Our second child, Robin, just graduated from art college! (Which in the UK is like US high school, not US university.) Robin’s deciding if they’ll do an additional year of training before starting university or take a gap year and work on personal projects, which includes setting up their website and started to blog about the ups and downs and challenges and fun of being a young artist. You can check out Robin’s page here. We also put a link on the top right side, where I imagine we’ll add more as the kids create websites.
Category: Kids
*Welcome, Welcome!*
Welcome to our little corner of the world! I’m Heidi, I’m married to Kit, we have six kids who are now teens and young adults and all but one are taller than me.
In 2005 our third child decided to show up four months early at a whopping 22 ounces and give us a good scare. This blog was created to keep family and friends updated through our 4 months in the hospital. You can read a bit about his NICU story here. He started a wish list of places he would like to see and things he would like to do before his eyesight declines further, an anticipated complication due to his early arrival.
Over a couple year stretch of time we began working on that wish list and being blessed in countless ways by friends, family, our community, and complete strangers as Ben tackles this challenge with his typical passion. So thank you, whoever you may be! We’re glad you came by and we welcome your comments and messages. Continue reading “*Welcome, Welcome!*”
Water Tower Tour!
I admit that touring a water tower struck me as possibly the weirdest of Ben’s wishes. A water tower?? Huh?? But apparently to a nine year old that was fascinating, we just had no idea how we could make that happen. Water towers tend to be surrounded by locked fences, and we weren’t sure that they routinely host field trips! So you can imagine our surprise when we were contacted by Jennifer at the Mustang Special Utility District and she was offering Ben a tour!
We drove out one afternoon to check out the office and the kids saw how the water levels are reported for each tower to the central office. They had lots of questions and were fascinated by the map. I think J, our five year old, wins for most entertaining inquiries! They also gave the kids some really fun goodies – I snitched one of those flashlights for my doula bag, and the cooler bags and cups are being used constantly. (Who knew utility districts had such fun swag, right?? Frisbies??) Then we drove down the road to the water tower itself – and it was huge, and I tried to NOT think about the fact that we were standing inside a water tower under this massive amount of water. The kids had lots more questions and they thought the echoing tower was way too much fun and Ben learned lots about how it all works.
Jennifer & the Mustang folks had learned about us through the Denton Record Chronicle article in February and they invited the paper to come back out for a follow up story. Though I admit we were really surprised to see the kids made the front page again! Both stories were really sweet & well done and we’re always happy to share Ben’s amazing story. He’s a pretty fantastic kid, and he’s grateful that so many people have been helping make his wishes come true – however funny and random they may be! Thank you to John and David for the great article and you can read it here, see some more photos, and read J’s funny questions about the towers. Thank you to Jennifer for providing all of these photos in the gallery, and thank you to all the folks at Mustang SUD!
It was really tall!
Now she’s staring up INSIDE the tower.
They were talking to each other through the long tubes.
Excited J.
Asking lots of questions.
Miss Livy being her usually cute self.
He was so excited by the experience!
Want to see a 22 ounce baby?
We’re often told that it’s hard for people to imagine how tiny a baby is at 1 pound and 6 ounces. We saw him daily and it’s still hard for us to wrap our minds around!
To summarize his story – B was born at just under 23 weeks gestation and was 12 1/4″ long. He was in the NICU for 109 days, came home on oxygen then became sick and went back on the vent in the PICU for 13 days. He had many of the complications associated with prematurity – pneumonia & other infections, lung disease, PDA and ROP surgery, hernia repair, feeding issues, developmental issues with gross, fine motor and speech… he has fought so hard to overcome these challenges and amaze us all. His lingering challenge has been his vision loss, but we know he’ll continue to surprise us with his persistence and creativity as he tackles any hurdle.
The Adventure Begins
We’ve been quiet here, I’m guessing no one is still following along but I needed a spot to document this wonderful and wild journey.
We’ve been pondering (a) where we should take Ben to see and experience things and (b) how to afford it. 🙂 He wants to see the Tardis in England, he’s a huge Dr. Who fan but alas, passports alone for a family are size will cost over $1000. (I still hope to make that happen someday!) It’s also tricky in that with my work I’m pretty much on call all the time – I have to plan vacations literally 9 to 10 months in advance and I’ve got babies on the schedule for next spring and summer already. I can’t just drop everything and go on a trip, but I don’t have more than week off call for months into 2014.
Stateside Ben’s big wish was to see Harry Potter world in Florida. (He also wants to see California, a waterfall, a mountain, snow, I should write up his whole list.) I did some preliminary research and saw tickets for the park would run our family about $1,000, it’s a 16+ hour drive (I am NOT that ambitious) and plane tickets were about $400 each (times 8!) Plus hotel, food, etc, etc. I felt so sad to tell him but I just didn’t see any way we could financially pull that off anytime soon. He said that’s okay – he would be happy with going to visit Legoland or Going Bonkers here in town. 🙂 He’s such a sweet kid… and he had no concept of the money involved, so we’ll be sure to get him to Legoland at some point, too!
We were running Kit to an eye exam and when we came home there was a letter on our door step. I wasn’t expecting anything so I opened it and read the letter – several times, because I couldn’t believe what I was reading and was in complete shock. I think I worried Kit when he saw me crying and saw the FedEx overnight package and wondered what bad news the letter held! Continue reading “The Adventure Begins”
Quick Rise Ciabatta Bread: The Movie!
Heidi and C worked up this little instructional video for her quick-rise ciabatta bread.
(By “her” I think he means the one I learned from him and Rebecca?? 🙂 )
4 cups flour (I do half wheat)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoons yeast
2 c hot water
Mix all, cover and let sit 8 to 18 hours or somewhere in there.
If you want a same day dough, increase the yeast to 1 teaspoon then let rise at least 2 hours or until bubbly looking. It has a less intense flavor but is still delicious.
When you want to bake flour a cutting board (we use a flexible one from IKEA) and dump the dough onto it, patting into an approximate lump. Preheat oven to 500 degrees (I do 450 as our oven runs hot) with a dutch oven inside of it. When hot, dump the dough ball into the dutch oven and COVER it (this is important.) Cook about 20 minutes, uncover then cook until golden brown on top. Dump out, cool, slice and enjoy! Add some rosemary, garlic & cracked pepper if you want a fantastic savory bread.
Here’s the pan we got:
We bought the Lodge Logic 5-Quart Double Dutch Oven with Skillet Cover