Category Archives: tristan

Some beautiful weather

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Yesterday we had some beautiful weather, and today looks to be the same. We decided to explore the area around where we hope to live. There is a lot of open countryside, most of it wooded. Mature oak trees are everywhere. (Oaks are my favorite trees.) There are lakes everywhere, too, and it was fun to drive by several of them and see all of the people out in their boats enjoying the beautiful weather. One of the things we did was to drive by the elementary school that, hopefully, Tristan will attend in the fall. It is a nice place and looks like it was built recently. Tristan is quite excited about going to school but I am not sure that his parents are prepared for this major life change :-)

On Wednesday last week, I attended Keegan’s 8th grade graduation ceremony. It was great to be there except that it was held in a gym without any air conditioning. Sitting two plus hours on a bench among a couple thousand hot, sweaty people is a challenge. Keegan is pretty sad to leave behind the friends he has made and we feel sorry for him. But he is a pretty gregarious person and we are certain he will make new friends at his new school. His Uncle Bryan picked him up after the graduation ceremony and Keegan stayed with him that night and Thursday, and then they left for fishing camp this weekend at Honey Rock in northern Wisconsin.

Long time without writing

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It’s been a long time since I last wrote.  Honestly I have felt some burnout with too many things happening in my personal and professional lives. 

On the home front, we’ve been focused on completing the purchase of a house.  Wednesday we had the formal home inspection and discovered some things that needed to be fixed, but nothing major.  The lawyers will hopefully sign off on the contract this coming Tuesday.  The only thing left after that, I think, is for the underwriting portion of our loan.  Michele, in particular, is preoccupied with figuring out what kind of color scheme we should use in the new house, as well as with other details such as window coverings.  We’ve never owned a new house before and having a tabula rasa can be a bit intimidating.  To help us garner ideas for decorating, we’ve visited a few big home stores including Expo and The Great Indoors.

Last night we had more excitement than we anticipated.  The little ones were roughhousing as usual just before their bedtime when Tristan grabbed Brinley’s left arm and pulled it hard.  She screamed and cried for over an hour and was obviously in a lot of pain.  She couldn’t or wouldn’t move her left arm.  The slightest movement caused her to cry even more.  I took her to the emergency room and she had several X-rays to see if she might have a broken wrist.  Fortunately she didn’t.  The doctor figured out that she had something commonly known as nursemaid’s elbow, which basically means that her arm had been dislocated at the elbow.  He made a quick adjustment on her arm and everything clicked back into place.  It happened so fast that I could hardly believe what he had done.  Within five minutes she was almost back to normal.

A new house

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Other%20Side%20of%20House

Thursday evening, Michele and I signed the papers necessary for purchasing a new house. This photo shows the front of the house. (More photos of the exterior and interior are available here.) It has four bedrooms and two full bathrooms and has about 2,000 sq. ft. of living space. All appliances are brand new and come with the house, which was built late last year. It is in a nice community within a short distance from a commuter rail station that I can use to commute to and from work. The schools seem to be quite good, which is really important for us since Keegan enters high school in the fall, and Tristan starts kindergarten. We couldn’t be happier with how things have worked out, and we just hope and pray that all of the necessary details will work out satisfactorily. The whole process from here on to the closing is in the hands of our lender, our real estate agent, and our lawyer. Of course, God’s hand is over it all. We hope to take possession of the house in about a month’s time. The kids are as thrilled as we are and already ask us when we will live in our new house.

Dryer boys

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This funny situation occured yesterday. Michele tells about it:

“This morning I was checking my email and the kids were upstairs playing together. No loud noises, no crying, no arguing…all is good. A bit later Brinley came downstairs and said that Tristan and Cohen got in and it went round and round. HUH? I asked her what she was talking about and went upstairs to investigate…”

The funny part is that I used to do this when I was little, too. And my mother often tells the story of one day when my oldest two brothers were little and she heard this funny noise: THUMP THUMP giggle giggle THUMP THUMP giggle giggle. When she went to investigate, she found that my brother, Kevin, had put my other brother, Tim, in the dryer and turned it on! So there must be some weird abberation in the Oberg gene pool.

Tristan turns five

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Monday we celebrated Tristan’s 5th birthday. Hard to believe he is five already! Next year he starts school. I hope to post pictures from his birthday party soon. On Sunday afternoon as part of celebrating his birthday, I took Tristan and Brinley to see Chicken Little at a nearby theater. It was Tristan’s second time going to see a movie and Brinley’s first. We had a good time and in general, the movie was good. Some parts of the movie were a little too intense, I thought, and I worried that Brinley in particular might get scared and start to cry. But she did ok. She just kept saying that the movie was too loud! The funny part was when one scene featured a sudden movement accompanied by a loud sound, and I levitated a few inches from my seat whereas Brinley and Tristan remained calmly sitting in their chairs. I laughed ’til I cried. I’m notoriously jumpy when it comes to startling movie scenes and if I go to a movie with others in our family, they usually refuse to sit next to me for fear that I might spill popcorn all over them, or worse, a drink. They usually say, “OK, get a seatbelt, would ya?!”

Christmas party

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Tristan has a dragon painted on his face

Originally uploaded by Steve_Oberg.

Last night we attended the Christmas party for my work. The weather wasn’t good and we debated about not going, but the kids were really excited about going so we decided to go after all. Michele had bought the three younger ones really cute outfits and they enjoyed getting dressed up. The party turned out better than we thought, with lots of special activities for the little ones, such as a face painter and a magician. There were special little gift bags with toys for them, and the kids even had a special meal with food they liked, including macaroni and cheese, and chicken tenders.

A stressful week

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This has been a stressful week. I have not felt up to writing blog entries for a while. On Wednesday when temperatures plummeted and we had some snow, we discovered that our furnace was broken. We were without heat until Thursday afternoon, when the repair man was able to replace the heat exchanger that had a crack in it. We made it through ok, but this incident helped us to remember to be thankful for things we often take for granted.

Cohen, Brinley, and Tristan have been struggling with chest colds for a couple of weeks now. ‘Course the cold temps didn’t help but they seem to be getting over it. After about 10 days of taking muscle relaxant and an anti-inflammatory (naproxen) to cope with the severe headaches I’ve been having, I was glad to report to my doctor that the medication had helped. This vindicated his diagnosis, that the headaches are caused by muscle tension. He said that many people who think they have migraines actually have headaches caused by muscle tension. The pain profile from muscle tension headaches is apparently indistinguishable from that of migraines. Anyway, my doctor prescribed physical therapy for 4-6 weeks and I had two sessions already. In addition to the therapy sessions I am supposed to do exercises three times a day. I think this treatment is helping.

On Tuesday a.m., Michele discovered that our dog, Maddie, had gotten ahold of an avocado pit and appeared to have eaten half of it. She noticed that Maddie had thrown up and decided to look up information about the situation on the Internet. She discovered that avocado pits are toxic to dogs, so we called a vet and asked for advice. The vet urged us to get her to the clinic as soon as possible. $160 later we thankfully found out that she was ok. It was a pretty stressful day for Michele since she had to go by herself with all three little kids, who were quite sick and crabby to boot.

Last night as I was going to the bus to start my commute home from work, I felt in my coat pocket and realized that I had lost my monthly train and bus pass (an expensive loss). I had to run back to my office to get enough money for the train and bus fares and in the meantime, missed the connecting bus. Unfortunately by the time I got to the Metra station, all trains outbound from Chicago were running up to 45 minutes late due to signal problems. I left work shortly after 5p and didn’t get home ’til after 7p.

Tired out

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I’m pretty tired out these days. Most of the fault lies with two little kids who continue to think that their real bedroom is their parents’. I am sooooo tired of Brinley and Tristan coming into our room at night and camping out, each and every night. Ironically, Michele seldom is bothered enough to wake up.

Michele had a really bad weekend with her shaking/trembling symptoms but seems a bit better today.

I heard from the buyer of our house in Indiana that almost everything has come together for the closing, so maybe that can be taken care of soon.

It was a huge disappointment to see Andre Agassi defeated by Roger Federer in the championship match of the U.S. Open. That kind of characterized the weekend, which was full of disappointment and lack of motivation to do anything.