Welcome to the Scharrer family's real life story! Most of our story is written for, and about, our four kids and the spice they add to our lives. It's our story of happiness, craziness, and sometimes ridiculousness. We've journaled through childbirth, the terrible two's, private school (and our public school experience), an autism diagnosis, medical school, residency, and long-term mission work in Africa.

Now we're following a new adventure, which involves a 45 foot motorcoach, homeschool, and as many ski slopes as we can go down in one year.

For posts from while we were living in Zimbabwe and updates about our future plans in Zimbabwe, please see our mission blog...

www.ourzimbabwejourney.blogspot.com.





01 April 2016

March in Pictures

March was a busy month!  There was never a dull moment.  Here are some of the highlights....
Maida got her PICC line out!  She was very nervous about getting it out, but her white blood count was going way too low with the powerful antibiotics that were given through the PICC.  According to her scans, she wasn't ready to go off of antibiotics, yet, so her team of doctors determined it was best to go on an oral antibiotic.

Maida and I spent an entire day at the Mayo Clinic with appointments and then even stayed after closing!  There was not a pharmacy anywhere that carried the antibiotic that she was prescribed!  The pharmacist volunteered to stay after hours to work on figuring out something for us and a friend brought us dinner at the clinic.  We ate on the floor close to a plugin so I could charge my phone.  It was important to stay in contact with the babysitter who was at home with the boys way longer than she had planned since Erik was also held at work longer than planned.  It was a crazy evening, but eventually we got a hold of one of Maida's doctors who changed the prescription.  Then we drove to the hospital pharmacy to pick it up since all other pharmacies were closed! It ended up being a late night for everyone.

T Baby, always in costume!

Torsten worked really hard one afternoon drawing a picture of him and Daddy skiing! He said the curvy lines was Daddy carving.

Last ski race of the year was in Taylors Falls!

Maida decided to give the race a try even though she had not attended practice since the second week of the season.
So so proud of my girl! I know this was a hard thing for her to do, but she did it confidently.

Maida, race 1 - slalom
Skogen, race 1 - slalom

After lunch we headed out for race number 2 and Torsten fell asleep while we were waiting for the kids to come down!  Three year olds are so heavy to hold while they are sleeping and in all their winter gear!

Maida, race 2 - giant slalom
Skogen, race 2 - giant slalom


Skogen made the podium for the boys!
Maida made the podium for the girls!



Everyone celebrated by skiing through the evening!  There's nothing better than having an activity that your entire family enjoys doing together.  I hope we have many other memories like this!




Sunday morning selfie after a busy weekend of skiing!


Lots of skiing means T gets lots of mouth sores.  When his face is all bundled up, he has a horrible habit of chewing and sucking on his lips.
One of Klaasen's favorite things to do is pick up Maida from school!  He gets out and goes up to her school to walk with her.  She always goes out of her way to make him feel special.


Motherly Maida put tired Torsten down for a nap!

My cousin Myra and I left the kids with Erik for a weekend and traveled to North Carolina for a One Tree Hill convention.  We had a blast traveling together and made many great memories!

 
 While I was in North Carolina with Myra, the kids and Erik spent almost an entire night making their entry for the duct tape durby!  They worked so late into the night that Torsten even fell asleep on the garage floor!





On the way to the ski hill, all ready to compete in the pond skim and duct tape derby!



Erik pond skimming
Skogen started out great!
But took a big nose dive!!
Klaasen did a great job, too!
And also took a nose dive!
Proud and wet little boys!
Warming up before the duct tape derby!







Team Scharrer




The kids had to carry their creation up the hill to the beginning of the race course!


Waiting in line at the beginning of the course!


Erik got them all inside the "coolbus" and sent them down the mountain.  Unfortunately, they didn't have the greatest run and did not win the duct tape derby.  They had a great time trying, though!

Dinner at Perkins when mom was out of town!


When I arrived home from North Carolina, Erik surprised me with a shaved face!!  Best surprise EVER!
 
Skogen put T down for a nap when I was busy unpacking from my trip.  So wonderful!
Maida had a follow up appointment at Mayo and it appeared on the scans that the abscesses are shrinking, so she was able to go off her antibiotics!
A quick dinner with her best friend before going home!

It seems like Torsten loves to sleep on his siblings!  He's not usually a nap taker, but a busy month makes for a sleepy Baby T.

Klaasen's St Patrick's Day creation!

Maida decorated St Patrick's Day cookies!

The kids enjoyed some much needed time at home and some screen time!

Klaasen brought home some of his art work from school!  His teacher told me that he is the only preschool student she has had that includes an esophagus, ribs, lungs, heart, veins, and  a brain on his creations.  :)


We traveled up to Minneapolis for Spirit Fest, a youth rally that we helped put on this year.  Traditionally it is held in Duluth and includes skiing.  This year it was moved to Woodbury and it was too warm to ski, so we took the kids to play at the Mall of America, instead.  Erik and I grew up going to this youth rally as teens and it was great to see it still continuing, even in a different location and without the skiing.










Besides all the fun rides, we also  go to do the ropes course!  Torsten was too little, but the rest of us braved the heights.  Maida and Erik seemed fearless while the other three of us took it a little slower.



The ropes course was very high and had lots of challenging courses to weave through.

Skogen and Maida finished up their winter soccer with a game against each other.  It got pretty competitive between the two of them!

Maida had her spring music concert

We took a family hike to the Seven Mile Park!













March provided some great weather!  The snow was a little sticky and our skiing came to an end as it quickly melted, but we are excited to move on to many new spring adventures!


We write to taste life twice, once in the moment and in retrospection.”
~Anais Nin