A Little Education

 

It started out innocent enough.  I clicked on a Geology article discussing the anomalous regions in the Sierra Nevada region linking together subducted masses of material into an extinct plate running underneath the entire west coast.  The existence of Farallon was new but the idea of subducted material and the accretion of island arcs drive the theory of the creation of California.  I even knew of the existence of the Isabella anomaly.  However near the end of the article I ran into a term I had never encountered before in Geology.  Delaminated. It sounds like something I would do to my kitchen floor.  Apparently the Sierra Nevada are delaminated.  Who knew? 

Googling the term I discovered that I really needed to get myself up to date.  Delaminating apparently occurs when

 “the lower portion of the lithosphere becomes more dense than the surrounding mantle. Because of the instability of higher density material atop lower density material, the lower lithosphere separates from the tectonic plate and sinks into the mantle.”

This tends to causes little things like volcanism and rapid uplift resulting in mountain ranges such as the Sierra Nevada.

Rest assured this is only a part of what is affecting this region.  I completed my degree 14 years ago and it was already becoming known that everything we thought we knew was probably wrong about that area.  New theories were starting to bubble to the surface.  I think it is time to re-educate myself on my chosen field.

Someone turned Two

This gorgeous little girl had a birthday back on January 21.

Karla is now an ornery two year old.

The beanie baby cow was a hit Gma and Gpa Thornton.  She insisted on sleeping with it for several days.  We seem to accumulate cow toys.  I wouldn’t know why…

If you look at the background of the above picture this was taking place during kitchen remodeling so the birthday celebration was moved to Gma & Gpa Deters house.  Grandpa Deters had a birthday two days before hers and she’s still at the age where we can get away with a little date slight-of-hand.

She has mostly gotten over her shyness but it came back with all the extra people around at Grandma’s house.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KARLA!

Kitchen Remodel

This past January we had our kitchen remodeled by knocking out the wall between the office and the kitchen and making it one large room.  Because we aren’t completely crazy and had no wish to become so or to have this project take the next year and a half we hired it done.  I am very happy we decided to to this because we couldn’t have done near as nice a job or have gotten it done in 10 days.
Since I was still trying to remove the last accumulated stuff from the office and kitchen as they were showing up to tear everything out, there aren't any before pictures.

The above picture is after it has been gutted and the wall removed.  This area is huge compared to how it used to look.

The tile has been laid and the walls have new sheetrock and are painted.

Basically completed with cabinets and island installed.

Megan and Malissa have already taken over the built-in desk.

While this mini-miracle was taking place in the kitchen, we camped out in the basement.  Really it wasn’t anything like camping out.  More like camping with all your kitchen appliances, electricity, out of the elements, running water, flushable toilets…ah…wait… there was a minor issue with that. 

Completely unrelated to the facelift taking place on my kitchen, the drain from the house decided to break off just outside the house.  Because of the construction this was noticed right away and not 1 or 2 weeks later when we went down to the basement next.

As of this point there are only a few minor issues to be completed.  Some of the lights have to be installed and a couple face plates need to be put on.  Other than that we are enjoying all of our new elbow room.

Fun in the Summer Sun

What we did this summer.  Or...those days I actually remembered to bring my camera with me! 

 

Summer Ball

 

 

If you look real close Malissa is on 2nd base and Megan is on 1st.

 

 

 

Laura had her 4th birthday on July 4th.  Somehow there were no pictures of others blowing things up.  Although there was plenty of that.

 

 

 

First Day of School.  Note the crispy brown vegetation in the background.  The grass only got mowed maybe 4 or 5 times all year.  It was not a problem when the lawn mower broke down for a month.

 

 

 

Random cute picture from this summer.

 

There were other things that happened.  The fair was a major part but somehow my picture taking must have been at a low ebb at that point.  Also our vacation to Anaheim will hopefully be shown off in a different post.

 

Until Next Time!!!





 



Pregnancy Update

What finally?!?  Or perhaps an "I didn't know you were pregnant!"  I know; I know; I haven't been very good at keeping everyone up to date.  Other than a couple of stray posts on facebook I haven't really had a chance to let everyone know how things are going.  Life just seems too busy!  That and having small children crawling all over while trying to type doesn't seem to help me actually accomplish anything.

So first the basics:
1)  Baby's due date is November 16 which means I am 36 weeks pregnant.  So yes I have rapidly been passing up the swallowed a basketball stage to full blown land whale.  I make no promises concerning pictures.

2)  In the beginning of July was sonogram time and according to the radiologist we will be welcoming our first boy.  The older 2 girls are very excited since they have decided we have enough girls.  Laura would much rather we continue with the girl only streak.  I'm pretty sure that Karla is oblivious and will be in for a rude awakening when we bring a new baby of either kind home from the hospital.

3)  In the beginning of September yours truly flunked her blood glucose test and has been diagnosed as a gestational diabetic despite having virtually no risk factors.  (Although from what I can tell they are not real solid on what actually causes it.  They like to blame it on hormones.)  So now I have the fun of monitoring my blood sugar, giving myself insulin injections (only once a day thank goodness), going to the hospital twice a week for non-stress tests and eating a very low carb diet using primal eating to guide it.  I will try to detail this more in a future post.

4)  The c-section is scheduled for November 8th however the last two still prefered to pick their own birthdays.

Despite all of this Baby Deters seems to be doing quite well and we look foreward to meeting him very soon!

A Picture Post?

After another lengthy drought in the blog post department I'm back once again.  Good intentions do not a blog post make.  So how about some cute pictures of the kids.

Karla my little helper.  By the way she is 9 mos old today!

Laura was building an armada of boats.  She may be planning a conquest.

Megan sneaks in by virtue of posing with Karla.  This is the number one way of getting a picture taking of you in our family.  Notice Megan's cool new do.  We're back to bangs and a short to the chin cut.

This picture of Malissa is actually of last week when we still had weather we could wear shorts in.  Since then the leaves have fallen and it is looking decidedly fallish outside.

Since I'm posting pictures I could not resist putting up one of this fellow.  This frightening dude just sat there and eyeballed me when I decided to take his mug.  Notice that he is LOOKING AT THE CAMERA.  Like I said, scary.

A little of this, a little of that...

The last week has been crazy busy and I don't think we are done yet.  The hard decision is: Should this post be in order of date or age of child?  We'll try it by date.  So...

 

Last Wednesday we took Karla for her 2 month check up.  She's up to 10 pounds and 23 inches long.  She is intereacting with us much more with coos and smiles.  Over the last month we've discovered milk products give her an upset stomach and eggs give her hives.  Definitely hope we outgrow those issues quickly because I'm nursing and this is Lent.  Not being able to eat eggs and cheese during Lent is a HUGE problem.

Friday was Megan's 10th birthday!  It's amazing how fast this time has flown by.  She's been waiting for this birthday because I told her she couldn't get her ears pierced until she was 10.  Now if her mom (yours truely) had her act together we would have gotten it done on Friday.  However the plan is to do the deed on this coming friday instead.  Will try to get a post up later showing the finished product.

Saturday was cooking and cleaning day because...

Sunday Malissa had her first communion.  Doesn't she look beautiful!  Since Baileyville has mass at 8:30 AND pictures needed to be taken before hand she had to be at the church at 7:30.  It's a good think she was excited because I'm not sure we would have ever gotten her out of bed otherwise.  (You should have seen trying to get her up in time for the bus on Monday morning.)

This is one of the last large classes left with 9 kids in it.  You notice that Malissa is standing off to the side and down a step.  She is taller than all but one of the other kids and this particular class doesn't have any short kids in it.  Maybe a future basketball player?  Her dad played.

Next day is Monday and you would think we would get a chance to recooperate and earlier in the day that actually seemed to be happening.  When Malissa came home from school she was happy and upset.  Apparently she lost her tooth at school but lost it the rest of the way on the way home.  She was happier after hearing that the tooth fairy would still know she lost her tooth and would know to bring her loot. 

After that Laura enters the picture but she is not having such a good day.  On Sunday night she scraped her knees up good while outside running around.  Then on Monday she slammed her finger in the lid to the cedar chest (just bruised).  The whopper came on Monday night though.  She was playing in the basement and fell off a chair onto her left arm.  It was pretty obvious right away that it was broken so John took her straight to the emergency room.  X-rays show that one bone is broken and the other is fractured (not broken all the way through.  This means that we spend Tuesday waiting to hear from the orthopedic surgeon in Topeka to find out if we need to take her down there and get her arm set and put in a cast.  They sent John and Laura home with some pain medicine which is working pretty good right now.  Right now TV restrictions have gone out the window and she is on a steady diet of Dora and Diego.  So hugs and prayers that Laura will feel better soon.

Update on Laura

We have a cast, no surgery, and she's up to no good again.  Hip Hip Hooray!