Celebrating Our Finnish Heritage

We came, we saw, we ate waffles.

As always, we really enjoyed the Scandinavian festival!

We made some of our best-ever flower crowns

and witnessed the raising of a Midsummer Pole--with lots of "Hey Hi"s, "Hey Ho"s and even a couple of "OH NO"s when the pole was looking especially difficult to raise due to a broken support beam. 

Janae, Alaina and Eric danced some traditional dances,

and Eric got to do some kids' activities, like an Ikea stuffed animal toss

and some dressing up in the Viking Village.

We also ran into two of my sisters, one of my aunts, and two of my cousins!

Janae and Jason got their Swedish meatballs, too.

Overall, a successful event--one we'll continue to look forward to every summer.

AprilMayJune

I feel like I lost a bit of time this spring, with the months seeming almost indistinguishable. Still, I have my photo app to remind me what happened when :) 

In April we were dealing with the house being for sale. We put in applications for two other houses and were offered contracts at both, but then our landlords convinced us to stay here, even taking the house off the market. 

The day after all that happened, Janae left with her jazz band/vocal jazz group for New Orleans! She'd been looking forward to this trip all year, and it did not disappoint. She listened to some of the best music she's ever heard and really enjoyed all the historic sights (just don't ask her about Bourbon Street....).

Since Janae plays piano for the band, she got to carry around her 100-pound keyboard all day as they went from one performance to another.

And on one of the last days, she discovered their hotel was only blocks away from a performance of one of her favorite musicals! Unfortunately, they couldn't go see it, but she was still pretty excited that it was so close :)

In May, the big event was Becca and Brody's wedding--I got to go and help my sisters decorate the day before, and we were able to attend the beautiful wedding and reception on May 13.

Later in May we had a long weekend for Victoria Day, and we visited a bird sanctuary at Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver.

 

Afterwards, we went to the Lynn Canyon suspension bridge, and got "trapped" on the other side because of an emergency incident that happened on the bridge (yikes!). We actually found another way back, but it was a lot longer, with lots of steep steps to climb.

  

Eric also had his school carnival at the end of May--a nice, sunny day this year! Janae and Alaina helped out with some of the games as well.

In June, Janae, Alaina and Eric had piano/cello concerts, back-to-back at their music school.

 

This also happened to be on Ben's 19th birthday!

The next big event was the high school/middle school's year-end Exhibition of Learning on June 15. Janae and Alaina both performed in jazz band and choir, with Janae also singing with vocal jazz (including unexpected solo parts in "Uptown Funk") and performing with her dance class. 

Whenever Alaina performs on the trombone, I always happen to be sitting in a spot where I can't see her--there's always someone sitting in front of her--so I can't get a good picture. This has resulted in Alaina claiming that there is "no evidence'' that she even plays the trombone! But at the exhibition I had a clear view and took lots of pictures :) She also played in her middle school concert band.

As always, I was blown away by what they do at their school--it's truly an amazing place.

And then this past week, Alaina performed in a puppet presentation for Indigenous Peoples Day. She and a group of students had been working with a puppeteer for several weeks after school, learning how to use these enormous, illuminated puppets to tell the story of our area's history.

Now, they're just finishing up the last few days of school! Janae's last day is today, and Eric and Alaina will be finished next week (Thursday). We're all looking forward to summer holidays :)

Lucky to Be There

On Thursday, April 27, I took the kids to school, filled up our van with gas, and was planning to go look for a dress to wear to my niece (Becca)'s wedding, which was coming up in only two weeks. But I wasn't really feeling well, so I decided to go home and lie down for an hour first. 

When I got home, my mom called to see if I could take her grocery shopping, and I explained that I had a bit of a stomach ache but would be fine after an hour or so and would come to pick her up.

Before an hour had passed, though, I realized I wouldn't be going anywhere except maybe the hospital. When I tried to call and tell Jason this, I could hardly pick up my phone because my hands were shaking so badly. I wondered if I was having a seizure--a feeling I'd had almost five years ago when I'd had sepsis.

In the ER waiting room things got even worse. I couldn't sit or stand, but Jason had to go back to work. He told one of the nurses how non-functional I was, and she said I could just "put up my hand" when someone called my name. But when someone called, I couldn't even raise my head. Luckily, another person in the waiting room who'd noticed my situation pointed the nurse in the right direction. 

The next few hours revolved around tests to see what was wrong. My blood pressure was very low, and I was so nauseous I couldn't move without being sick. I had abdominal pain and crumpled to the floor when the technicians tried to stand me up for a chest x-ray.

Jason brought Ben to stay with me at the hospital, and Ben fed me ice chips from a spoon because I couldn't even do that. He reminded me later that I'd asked him if he "thought I was going to make it."

A doctor told me there was some inflammation around my appendix and that they were going to remove it as soon as possible. This confused me, because I'd heard about other people having their appendix removed, and my symptoms didn't really match up. 

Soon I was up in the OR, being lifted in a gurney onto the table. The surgeon told me that the infection seemed to be around the appendix, rather than in the appendix itself, but that they would remove it. 

I woke up hearing nurses talking about sepsis. My blood pressure was even lower than before surgery (around 70/40), and I was on a strong IV antibiotic to try to clear up the infection. The surgeon confirmed that my appendix had only been "an innocent bystander" and not the source of infection; however, even though they'd explored my entire digestive tract, they weren't sure what had caused the problem. Their best guess was a ruptured ovarian cyst.

I was in the hospital for six days, on oxygen, too sick to eat or walk around, despite all the anti-nausea meds they injected into my IV. Finally the infection cleared up enough to stop the antibiotics, and after that I started to feel a bit better.

Coming home, it was several days before I could walk very far. I just sat on the couch with a heating pad and tried to eat bland foods. 

But, the day before Becca's wedding, I was able to go to the mall and find a dress :). When I told the salesperson that my niece was getting married the next day, she said, "You left it kind of late to find a dress!" 

Yes, I guess I did. 

But all things considered, I'm pretty lucky I got to be there at all.