I woke at 4:00. We are pretty much 100% one in heart in our decisions together, but it's still hard to make emotional decisions. It takes a LOT of time, prayer and wisdom. Wisdom seems to come slowly for us ... especially me.

I don't know why I'm saying all of this except for the fact that what you read here is only a glimpse of what is going on with me. Sometimes there is so much on my heart that I cannot share. And when I sit down to blog, I'm stumped. Yesterday was one of those days. I truly was every busy and barely had time to catch my breath, but I also had a heavy heart and didn't know what to say to you. :) Today I know what to say: Go, Football!! Saturdays filled with college football are just very happy days. :)

Peel A Boiled Egg

Go check out Mom's Crafty Life for a totally new way to peel a boiled egg! After you watch it, come back and tell me if you tried it and if it worked. That video totally cracks me up!

WFMW: Kitchen Organization!

Works For Me Wednesdays is having a Kitchen Organization Theme! Woo-hoo! This is where I display my love of all things iron and curvy. Some things must sit out on the counter, therefore, I choose cute, curvy ironwork to organize my counter clutter!

I present to you, the fruit stand. Love it. Thank you very much, Mr. Costco. This allows my fruit to naturally ripen and reminds me to eat it all while on beautiful display. I would love to have skin as pretty as that peach sitting there. Mmmm, so soft.

Think Paul McCartney's song "Ebony and Ivory" while singing, "Onions and Pep-pers live together in perfect harmony, side by side on my counter, oh lord why don't we?"

If you have an aversion to paper goods, please skip to the next picture. At the palace, the King, Queen and Princess use a fair amount of paper goods for meals. This cute little organizer (Costco again!) makes it all so adorable.

I have this thing about plastic containers. They must be with their own kind, ya know? So, each size gets it's own square footage of the drawer and they "nest". Awwww. Nesting plasticware, so sweet. And organized. :)

Mexican Lasagne

BessedwithGrace hosts a kitchen carnival on Tuesdays. What a great way to get new recipes!

Mexican Lasagne
Serves 12

2 lbs ground beef or ground turkey
1 - 17 oz can whole kernel corn, drained
1 cup salsa
1 - 15 oz can Mexican style diced tomatoes
1 envelope taco seasoning
1 - 16 oz carton cottage cheese
2 eggs
1 tsp oregano
10 corn tortillas
1.5 C. shredded cheddar or monterey jack cheese

Brown meat stirring to crumble. Drain excess fat.
Add corn, salsa tomatoes, and taco seasoning. Simmer 5 minutes.
Combine cottage cheese, eggs, and oregano, mixing thoroughly.
Place 5 tortillas in bottom of lightly greased 13x9x2 casserole, overlapping to fit.
Layer in order listed, 1/2 of meat mixture, cheese mixture, 5 tortillas, and rest of meat mixture. Sprinkle with cheese.
Bake uncovered at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes before serving. Serves 12.

Enjoy!

Morning

Lamentations 3:22-24
"Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him."

Presenting The Sunday Morning Pancake

This gives a whole new meaning to the term "breakfast burrito".