The Nelson Narrative

Today is my birthday.  I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm 44.  I realized yesterday that I am now no longer in my early 40s but have moved into my mid 40s.  Yikes.  That seems SO old! Anyway, Paul's parents babysat last night so we could go to dinner.  We went to Wild Ginger for happy hour and had yummy satay and spring rolls and awesome pomegranate cosmos. After dinner we went to Crate and Barrel because I have some gift cards but ended up not buying anything.  Then we went home and had cake.  Tonight Paul is going to make me cannelloni. MID 40s.  Ugh...

First of all, our computer is down so I'm blogging from my phone today.  My mom suffered a stroke on January 2nd and spent two weeks at Harborview in Seattle.  Last Wednesday she was finally moved to a care facility in Mount Vernon, where most of the family live.  Now that she's further away we hadn't seen her since Tuesday so since Paul had yesterday off we went up to see her. We got up there at noon so we took the girls to Red Robin for lunch, then visited mom.  My sister-in-law and niece were there, too, so we got to see them and also a family friend. Since we were going to be up there we also arranged to go to the Children's Museum with my niece (the sister of the first one) and her two kids, the girls' 2nd cousins.  We don't get to see them that often so it's always fun to get together when we can.  My best friend and her son joined us also so it was great to see them, too. After the museum we stopped for frozen yogurt.  This place was really ...

The girls got gymnastics lessons from Paul's parents for Christmas and yesterday was their first class.  They loved it and had big smiles on their faces the whole time.  It was really cute.  Their friend is in the class right before theirs so they will get to see her every week, too. They're the ones on the far left and far right.  Not quite sure how to get their legs up there... In other news, I just got home from dropping them off with Grandma and Grandpa (we met at a restaurant half way between) for the weekend!  Two nights to ourselves plus the game Sunday morning...it's going to be great.  We have some movie passes to use, so we're going to a movie tomorrow and otherwise we're just going to work on things around the house.  We are trying to refinance and have an appraiser coming on Monday so we need to spruce the place up and just do some things we've been meaning to do anyway. Sunday the Seahawks are playing at 10:00 so we're g...

So, I've been periodically documenting my pregnancy, five years later, as the anniversaries of certain highlights occur, since I was not yet blogging at the time.  It was around this time 5 years ago that I started working reduced hours.  A few months before I got pregnant, I had started having pain in my hip (I forget which one).  As my pregnancy progressed it got worse and worse, to the point where by this time 5 years ago I could not stand still for 5 seconds without being in agony.  I was ok walking and sitting, but standing still was excrutiating.  It was still really bad after they were born so I went to a chiropractor only 5 days after their birth, could finally have x-rays, and it turned out that one hip was like 5mm higher than the other. Anyway, we were still living with our friend while our house was being built, and I was working from 7:30 to 12:30.  I would get home between 1:30 and 2:00 and lay down on our bed and watch a Baby Story fro...

Last night was the first New Year's Eve that we left the house since before the girls we born.  I friend down the street had a kid-friendly party and we all had a great time.  The kids all played upstairs while the grown-ups ate and drank downstairs.  The guys had beer and whiskey and us girls had martinis.  Just before 9:00, we called the kids downstairs to watch the ball drop in NYC and we had lots of noisemakers and silly string for them to have fun with.  Right after "midnight" they all got to work cleaning up the mess.  It was pretty awesome to see all the little kids with brooms and vacuums in hand cleaning up all the confetti and silly string while us grown-ups sat back and nursed our drinks! Anyway, we left around 10:00 and put the girls to bed then watched the ball drop again at the real midnight.  At least I did.  Paul, like usual, fell asleep before it happened. Now it's 10:00 AM and the girls are still asleep.  ...