Laryngotracheobronchitis

This is what Hailey now has. In layman's terms, she has croupe. About 10:30 last night Hailey started having a hard time breathing and was coughing like she was going to lose a lung. The weird ting is she was completely fine yesterday morning and afternoon. We went to my nephew's basketball game last night and she started acting really lethargic and weird. Most of you know Hailey and how active she can be. Last night she sat in my lap for an hour and didn't move. When she acts like that, we know she's sick! We came home early from the game and put her to bed.

JR went over to Todd's house to hang before he left town. About 10:00pm she woke up coughing and crying. I could hear her breathing from across the room. Was a little bit scary to say the least. I called JR and told him I thought we needed to take her to the ER. He thought I was overreacting because when he left she was sick, but not that sick. He came home and realized how sick she really was and decided that she should go. JR stayed home with Ethan and my sister went with me to the hospital. After 3 1/2 hours in the ER, 5 chest x-rays, a breathing treatment and 2 steroid shots, we were good to come home.

It's always so sad when your kids are sick. I felt so helpless last night when she was so sick. I am her mom - I am supposed to make things all better. Luckily she is feeling much better today. Now, I am praying that she will take a nap so I can get one in too...

Money Money Money

I love days like today. I was looking at the Kohl's ad and realized that they were having their 80% clearance binge. I took Hailey and we spent 2 hours there (sad, I know). We got so busy we were late picking Ethan up from school. Oops!! So, the deals were so good, we decided to head back into Okemos after we picked Ethan up. After refueling with lunch, we headed to the mall this time. Old Navy and The Children's Place were also having amazing clearance. Here are my totals (quite an accomplishment, I think!!)


Full Price of 4 bags of clothes: $681.00

Money I actually spent on 4 full bags of clothes: $134.00

Money I saved shopping today: $547.00

The look on JR's face when I told him how much I saved: Priceless


We ended up shopping for almost 5 hours today! The kids were really good sports about it. It takes a long time to look through that much clearance, but it was obviously worth it! The kids are now outfitted for next fall :)

New Look

So yes, I can FINALLY post pictures! It's about stinking time!! :) Hailey got new glasses yesterday as you can see. They are really strong, so I think it will take her a little time to get used to them. Poor kids got JR's bad eyes. Thankfully the doctor said that her eyes will get better as she gets older and she should not need glasses for more than 8 years or so. I guess that's a good thing - just worried about kids teasing her because they are so strong. She has been really sick the last couple days and she has pink eye. So, between the pink eye and her eyes being so droopy she looks a little funny because the glasses magnify that.

No Pictures

I can't post pictures. I am so frustrated. No matter how much I tell the program that I love it or try and sweet talk it it just won't let me post. Whenever I open the program it "gives me the finger" as JR says. It totally works fine for JR, but when I log in, it completely shuts down. Does anyone know of another program tha posts pictures on a blog other than HELLO? This was one of the reasons I wanted a blog so I could put up funny pics of the kids and embarass them years down the road.

So Ethan is finally feeling better - actually gets to go back to school tomorrow. He has been home since last Wednesday with a fever and headache. Now Hailey has it. Just praying that JR and I don't get it. Mostly JR because that would not be good if he can't work.

Sorry for the lame post - just wanted to post something. Hopefully life will be more exciting tomorrow - in a good way. Don't want "excitement" like Hailey puking all over me all night or anything like that.

ZZZzzzzzz...

Well, I think I jinxed myself yesterday - I told someone that we had ecsaped the flu this season. I am beginning to think that I was wrong. Hailey came into our bedroom at 2:30 this morning saying she felt like she was going to throw up. Great... just what a parent wants to hear at that time of the night (or any time for that matter). Ethan has been running a fever the last 3 days and hasn't gone to school. So, it is now 4:15 am and Ethan and Hailey are both sitting up with me in our living room watching the Scooby Doo movie for the 2nd time tonight. Don't you wish you were here so you could watch it too!! LOL! This is such a cheezy movie but for some reason the kids love it. We rented it from the library last week and no lie we have watched that dumb movie about 15 times. Once was plenty for me.
So it's been an interesting couple days. Lots of weird stuff going on to say the least. Most of it was good in the end - learning from what happened. I also learned that I didn't get the nursery job at church. Kinda bummed, but I am totally ok with it. It will be nice not to have to be at church all 3 services on Sunday - just makes for a long day for the kiddos. So, I will have more time to work on "Together" stuff which is fine with me. :)
Well, I am really hoping the kids will get tired soon so I can go back to sleep. Probably not going to happen, but a girl can dream....

What fun...

So, I took JR and Dan to the airport at 5:45 this morning. It sucked!!! They were leaving MI to go to one of my favorite places - Colorado. I miss being there so much. I miss being able to go for a walk along the riverbank and be surrounded by mountains and clean air and just plain beauty. There was this one park I used to go to at least twice a week. It was along the side of one of the foothills. There were miles and miles of trails with picnic tables along the way to stop at. The coolest part is when you're in the mountains you don't hear anythying but the sound of water rushing along the riverbank and birds singing as they fly overhead. There is no place like it. It was so peaceful. I loved going there and reading or talking with God, or even yelling at Him. I began to do that a lot after we decided we were moving back to Michigan. I had such a hard time with that decision. I knew we couldn't afford to stay in Colorado, but the last place on earth that I wanted to move was back to MI - where we both grew up. It was going to be great to be near family and all that, but Colorado was my home. I remember the last 6 weeks before we moved, I would cry every Sunday at church. The church we went to before we left was literally on the side of a mountain - it was called Lookout Mountain. The drive there was AMAZING!!! When you got off the highway, you would come over a hill to the main road. It was like in a movie - you would come over the hill and it was like you could hear angels singing as the mountains came into view. The mountains really are purple like the song says. There is nothing like the mountains. The walls inside the church auditorium were all glass. The view was awesome. In the middle of a service you could look out the windows and see a herd of buffalo along the bottom part of the mountain. I begin to cry even thinking about it. It took me a long time after we moved back to Michigan to realize that we probably would not end up back in Colorado. I was so angry. I know JR was too. It took us a long time to get incloved at Riverview because we "knew" we would not be here for a long time. We "knew" we would be moving back to Colorado soon. It's so funny how we would always say, "well, as long as we don't end up back in Michigan, we'll be fine". Funny how God works. Funny...

We've been here since June of 2003 - can't believe how time has flown by. It has been an adjustment being invloved at church but not as paid staff. At first, I felt so weird - like it wasn't ok for me to get involved if we weren't on staff. Kinda hard to explain. However, it has been nice to get involved because I really desired to - not just because I "had to" because my husband was on staff. When we decided that we were going to be staying here and that we wanted to get involved at Riverview, things began falling in place so quickly. I love working with Together and organizing events and stuff. That is so me. It wasn't until I was able to plug in somewhere to serve that I felt like I was at "home". Is that weird? I don't know. All I know is that I am happy right now - really for the first time since we've moved to MI. I feel like we are making some amazing friends and seeing God do some really cool stuff. I interviewed for the nursery coordinator position on Wednesday. I think it went well and I pray that I get the position. When Missy handed me the job description I thought "yes", this is so me and so what I would love doing! Waiting to find out who they decided to bring on is driving me crazy. I am so excited about the opportunity to serve at Riverview and get involved in people's live again. But, I also know if it doesn't work out, it wasn't supposed to be. Either way, I still love Riverview and the community we have found there.

Holy Cow - I totally just vented on something I had no intention on writing about. I was going to write about how weird it is not having JR here and how bored I was after the kids went to bed. I actually sat in front of the tv and played the old-school nintendo and won the whole stupid thing. What an accomplishment! LOL

Ok, enough of my therapy session. For now at least....

Yummy!

Ethan and Hailey woke up early this morning and decided to fix JR and I breakfast in bed. At first they were going to fix eggs, but we nixed that one quickly! We all decided that toast would be a safe alternative. JR and I were laying in bed laughing as we hear Ethan and Hailey moving chairs into the kitchen so they can reach the toaster and the bread. About 5 minutes later, they come upstairs with our breakfast. Hailey fixed mine and Ethan fixed JR's. Hailey came around the bed and handed me the plate with what looked like a a piece of bread drowning under a pound of butter. It was so funny. She kept insisting that I try her toast and that it was yummy. All I could think of was, "how do I get out of this one without hurting her feelings?" Well, we told them we wanted to come downstairs and enjoy our toast at the table. I took our toast and snuck into the kitchen to scrape all the extra butter off. We did end up eating our delicious breakfast, without them knowing we had saved the toast from it's near-death experience.

This was such a funny and memorable moment as a parent. This was the first time the kids had fixed us a meal all by themsleves. They were so proud - and so was I!!

Secret Shopper

So, I got to do something kinda fun today. During the past few months I have been trying to find a part time job just to help us get along. After some playing around online, I found this secret shopper thing. Thought it sounded like fun, so I signed up. Best part was it was FREE!! :) After about a month, I got an e-mail from them asking if I wanted to be a secret shopper at SuperCuts. Now, I was a little scared because I have gotten 2 horrible haircuts at this chain in the past. But... I thought, what the hey. I will just get a trim. So, I had to go all the way to Charlotte for this silly haircut. So, I get there (with both kids mind you), and go into Walmart where the salon was. I should qualify the child thing - JR was still working which is why I had to take the kids with me :) Anyways... trying to keep Hailey occupied while I was getting a haircut was definitely a challenge. Long story short - I actually got a pretty nice cut. Just kinda something fun to do. Go on a road trip with the kids and get a free haircut. Wow, is my life really this boring? Holy crap.

What a day...

Well, I was supposed to start working at Il Baccio Cafe last night in Okemos, by the new playmaker's store. About 12:30pm I got a call from the store manager saying that after talking with the owner of the store, they realized that they didn't have money to hire someone new on and that they were going to have to close the shop at 4pm now instead of 8pm because things are going so slow. I hung up the phone and was a little perplexed. The kids and I happened to be with JR for lunch, and he was suprised also. It will be nice to be able to be with my family now at night instead of working. They really weren't paying a whole lot, so JR and I had actually weighed the pros and cons of me working this job. I would have been working from about 5pm-9pm on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday and only bringing home about $20 a night. Not really worth being away from my kids and hubby at night for that. So, anyways, kinda glad to be able to stay home, but still wondering why all that happened.

So, had to go to Meijer for some groceries, and it ended up being a 2 1/2 hour trip! Good Grief!! We stood in the check out line for almost 30 minutes. The kids were almost beside themselves!! Ethan ended up crawling under the cart and laying down for about 20 minutes on the wire shelf thing down there. So, I came home and unloaded the groceries then ended up getting another stupid migraine. This is my second one in less than a month. It totally sucks not having insurance right now because I can't get any medicine that will help me. It's really bad - the migraine medicine I have right now is 5 years old. I'm probably getting just as sick from taking that as I am from the dumb migraine. So, I spent the evening worshiping the porclaine thrown and it is now 2:45am and I am still getting sick. ARGH!!! I really need to sleep, but I just can't get comfortable, so I thought I would jump online and mess around for a bit and see if it would take my mind off of my misery. It is almost working. Ok, not really.

I hope I can get a little sleep and won't feel like crap tomorrow because I have to take Hailey to the Dr. She has had a problem the last month with one of her eyes becoming lazy. It's so sad to see your child have somthing wrong. JR had the same problem when he was young and ended up having surgery when he was 3. I hope they can do something soon because her eyes are quickly deteriorating. It's so strange how fast it has happened and gotten bad.

Well, I need to get some sleep and try to keep my stomach in one piece.

Nighty night