Saturday, October 23, 2010


Or, as some people call it, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. You know, the movie? It is Caroline's absolute FAVORITE movie in the whole wide world. We have Netflix and can used to be able to before someone (cough cough Henry) broke the Wii stream movies through the Wii. The most popular of which was, as Caroline calls it, Meatnalls. So after Henry broke the Wii, I decided to be the nice mom and got Caroline her very own Meatnalls DVD. You would have thought that I gave her a gold brick. Or a pink tutu. I made the mistake of giving her the DVD right before bedtime (well, ACTUALLY, Henry gave it to her. I was going to hold on to it until morning) and she flipped. All we heard for the next 20 minutes was "MEATNALLS! MEATNALLS! MEATNALL! FATCH MEATNALLS!" until Ed got her to bed. Of course, she had a death grip on Meatnalls so he had to tuck in her AND her movie. Fast forward to 3am. I wake up to Caroline staring at me holding Meatnalls. As soon as I opened my eyes it started - MEATNALLS! Fatch Meatnalls Mommy! GIVE ME A BREAK! So I threw her into bed with me, and Henry, and Ed (you know, the guy who was snoring through all of the Meatnalls?), and for the next 3 hours she tossed and turned and whispered "meatnalls... meatnalls... fatch meatnalls..." Finally at 6am Ed woke up and put Meatnalls on for his little princess.

Friday, September 3, 2010

I'm back!

For now, at least! I'll really, REALLY try to keep up with posting this time around. I swear though, three kids did me in. I was so with the program with two.... now, not so much. Speaking of kids...

Everyone's been doing pretty well, finally. Caroline broke her arm back in April (fell off the couch. WHO DOES THAT?), and had to have emergency surgery on it in the middle of the night. That was great fun - I've never had a kid 1. break their arm or 2. need surgery for anything. Fortunately she did fine, and I financed another room at good old A.I. duPont.

THEN, Ed went and tried to kill himself in a tractor trailer wreck on May 12th. Fortunately he's fine, too - shattered his pelvis and had some nasty road rash on his arm, but he's well on the way to recovery. Nothing like a few more gray hairs for the whole family...

And that's about it around here.

Monday, October 12, 2009

How do you spell...

SLACKER? Because, well, that would be me. Everything's been fine on the Borrelli front, I've just been in big time vacation mode. I just couldn't get back into the regular program until, oh, this week. So, we've been good. Ed was laid off, again, but I had a good postpartum job for about a month, and then a bunch of birth clients, so it's been working out. I attended 3 births last week, and all of the babies were nice enough to have their mamas labor during daylight hours. 2 out of 3 of them arrived in time for me to get home for dinner even! I love those kinds of babies! Keith is in 1st grade now, and just turned 7 on Friday. Where did the time go??? I swear I just had him! Next thing I know he'll be driving! Henry is doing fine. He started preschool and absolutely loves it. He goes in, puts his backpack and lunch box away, then comes over and says "bye mom!" and gives me a kiss goodbye. Once in a while he asks if I'll pick him up, but more in a 'I'm trying to make conversation with you and don't really care' tone. Caroline does pretty well with daycare one day a week. She gets to see Henry, and she's a little social butterfly, so she's got it made. Last week, however, the teacher told us that she stripped down naked TEN times. Hopefully she's just getting this out of her system now. It's cute when you're one... She's been going on the potty when she's home (WHO DOES THAT???? She's 14 months old!!!!!! Henry won't even pee on the potty!!!!), and she says a few words. When the bus comes by in the morning she toddles over to the door saying Bye Keith, Bye Keith. She's growing up too quickly, too! So yeah, we're good. And since I flaked on the vacation post, here's some pictures. My parents are leaving this weekend, since it's been snowing for about a week and the temperature the other morning was -10 degrees. I am so glad I'm not there right now!

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

VACATION: Traveling, part one.

Ed and I have taken, oh, three vacations now since we got married. We just got back on the 17th from the third! We went to Wyoming to join Keith up on a mountain at my parents' cabin. It was quite the adventure. We left here on the 7th, flew to Chicago, then caught our connecting flight into Billings, Montana. I should mention here that I HATE to fly. Hate it. We're talking almost hyperventilating. Gin gets me through flights usually. So anyways, we're flying. Because it's a 3 day drive to Wyoming, and that's with one kid. Not two. Henry had his own seat (which he sat in his carseat in... the same carseat we had to drag through all the airports in order to get it into said airplane seat)

(see the carseat on the back of the stroller?)
but Caroline got to sit in our laps. She doesn't sit still very well. and I don't cope well with a baby who wants to look out the window.

I mean, we're pretty high up! I don't want to look, but I can't not pay attention to her, because she's not too steady on the feet. Ed usually ended up looking out the window with her, while I dug holes in the armrest with my fingernails. So we're on the connection to Billings. That was an OH SO FUN flight. It's one of those small planes - not a propeller plane but the next size up. So small that Chicago's airport doesn't use one of those tunnel thingys to get to the plane. INSTEAD, they make everyone gate check their carry ons which are bigger than, oh, a purse and THEN make everyone walk down some steps and out onto the tarmac. Oh, it was pouring when we were in Chicago. Especially while we were on the tarmac waiting to board the plane. And there were some issues, so we couldn't board the plane. Instead we enjoyed the rain for 20 minutes. Caroline was screaming, Henry was shivering, I needed a drink... you get the picture. So we get on the plane, the plane takes off, Henry falls asleep, Ed takes Caroline, and I order a gin & tonic. It was only a two hour flight, so fortunately it went by pretty quickly. That is, until the pilot said we were starting our descent into Billings. And then, a few minutes later, the pilot came back on and said that there were severe thunderstorms right over Billings that he wasn't going to fly through, and we only had enough fuel to circle Billings for 20 minutes so we might just be diverting to Bozeman. THAT announcement almost put me into cardiac arrest. So we fly for a minute or two (I swore it was more like 19, but Ed says it was just a couple) while I try to figure out how exactly the pilot knew that we only had 20 minutes of fuel - was there a low fuel gauge up there? Were their calculations right? What exactly happened if we ran out of fuel 10000 feet above the ground? All of this was running through my head while we were flying in some nasty turbulence. It was not a fun time. I think I told Ed that I was going to be moving to Bozeman, or Billings, or wherever the hell the plane landed because I was D.O.N.E. done. Then the pilot came back on and said that we were, indeed detouring to Bozeman to get fuel. So we go to Bozeman, land, get some gas, take off again, and fly the hour to Billings. I still haven't figured how a quick detour because we only had 20 minutes of gas turned into an hour return flight, but whatever. We landed, TWICE, in one piece. I was pretty impressed. I was also impressed that *I* was not the poor person who's final destination was actually Bozeman, which is about 3 hours by car from Billings. I overheard that poor soul at the baggage claim on his telephone. He was, how should I put it, not a happy camper.
Finally, we were off the plane. My mom's friend who had been staying with them was leaving in the morning, so she had driven their car up to Billings to meet us. We dropped her off at her hotel and then got on the road to the mountain. Fortunately the kids were exhausted (it was about 8pm Mountain time - 10pm Eastern! They go to bed around 7pm!) The road from Billings to Sheridan (I-90) is long, and straight, and boring. And the radio stations don't come in too well, and if they do you usually end up driving out of range pretty quickly. So we drove, and drove, and drove. We took highway 16 out of Buffalo, and then had to start paying attention to the directions. The directions said something like this:
Drive 27.4 miles out of Buffalo.
Turn onto state road 123.
Drive until you see a dirt road.
Drive down the dirt road 1.2 miles.
Don't drive through the fence, but instead go through the gate.
That last bit of directions is important. I'll get to it in a minute. So we're driving down highway 16, which is a windy highway up the mountain, and all of a sudden there's a tornado warning on the radio. And said tornado is in the county we're in. According to the radio, the tornado was outside of Story, and was going to be at mile marker 212 on highway 25 at 10:20pm, mile marker 224 on highway 25 at 10:23pm, mile marker 234 at 10:27pm, and so on. I know, you're thinking where in the hell is Story and all these mile markers? Don't worry, we didn't have a clue either. We were just crossing our fingers it was nowhere where we were! Fortunately, it appeared we were nowhere near Story or any mile markers on highway 25. We finally found the road we needed to turn on off of 16, and then found the dirt road. They weren't kidding - it was a dirt road. And dirt roads don't have streetlights. About this time (which was about 11pm), the skies decided to open up. No, it wasn't a rain storm, but instead a hail storm. So I'm driving down a dirt road with no light in the mountains of Wyoming in a hail storm looking for a fence and a gate. AND, the odometer on the car doesn't appear to have tenths of a mile on it, and we need to go 1.2 miles. After we drive what I'm guessing is just over a mile, I see a fence. And then we look, and it's a gate! So I stop. Ed's staring at said gate, I'm staring at said gate, and we're both thinking this can't be the gate. So I drive through the fence and keep going. A little while later Ed and I are discussing just how far we think we've driven, and he says he sees lights that look like a cabin, but they're behind us. So I turn around. I drive BACK to the fence and the gate. And I stop with the headlights pointed at the gate, and we stare at it. After a minute or so, I say "Ed, I think that's a horse corral."
(The daylight version of said horse corral, complete with horses. See the gate? I almost drove through that!)
So we decide not to drive through the gate, but to go through the fence again. I start down the road again, and Ed says "oh look! They sent help!" A car was coming down the mountain to find up - I guess they were watching our headlights going back and forth and my cousin's husband decided someone needed to rescue us. We drove toward the lights, and lo and behold, there was a fence. AND A GATE! And it was a serious gate - no horse corral here. Keith and my dad and my cousin's husband were there to greet us, and send us up to the cabin. Finally, a little after 11pm, we had made it! Stay tuned for the next installment :)

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Keith's Wyoming Trip

About two weeks ago, Keith left for Wyoming with his grandparents. I've talked to him, oh, twice since then, so I think he's having fun. Fortunately, every once in a while I get a few pictures in my email box.