Beating the Heat

The week started out nice with temps hovering around 84 or 85 degrees and nearly no humidity.  However, things quickly changed on Wednesday and got increasingly worse the rest of the week.  Wednesday we hit the low 90's.  Thursday we set a record high with Indy hitting 104 and our little suburb outside of Indy officially hitting 106.  Yesterday we hit 100 with the heat index at 112 around 3pm but within 45 minutes we had a nice storm roll in and it cooled us down slightly.  Within hours though we were back up to the upper 80's and it was humid.  Today we're back up in the 90's and humid again and no relief in sight for the next 10 days.  We're looking at low to mid 90's all next week. Not that I mind terribly other than it causes my air conditioner to run nonstop but gives us a great excuse to stay cool in the pool.

So Wednesday and Thursday we were in the pool at my mom and dad's house most of the afternoon.  The kids love it.  Emi especially.  She's jumping into the 8 ft deep end with her water wings and just zipping all over the pool with those little legs propelling her wherever she wants to go.  We're hoping to have her swimming water wing free by the end of the summer.  It's not easy teaching a deaf child how to swim when your ASL is not up to par and she can't hear you tell her what she needs to be doing.  She's got the kicking down, she's just not getting the hang of moving her arms too.  Eriks is a pretty good swimmer but we need to work on him learning how to tread water for at least 5 minutes.  We also would like him to learn how to dive.

We'll likely be back in the pool tomorrow beating the heat.  Why not?  It's in my parents' backyard and it's free.  Plus the sun is making me a bit more healthy looking by putting some color in my pale purplish skin.  I'm also getting some exercise and working muscles which in turn makes me tired so I'm sleeping better at night.  Can't complain about that.

Enjoy the photos from our time in the pool Thursday.

Three Years Ago

Three years ago today Lane and my mom were on the other side of the world meeting our daughter for the very first time.  From the time we saw her face on March 26th in an email until June 29th, all we had were photos.  Finally, she was safe in Lane's arms.

I still can't believe that she's gone from this:

To this:

She is one of a kind.  Who knew she would blossom into such a bright, funny, energetic, spitfire of a dare devil.  She has no fear.  She has jumped into the pool at my parents house several times without wearing her water wings and could care less if she sinks.  When someone pulls her out, she's laughing hysterically.  Luckily, someone has been in the pool when she's done this.  My guess is she'd jump from the roof of our house if she could.  She's definitely keeping us on our toes!  Crazy kid!

Happy Gotta Day Anniversary!!!

Jāņi in Michigan

This past weekend the family went up to Michigan to spend the weekend with other Latvians celebrating the midsummer holiday known as Jāņi.  Unfortunately for me, I started Friday with a low grade fever and never really recovered for the weekend so it was very little partying for me and a lot more sitting on my parents deck chilling.

Eriks had to be there for a regional dance practice for the Latvian Song and Dance Festival being held in Milwaukee this year.  It will the first time ever he does Latvian folk dancing in a major performance. He's super excited but doesn't know we're going to be there to watch him dance.  It is not an inexpensive trip and originally we arranged it so that he goes with my parents and sister.  After the guilt took over and kept eating at me, I told Lane that we could not miss the opportunity to see our son dance in his first ever major performance.  So we found a way to come up with a hotel stay for one night so that we could watch him perform.  The life of a student stinks.  Money is tight and I'm hoping the next 2 yrs of school fly by so that we don't have to worry about it so much.  Originally we were going to surprise Eriks, but I think we're going to tell him this week that we will be there to see him dance and that he'll still have time with his grandparents without us.

The weather this weekend was gorgeous.  The kids got some time on the boat and on the lake Saturday.  Emi went tubing for the first time ever this weekend and loved it.  She didn't want it to end and was disappointed when her time tubing was up.  Eriks on the other hand wants to go so badly but then when my dad starts increasing the speed on the boat he freaks out.  My guess it's an Asperger's thing for him.  Which is so weird because the first time he went on my uncle's boat at about age 4, he loved the speed and didn't mind it at all.  But as the years have gone on, he doesn't want to go fast and has this fear even though he's wearing a life vest and is a decent swimmer.

I'm thinking about going up by myself on Saturday and hanging out with my sister and parents for 1 night to get a bit of a reprieve.  I have been with my kids non-stop since they got out of school and although I love them, I need a break.  Well, almost non-stop.  I got a bit of a break last week when they spent the night at my parents' house because I had to get up at 5 am to drive to Columbus for a cardiac CT scan and a doctors appointment.  I don't think that really counts because we didn't have a choice.  I won't know the results of the CT scan for a few weeks.  My cardiologist said he was just getting some of the images back when I had my appointment with him and it will take a few weeks to get a good look at them and get results.  The only thing I wasn't warned about was the fact that they would put in an IV so they could push some contrast.  It hurt and I didn't like it.

It's going to get hot here later this week.  They're saying possible temps over 100.  It's been very dry here in the Indy burbs as well.  We've had maybe .100 of an inch of rain the entire month.  Maybe a little more.  We've had a bunch of brush fires in the area as well.  Our water bill is going to be sky high trying to keep our grass from looking completely terrible and keeping our flowers and garden happy.  So please beg Mother Nature to push some rain our way.  We really, really need it.  So we'll probably be in the pool trying to beat the heat.

Always Backup Your Hard Drive

I'm learning the hard way that it's important to back up your computer every so many months so that if something happens, you're not up a creek.  After 5 years, my laptop's hard drive decided to stop working.  We're still trying to see if we can get the info off of old drive.  But everything that was on my laptop is now gone.  Poof, disappeared.  We had to replace the drive so I have a new one.  A month ago, I did back up all the photos I had on my laptop.  So thankfully, thousands of photos were saved.  However, all my documents and saved files were not.  There are only a few things that I'm pretty upset about if we can't retrieve them and they are some papers I wrote a few years ago in a college history course I took that got huge praise from the professor that graded my assignments and exams.  The other thing I'm sad about losing is I was keeping a written record of all the books I've read.  It's one of my interesting quirks.  I'm doing it because I'd like to see how many books I can read from here until the end of my life and so that I don't re-read something I don't want to.  There have been a few times where I've purchased a book thinking I've never read it only to get about 50 pages in and remember everything about it.  There were about 250 books on that list thus far and I have no idea how many I'm going to remember reading.  I know I can rebuild much of the list since I've enjoyed lots of books by the same author and some of them are a series like Harry Potter and the Twilight series.  I'm waiting to rebuild the list until I know for certain that it will not be able to be recovered.  I've lost all my bookmarked web pages, scrapbook and stamping project ideas that I found on the web.  I was totally sick to my stomach when it happened.  I turned on my computer and it wouldn't go to the desktop page.  It wouldn't do anything.  But like I said, I'm so thankful I made the decision to back up my photos and they were all saved.  I would have been so very sick if I had lost all those.

In other news, we're setting up for another hot and dry summer.  We thought we were going to get slammed today with a nice line of storms that was sitting over in Illinois.  The line of storms dissipated and we didn't get a drop.  The weather man says we're supposed to get some scattered storms today but I'm not holding my breath.  We haven't had rain in nearly 2 weeks here.  There has been no traceable amount of rain here in our little suburb outside of Indy at all this month.  We're watering the backyard as I type this.

I have a few photos of the kids that I'd like to share later this week.  I just replaced the hard drive of my computer a few days ago so I haven't had time to upload any photos.  So look for them in a few days.  I just wanted to explain my absence.  My computer died about 10 days ago and it took a week of trying to mess with it to see if we could get it back up and running before we decided to replace the hard drive and buy something in hopes of getting the info off of it.

Where Did the Time Go? 4 Month Rewind

I know, I know, I know.  I'm sure no one thought I was coming back to the world of blogging after being gone nearly 4 months.  Well, it wasn't completely by choice.  Yes, I will admit that I had grown bored of blogging.  It was getting mundane and I had lost the spark to take photos and write.  A few people asked me if I was ever going to blog again.  My dad reminded me several times that I hadn't blogged in a long time.  I guess the time had come to get back into blogging.

I also was very sick this winter and spring.  If you remember in my last post way back when, I had just been diagnosed with pneumonia and it took me a very long time to get over it.  Typically it takes about 3 weeks to get over pneumonia.  Add in my complex heart history and it easily took me about 5 weeks.  I was finally feeling more like myself by the end of April.  My allergies are killing me now though.  I never had any problems for the first 21 years of my life living here in Indy.  Since moving back, it's been a whole other story and this spring especially has been brutal.  Lane's suffering more than he'd like this spring as well.  Most days he's OK, but when the allergies hit, they are really really bad.  Today is one of those days.

So here are the highlights of the past few months.

- Spring break was not all that exciting.  Neither child had it at the same time.  They don't have spring break at the same time next year either but I think Emi will be taking 2 weeks so that we can go somewhere.  Probably Florida.  Hopefully the weather down there will be fantastic.

- In April Eriks received his First Holy Communion.  It's hard to believe how quickly he is growing and changing.  The weather that day was horrible.  Rainy and cold.  Definitely not the weather I was expecting at the end of April.  Even though the weather was horrible, the day was so special and Eriks was surrounded by both sets of grandparents, his godparents and most of his aunts and uncles as well as almost all of his cousins.  One of my nieces was ill so she and her dad were unable to make it.

- Eriks finished his first year at Lumen Christi school and his first year of Latvian School.  He seemed to enjoy both but my guess is he's glad to have a break from both for awhile.  He has a very good year at Lumen Christi.  The smaller size class was a huge help for him as he benefitted from more one on one time with his teachers.  Latvian School was a little rough.  More so because he didn't know what to expect and it was a whole new world for him.  He caught on fairly quickly though and in my opinion did better than I thought he would his first year.  I only say that because it's hard to do something you've never done before.  Next year will go much better for him and my guess is he'll have different teachers that know him.

- Lane ran his 1st mini-marathon at the beginning of May.  He ran 13.1 miles in just over 2:01.  He was happy with his time but really would've liked to have finished it in under 2 hrs.  If he decides to run it again next year he'll work hard to do that.  He didn't train as much as he wanted to but was happy with his time.  His brother finished 17 minutes behind him.  He'll never finish it as fast as the Africans do.  I think the winner for the men's finished in just over 1 hr but was disappointed in his time because he said if it wasn't so humid, he would've finished in under an hour.  They were running about 5 minute miles. Sick.

- We attended 2 weddings in May.  One was on the 19th and the other was a week later on the 26th.  We had fun at both.  We have at least one more wedding that we know of to attend this year over Labor Day weekend.  This has been the busiest year for us for attending weddings in quite some time.

- Finally, I turned 37 last week.  Never thought I'd make it this long.  I wasn't even sure I'd make 20.  Now I'm very happily pushing 40.  It was a good birthday.  Nice and low key.  I totally expect the opposite for my 40th in 3 years.

One more small note.  I have always had a passion for photography.  For at least the past 5 years now, I have been talking about a career as a photographer.  Well, I am getting much more serious about it.  If you are friends with me on FB you have seen my photos.  I've shown off a lot here as well.  Anyhow, I'm trying to get my foot in the door now as a photographer.  I'm hoping in the next month or so, I'll have a website up and running in hopes of finding jobs.  I in no way see myself as a professional yet.  I'm still learning and have a lot to learn.  But several people have asked me recently upon seeing my photos if I've made it a profession yet.  Sadly the answer is no.  With that being said, if they think my work is good, why not give it a shot.  You never know what will happen if you don't try, right?

So here are some photos of activities over the past few months since I've been away.

Blog Neglect

I apologize to those of you who have been checking my blog for updates.  This crazy up and down weather has been wreaking havoc on my body.  One day it's 30 degrees and snowing, the next it's nearly 70 degrees and sunny.  The up and down craziness proved just how bad it was for my body when I ended up with a diagnosis of pneumonia a few days ago.  The doctor wanted to put me in the hospital and I said that I already spend enough time in hospitals because of my heart condition so no thank you.  I did promise to stay on fairly strict bed rest for the majority of my time on antibiotics.  So for the past 4 days, I have only gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom, shower and eat dinner.  The rest of the time I have been resting my body and lungs.  I'm beginning to feel better.  I'm getting more air into my lungs and the antibiotics are breaking up the pneumonia that is causing me to cough up the gunk that's in there.

Not much has happened over the past few months.  We had the Super Bowl come to town and Emi turned 4 last month.  All things I'd really like to blog about sometime in the upcoming week.  I wish we had more going on but Lane is consumed with school and I'm consumed with everyday life.  Boring. Boring. Boring.

Just wanted to pop in and say, 'hello'.  Be back soon.

When You Need a Laugh...

I know I've said it somewhere before but Emi is definitely the comedian in the family.  She will do anything to make you smile and get a laugh.  Well almost.  Her temper tantrums certainly don't make us smile but thankfully they only happen a few times a week and are mostly tolerable.

Two days after Christmas we got the snow I've been praying begging for since the beginning of December.  It would've been much nicer to have it on Christmas Day, but I took the 2-3 inches that fell anyway.  We spent the better part of the morning in PJ's that day.  The week before Christmas had been a flurry of activity and starting on the 26th, I wanted to spend a few days being a bum.

I was sitting on my bed doing some after Christmas research on my laptop when Emi ran in and started her antics.  She was super excited about something.  I asked her a question and she responded with, "I don't know!'  Lane was here too as he had followed her up.  That was the first time we had heard her make a coherent sentence like that.  I was floored.  Most of her responses have still been via ASL and 1 or 2 word utterances.  But clear as a bell it came out.  She said it a few times more and so the i.Phone came out and the video started rolling.  Her gestures with her response told me that she understood.  Lane and I spent the next few minutes giggling with delight.  She found something to make us laugh and kept on rolling with it.

Enjoy seeing it for yourself!

New Year's Resolutions

I used to make them when I was in my teens and early 20's and then I stopped somewhere around the time Eriks was born and they always get broken anyhow. What was the point of I didn't stick to them?

I'm not making any this year either.  However, I am making goals for myself this year and am going to do what I can to stick to them.  As outgoing as I am, I have very little self-confidence in accomplishing things.  I get frustrated and give up.  Then I get ticked at myself for getting both frustrated and giving up.  Not a very healthy relationship with myself in that sense.

My cardiologist has a stress test scheduled for me in just over 2 months.  I have never done one and I'm EXTREMELY nervous about it.  I don't exercise and I'm about 30-40 lbs overweight.  I carry my weight well but my pants size is about 6 sizes bigger than I want it to be.  So one of my goals starting next week is that I'm going to spend 20 minutes exercising 3 times a week and making healthier food choices.  Part of my issue is I tend to skip breakfast because I'm not a breakfast eater.  I hate eggs and often eggs/egg whites is what people who eat healthy have for breakfast.  I can't stand the texture, the taste or the smell.  So I've got to look at other filling options.  I'd like to be at least 10-15 lbs lighter in 2 months and be able to handle the stress test better.  I also think that if I blog about it, it makes me accountable.  So expect to be hearing about it here.

Another goal is patience.  Especially with my children.  A horrible quirk of mine is that I have pretty bad OCD issues on certain things.  I am meticulous about where things sit or are.  When my kids move things on end tables or wherever they are, I flip about them not being where I put them.  Lane gets to deal with this too.  More often if he puts something back on the wrong place and I go to find it and it's not there.  I hate disorder.  This stems from the the fact that so much in my life has not been in my control - my health, my husband's military job...that I've taken other things to the extreme.  I got better for awhile.  I used to clean house at 10 pm and it drove Lane crazy.  So much so that he'd take stuff out of my hands and tell me enough.  I haven't gone back to scrubbing the bathroom and toilets late at night but I'm definitely doing other things instead of unwinding.  I lose it when stuff isn't in its proper place.  So I'm going to work on not doing that.

My last goal (because I think 3 is enough) is to find a love of something.  I don't do anything for myself.  It's all about taking care of my family.  I need to get myself out of the house at least once a week and do something for myself.  Pottery, painting, photography...something.  I think if I did more for myself, I'd be a better wife and mother.  I wouldn't resent all the other things I do as a wife and mom if I did something that makes me happy.  Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be looking for something that gets me time for myself and makes me happy.

So do any of my readers have an goals or resolutions they'd like to share?

Christmas

We spent both Christmas Eve and part of Christmas Day at my parents' house.  We went to Mass with my mom and sister while my dad went to his church service where he attends church.  Afterwards we headed over for heavy appetizers, games and just spending time with the family.  We had a good time and the kids got to open a gift that my great-aunt sent over to them since she and her family decided not to spend Christmas Eve with our family this year.  We were able to get some very good photos of the kids together.  Last year and the year before it wasn't such a great experience but as they're getting older, they seem to be getting a little more cooperative.  My parents were very pleased with the outcome of the photos.  Maybe this spring we'll try to get some good outdoor shots of the 3 grandkids together.

Christmas morning the kids thankfully not up at the crack of dawn.  They got up at 8 am and I got up 30 minutes later.  I was up until around 1 stuffing stockings and required a few more minutes of sleep.  It took several hours to get through our gifts.  The kids took time to look at their gifts and we also opened gifts from Lane's parents and Lane's sister's family that she had sent for the kids.  The kids enjoyed their gifts but have yet to play with some of them.  We didn't get them that much but they got a lot from everyone else.  Eriks still has boxes that haven't been opened yet.  Much of Em's stuff was put away because it was stuff we asked for that went with other stuff she already had (ie more stuff for her American.Girl Bitty.Baby doll, furniture for her Loving.Family dollhouse, etc).

Lane did well this year when it came to getting me gifts even though I yelled at him for procrastinating.  I procrastinated a bit this year too which I never do and I regretted it.  It will not happen again.  I'm just going to start picking up stuff on clearance for all the kids I know if I think they'll like it through the year and stash it away.  I was miserable and completely exhausted by Christmas Eve and although as I said it was relaxing, I didn't enjoy it as much if I hadn't been out running errands earlier that day trying to finish up.  So back to the 2 really cool gifts he got me.  He and I are going to go see Shen.Yun the Chinese Performing Arts show.  I have friends who have seen it and say that the majority of the show is beautiful but there is one very controversial part that they wish was not included.  I still want to see it for myself.  We are also seeing Ron.White perform too.  We are huge comedy junkies.  We love it, especially good comedians.  Unfortunately with kids and the fact that it can be expensive, we don't do it as often as we'd like.  Granted we could go to our local comedy club and see stand-up instead of the big name comics.  Both performances occur during Lane's spring break in March so we'll have a busy week.

Christmas Day afternoon we headed back to my parents' house for dinner and opening gifts from my parents and siblings.  My mom and dad are so generous and honestly should've not gotten everything they did.  I got a bunch of the Rachael.Ray stuff I wanted since some of my cookware is starting to become unusable as I've worn it thin.  I actually had to throw away a beloved non-stick pan a few months ago.  I also got my badly wanted blue Colts sweatshirt.  The kids got more stuff than they know what to do with.  The dinner was fabulous as always.  I was blessed with a mother who is a fantastic cook and has done a very good job teaching me.  For dinner we had beef tenderloin, hassleback potatoes, Caesar salad with homemade dressing, roasted asparagus and rolls.  I was stuffed but managed to eat a piece of to-die-for Red Velvet cheesecake.

It was a very good Christmas this year.  Albeit a little weird since this is the first time we spent it with family without having to travel more than 8 hours to spend it with them.  One of these days we would like to get back to San Antonio to spend Christmas with Lane's parents but driving is not an option as with my health I don't do well in cars for long periods of time anymore (edema aka swelling in my legs and very poor circulation) and Emi hates being strapped in a car seat for more than 3 or 4 hours.  Currently the drive between here and there where they live is about 20 hrs.  While Lane is in law school, we just can't afford to put 4 people on a plane.  I'm hoping that the year he graduates we'll be able to do it because I fell bad that we can't do it anytime soon and I'd like to visit with family and friends down that way.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah depending on which you celebrate!  I still can't believe it's 2012!

Latvian School Play

It's that time of year and I've had no time to blog.  Please accept my sincere apology.  Over the next couple days, I am going to work on catching up on the events of the past few weeks and I am going to work hard in the new year to blog more.

So nearly 2 weeks ago Eriks had his last day of Latvian school before Christmas break.  Latvian school is once a week.  In the fall and spring it takes place on Friday nights and during the winter it's on Saturdays. In the younger grades the kids learn Latvian songs, Latvian folk dances, reading, writing and grammar.  When Eriks is older, he will learn Latvian history and geography.  I am a Latvian school graduate and although I hated the homework and giving up my Saturdays as a kids, I am very thankful I had that kind of opportunity to learn about the country my family came from.

On the last day of Latvian school the students put on a Latvian Christmas play.  As a kid the majority of the time they include animals, elves, evergreen trees...typical Christmas stuff.  Eriks was an elf this year in the play.  He had one line to deliver and did it with style.  The kids also sang some Latvian Christmas songs and did some dancing.  It was very cute and we enjoyed it.  After the play Santa made a visit to the kids and gave them presents.

 My little goofball!

 Christmas music being played on traditional Latvian instruments.  

 My niece L was a rabbit in the play.

 My other two school age nieces B and A were also elves like Eriks.  B is standing right next 

to Eriks and A is in a dress that matches her sisters (second from left).

This is the photo I took of the kids and used for our Christmas cards this year.