I was happily working on one of my quilts on Friday afternoon when all of a sudden I had a needle stuck in my fingernail.   I truly have no idea how it happened - it happened in a millisecond.  

I looked at my impaled finger in disbelief and then said 'Oh Shit!' in a rather calm voice.  There was a guy in our house installing some new cabinets and I really didn't want to freak out in front of a total stranger.  I pulled out the needle and could have sworn the tip was still attached.  There was string coming out of my nail and it wouldn't budge! I actually had to cut myself loose from the machine! 

I then ran outside to call my husband and totally broke down.  He said he had to do a couple things and then would be home.  "It's going to be fine, put some ice on it," he said, thinking I was just over reacting.  My hands were shaking, my arms felt all tingly and cramped up as I was in a bit of shock.  I called my doctor and drove myself to the office (just a minute away) only to have her tell me it was pretty serious and I needed to go to the ER.  I drove home just in time to meet my husband there.  

My finger was throbbing and I could feel that something was in there, but I just thought it was the thread.  The kids were going to be coming home in about an hour so I made arrangements with my neighbor to watch them, thankfully.  The ER was not busy at 2:30 Friday afternoon, so I got in pretty quickly.  They x-rayed my hand, and the expression of the PA and my husband looking at it in the hallway suggested the situation was not great.  It's never good to see a grimace on a medical professional when viewing an x-ray!

As it turned out, the tip of the needle broke off in my finger.  I measured later and it was about 1/4 inch long!!  Thankfully it didn't hit or damage my bone at all.  But, they had to pull off my nail (the shots for numbing my finger were the worst!) then pull out the needle which did a fair amount of damage to my nail bed.  

I visited a plastic surgeon on Monday to look at the nail bed (not really how I thought I might ever be visiting a plastic surgeon . . .).  He said if I hadn't visited him my nail definitely would not have grown back!  I had no idea it was so bad!  He put a little piece of metal like tin foil under my cuticle and stitched it in place.  It will prevent my cuticle from healing so my nail can grow back.  If the cuticle heals, the nail would never be able to grow back!  It looks pretty wild and he'll take it off after 2 weeks or so.  

Of course my husband was going out of town this week so my Mom came to help me, which turned out to be something I really needed.  I can't really use my hand for anything substantial because it pulls on the stitches.  What a pain!!  So, I've been hanging with my laundry fairy/chef all week. 

The positives of this whole situation is that I'm right handed and it happened to my left hand, it didn't happen to my kids, and I now know a lot about fingernail injuries and nailbeds.  It is so annoying and I just can't believe I sewed my finger.  I guess I've just got another interesting story to tell, kind of like the time I stabbed myself in the leg with grass clippers when I was 8 or the time I severely sprained my ankle on a stupid pinecone!!  

If you never make any mistakes it means you've never tried anything new, right?  

I love my minivan.  Love.  It.  For many reasons which you can read here.  And, three years later I still feel exactly the same.  My Odyssey is about to round 100,000 miles, and I've been thinking about upgrading to a newer version in the next year or two.  Until I saw the VW Microbus.

I. Love.  It.  So.  Much.  I've long loved the VW Beetle, which is perhaps the least practical family vehicle next to a smart car.  But not this beautiful little VW bus!  It is surely a family car, despite it's long running association with hippies, pot smokers, surfers and Scooby Do over the years.  I see myself loading up the kids, and looking awesome as I drive down the main drag of suburbia.  People would look and think someone really cool was driving that car.  Not some tired, carpooling, chauffeuring, PTO Mom jamming out to One Direction.  And should I ever drive it sans kids, people would not make automatic assumptions as is inevitable when a woman is driving a mini van solo.  "Oh, look at that Mom in that minivan.  She must be going to the grocery store or to pick up her kids".  

Oh no, this car could change the face of Moms and families everywhere. We could be cool. People would look past the tired eyes, yoga pants, snot-filled shirts, and know that underneath all that we are just regular people trying our best to not entirely lose ourselves to our kids.  We would no longer have to justify why we have the car we have, or continually explain why our car is just as awesome as anyone else's ride. 

I love the rounded hubcaps and it's cartoon-ish, happy appearance.  I love the retro green color.  I love it's sleek cuteness, and it's tiny wheels.  I love that I could put a surfboard on top for added awesomeness, even though I don't surf.  I love that it appears roomy enough for all three of my kids and the dog.  I would even trade the automatic sliding doors in the swagger wagon (possibly the best feature of the min-van) for this little beauty.  You can read and see more pics here.  

I would buy this car tomorrow if I could, but unfortunately I can't seem to find any reliable info that it's actually on the market at this time.  Oh, the sadness!  It's seems there are many rumors, and I will continue to monitor if this becomes a reality.  Oh, please, please, Volkswagon, make this car!  If you do it right, it will fly off the showroom floors.  Just be sure to include a DVD player so I can turn my kids off and enjoy the feeling of freedom and happiness while still being the responsible, tired, chauffeuring Mom I am.  

This is such an easy valentine dinner for your kids!  I made regular ol' meatloaf, and shaped it into little individual loafs a heart using a heart shaped cookie cutter.  I used a ketchup bottle like this one to write the messages on the plate.  

Just use your favorite meatloaf recipe, add your favorite sides and you've got a fun Valentine dinner for your family.  Find some old leftover V-day stickers, etc. and decorate your table for a special dinner in!  Who wants to pay for all the overpriced dinners restaurants serve on Valentine's Day?  Not me!

I've always wanted to learn how to quilt, and it always seemed so out of reach, something only old ladies did.  Boy, was I wrong!  Until a couple years ago, I didn't even have a sewing machine.  I kept telling myself I'll do it later when I have more time or when the all the kids are in school or when I'm not so busy.  And one day I realized that I'll long be dead before my life calms down at all.  So, a few years ago my Mom bought me a simple sewing machine for Christmas.  I re-learned to sew, and made skirts and pajama pants for the kids.  But, wanting to learn to quilt was always lingering in my mind.  

I decided there was no good reason to put it off any more.  So, I took a couple classes, did some reading, went to a quilt show, bought a pattern and even made the quilt top.  But, then it was time to actually put the batting & backing on and quilt it.  It seemed too intimidating, so I decided to make a small sample quilt that I could practice on.  I gathered a bunch of fabric, and made a little doll's quilt, and quilted and bound it with the help of many youtube videos.  And, WOW!  What a trainwreck!  I made every mistake possible, and it was so bad that I almost gave up and threw it away.  I also realized my sewing machine was not capable of quilting, so I went out and bought a decent machine, and what a difference that made!!  So, I pushed through and finished it anyway.  And, I gave it to my daughter for her AG doll, and she loves it!  I must admit the colors look pretty good, and from far away you can't really tell how bad it is :-)  But, I learned a TON, and then I decided to finish the one I started like a year ago.  And, I made a decent amount of mistakes, but it's a million times better and is functional.  I gave that one to my youngest daughter, and she loves it too!  

I love being able to make something special and functional for people I care about!  I love picking out fabric and patterns and thinking about who will be using it.  I'm currently working on another one, which is proving to be a little more difficult and time consuming because of all the pieces, but I hope it will turn out well.  I think I'll add a tab to share all of my crafting things.  

Here is my first official quilt - the doll quilt.  I totally messed up the corners and many other things, but Saige the AG doll doesn't seem to mind.  Sometimes learning the wrong way to do things is the most valuable way to learn.

This is not the best picture, but this is the 2nd quilt I made.  You can see my 3 year old behind it for scale.  It turned out pretty well.  I bound it in purple which I thought would look cool, but I don't love it.  Another lesson learned and overall it's not that bad.  

In December, I started thinking that maybe I could start looking for a part time job or something.  Everything seemed to be going well, and I thought I could maybe squeeze in some time to do something to make a few dollars.  Well, then January happened.  You know the saying 'People plan, God laughs'.  I think that's what happened to me.

It all started on New Year's Eve with the lice.  Well, the lice adventure turned out to last for almost 3 weeks since they were strong little buggers, and refused to die.  I treated my middle daughter twice (which did the trick), and after 3 OTC treatments in the very thick hair of my youngest, I had to call in the big guns - the $200 (Yes, TWO HUNDRED DOLLAR) prescription.  It worked.  DIE DIE DIE you crappy lice!  I must have picked through hair for a total of at least 8 hours overall.  And, every towel, sheet, blanket and stuffed animal must have been washed at least 6 times.  I despise laundry on a normal day, let alone when I have to wash the same crap every single day.  It was like a bad version of Ground Hog's Day.

In the middle of the lice business, my youngest woke up one day with extreme pain in her hip.  She couldn't walk, stand or barely move it.  She was screaming and crying, and she is not normally like that.  Ever.  So, I took her to the doctor to find out she had transient synovitis, which is basically an inflamed joint resulting from a prior viral infection, likely a cold.  TS could last up to 3 weeks, and luckily for her she was mostly fine after a couple days, but we didn't escape an expensive X-ray and a few minor flare ups over the next couple weeks.  

Then, the same little girl came down with a bad cold that started with a small fever.  No big deal - fevers happen and I don't usually do more than treat it with some ibuprophen and rest.  Well, after 2 days her fever rose to 103 to which we promptly treated with advil and tylenol (we were told once after she had a febrile seizure to be very diligent with her fevers).  Two hours after giving her meds, her fever was still 103.6!!  And, it was midnight.  Why must everything happen at midnight??  We were about to pack her up and visit the ER when it finally started going down.  So, I was going to take her to the doc the next day, and of course they were totally booked.  We visited her allergy doc who thought it was just a nasty virus (thankfully not pneumonia or anything worse) and prescribed many breathing treatments to keep her viral-induced asthma under control.  And some antibiotics just to be safe.  When she gets sick with a virus, it's always exacerbated by her asthma.  And it's very scary.

That led to breathing treatments every four hours for several days (some treatments last as long as 30 minutes), then twice a day for another week. Towards the end of her antibiotics, she started coughing A LOT due to some drainage, so we had to spend the night holding her upright to prevent massive coughing fits.  It's now been a few days and her congestion isn't totally gone, but she seems to be OK.  

Add in some stupid remnant pain from my ankle sprain ONE YEAR ago, a fever/cold for me, and a variety of other things that I can't even remember now because I'm so tired and spent from the whole month of January.  When it rains at this house, it definitely pours.  But, in the end, it's all manageable and not life threatening, so I'll take it.  With lots of coffee, naps and take-out dinners, but I'll take it.  

Here's to hoping February will be much more uneventful, and Dear God, I promise to not to even consider working outside the home for many more years!!