'Scony Cousins

My cousins from Wisconsin, Kasea and McKenzie ("Ken") came down last Friday, July 30th and stayed until Saturday, August 6th. Last year, they came and stayed with us for a week too. We had such a great time!! I (all of us actually) love those girls to pieces and we enjoy every minute we have together.

We did some craft projects after our trip to Hobby Lobby, my mom came to see us for a night, we took some senior pictures for Kasea, the girls helped me paint my kitchen, we went bowling, watched movies, went to a parade and went swimming. To say the week flew by is an understatement. In fact, the girls were supposed to leave Friday morning, but stayed an extra day.

These two are the best! They are so polite and helpful and don't complain. We really appreciated the extra sets of hands with the kids. I think both girls would tell you they came a long way in dealing with Blake and Bowen. When they came they didn't change diapers, feed the boys and Ken was even nervous to roll Bowen back over on his back. :) By the end of the week, they were rockstars! They were changing diapers, making bottles, helping me with dialysis stuff...

I miss the girls already and I wish we lived closer! We can't wait for next year!

Father-Daughter Dance

There's a group of gals in State Center that started a Father-Daughter Dance five years ago. This was Aaron and Jenna's first year attending and Jenna was so excited for it. She kept asking how many days away it was until the day of and then it was how many hours. Aaron was so great about it too! He suggested Jenna wear her flower girl dress and get a ribbon to match one of his shirts. They were the best looking duo there in my very bias opinion. :)

In addition, this year they asked our family to be the recipients of the free-will donation that is taken. We feel blessed that they thought of our family. We are truly grateful for their donations.

The fathers and their daughters got to be announced in a promenade and afterwards they got to dance. Jenna informed me they did the hokey-pokey twice and also got to limbo.

This was taken right after the promenade. There's just something special about being a daddy's girl. :)

I'm "sew" embarrassed

Here's my embarrassing confession: we have lived in our house for 3.5 years and I have no curtains in my living room and toy room. White, white, white. Finally, I snapped last week. I told Aaron we were getting curtains and getting them soon! So, last Friday when we were in Target I found some I really liked for the four windows that were needing them. Aaron had other ideas. Our conversation went like this:

Me: I really like these curtains!

Aaron: You are not spending that much on curtains. I can make you curtains for half that price.

Me: Yeah right.

Aaron: Yes, Jame, I can.

Me: Fine. I bet you $5 (big better, aren't I?!) that you can't make curtains.

Aaron: Let's go to Hobby Lobby.

Fast forward to us being home. Long story short, a few years ago I was able to get a nice sewing machine for free. Well, it was finally time to use the machine and do you think we could find the darn pedal anywhere? Of course not! Luckily, our good friend Mary let us borrow her sewing machine and Aaron got to work.

My cousin, Ken, helped Aaron pin the material.

And away Aaron went! I was shocked he still remembered how to sew. I'm embarrassed that I can't sew because it's something I wish I could do, but I'm also impressed that Aaron can.

After watching for a while, I decided I wanted to give it a try. Me, a person who couldn't even thread the dang sewing machine in junior high. Me, a person who opted to take shop over home ec in high school so I could avoid sewing again.

Aaron was trying to give me the run down. I actually did ok, until...

I pricked my finger with a pin! Oh well, I can say I sewed two sides of one of the four curtains Aaron made, right?! :)

Drumroll...the final product....

He was so proud!!

The way I see it...

Tears

Do you ever have one of those weeks? Those weeks where you just find yourself crying a lot. I’m having one of those weeks, but I’m not really sad, just emotional. I had two incidents that happened this past weekend that made me break down.

First, on Sunday evening my husband and daughter went to the Father-Daughter dance that was held at the St. Paul Lutheran Church. It was so nice! What a great event for dads and daughters. Jenna was excited for a couple of weeks in advance and didn’t stop asking how long it was until the dance until she and Aaron left for the dance.

This year, the group that puts it on asked if our family would be the recepients of the free will offering they have. We said we would and I (along with the rest of my family) were so touched by the generosity that was shown. Honestly, it was just another thing that brought me to tears.

While at the dance, a little something was said about our family and Blake and everything we’ve gone through since finding out we were expecting twins. It was strange, I have to tell you. When you’re used to telling people about your situation and then you have to actually hear everything you’ve been through, it’s a different feeling. Enter me tearing up, yet again. Hearing it out loud made me think, “Wow, this sounds really bad. Twins...a baby in Iowa City for ten weeks...kidney failure...nightly dialysis...transplant.” I know I’m not explaining it right, but it was like an out of body experience or something to hear somebody talk about your life in such a way.

Incident number two: I checked our family’s blog over the weekend and noticed a new comment on one of the posts I had written. What I found made me speechless and reinforce my belief in fate.

The comment was from a gal in California who found our blog via Google (I have no idea how) and on the day, THE EXACT DAY, that Blake got to go home she welcomed a son seven weeks early. Her son suffered from posterior urethral valves (what caused this mess for Blake) his kidneys are working at about 15%, they have started the same dialysis that Blake is on, they are talking about a G-tube and he had just had a hernia repaired.

Does that sound familiar? Yeah, it did to me to. I just stared at the computer and read the comment two more times. I teared up. I am thankful she found us. If nothing else for a place to go just to realize that somebody else has been in your shoes. I always feel like everything in your life happens for a reason. Things like this don’t just happen. It just gives me goosebumps that she had her son the same day we took Blake home. What in the world are the odds of that happening?

I have this feeling in my gut that it was just meant to be that she found us. It couldn’t have been easy because my husband tried googling to find us and he couldn’t do it. I got her email address because she wants to talk to me. I am definitely emailing her, if nothing else just to let her know that we have been there and we’re making it and things are going to be ok. What I learned after this week is that sometimes, you just need to let go and cry, but that’s just the way I see it.

Sponge Balls

I got this idea from a friend (thanks Chris!) to make these sponge balls for the kids to play with. With as hot as it's been, I decided it would be a perfect time to make these with the kids. You need three sponges for each sponge ball. The kids liked to mix and match the colors.

Start by cutting a sponge in half and then in half again.

Line up the sponges in any pattern you want.

Gather them together like this and then use a rubber band to secure them in the middle. The result looks like this:

Cute, huh?!

The kids and I had a lot of fun playing in the backyard with them. I even got in a pretty good dual with Jenna. Brody was my little helper and stole all the sponge balls from Jenna. :)

This picture of Brody freaks me out. I have a vision of him at about 17 pitching for his high school team. Daddy was pretty proud of his form.

Jenna had pretty good aim. She even nailed Brody in the forehead, which she found hilarious and Brody...not so much!

Rollin'...rollin'....rollin'

Those Burdorf boys are rolling! Actually they have been for a couple weeks now, but I'm just getting around to blogging about it.

The week of Blake's one-month check-up we were at Aaron's baseball game and Bowen rolled over. Kinda. Sorta. With a little help from a little slope of the hill. I got excited and everybody sitting around me agreed we could count it as the first time he rolled over. But, he really and truly rolled over at home the next day.

With Blakers being in the hospital so long, we figured he might lag behind physically, just because he was laying around more. Exactly one week later Aaron texted me at work to tell me that Blake had just rolled over. I couldn't believe it!

The nurses figured that once Blake rolled over he wouldn't do it anymore because of his G-tube and PD catheter. Doesn't phase the kid a bit! In fact, he rolls over more during the day than Bowen.

Just like with Jenna and Brody, every little milestone is so exciting. The first year of life is such an amazing journey!

Project for the Twins' Room

Once in awhile I like to do something a little crafty and I knew I had to make some personalized for the twins' room. I did two different things for Jenna and Brody's room with their names on it, so I headed to Hobby Lobby (I SO love that store!) for some inspiration.

After walking through the aisles I found some wooden letters, a wooden backplate, paint and baseball scrapbook paper. That's it! Bonus: everything except the scrapbook paper was on sale! :)

Here's what the letters and backplate-thingy looked like to start:

My two best helpers! Kids just can't resist paint, can they?

Here's what I did. I wanted them each to be in different colors, so I decided Blake's would be blue and Bowen's red. I had the kids paint the letters and then I painted around the edge of the backplate. Once that dried, I traced the scrapbook paper around the backplate to fit perfectly. I then modge-podged on the scrapbook paper. After that dried I used wood glue to adhere the letters on.

The finished product:

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out! Super-easy and cheap! :)