Yes, No, Deffinitely!, Maybe

Rachel experienced a life "first" this week.  She got asked on her first date!  Not only a date, but a dance date!  Not just any dance, but the PROM!  Wow.  Pretty exciting times, folks.

Now, I don't know how it's done anywhere outside of Utah, but where we are from, school dances can be a huge production, starting with even the asking/answering process.  Some kids can go crazy pulling off elaborate, creative (and often expensive) invitation and answering gestures.  It's definitely not necessary to go to such lengths, but can admittedly be a fun part of the process.

That being said, Rachel was totally taken by surprise when one of her classmates came up to her after school and hurriedly handed her a crunched-up little note.  When she opened it, this is what she read:

A check-the-box note!  For Prom!  We both thought it was a little funny, but mostly sweet and sincere.  

Rachel came home and sent a message to her classmate, telling him how flattered she was to receive his note, but that she wouldn't be able to go with him since she is not going on dates until she turns 16 (she only turned 15 a few months ago).  He was very gracious and understanding, and it hasn't been weird when she has seen him at school since that day.

Steve and I had a long talk the night that Rachel received this note.  Even though she is still several months away from dating, we both felt sobered by the fact that our baby girl is growing up.  I miss the thumb-sucking days, when Rachel would play with her collection of hard animal toys for hours on end, organize puppet shows, pretend to be a dog, or sing dramatically at the top of her lungs (when she thought no one was listening).  Even though we still have littles in the house to keep us feeling "young", it doesn't lessen the sting that our older kids are getting closer to being grown-ups.  {sigh}

I'm not ready!!    

New life and near death in the ER (guest post by Steve)

Ahhh.  Now I feel at home.  I've mentioned before some of the challenges and differences that I've experienced while practicing medicine in New Zealand.  So many things have been different that it's taken me awhile to settle in.  I finally had a shift this week that made me feel right at home.  They can change the names of medications, doses, lab values, test ordering processes, etc., but they can't change crazy.  Crazy is crazy anywhere in the world.

The shift started off nice and quiet.  During handoff with the night docs, they told us about the patients that we would need to follow up on during the morning.  Chest pain rule-outs, weak and dizzies, patients waiting to be admitted to the floor, and a suicidal patient that had to be sedated overnight and was waiting for a crisis evaluation.  We settled in and started seeing some of the early morning patients that had begun to trickle in.  Before too long, it had picked up and we found ourselves busy with a variety of patients.  The EMS radio interrupted our pace with news that they were bringing in a 2-year-old in status epilepticus that had been seizing for 30-40 minutes.  Matt, another American, got prepped and waited for the patient to arrive.  It would prove to be a difficult case that would keep him, and several of the nursing staff, occupied for the next hour or so.

During this chaos, I witnessed an older gentleman yelling obscenities at a nurse and frantically pushing doors trying to get out of the emergency department.  I was told that he was the suicidal patient that had had to be chemically restrained overnight.  He apparently had woken up from his drug-induced coma and wanted out of the department now!  There were, of course, no security guards in sight.  I ran to help the nurse and see if we could calm the patient down and redirect him to his room.  We tried to reason with him, redirect him, offer bribes, and whisper sweet nothings.  He would have none of it.  He continued to scream at anyone in his way, demanding to leave and pounding on the doors.   I didn't want to sedate him again, because that would mean that crisis wouldn't be able to evaluate him for several more hours, but instructed the nurses to draw up meds just in case.  We finally found ourselves outside of a locked door at the end of the hallway leading to the waiting room.  After pounding on the door for a minute, he stopped, seemed to calm down, and turned around.  We hoped that maybe he was giving up and we could escort him back down the hallway to his room.  Little did I know it was just about to get interesting.

I should admit that I'm kind of a fight fan.  I've always enjoyed a good scrap, and maybe I stick my nose in a little close when things are starting to go down.  Someday, of course, that will eventually burn you.  Today was that day.  As I reached out to guide him by his arm down the hallway to his room, I was taken by surprise by his superhuman, cat-quick reflexes.  Before I could defend myself, he reached out, grabbed the ends of my stethoscope around my neck, crossed them, and pulled as hard as he could.  Time stopped.  It took me a second to process what was happening.  This older, pudgy, angry little man had me in a stethoscope necktie and was pulling for all he was worth.  I couldn't breathe.  As I stared at his glassy, bloodshot eyes bulging out of his angry little face, I felt angry at him, but sorry for him at the same time.  I tried wrapping my fingers underneath the stethoscope to give me some breathing room, but it was too tight.  Seconds that seemed like minutes passed as I tried to decide what to do.  I felt like my only option was to start swinging.  I pushed him into the corner and raised my fist, ready to bring down the hammer! (or at least the fly swatter).

But..., I..., hesitated.  Now, I've taken people down in the ED before, but throwing a punch just felt wrong, even if I couldn't breathe and was having my life flash before my eyes.  Maybe part of me thought that if I let him go just a little longer, maybe I would pass out and then get to go home early from my shift.  Unfortunately, my indecision was my decision.  After I pushed him into the corner, raised my fist and gave him my own bug-eyed, hypoxic stare, he loosened his grip.  I was able to extricate myself from his anaconda squeeze, but I still wanted to punch him.  I kept my hand raised for a moment, weighing how good it would feel to punch him in the mouth versus how bad it would look.  Reason finally won out, and I begrudgingly walked him back to his room.  I think he realized he had crossed the line, because he laid down on the bed, closed his eyes, and didn't move for the next hour.

I stood outside his room for a while, making sure he wasn't going to act up again, or maybe hoping for a redo.  As I stood there trying to get over my fightus interruptus, the EMS radio again blared to life.  They were bringing in a 28-year-old female with a distended, painful abdomen and low blood pressure.  Moments later, they arrived.  I walked into the room to see a young woman, lying on her side, writhing in pain.  She had been seen by her doctor that morning with severe abdominal pain, and a distended, tight abdomen.  He thought that something may have ruptured and that she needed to be seen by a surgeon.  She told us that she had had a period 3 weeks ago, and that she couldn't possibly be pregnant.  Now, I'm not an expert, but I've seen a pregnant woman once or twice, and this lady looked pregnant.  I asked her husband if she was pregnant, and he wouldn't say yes or no.  He just shook his head.

Trying to examine the patient was a challenge.  She wouldn't hold still, wouldn't let me palpate her abdomen, and writhed all over the bed as I tried to ultrasound her.  She seemed completely out of it, due to pain, drugs or emotional distress.  Very odd.  Even though I couldn't really see anything on the ultrasound due to her movement, I recognized that we had to treat her as if she was having a pregnancy-related emergency.  Nothing else could have caused this presentation.  We needed to see if she was delivering or hemorrhaging.  Attempting a pelvic exam was near impossible.  She had her legs crossed, and wouldn't lay on her back.  Again, very odd.  Finally, with enough nursing power, we rolled her on her back and performed a quick pelvic exam.  The baby's head was crowning.  Within a few moments, with the help of the OB resident who showed up just in time, the baby was delivered...full-term, healthy, pink, beautiful baby boy.  Crazy.  Mom didn't want to see or hold the baby.  Dad sat in the corner of the room and cried.  We cleaned them up, called social work, and sent them upstairs.

In the aftermath of the morning, I noticed people staring at my neck.  I had perfectly defined ligature marks on my neck.  I wish I would have snapped a photo for the scrapbook.  It's not everyday that you get to experience near death and new life all in one morning.

Day-cation

I've been feeling like this blog is turning into a BLAH-g.  There hasn't been much to report lately.  Apparently, when you sign up to come and live in New Zealand, you actually have to LIVE in New Zealand...school, work, grocery shopping, cleaning, homework (ha!), church activities...who knew??  All good stuff, but nothing super glam.

That's why we were all so excited when Steve had a long weekend off.  We planned on taking a little road trip to camp for a few nights.  As the weekend drew near, we were discouraged to see that the forecast called for rain all weekend.  Since we have a bigger trip planned in two weeks over Spring Break, we decided to scratch our plans for camping and just have a day-cation instead.

I am fully aware that in many of the blog posts up to this point, I have detailed the naughty food we've been indulging in (this post will be no different, I'm afraid).  The term "comfort food" is one in which we all have a newfound appreciation.  That being said, we have really tried to counteract our poor food choices with regular exercise, and I have sternly instructed my husband to try to keep his "secret" stash of chocolate bars more secret (I know they're here somewhere...I can smell them......).

Anyway, we started out our fun day with great workouts.  Steve went on a 12-mile trail run (over-achiever!), and the girls and I did some workout DVDs.  Julia jokingly complains that they are "old lady" routines, which makes me laugh...they are actually very recent DVDs in The Firm series, and they are awesome and difficult.  If she thinks these are old-lady-ish, I am going to need to get my hands on some Jane Fonda or Richard Simmons workouts!

After exercising and getting ready, we drove to our local beach.  It's only about 30 minutes from our home.  I love having the beach so close!  It was a chilly and windy day, but that never stops my children from getting in the water.  I'll be glad when it's warm enough that the kids can actually wear their swimsuits at the beach.  The water was shallow for quite a distance, and the kids had fun running in and out of the surf.

This next sequence of photos makes me laugh... all four of the older kids raced out together, but then you can almost hear Emily say, "Umm, never mind!" as the water gets deeper!  

Luke enjoyed playing in the water...

...but Landon had fallen asleep on the drive.  He was grumpy and wanted to be held, which I didn't mind one bit...I don't have much longer where my kids will actually allow me to hold and snuggle them!  

Judging from Landon's facial expressions, I'm pretty sure I'm enjoying the snuggling more than he is. :)

We found a log to sit on, and had fun examining the shells we had discovered.

When the kids had had their fill of the beach, we loaded up and headed back to town.  We had decided that as part of our day-cation, we would get some American fast food.  Since we haven't had fast food in almost 3 months, there was a considerable amount of discussion and debate about where to go.  As we've talked to Palmy residents, the one place that has come up more often in conversations has been Carls Jr.  Have we ever been to Carls Jr. in the States?  Not that I can recall, but we decided to give it a go.  The building is actually quite fancy for a fast-food joint.

On the other side of the building is this wall-sized mural highlighting San Francisco...one of our favorite cities in the world!

Since we were sandy and wet from the beach, we decided to get our food to go.  Thought you might be interested to see the display of our final order:

My $3.50 "big burger" came with ketchup, mustard, onions and gherkins (pickles).  It was basically a bit larger version of a junior burger you'd get at home for 89 cents.

Here's Steve proudly displaying our very first fountain drink in months!  Oh, how we miss fountain soda.

We took our food and drove a few miles to a cute little town called Ashhurst, getting a great view of the wind farm on our way.

When we reached the park, the skies opened and began pouring rain.  We had to eat our food in the van instead.  Maybe it was all that fat and sugar, but everyone got a little silly while we were waiting for the rain to stop.

Luke held on to that hamburger (his "craddy paddy") for as long as he could, without really taking any more bites.

Once the skies cleared, the girls had fun posing in front of this mural at the park...

Julia was the first to notice this brilliant rainbow, and the kids raced to find their pot o' gold.

It would appear that the treasure is actually...Julia herself!  No surprise there...we think she's pretty special.  A few more random shots at the park:

I love that last picture.  How we adore these cute kids of ours!

We came home, changed into warm, dry clothes, bathed the littles and put them to bed, then watched an episode of "Sherlock" together (one that Steve and I had already watched and deemed appropriate for the kids).  Have you seen that show?  We absolutely love it.  We had heard great things about it, and the day we searched for it on iTunes it was only $4.99 for the 2-season box set!!  Bargain!   

Great day for the Caldwell family.  Never underestimate the power of a good day-cation. 

Bark Worth Biting

This is admittedly one of my favorite sights in the world...Steve at the stove.

Hubba, hubba. :)  

In this photo, Steve happens to be making one of the most delicious treats we've ever had, a perfect balance of chocolatey-caramely-crunchy-salty goodness.  {swoon}

Since we first discovered the recipe for this delightful concoction while living here in New Zealand (and will undoubtedly be enjoying it for years to come), I thought I'd blog about it, while simultaneously sharing the recipe with readers.  Win-win all around.

The official name of this yummy goodness is Salted Chocolate Toffee Pretzel Bark, which we found over on Mel's awesome recipe blog.  I don't know Mel personally, but have been cooking from her website for years.  Great stuff, folks.  We've enjoyed some of her recipes more than others, but have never had a true "miss" from her site.  This here recipe is a slam dunk in our book!  It has to be a crime...somewhere...to make something this tasty so quickly and easily.   

Preheat your oven to 375.  Line a baking sheet with foil (use non-stick foil or spray the foil lightly), or non-stick parchment paper.  Spread broken-up pretzel pieces in the pan...aim for just a bit more than a single layer (not too deep). 

On the stovetop, combine one cup (2 sticks) of butter with one cup of packed light brown sugar.  Stir and cook over medium heat.   **New note:  My family has realized, after several batches, that we like just a BIT more caramel/toffee, so I've been making it with 1 1/4 or 1 1/2 cups each of butter and brown sugar, especially if I have more pretzels or I am using a larger pan (all other instructions the same).

When the mixture begins to gently bubble and simmer, let it cook 3-5 more minutes, without stirring (shorter time for softer toffee, longer time for crunchier toffee).  Pour evenly over the pretzels.  

Place the pan in the heated oven, and cook for 5 minutes.

After baking, remove from oven and sprinkle semi-sweet chocolate chips evenly over the top.

After 2 or 3 minutes, use a spatula to gently spread the melted chocolate evenly over the pretzel layer.

Sprinkle with sea salt...

Let cool until chocolate hardens (since we are very impatient, we put ours in the fridge to hasten the hardening).  Break into pieces, and enjoy!  

There you have it, my friends.  We triple-dog-dare-you to not love this delectable little goodie. 

Home Sweet Home

My cute niece (Hi, Chloe!) has asked Julia a few times when I'm going to do a post about our house.  Here goes!

This is what our house looks like from the front curb.  It might seem strange to have the wall/fence around the home, but this is very common here in New Zealand.  It's rare to see a home that doesn't have some type of fence or hedge around it (whereas in Utah it is more common for front yards to be unfenced...if there are fences, they usually enclose the backyard area).  The building lots are quite small here, at least within city limits.  Therefore, the yards are small too, and it's normal for homes to fill entire blocks of land (homes in the front, next to long driveways leading to homes in the back, behind the front homes).  Maybe that's why the privacy fences are so common?

Here are a few more views from the outside:

Walking up the front step to the door:

Standing at the front door looking out:

Before we head inside, I'll give a quick summary of how we landed this home in the first place.  If you have read the blog from the beginning, you'll remember this, but there are a few new insights and details to note.

The family who lived in our home before us (the Hansens) consisted of a couple who are several years older than us, and at least one older child.  They tried and tried to sell the house, with no luck.  When our friend at the hospital expressed interest in finding a large home for rent (they say "for hire" here), word got back to the homeowners, and they shifted gears from "sell" to "rent" mode.  They hired a management company to oversee the whole rental aspect, wanting limited contact with us directly (although Mr. Hansen has come by a few times to pick up mail and packages).  We pay our rent through the management company, and they come by every few months to do an inspection and take photos.  The homeowner has continued to pay for gardening/landscaping services, so we haven't had to lift a finger in the yard.

The Hansens were very, very generous in the furnishings they left behind, wanting to accommodate the needs of our large family.  They even purchased some new items based on our needs.  We are so grateful to them.  We have only needed to buy a few things to make this arrangement ideal.  

Mrs. Hansen made sure that there were ample linens and dishes for our use.  The age and style of many of those items were a bit startling, but again, we are using them anyway and are grateful for them.  The abundance of ceramic cats and similar decorative items throughout the house have been carefully stored in one of the closets.  We've taken down some of the wall-hangings and replaced them with ones we've purchased which are more suited to our style, and we've bought a few pillows to add some color to the sofas and beds.  Nearly every room has curtains on the windows and glass doors.  Not wanting to remove or change them, we've tried to decorate around the existing color scheme in each room.  In some of the rooms, nothing matches, which is fine too.

In the kitchen, we bought a bright rug and a few colorful items for above the cabinets.  The color palate in the kitchen was very neutral, so we added a little burst of color here and there, without going too crazy.  Every single cupboard and drawer in the kitchen had many MANY items left behind...some useful, some not.  I'm not sure how we'll ever find a use for the very naughty Valentine's Day card from Mrs. Hansen to her husband, discovered by one of my kids.  Sometimes it would be so nice to have a delete button in the brain.....

All things considered, the house was overall in excellent condition when we arrived.  When we learned that the owners had smoked in the home and had also owned pets, we were concerned, but were pleasantly surprised to find that the smoke and pet odors were very subdued.  I sneezed pretty good for about a week (I'm SO allergic to cats...real ones...well, you could say the ceramic ones, too), but we vacuumed often and opened windows which helped clear out any residual allergens.  

Anyway...are you really reading this post to hear about my cat allergies?  I didn't think so.  Let's continue the tour, shall we?  Here are some inside views of the entryway:

The hallway heading to the bedrooms:

That last photo is Luke and Landon's room.  They have transitioned to big-boy beds seamlessly!  We'll often put them to bed, then hear them talking and giggling and switching beds for well over an hour.  They are so much fun.  Their friendship is occasionally volatile, but mostly adorable.

They like to look out their window at the lemon tree...

  

Here is the master bedroom.  The rose painting and curtains were in place when we moved in.  Although I love red, it's not my first choice for a bedroom, but we've made it work.  You'll notice that we are sleeping on two twin beds pushed together... the full-size bed that was originally placed here got moved to one of the kids' rooms after about three nights.  The comforter is king-sized and fits this double-twin setup quite nicely!

The home has two full bathrooms and a half bathroom.  The first bathroom pictured is the hallway bath, and we jokingly call it our 6th bedroom.  It is enormous!  You could definitely put a twin bed in here, right? :)  The huge bathtub is a pain when bathing little ones, but an absolute dream for mommy after the littles have gone to bed.  Aaahhhhh.  There is also a very large shower behind the door, not pictured.

Here are the other two bathrooms, the guest and the master:

We spend most of our time in the living room/lounge/kitchen area.  It all sort of flows together.  It's spacious and bright and open, and the kids have plenty of space to play and stretch out and run around. Since we don't have central heating, the fireplace has gotten lots of use, especially during our first few weeks when it was still the middle of winter.   If you close the doors leading to the hallway areas, the living areas get toasty fairly quickly when the fire and fan are on.  When it's time for bed, we quickly hurry down the chilly halls to our beds, where electric blankets/mattress pads provide warmth and comfort.  That's the kiwi way.  Even though this is a newer home and the windows are all double-glazed, it has gotten pretty darn cold around here at times, although paling in comparison to a harsh Utah winter.  We are heading into spring now, with great anticipation!

I had spot-cleaned several areas of the carpet on the day I took these photos, hence the darker spots (for those of you who happened to notice!).

This next area is the lounge between the living room and kitchen.  It also serves as our home gym.  I brought several of my favorite exercise DVDs to New Zealand, hoping that they would play, since some US discs don't play in the local DVD players.  Luckily, about 80% of my DVDs are playable on this player!  Now, I just need to actually use those DVDs about 80% more than I've been using them!  It's hard to squeeze in workout time between eating pastry and Tim Tams.  :)

On to the kitchen/eating area...we are glad that there was an empty wall just big enough to fit our new (nearly-one-hundred-year-old) piano.  We don't love that the table and bar stools are placed on top of carpet, but we're too cheap to buy area rugs for underneath.  We are trying to keep the carpets clean, but it has been a challenge.  The carpet is very low pile, almost industrial style, so that helps.  Whenever I scrub a spot clean and my towel comes up covered with pet hairs, I feel less inclined to care so much.

We love the bright and well-lit kitchen.  We also love the spacious pantry with a huge countertop, which makes preparing lunches so much easier.  Between sending lunch and snacks to school every day, and rarely eating out, this kitchen has gotten tons of use already.  It's a great space and much nicer than many of the other homes we looked at.

If the fridge looks smaller than what we are used to in Utah, it is...this is only the refrigerator portion.  There's a large chest-style freezer in the garage.  Since the trash bins are in the garage next to said freezer, I thought I'd add that kiwis are very environmentally conscious, and they take recycling seriously.  In our part of Utah, recycling is optional and you actually have to pay extra to have your recycling picked up.  Here in NZ, besides the weekly trash pick-up, we have paper/plastic recycling pick-up every other week, switching off with glass.  You can always tell when someone has had a "spirited" few weeks based on the amount of glass bottles in their recycling bin!  More often than not, the bins are overflowing (but who am I to talk about vices, since our plastic recycling bin is always chock full of empty soda bottles).

Here is the laundry room.  It's at the opposite end of the garage.  I'm used to having the laundry room inside the house, but this room is so open and bright that I don't mind walking through the garage over and over on laundry days.

  

We have an electric dryer in the garage, as well as a clothes line outside.

A few more shots of the backyard...

The girls took some pictures of one of our many fun bubble-blowing sessions on the patio...

We have been treated to some beautiful sunrises and afternoon rainbows, viewed right from our front yard:

I think that about covers it!  We feel incredibly fortunate to be living in this beautiful home in such a nice neighborhood.  Hope you've enjoyed the home tour!