Small Animals and Not so Small Animals 2010

Aww! Small animals! We love where we live! So much to see and do, well that is if you can find out about it before it happens rather than read about it after it's over. Advertising is lacking out here...

Fortunately or unfortunately, I spend a fair amount of time researching fun activities like this to do. We've been the last couple years and have thoroughly enjoyed it. One of the highlights is that you get to ride a bus and visit the nearby poultry farm and horse farm, on your way there you drive by the beef and dairy cattle farms, which are actually closer to my house than the pavilion where you load on the bus. But the kids and I love it just the same. It's even more fun when Daddy can come!

Here is my sweet Eric holding a baby duckling. They are so cute, definitely my favorite!Brooklyn and Sadie petting a baby chick! They had baby chicks, turkeys, quails, ducks, all available to hold. The girls absolutely loved it! One of the turkeys I was holding was so tired as soon as you held it still in your hand it would fall asleep. I didn't want to put it down just to let it have a little rest. Poor little babies were so tired from all the picking up and holding going on that day.

A dairy cow a not so small animal. Cows to sit on, cows to milk, what more could a kid want?

This little piggy went to small animals day, and squealed the whole time he was away from home! Quite the noisy little porkers! But still fun to pet.
Go Babe! I mean, oh wait, that's a real sheep dog herding sheep. Babe hasn't quite learned the ropes yet. It was fun to see the dog in action and the sheep respond.
Baby lamb! So soft. I just love the spring and all the new life that comes with it.

Spring Break in a Nutshell

Brief update from the Hogan household. We're alive and well. It's been so long since I last posted, what to catch you up on...we'll start with Spring Break.

Spring Break 2010: A Trip to Chicago!

Sadie enjoying her bread at dinner.

Brooklyn eating only the "soft part" of the bread. She doesn't care for the crust and will leave piles of crust carcasses on her plate, as shown below.

Sadie and her chocolate dipped and sprinkled marshmallows. She's my sugar baby!
On the ferris wheel on Navy Pier. Such a fun place. I still haven't heard the end of the time we forgot to ride a ferris wheel. I think I'll be trying to make it up to Brooklyn the rest of her life.

Look! I'm a turtle! The awesome Children's museum on Navy Pier. I highly recommend it to any parent visiting the Chicago area! So much fun. Something for every little kid.

Sadie and her catch of the day.

Brooklyn walking through the pipe headed toward the water room at the museum.

Here Brooklyn and I are atop the Willis Tower (formerly called the Sears Tower) 103 stories up sitting in the glass lookout. It's quite an experience to be 103 stories up and be able to look straight down to the sidewalk below.

Such a fun trip. We spent most all of our time at museums. We visited the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, Children's museum, a Hershey store, double decker bus tour, went to a mirror maze and freaked out the kids probably the "broken elevator" starting out the maze was the problem...and so much more! I think next time I want to do all the museums, I'm going to go in the winter time and avoid all the lines. The lines to get into the museums just to buy tickets were ridiculous! We waited an hour outside the Shedd aquarium just to get into the building to purchase tickets! If you go, buy tickets ahead of time and skip the lines!

I think the thing that made me laugh the hardest was that our hotel happened to be right across the street from a fire station. Needless to say we heard a fair amount of sirens and each time the girls would run to the window to see it before it disappeared into the city. The first couple nights were interesting trying to get kids to settle down and tucked in and then off goes another siren, back to square one.

A good trip, a good time. Chicago is a fun city!

R.I.C.E. The recipe for recovery success

After struggling with knee pain for the last year or so I couldn't take it any longer and had knee surgery on Feb. 23. I started training for a half marathon about this time last year. When I first started running I felt great! No pain in my knee for the first time in a long time. Then I went to a running clinic to improve my form and instead of improving it seemed to cause more problems than good. I started to have pain in my foot which I have never had before and then my knee pain started. I continued to train as the pain was only prevalent when I was running. But as the mileage increased and the pain lasted days after a long run, then progressed to pain all the time.

It was time to do something. I had x-rays done which showed nothing other than some arthritis was developing. I continued to finish my training as the half was fast approaching. The week before the half marathon I had so much pain in my knee I could hardly walk. The worst part of all of that was I was in San Francisco walking everywhere and supporting my dad in his swim from Alcatraz! At the finish of the swim, I ended up standing in the ocean to get the best pics and soaked my only pair of shoes. Not wanting to just wear flippity's (flip flops as they are called at my house) with no support with my knee pain as I walked back to the hotel I saw a shoe store and decided that I needed a new pair of shoes. I went in, saw a pink pair I thought looked nice, told them my size and attempted to try them on. I really didn't try them on long. Here's why, not wanting to make a nuisance of myself that my feet were soaked and I was leaving puddles just standing there, as I slipped off my soaked shoe I left a good portion of the beach there on the floor. Not wanting to add to much sand to the new shoes I slipped it on with my wet foot, noticed my toes didn't rub the end and said I'd take them. I bought a new pair of dry socks to go with them. Bam! Less than 10 minutes in and out with a new pair of shoes. My knee began to feel a little better with the new shoes.

I questioned whether or not I should even run the half the pain was so intense. But I had trained so hard and had traveled across the country! With the new shoes the pain lessened and I decided to do the half and did them in those pink shoes. Ever since the half I have had constant knee pain and I haven't run since the half. I came home had a MRI which showed I had tendinosis of the patella retinaculum and decided it was time to try physical therapy. The first time I went to PT it seemed to make my knee pain a lot worse and they gave up and threw in the towel.

My next step was to visit an orthopedic doctor. He palpated my knee and thought I might have a plica. He wanted me to give PT another go and see if it made any difference and follow up with him in a month. The second round of PT was much better than the first, I tried a different location but I still had a constant ache in my knee and was not able to exercise. At my follow-up appointment it was decided that arthroscopic surgery was the way to go and I scheduled it that day.

The surgery went well. They examined the integrity of all my ligaments and menisci were examined. There was no sign of arthritis, the plica which Doc said was huge and inflamed was removed. My PCL, the stability ligament in my knee is loose from an injury about 10 years ago when it was partially torn, but it is stable. No further surgery is required to repair it. Hooray! I came home with crutches but never used them.

Brooklyn was very concerned about crutches. She had told me that if I came home with crutches she would cry and run and hide. She also said she'd rather that I be in a wheelchair than to have crutches. Eric helped me in the house after surgery then went back out to the car to get the other things and brought in the crutches. As soon as Brooklyn saw them her heart sank and she clouded over and covered herself up with a blanket. I had the bright idea to let her decorate them with stickers. One crutch for each girl out came the stickers and I have the fanciest crutches ever.

Recovery has gone well with lots of rest. Thank goodness my mom could come to town and run the fort. The only hiccup was I had some calf pain that I thought was probably just muscular stiffness from walking funny and a couple extreme charlie horses, but decided it best with my family history of blood clots to get it checked out. After a trip to the ER and a Doppler ultrasound no blood clots were found. Now a week and a half post-op, stitches has been removed. I can now shower without wrapping my knee in saran-wrap to prevent infection in the knee joint. I'm almost walking normally. I still have some swelling and pain but overall it hasn't been near as bad as when I tore my PCL 10 years ago. Lots of rest, ice, and elevation for me. The doctor and I are confident that the plica is the culprit of my knee pain. Now we'll just have to give it some time to heal and test it out on the roads.

Talk of a 2 1/2 year old

Sadie dips her 5 fingers into some spilled flour on the counter and proudly comes over to show it to me. I could tell she was contemplating on licking her fingers. I told her flour doesn't taste good all by itself. But she says "I like flour!" and promptly sticks her finger in her mouth and licks it off, immediately followed by her spitting it out. To which she replies "maybe I don't like flour."

One word both girls have picked up is the word privacy. I laugh every time Sadie attempts to go potty, because if you are in there with her she will always tell you that she needs her privacy and that you need to go out. Knowing Sadie, giving her her requested privacy and leaving her alone in the bathroom is a bad idea. She still asks anyway.

Sadie and I were discussing why we use worms to fish with. She began talking that worms eat scrambled eggs, and then says, "no, worms don't eat scrambled eggs!" I asked her if they eat dirt and Sadie replies with "worms crawl in the dirt!" She's one smart little girl!

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year we headed home for the holidays. The girls are always so excited to go to Grandma's house! At last the day had come.

So I'm totally having technical difficulties and it's too late at night to even think about trying to fix them. You are just going to have to guess which picture goes with which caption because they are not even going to be close!

Here are the girls sitting on the plane by themselves across the aisle from mom. Thankfully it was a

short flight!

Sadie has been drawing happy ghosts. Here is one of her very first ones. Brooklyn also is showing off her ghost with the purple marker.

Sadie LOVES whip cream! I think that is all she had for Thanksgiving dinner!

Grandpa introduced the girls to "pumpkin rolling." He'd saved a couple pumpkins from Halloween that had been frozen and started to become a little mushy for the girls to roll down the driveway. Sadie would set it down and give it a big kick. Half of the fun was running down to find it in the bushes and to carry it back up and start all over again! The game evolved into "hide and seek" with the pumpkins being hidden by Grandpa, and then of course grandpa had to find the girls!

Brooklyn, Toby, and I took a hike up on the mountains behind my parents house. I've always loved it up in the hills. It was fun to take my little girl on the hikes that I always took as a little girl and share that with her. We made it up to the "cave" and an old indian burial ground. Toby had a great time too.