Elina fick bort sitt gips!

Idag fick Elina bort sitt gips och fick sedan en stödskena, precis som Isak hade. Hennes är storlek extra, extra small! Snacka om tunna små armar. Tänk att hon kan vara så smal och ändå så stark. Hon var väldigt glad och nöjd och tog med gipset till skolan för "show and tell."

Sågens vibrationer kittlade!

Ser bra ut, eller?

Julia and Play-Doh

It's a love-affair! Julia can sit with completely unbroken focus for 2 hours straight with Play-Doh. On Friday Mark, Isak, Elina and I went to see "Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat" at Sooner Theatre and Donna babysat Anja and Julia. We were gone for 2,5 hours. When we got back Julia had not moved from the Play-Doh - and it is typical for her.

It just doesn't get boring.

Thanksgiving

We got together with Mark's extended family on Donna's side for Thanksgiving. We gathered in Oklahoma City and ate tons of food - of course. We had not seen many of these family members for a long time because of our San Antonio trips that last two Thanksgivings. Here are a few pictures.

Linda and Isak at the buffe line.

Isak, Grandma and Elina filling their plates.

Elina and Anja.

eating.

Troy at the kids' table. Liam and Sebastian to the right.

It was warm and the kids played outside.

Mark dropped a pumpkin pie as we were leaving...

The day after Thanksgiving we got together with the Bells.

Madeline and Elina.

Luke and Julia.

Ryan and Mark.

Elina 2nd grade performance

Elina had her 2nd grade music performance on November 15th. She was a leopard and was very cute. We are used to very high quality productions coming out of Truman School, and this one did not quite live up to previous ones. The songs were more like chants, rather than songs. Still, Elina did a very good job and we are proud of her.

Anja och Julia sprang lite i korridoren när musikföreställningen blev lite långtråkig.

Halloween

From the left, back:

Hogwarts student, Norbert the Dragon, Hedwig the Owl, Molly Weasley,

Hermione Granger and Dobby the Free Elf

Getting ready for school parties!

Isak's 4th grade classroom.

Anja's FIRST class party, of her own!

Anja's pre-K class.

The Principal was Cruella DeVil and all the teachers were dalmatians.

Priceless!

Hermione and Hedwig at school party

Inger's mom Sonja and Donna - ready to hand out candy

Hogwarts students and professor?

Trick or Treat-ing going smoothly.

Elinas Gips

Elina fick sitt gips i dag.

 Väntar på gipset.

Handen hade blivit svettig innanför skenan och bandaget. :( 

 Elina valde rosa! Hennes gips är också vattentåligt.

Hon var nöjd efteråt, men kan inte hålla en penna ännu för det gör för ont.

När hon kom tillbaka flockade alla klasskamraterna runt henne med spritpennor i högsta hugg

 - de ville skriva sina namn. 

Men läraren sa att de fick vänta lite.

Cast-Off, Cast-On

Isak got his cast removed today which revealed a very skinny left arm - and dirty! (But Isak refused to let me clean it). He felt very vulnerable and is a long way off from using it normally. He did get a nice brace to wear. And he cannot participate in sports for another three weeks! Sigh. Apparently, his arm is now more vulnerable than when it was in the cast. In 3 weeks his bone growth should be at adequate levels to where he can resume normal activity. The X-rays looked good, though, and we are certainly grateful for that.

"Awkward" (is what he says in the video)

The big reveal... of the very skinny arm

I asked to keep the cast pieces (the gross padding removed). I am thinking about wrapping the pieces up in a nice present to put under the Christmas tree. Especially in light of what happened just a few hours later. Let's just say Oct 25, 2011 will be remembered in the Fisher family...

I picked the kids up 30 minutes early from school so we could head out before the pick-up traffic got thick. Destination: Pumpkin Patch and Farm. The kids were super excited. This would include corn maze, animals, picking our pumpkins and riding ponies. I had packed a pic-nic 'dinner' and thrown the big blanket in the car. In Moore/S OKC we stopped to get some 'real food' at Crest Market (chicken tenders, in this case - love that store). Mark was due to meet us.

As I unload Julia and Anja, I hear a thump and Elina screams from behind the car! She is the kid least likely to cry in our family - at least from physical injuries. She's tough and wipes her tears quickly. But this time she just sat down next to the car, clutching her right arm and for a long time unable to tell me what happened. She'd tripped on her untied shoelaces (her mother may have mentioned something about tying them...) and taken an unbalanced fall to the unforgiving concrete, bracing her fall with her right arm. She was so shaken she wanted to ride in the grocery cart. Luckily Crest has not one, but two child seats, side-by-side, in their carts. So Anja and Julia sat in front and I lifted Elina into the cart. She cried for five minutes straight, at which point I said to Mark on the phone, "I think our outing is cancelled, because Elina may have a broken arm." She never cries more than 30 seconds for pain. Now, injustice, done to her or some innocent person/creature, can cause her tears to flow for longer, but it has undertones of rage that were not present today.

Elina kept being weepy, saying "I feel like all I want to do is sleep, or just sit and hold my guinea pig all day." "I cannot write with my hand, but I could probably ride a pony." The last utterance gave me some hope that the arm might just be very bruised. I asked her to move the arm and hand carefully in different directions and she had good range of motion, and the arm looked normal. But when Mark came we took Elina to the nearest Urgent Care and we ate our pic-nic food in the car, and Elina ate hers in the waiting room.

Sure enough. Broken arm (wrist). The radius bone right at the growth plate (which can be problematic for proper growth down the road). She has a splint now and will go in to get her cast on Thursday of all goes according to plan (same orthopedic surgeon as Isak - wonder if we can get a special family rate?). Since hers is the right arm, and she is right handed, she's in for a challenging month or so ahead.

And you know something else? In the car, on the way to Crest Market, Elina told me how a boy in her class had fallen at recess TODAY and broken his arm. What?? (The school nurse confirmed it, later.)

 Elina brushing teeth with her left hand.

Isak showing off his new brace.

A good attitude - in spite of it all.

We're officially increasing our calcium intake. 

Though looking at THIS I can see that they are hardly deficient. 

Critters

Elina is nuts about animals. Actually, nuts doesn't cover it. She thinks about animals all the time. She loves, loves, loves animals. She has been this way since she could say a few words. The poor child should have been born on a farm, or at least had the privilege of having grandparents with a farm, like I did when I was growing up. One of her long-standing dreams is to get to milk a cow. (I know, her mother should arrange for this to happen). Elina (who doesn't really love math) will LOVE a math problem if it has to do with animals (If John has 14 piglets and Jane has 12 how many piglets do they have together?) She is all the time fantasizing about the many and what kinds of animals she will have when she grows up and has a farm. When she checks out library books at school it is always non-fiction about some animal or dog-breed. The first 'person' she seeks out after school is Sadie. Together they play outside for hours.

Lately she has been praying for a pig. A pig! She talks about how she will have a pig when she grows up. Oh, how she wants a pig! 

Well, it got me thinking - she 'needs' another animal, besides the dog, to dote on. Well, I don't want to be the ogre parent that ruined the animal crazy girl's childhood by depriving her of the opportunity to care for a little critter. Not a pig. But, perhaps a Guinea Pig!

Well, I found one up for adoption on craigslist with all imaginable equipment and supplies, including a bunch of food and hay, indoor and outdoor cages, etc. In complete secrecy I brought her home and rearranged the furniture in the play-room to fit the large cage (while Mark took the kids to Sam's Club). The kids' astonishment was extraordinary. This was not just for Elina, of course, but for the whole family.

Elina just couldn't believe it. She was ecstatic, but kept asking how many days we would keep it (thinking we were pet-sitting). I repeated 3 or 4 times that she was ours before it sunk in. After learning all about guinea pigs we decided to get Mimmi a friend - they are happiest when they are not alone. Elina picked out the ugliest (in my mind) baby guinea pig because she was the bravest and most outgoing one. Her name is Maja.

These sweet critters receive no shortage of love.  We now have to get a lock on the cage because Julia will open it and lift them out and hold them - not always so gently. I had not expected how tender Isak would be around these little ones. But I should have known. He was the same way when Anja and Julia were tiny babies. Supersweet.

Today we took them outside and let them eat some grass.

 Innan detta kortet togs hade Julia hittats i mitt badrum med mascara i handen. 

Hon hade tom på ögonfransarna, den spjuvern. 

Hon säger "Nej, inte ma-fin, mamma, de e muuuus."

 Elina lycklig med sina husdjur.

 Marsvinen är inte det minsta rädda för Sadie.

Anja har plockat rabatt-blommor, som vanligt. 

 Elina och Mimmi.

 Elina och Mimmi, Isak och Maja.

Vi lät dem springa ute också och Sadie ville väääldigt gärna leka.

Rain Days

Oklahoma is going through its worst drought in history and our neighbor to the south, Texas, has it even worse. We are used to lots of spurts of heavy rain and some moderate flooding in the fall here in Oklahoma. And we had several days of rain early in the month and McGee street in Norman flooded - as it should! I was so incredibly happy. The kids were too. Anja says of rain days: "Det här är den bästa dagen i mitt liv!" (This is the best day of my life.)

It even began to pour one day when we walked our mile and a half to school. Anja was in utter bliss! Here are a few pictures from our rain days. I pray for many more to come.

 De minsta systrarna på väg till lekparken.

 Och en bok måste man ju ha med i regnet...

 Elina tyckte sparkcykla genom rännilarna var roligast.

Kungen av minerna.

Isak sprang som en galning utan regnjacka i timtal. 

Regnet var ju varmt ändå. 

Neighborhood Play

When we moved here from our old house, the MAIN consideration was to have lots of opportunities for the kids to play outside. The location, therefore, was the main selling point for our current house. Two new kids moved in behind us, Mia - who was on both Isak's 2nd and 3rd grade classes, and Jackson, a 1st grader from Elina's school, and we have ladders on each side of the fence so that the kids can go to each other's houses. Another little kid, Justin, from that street behind us, joins them too. Add to it, the two boys across the street (Tristan a long-time buddy of Isak's and the other, Xavier, the BOSOM friend of Anja's), and finally Ashton - also across the street from us, 1 year older than Anja. It makes for this mass of kids that run around the cul de sac, lots of screams and laughter. They own our street and the park. Julia wants to play with them all time, but we can't really let her.

"Mamma! Jag har hittat en daggmask! Titta vad sööööt"

En del av barnen på vår gata.

Anjas favoritsysselsättning!