Madness

oh my gosh, i'm going to scream. i just had this really long and i'm sure, VERY interesting post about the saga that is our phone service....and just as i'm typing the ending sentence, my hand moved over the phantom button on this new laptop that likes to erase all of what i just typed. lovely.

hope your day is better than mine is showing.

sigh

A Picture Post

I finally figured out that my new laptop was downloading my pictures to the right place but was putting them in a file within the 2006 photos...huh? I need to tell SOMEONE what year it is.

<
Dave sleepin', what he did a lot the past couple of weeks. Though he won't admit it.


A pathetic attempt at playing Wii.


Administrating the meds. He's such a joy. This is the part where I smack him and tell him to take it like a man. Not really. Well, maybe.


Ah, motrin, finally starting to kick in.


Calvin, Mr. Handsome, he has been my righthand man the last couple of weeks. What a stud.


Finally back to school, and their grades have been really good this week. Yippee!


Ah, back to normal. This is as close to normal as it gets for us.


This was my favorite day. Our first day back, running a couple of errands. The boys being...well, boys, in the back seat. Makes a mama happy. And I only had to reach back and slap them a couple of times, life is good.


I don't normally get frozen waffles, but these were free with my new coupon thing I'm doing. I was so proud of myself. The boys were thrilled that I actually found a way to make convenience food healthy.


Another self portrait before I left for town yesterday. I love my boys.


Calvin took this mug shot of my rooster. Poor, Mr. Rooster, he's still not quite sure what he did wrong. But he's very sorry.

****************************************

So we have a couple of nice homes picked out for either my parents or Jay's mom, you know, to live in if they need to come out here for us to take care of them. We would really want to spoil them...so here goes the list, let me know what you think...


House #1, it's close to our home. The donkeys come with it and work as a built in alarm clock, so nice.


House #2, it's right across from the fire station, so I know my sister would visit more. You know it's true, Marcie. (sorry Lance)


House #3, what you don't see is that it comes with laundry facilities, yep, washer and dryer right on the back porch. Classy but convenient.


House #4, probably the one that is most habitable, except for what's written on that yellow sign...something about toxins...but it probably won't affect them too much.

We love our parents. We hope they come to visit really soon.

****************************************



So we almost missed it, what being on quarantine. Spring. The cherry blossoms. these trees are so beautiful.



Beautiful.



Tulips. These are for my mom. She loves tulips. Here you go mama, for you.

And because I love you so much, and because you are totally worth the expense, and because I'm thinkin' I need to do something nice for you, what with the whole 'puttin' you in a shack' business...some more tulips...





This is the river that we kayak down during the summer. The one that my bro-in-law thought he was going to die on. It's so much fun, and not at all dangerous. We might have to sell a dog in order to afford to do it again this year, but it's SO worth it.


I love these flowering trees. I don't even know what kind they are, if you know tell me, not that I care too much, I'd still use my name of 'big giant purply flowers tree'. I'm very scientific about these things.


And the dogwood, it's our state flower. I love the dogwood. We've got a very sad one in our yard, very sad. So I'm pretending this is our tree, it belongs to one of our neighbors. I didn't want to embarass myself by walking through their front yard to get a better picture of the thing, plus it was raining really hard at this point and I'd already done my hair...a girl has to have priorities. But I love the dogwood tree.

It's been overcast and rainy for a couple of days here, and today, the sun is out, windows are open and the birds are singing. I need to go put on my prairie dress and run through the fields. Hope y'all have a great day.

(Okay, so don't you know that I'm the worst speller, except of course, maybe for my dad and husband, I don't spell good. So then blogger's spell checker decided not to work. Dang it, I had to use the dictionary just to look up quarantine, because how often does one need that word. I hate dictionaries. But don't tell my boys, they still think that mom was a stellar student. Yeah, right.)

Thankful on a Wednesday

1. Dave is doing better.

2. Back to a semi-normal day today.

3. Hearing Dave's laughter all day.

4. Getting to stay in my p.j.'s till after-noon.

5. Dave eating lots of food today.

6. Hearing the normal brotherly banter in the back seat of the car.

7. Dave not laying on the couch all day.

8. Antibiotics and cold medicine.

9. Sweet friends that called and emailed to check on Dave. Thank you.

10. Our health.

Fighting the Nap

So this post is by my son Dave. After taking him to the doctor to find out he has a 'form of strep' and possibly mono (we'll be waiting for the end of the week to take the blood test for mono)..the doctor told him, he needs to stay inside, resting, drinking lots of fluids, eat lots of fruits and veggies and GET LOTS OF SLEEP!!!!! Dave rolled his eyes. I did the happy dance.

So when we got home, I knew it was MY naptime, so I had Dave go up and take a nap too. This is what he spent his time doing....while I was sleeping.

WHY NOT TO NAP By David H.

1. It's a waste of time.
2. Night is when you sleep.
3. I don't feel better, I feel worse.

Nappng is so dumb, why nap when I could be doing school, playing with dad or Calv, studying the word of God (nice), reading, or watching a movie. They are all better than napping. It's a waste of time. If you want to get better then why nap, I could be getting better, naps make me feel worse. I am a night sleeper, I don't know about you but I generaly sleep at night. Instead of having 15 hours to do stuff,when you nap you take off 2 hours - in 2 hours I could watch a movie, read 7 chapters or play a game. Overall I am against naps and HATE taking them. Doc may have said go to sleep early, but that's at night and its not night, its 2:15.

(this is where he stopped, because...HE FELL ASLEEP!)

He's so precious.

Day 13 on the 'Dave is Still Sick' Watch

Yes, it's true. I'm completely beside myself. I thought I was bad when they got the stomach flu but try having them have a cold and fever for 13 days. Makes this Mama pretty much a mess. I know we should have more sympathy for the sick boy. But this is my blog, not his. :o)

But really, he woke me up again yesterday morning saying he didn't feel good at all and had another fever. After getting him all tucked in on the couch, meds in, water downed and he fell back asleep ,I just rubbed his back...and prayed, and prayed, and prayed. My poor baby, my heart just aches when my babies are sick. I don't care how old they are, it will still make me cry and worry.

Jay had to put the kibosh on me taking him to the doctor everyday, saying that a cold and low grade fever are no excuse to go to the doctor and what can they do that they didn't do last week????

Then, it happened, the sweetest voice on the phone...our pediatrician finally callin' me with the final lab results from the culture they took from him last week. He either has strep or maybe mono. See, he really was sick and needs those antibiotics. I'm normally one of those moms that tries all the 'natural cures' before I'll give them anything regular, but not this time. I was begging for drugs. The nurses and receptionists are completely tired of me calling everyday. But the sweet Doctor calling me tonight and wanting us to get the pills and then bring him in the morning to check again. I just love him. I could just kiss him right now.

I don't have any pictures for this post. One, because I couldn't figure out how to download them into my new laptop. Two, how many pictures of a sick little boy laying on the couch can one take? Third, he now snarls at me when I get my camera out. Except for the sweet picture I took of him snuggling his dog yesterday afternoon, that dog knows when his Dave is not feeling well, and it makes my heart smile.

Jay and I have been tag teaming it, Jay is in charge of doing the Neti-Pot (nasal passageway clean out) every morning and night. I'm in charge of administrating the medicines. Jay's in charge of making sure he eats the food I give him. I'm in charge of drowning him in fluids. Jay is in charge of giving him comedic relief. I'm in charge of snuggling him and watching movies with him. It's a tough job, but I'm happy to do it. Jay's not too thrilled about the Neti-Pot thing, especially when Calvin and I come running to see what creatures are comin' out of his nose. Lovely little science project.

His baseball draft was tonight, but he was too out of it to go, we're hoping that there will be a make up night. I can't imagine the spring without baseball. His last basketball game is this weekend, hopefully he'll be able to at least go and sit on the bench. I've missed church three weeks now, I'm hoping that no-one will be sick and I can go this Sunday, I'm thinking the pastor is going to make a house call pretty soon if he doesn't see me there soon. We've tried doing a little bit of school but when I look at the month of March in the attendance book, it's a very sad sight. Looks like we'll be schoolin' through the summer this year.

I'm off to stick a thermometer in my turkey, mash some taters, paint my toenails. Hears hopin' I'm able to blog about something other than sickness...soon.

We're Still Here

This is what greets you at the back door. After what seems like a month of illness, it pretty much sums up our house. We are very thankful that so far it has not gotten to Jay or I.

So for the past two days this is what my guest room was used for...



The poor little thing. We thought he was getting better over the weekend, but then Monday night it hit him like a ton of bricks. Fever, cough and severe tiredness. We rushed him to the doctor Tuesday night where they did strep test, flu test, pee in a cup test. He has nothing serious. It's just a cold. But this is the worst-bad-@#$ cold of the century. O-my-goodness!

I made him stay in bed all day yesterday. I've been force feeding him fluids, soups, fruit, malt-o-meal. The DVD player doesn't work in this room so he's been watching TV all day long. I know that he's being corrupted by all the nonsense cartoons, game shows, Judge Judy and maybe a little soap opera...but, seriously, how much can affect a little eleven year old? Right?

We were suppose to have some friends come and stay with us for a couple of weeks before they go on their mission field. But what with the plague going on over here, they were a little scared. So they are coming tomorrow to just stay the weekend. Don't you know I've had to completely wash down and clean the guest room & bath.



Yes, I have WAY too much free time. This is what I do when we have guests.



Oh, but wait, check out the bathroom.





As you can see, not very exciting stuff going on around here. Me trying to keep busy and not go stir crazy and the boys doing hardly any school and lots of TV watching.

Spring is here and we wanna go out and play....soon, hopefully, real soon.

House of Plagues (take two)

Meet Sickie Number One...


(oh, and can I just tell you, this is what the kitty does every night, he jumps up on Calvin's stomach and starts massaging it, till he gets it just right, then curls up and lays down. Calvin loves it, and we just laugh.)

He came down with it last Thursday and is still going strong. We thought it was Strep, but now the Doctor thinks it may be Mono (lovely).... we're still holding out hope that it's just a bad flu/cold thing.

Then yesterday, Sickie Number Two...



Doesn't have much energy, but at least he can still hold the wheel. That would have been tragic.

I've been keeping busy by doing lots of cleaning, laundry, reading, did all my ironing & mending; watching all the Andy Griffith, Gilligan's Island, I Love Lucy shows, some Indiana Jones movies, ALL the Rocky movies (Yo, Adrian!), it's been real fun.

I've also been dealing with lovely computer naughtiness. Like email just not wanting to download. Being kicked off the internet at the bestest of times. And right now, I keep getting some sound file that keeps playing weird commercials. There is no window, just some sound....what is up with that? Some bad woogies have gotten ahold of my computer. My Mr. Computer Chris got a frantic call this morning. He loves my frantic calls...."Chris, come quick I can't check my blogs, things are very dire, need your help, stat!"

We did order me a new computer, because this one is well, not doing well, computer guy said it was a good time to do it, and the deal was too good to pass up. But in the mean time, I still need to be able to do the important things like run payroll, pay bills, email my homies, blog for my parents, shop for shoes, check out the deals at Old Navy...you know the really crucial stuff.

wups, gotta go, someone just hacked up somethin' in the other room, gotta go check to see if it was the cat or the Dave. O, Happy Day!