Joy & Peace

Christmas is in full swing at the Kohler household. The tree has been cut and trimmed and Quinn has recieved his first gift of the season.
"Daddy & Quinn off to find the perfect tree."



"Loading up the perfect one"

"A fresh air and Cheeto induced nap"


"Quinn's first magical gift of the season"

We are leaving in the morning for the Emerald Isle (Ireland) and I am having a hard time with the thought of being away from Quinn for 5 days. I know he will have fun with his buddy Gianni, but will he forget us? Will he start calling Cora "mama"? Will he assume his last name is Williams? Will his eyes turn brown? Will he be potty trained, reading and sharing his thoughts on his own blog? When we pick him up will he say, "no thanks, I prefer it here."? I am going to miss my boy so much. I actually cried in WalMart last night (not even for the usual reasons WalMart makes me cry, but because I will miss Quinn so).
PS I am actually OK with the potty training thing...OK Lyssa? hee hee hee

Quinny Was A Punk Rocker

Quinn had his first Halloween, which also happened to be Protestant Reformation
Day. The costume was a natural fit because Quinn grows a mohawk with very little hair on the sides. He has never had a haircut, so he really does have a natural mohawk! He sported that thing with pride in all it's glory! He went trick-or-treating to 4 houses with daddy. He had no interest in actually eating the candy, but greatly enjoyed carrying it around in his basket for a few days.


So here is the new news: we have officially been accepted as missionaries for TeamWorld missions, and will be considering a placement in Ireland in late 2010 or early 2011. It will mean huge changes for our family. We have put our house on the market and will in the next few months be completely debt free paying off the last of our debt i.e. the Jeep and a student loan. We will keep you all posted on our decision making process. Now... if we do go to Ireland, you all better be saving some money for a trip to see us! Please keep us in your prayers as we consider our future!

Exit Summer Enter Fall

Summer is over and Fall has moved in. Here is a summer wrap-up video with highlights of some of our fun adventures. The video includes several cameos from the Williams family, since we spent most of our summer fun times with them. Turn up the volume and enjoy!
Since Andy's job is ending at the end of this month, I spent the last 2 weeks getting in as many Drs and dentist appointments as I could before our insurance runs out. My first one was the dreaded pelvic exam...always a favorite. Then on to my very first mammogram! It was as delightful as everyone says. The lady was very kind and gentle with me and told me when to stop the pressure as she flattened my boobs on a cold xray plate. She said I was a "real woman" because I let her smash them as far down as the machine would go. I just didn't want to be a wimp, but I am not sure if this was a good choice for me. When the test was over and the pressure was released, I pulled back away from the machine and I swear I had two flat crepes sticking out horizontally from my chest. I am still waiting for them to resume their natural shape. I really think bra shopping will be a nightmare if they don't. "Do you have something in a 38 double pancake?" Andy doesn't seem to mind, but he keeps craving maple syrup...
Next I had a series of standard blood tests and went through 2 techs to get the blood. Apparently all of my larger veins are deep in my arm, so they had to dig for them. Not fun. After that, something really scary happened. I got a call from the hospital and they called me back for a second round of mammograms. Terror! I was so nervous. It turns out that the first time you get one they are trying to establish a baseline that will be compared to all future mammograms. She informed me that they needed to get additional pictures and they would have to "spread me out more" . Seriously....they couldn't possibly spread any more. They said it was very typical to be called back on your first time. WISH I WOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT SOONER!!! Everything was fine and they didn't have to go to an ultra sound to see through the tissue.
My final visit was the dentist. I would rather have my boobs squished 10 times. I was really nervous because I have been a very bad girl and have not seen a dentist in over 13 years...yes 13, not 3! I was sure I had a mouth full of cavities, but much to my surprised they were so impressed with my oral hygiene that I finished my cleaning an hour early! I will never put it off that long again, but its good to know that I brush and floss with success. Or maybe its all the crisp apples I have been eating this Fall!!!!
Quinn is growing up and trying to say words. He can say several words that only we can understand along with bye bye, daddy, mama, baby, book, cup, all done, etc. The word we have been working on lately is "yes", but he says "ham" instead. I ask him if he wants a drink and he says "ham", are you hungry? "ham", do you want to play? "ham". Well...either he is afirming my suggestions, or he is craving pork. We have been praying with him at night before we put him to bed and tonight after our prayer he said "maaaaaaayyyymen". Awww, too sweet.

Quinlan McKohler and the Very Clean Throne

Real men wear kilts! Our dear friends from Wee Bit O' Scotland in Boise sent Quinn his first kilt! Now all mini Braveheart needs is a mighty sword. Freedom!!!! Don't even try to pretend that this is not adorable.
One thing I am coming to understand is that this kid is all boy. He decided to try to climb his dresser and it tumbled over on him on Sunday night. It pinned his feet underneath and his legs just above his ankles swelled up pretty bad. We took him to the ER and after a 3 hour wait (not to mention the interesting company we kept in the waiting room) the nurse brought us the big news.... his diagnosis was a bruise. I was very relieved, but a bit embarrassed that I may have overreacted. I guess it's better to be safe than sorry. The ER wait was excruciating. I enjoyed a really bad cup of coffee and just as I was getting the courage to have a second cup, a waiting patient sneezed several times right on the coffee maker...I skipped the second cup. That place has to be a Mecca for a host of deadly bacteria and germs. My throat feels kind of sore come to think of it. I just know I will get the swine flu! Am I becoming a hypo?

I suppose the best way to rid your home of germs and icky bacteria is to keep up on the house cleaning. Apparently Quinn thought I might have been neglecting my domestic duties. He decided that mom needed a bit of help in this area and decided to surprise me by cleaning the toilet.....with all the cleaners, my mouthwash and my Oral B rechargeable electric toothbrush, sigh. What do you do? It really was kind of funny and he was only trying to help so we thanked him for his efforts and just died laughing. Well, that is until I remembered the toothbrush, that wasn't very funny at all. See, now not only will I get swine flu but I could get some kind of butt-in-mouth disease. OK, I really need to look into this hypo thing.

One more for the ladies!

Now we know what boys wear under their kilts.

Huggies size 4.

Quinlan ....Jackson?

The media coverage of Michael Jackson has reached it's limits in my household.

This is how you know it's time to turn off the TV and read more books: my 18 month old started moonwalking a couple of weeks ago....sigh. Hope you enjoy Quinn's tribute to the King of Pop.

Illuminated Reading

Have you ever known one of those people that is on a never ending quest to find something? I'm not talking about some quest for enlightenment or a sort of spiritual journey, but some little doohickey or what-not that they think they can't live without. I am one of those people. As my friends know, I had a problem a while back with collecting lip glosses/ lip balms in my search for the perfect one. It couldn't be too sticky, too slimy, too glitter gritty, wear off too easy, too colored and had to smell and taste right. I had to go to cosmetic rehab after finding over 20 of these tubes in various corners of my life, most of which had only been used once. I was able to kick the habit, give them away all to dry lipped friends and force myself to finish a whole tube. I am feeling much better now and my lips are doing fine.

My latest obsession is much less frequent and has spanned a much longer period of time: my search for the perfect booklight. I have a bedtime ritual, like most people i.e., washing the face, brushing the teeth, applying ample amounts of night moisturizer on my 39 year old face, etc. I top my ritual off in bed with a few chapters from a good book. Since my husband has long been in the Land of Nod by this time, I require a light just bright enough to illuminate my pages but not wake my precious from his well deserved sleep.

There are many on the market and while I was still working at the bookstore I had access to many varieties. This is when the collecting began. I tried the Mighty Bright, the Itty Bitty Booklight, and many other brands. They seemed to be just great at first until my standards were eventually compromised by their performance. Some drained their battery life about every other night, some only lit one page causing me to have to shift it each time I navigated to a new page, some had to be readjusted each time I turned a page, some had snakelike tubes you could adjust just so until you noticed that your head was casting a shadow on the page, some had LED lights that cast a strange purple beam, some had multiple brightness settings that the bright was too bright and the dim was too dim (of course), I have tried to clip them to books, pages and even my glasses.....sigh. There are even forums on the Internet dedicated to people just like me on the same quest. They have posts about what didn't work or what they hated about this one or that, but apparently when they find the right one, they don't return to the forum and let the rest of us know. (most likely because they are too busy reading with their perfect booklight)

My latest light has done OK for me for the last few months but I am sure it is noticing I have become concerned with our relationship. This one boasted a clip that was big enough to clip to my headboard. Brilliant! The only problem I had was that I would occasionally bump the clip in the night and send it flying with a loud smack as it detached from the bed. One night it came unclipped as I was reading and fell behind the headboard and under the bed, just out of reach. With the light still on, I decided to leave it there until morning as not to awaken Andy. As I lay in bed the light from under the bed glowed and gave the feeling that I was laying on an enormous halo. I couldn't sleep. Back to the drawing board.

Last night Andy came home a night early from hiking after having been chased out of the Wind River Range by killer mosquitoes (see AndrewKohler.blogspot.com for more details on this exciting adventure). As he was unpacking his gear, I noticed a curious little contraption I had never seen before. It was a headlamp. Hmmmm....it's worth a try. I tried it on and wore it around the house to get used to it before beginning my bedtime routine. It has a peach pit sized light that rests on your forehead with three settings.

1. Dim: the gentle setting....seems like it might be just right!

2. Bright: this setting reminds me of the lights that beam from helicopters that shine on the ground during a prison break.

3. Hazard: the bright light set to flash. I guess it might come in handy if I get a paper cut reading and am so weak from the pain that I need to alert Andy to run and get me a Hello Kitty band aid

Anyway, I tried it last night and it seemed to work like a dream. I only found 2 problems with it, hopefully I can live with them.

1. It leaves a red elastic mark on your forehead that you hope will be gone by morning

2. Forgetting you have it on and setting it to high

This latter point revealed itself twice last night. The first time- I went in to check on Quinn and he jerked awake and looked at me like I was an alien coming to abduct him!

The second time- I walked into the bedroom and my husband looked at me through squinty eyes and said "Your High Beams are on!". "Huh?", I said, as I stood there in the dark clutching my boobs. I slowly realized that he was talking about the headlamp!

Quinn the Thumbless Wonderboy

When I was a kid, my grandmother (like all good grandmothers) instilled a fear in me that I will have to live with forever. Besides leaping from dark corners in the night and trying to scare me by calling the "booger man" from the very pits of Hades to suck the essence out of my brain, she apparently also blessed me with the gene for dramatics (as you can well see). Every time I had a headache, she told me it was a brain tumor. When my tummy hurt she said I had a poop stuck crossways. Pepto Bismol was dessert at grandma's house.

So, today I cut my son's thumb off.

(have you already forgotten what I said about being dramatic?)

As I was dressing Quinn in his ever so cute lobster Gianni hand-me-down swim trunks for a day at the spray park (that never actually happened due to a downpour that nearly caused our garage to float down the street), I realized that his nails were getting way too long (inching toward drag queen long). I , grabbed the super duper owie proof , plastic enclosed baby nail clippers and went to work. Of course they were shaped like a little alligator and Quinn felt he should grab them as I was squeezing down on his thumbnail. Holy mother, I clipped the skin on the end of his thumb! Blood! Tears! Panic! I rinsed it off, and put pressure on it with a paper towel, still I couldn't get the bleeding to stop. Oh, no....my child is a hemophiliac! He is certain to bleed to death. At this point he became frustrated with my applying pressure to the wound that I learned in my DFS CPR class and he began to wiggle and cry. More blood, blood on my shirt, blood on my pants, blood on the floor...It looked like OJ was here.....think, think, how much blood in a baby's body? My heart starts beating palpitations of panic, cold sweats, nausea. Will all his precious life blood drain out this tiny snip in his thumb?!? 10 min goes by, still bleeding, 15 min, 20.....I have killed my child!!!!

21min.....all is well. Blood stopped. Heart rate slowing. Sorry about the OJ reference. What am I going to do if he really hurts himself someday. THANKS GRANDMA!!!!!

Bluegrass Baby and the Bad Day

Poor Quinn.
This is how his evening ended last night. I hate it when I spill perfectly good popcorn too. He just couldn't get a break yesterday. He fell in a hole in the back yard, shut his hand in a cabinet door, got his finger stuck in the bathtub drain, had an exploding diaper at nap time and proceeded to roll in his poop in his sleep, got the big "no no" from mommy for pulling the cat's tail, had a cow when he realized that we were out of bananas, and spilled his popcorn on the floor.
Earlier this week we were winding down our day with a little channel surfing and came across "O, Brother Where Art Thou" on TNT. Quinn was in his jammies and we were just about to put him to bed when the song "Man of Constant Sorrow" came on. The couch started shaking and I thought maybe we were experiencing some seismic activity. I looked to my left to see Quinn standing up on the couch rockin' out, full on head thrashing, jamming to the music like he was in the front row at an AC/DC concert. I was waiting for him to take a header as he attempted a stage dive onto the floor. We play music around the house all the time, but this was the first time I ever saw him do more than a little head nod. We got quite the giggle out of this. We kept rewinding the song (thanks to the DVR) and he danced for about 10 minutes. I guess bluegrass is his kind of music! Who woulda thought?

It's Official!!!!

Well, it happened! The adoption of our son, Quinn, is final! It seems so strange to be some one's mom. I can't imagine ever being without him.

The adoption itself was very short. The Williams family joined us at the courthouse and the morning began as I broke into a cold sweat because our lawyer had not yet arrived with the paperwork. As we waited we watched as several others showed up for their own obviously not so happy cases. Compared to the current company we were keeping in the hall outside the courtrooms, we felt a bit overdressed, content and strangely stable......grateful I guess is the appropriate word here. Plenty of other lawyers were showing up to whisper in corners with their clients about how they should behave and what they shouldn't say in court. Finally when I had decided that it was already too late, and this adoption would never happen (drama, drama drama), our lawyer finally showed (whew).

After it was over, the judge posed for a pic (expertly taken by Melyssa) and we were parents!

Wow, no labor pains, no stretch marks or anything. Our lawyer collected the papers and said "I will be right back with copies of all of these divorce papers for you." WHAT?!?! Did I hear that right? I came into this courtroom to gain a son, not lose a husband!!!!!!!!! Did I just get a divorce by accident? Luckily it was just a slip of the tongue, but I looked over those documents just to make sure. We celebrated Quinn's adoption (and the fact that we weren't divorced) with BBQ ribs and way too much food and cake.

Our Fairy Tale Begins...

We are about 49 days away from officially filing to adopt

Quinlan Jack Kohler (to be).

All is in order so far and we should be completing the preliminary paperwork at the end of the month with our case worker. What a crazy ride this has been! It is very exciting for us and we fall in love with Quinn more each day. He is happy, healthy and just enough of a stinker to be a true Kohler.

For those of you who may not know the whole story, I will give you the super-condensed version:

Foster parents, allowed foster licence to expire, not foster parents,

a baby to be adopted, re-licenced as foster parents for quick adoption,

Texas, baby born, birth mom changed mind, whew (crazy situation averted),

back to Wyoming,

2 weeks later a call for foster placement, 9 month old baby boy placed in our home,

birth parents relinquished rights, baby needs a permanent home,

really glad we re-licenced as foster parents or we wouldn't have had this blessing!

(God had it all worked out obviously)

Did you get all that?

Now we just wait until May for everything to be finalized!

This will be the longest 49 days...

In the meantime, Andy is heading off to China in mid April while I head to Indiana to introduce Quinn to his new grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc.

Stay tuned for more!