Baptismal Braids

Yesterday Kate was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 
I spent a long time trying to figure out how to do Kate's hair for the occasion.  Her hair is beautiful -- smooth and silky, and straight as a board.  Since I wanted her hair to look nice for pictures before and after, as well as not take much time to "fix" after the baptism (by full immersion).... it took a little research.

Anyway, here's what I came up with.  And I like it :)

I started by having Kate take a good shower, and gave her a trim (it's been a while and apparently her hair grows unevenly).

Ta-da!

I made a full part down the center of the head.  Then another part across the top of her head near the front.  This front section I divided into 6 parts going across.

Apparently I skipped the photo of a step.  Oops.  I braided each of the 6 front sections going back and secured the bottom of each with an elastic.  I made another part going across her head one each side and created three more sections to start a french braid on each side.  I used an elastic band to secure the end of each braid to its corresponding side.  This is the slightly complicated part... The braids on the left side were secured to the sections on the right side and vice versa.  Plus, the braids were woven together.  This is easiest seen by looking at the pictures.  Each braid alternated over/under/over.  It's not nearly as complicated as it looks, just takes a teensy bit of concentration.  On her actual baptism day I missed one of the over/unders and it drove me crazy! 

I finished a french braid on each side starting with the three rubber-banded sections.  The tiny braids were left braided so at the top of each french braid has tiny braids through it also. 
Finally I lifted the bottom of each french braid right up and used a hair bow with a french clip on it to secure the bottom of the braid over the hair bands securing the three starting sections. 
With her hair wet I just spread out the ends of the hair and let it dry on its own (this worked great after the baptism!)  With her hair dryish I used a teensy curling iron to curl the ends down a bit into a puff instead of sticking straight up.

These were great for baptism day.  Her hair stayed secured really well when she went under the water and came back up.  When I changed her out of her wet dress into a dry one and changed the bows (from plain white to the white with blue stripes) her braids stayed nice and tidy.  I simply patted the hair gently and yes, it dripped a little over the next while, but not bad.  It probably helped keep her cool at the picnic lunch at the park afterward :P  I'm very happy with how these worked!

Oh Wretched Wife that I am...

I really am bad.  And I feel awful about it.

I didn't do a post about my fantastic, wonderful, incredible, spectacular husband for his birthday.  Bad me.

I also didn't send his birthday picture post to the Jarbh family!  The only one of those I've missed in the last looooong time (that I'm aware of) was my SIL whose birthday was just a couple of days after my worst surgery.  Naughty me.


I'm so sorry sweetheart!!!!!  And you've been so patient with not even harassing me about it (well, you did briefly mention it after I was done with all my other stuff this week).  My bad.  I will post a picture a day for a month if you'd like just of YOU.  Would that kinda make up for it?

Perhaps I should just tell everyone what a perfect husband you are for me?  Except I do that every chance I can anyway...   well, sorry babe.  My bad.

Happy Birthday to my splendiferous husband.  I love you SO much.  You make this crazy life of mine worth facing day after day (well, you and our adorable children).  You're such a sweet daddy and I love serving in nursery with you at church.  You're a good guy.  And I like you :)

On Michael's birthday he had to work really late.  I let the girls stay up late until after her got home.  They made this big poster for him earlier in the day at the neighbor's house.

   During the day, Kate made snickerdoodle cupcakes for his birthday cake, and I mixed up some cinnamon buttercream frosting (a container of storebought buttercream frosting with cinnamon stirred in :P )  The cupcakes were REALLY good.  This coming from a dedicated chocolate lover.

Then the girls tried to walk some knots out of Daddy's back before they went to bed.

Sorry it was such a loser birthday, babe.  Thank you for being understanding about everything.  We love you tons :)   (we got to borrow a Wii from a friend for a week.  I love hearing the girls chatter along in proper golf-speak, lol)

Still a bit woozy

Jarbh: See the Rainbow. or hear it? please don't taste us. That's creepy.

My family had a special "reunion" day today.  It has been in the works for months.  Both of the out-of-state families arranged to be here at the same time and everything.  Unfortunately I didn't get to go since I was in and recovering from surgery instead.  But I did do some things to help prepare.

This morning the family went for a hike, then had a picnic lunch then went to the pool.  We wanted to keep everyone hydrated in this 100+ degree heat yet not run through a bazillion cups or water bottles daily.
I used an idea my sister-in-law had used at girls camp for church just recently.  Since I buy ribbon by the 50 yd. spool I had plenty to use. Each family had a different color, then I wrote names on another bit of ribbon and melted the ends together to make a strong loop on the "leash" part.  So to find your own water bottle holder you can narrow it down by easy-to-see colors first.  The rubber o-ring stretches over the neck of the a water bottle.

So you could replace the water bottle from time to time as desired :)  Cheap, easy project!

I also designed a label for the water bottles.  I printed them off, cut them, then used two pieces of packing tape to "laminate" each label on.  The family is referred to as the Jarbh family: (note the capitalized letters)
       Jensen (last name for Mom and all the boys' famlies)
       Asplund ("married" names for each of the girls' families)
     eRdman
  lamBert
soutHern
It's a unique name that refers well to the collective family of my mom and all her children with their children.

Here's what the water bottle label looked like:

The "ingredients" list has all the names in the family, and the "Product of_______" covers the three states the family is spread over.  I did make one mistake... There are 45 people in the Jarbh family.  I accidentally put "Net 44 Characters".  So I suppose you can assume there are 44 "characters" and one "normal" individual ;)

My mom even found tiny little water bottles for the soon-to-be-born baby and the not-yet-a-year baby.  Their straps are just tiny and really just for show (so as to not be choking hazards, of course).  But we didn't' want to leave them out!

While my girls were getting ready for today they each lay out a towel over the railing. They were pretending to lie down on their towels while standing up. Which they informed me was necessary to photograph.

Because of all the crawling I've done when I'm not using my crutches I discovered scaly callouses on my knees this morning.  Kate looked at them and said "I guess you could just call yourself a reptile and move down by the water!"  Which was so utterly off the wall it still makes me giggle a little :P

This is a rather strange picture, but this is the best shot I got of these.  These are some rather unique "wrap pants".  It took me about 10 minutes to make these with one seam (the crotch seam) and then stitching on the ribbon.  The front part gets tied in the back, then the back wraps around to the front.  The sides overlap ("wrapping").  This is a knit interlock so it doesn't need hemming.  I just left nice cuts on the sides and the hem which reaches the bottom of my kneecaps.  Perfect for wearing with a cast!

Here's my foot on the way home from my surgery this morning.  My foot was FREEZING cold so I was wearing the little surgery sock... and had the ice pack tied on.

The surgeon removed several fragments from the ankle joint and said it was obvious how very painful it has been (no kidding!).  It was certainly in bad shape.  I'll spend the next 3 weeks with no weight allowed on my right foot.  But one really nice thing is that I'm just in the surgical wrap!  No heavy cast to haul around.  A bit of movement is important so the faux-cartilage will form smoothlly in the right shape.  The trick right now is keeping the swelling down.  There is a great deal of pain still, but it should gradually ease over the next unknown period of time.  Yay.

These are my poor dried up toes.  They are swollen, painful, cracked, etc.  So the yellow washy stuff they used for the surgery prep isn't coming off very well, lol.  i thought it was very sunny.  As well as a bit jaundiced looking :P

Here are my feet tonight.  My right foot is wrapped in a second wrap to help control the swelling.  The purple on my left foot.... well, keep looking:

What a mess!!!

But in my opinion, totally worth it cause it makes me smile :)\

I want to find some pretty fabric to make pretty covers for the pit pad and the hand pads.  Totally be awesome!  Maybe I can get to the Quilt Shop sometime soon.  They have all the coolest stuff.

Tomorrow I hope to make it to a baby shower for one of my sisters-in-law.  I'm sure I'll take pictures there too, so keep watching ;)

Oh Great, Kate is Eight!!! (Sorry, couldn't resist the rhyming).

The cake says "Happy 8th, Kate".  For those Cakewrecks officionados you'll note the comma which lets you know she's not our 8th Kate ;). 

This morning Kate went with Daddy to pick up the co-op produce, had daddy/daughter breakfast at IHOP (complete with a birthday sundae and singing for her!) then did a little shopping at Maceys.  Among other things they picked up a birthday cake.  I was going to make one, but since I'm off my foot they decided to give me a break (no pun intended).

We enjoyed a birthday party around lunchtime.  Ate cake and ice cream and opened Kate's presents.

She got some fun little presents from her sisters, then a new dress and shoes for her baptism day and a nice CTR ring.  She was very excited about it all.

I'm a little happy to see that even bakeries end up with sinking cakes.  Apparently filling the divot with frosting is considered "professional".  Thankfully it was reasonably tasty frosting :)  We did end up with a near mom-wreck this morning.  The girls wanted to show me the cake but I was sleeping in so they decided to just snuggle the cake right in with me in bed.  Thankfully I didn't cream the cake in my sleep :P

We sure are happy to have Kate in our family.  She's a very happy, helpful, conscientious daughter.  We love our Kate so much!!!!!

You know you were wondering.

Yesterday I had my two week follow-up with my doctor about my ankle fracture  They were supposed to either give me the thumbs up to stay in the walking cast for 4 more weeks or put me in a hard cast.  So they took some x-rays  The doctor was just telling me that it looked like it was probably healing fine and we'd just wait for the final word from the radiologist when the radiologist read popped up on his computer.  Unfortunately he wasn't so happy about how I was healing.  Alignment looked off or something. So the doc's nurse made the call right then to set me up asap with an orthopedist.  Just so happened that she could make space for me in an hour.

So I went to the orthopaedic clinic and met with the specialist there.  She reviewed my ct scan from two weeks ago and all my x-rays.  And was not happy about what she saw.  There's a pretty good chip of bone removed from the talar dome in my ankle.  (The curve at the top of the talus between the fibula and tibia.  Got crushed when I fell.)

The problem is that the chip of bone has a large cushion of fluid below it keeping it separated from the bone it belongs to.  This is bad because it won't be able to heal with separation anxiety! 

At this point you are all supremely fortunate.  As usual I typed up way more than anyone cared to know about the details of the fracture, upcoming surgery, and healing... then the battery fell out of my mini and the plug came out.  So it all got deleted.  Suffice it to say: I had an MRI last night which showed more bad stuff (lots of angry bones, etc.) which the orthoped. showed me this morning, so I'm on the fast track to an even more specialized specialist (redundant much?) and surgery.   I'll be off my foot completely until the surgery (hopefully very soon) and then at least 4 weeks afterward when they may begin easing me back into the boot I'm in now. 

 (The fragment with the arrow pointing to it is my "boney shrapnel".  This image is from my CT scan two weeks ago.  It's actually worse now.)

This will be my THIRD (yes, 3rd) surgery within 4 MONTHS (yes, that's only 1/3rd of a year).  Three completely unrelated surgeries.  I think this deserves a discount.  Or at least a plastic trophy of some sort. 

I'm out of energy.  Out of motivation.  Tired of trying to run a household from the recliner because I *can't* do it any other way.  Tired of the stress of asking for and accepting help from people.  And mostly tired of needing help.  I know Michael is doing everything he can and more and am so grateful for him.  And I've had HUGE amounts of help from my mom in particular.  She has helped us daily with the nitty-gritty.  I'm so grateful for everything others have done for us, and will certainly need more help during the next several weeks.  :-/

So here's to surgery!   (Yes, the picture below is from my last surgery.  *So* 11 weeks ago.)

The grand birthday party event. Time for bed.

Today was Kate and Lizzie's combined birthday party.  We invited all their similarly aged cousins and they each chose about 5 other friends to invite.  That made for nearly 30 kids between the ages of 5 and 9.  The girls wanted a Phineas and Ferb themed birthday party.  Phineas and Ferb is hands-down our favorite kids tv show.  We enjoy watching it as a family and Michael and I have been known to watch it even when the kids are in bed.



Just before Lizzie's actual birthday a clever person at Dabbled posted a fantastic Perry the Platypus cake she had done for her son's birthday party.  She was super sweet and hurried to post a tutorial on how to make the cake since I wanted to do one for the party.  Then I broke my ankle and things got put off.  I felt really bad that she hurried to get it set up for me and she could have taken her time over two weeks!  Since I feel better the more I stay off my foot I decided I may need to go a little simpler on the cake, but I was determined it would be Perry the Platypus.  So I decided on Twinkie cakes.  I'll do another post where I share my cake making experience but they were a great way for me to learn new techniques in cake decorating.  I'm exhausted, but very happy with the outcome.

Because of my limited mobility (I'm so sick of how often this is the driving factor in our decisions these days) we decided to make a very easy for us sort of party.  We used the bounce house and inflatable slide from Saratoga Rental Center (which we happen to be related to) and the kids had a great time. 

The one down side is that it was HOT.  I bet it was the hottest day we've had yet this year.  So we had kids in and out of the basement too.  The girls turned on some Phineas and Ferb episodes in their playroom

and we happened to have a Wii a friend had let us try out over the weekend which was very popular (and well supervised!) in the family room. 

About halfway through we gathered in all the kids and opened presents

and had cake and ice cream. 

Then the kids went back to jumping and sliding. 

Despite a couple of minor bumps it seems that everyone had a great time.

I'm now ready to sit with an ice pack on my leg and relax :)