Hello out there!

Since I've written last...Alli's fever broke the afternoon after we took her to the hospital for labs, wouldn't you know. The labs ended up coming back negative on everything, too. She's getting her energy back slowly, she still seems a bit tired and cranky--more than usual.

We've been trying to be patient with the weather. It seems like it rains two days then it's dry two days. And the temerature isn't that warm yet either--around 63 degrees or so. But today it's actually pretty nice out.

Today we had Angie's two youngest kids here for part of the morning. I was already planning to have another mom from church here with her 4 year old and baby for a VBS meeting, so we had a houseful of little kids. There were two 4 year olds, two 3 year olds, one 2 year old, one 1 year old, and one 6 month old! Actually, it was a great morning. The kids played together so well, and the other mom and I got a lot of VBS planning done.

Tomorrow is a community 5K walk/run where I'll have a booth set up for VBS registrations. That will be fun! So I'd better get some work done for it.

Alli's fever

Sunday night Alli felt warm as we were getting ready for bed. She woke up in the night burning up. In the morning ther temperature was 103 degrees. She didn't have any other symptoms, but she was tired and "shiver-y". She had the high fever again on Tuesday, so I took her to the doctor to check her ears since we just got through with a round of antibiotics for ear infections a few days before. The doctor said her ears were fine, but her throat was red. He did a Strep test, but it came back negative, so he thought it must be something viral. (As a side note, the kids did great in the dr's this time!) She continued with the 103-104 degree temp all day Wednesday and Thursday. But around noon on Thursday, I found a tick in Alli's hair. It was a little smaller than a pencil eraser, so I must have not seen it for a day or two! Then I got worried that it might be Lyme's Disease, so I called the doctor again. He said he thought it wasn't related, but because of her fever he wanted to see her again, this time to take a urine sample. Luckily she had to go before we left the house because I don't think we would have gotten the sample from the doctor's office! He said the urine was fine and a second strep test was negative, so he ordered labs. We all got buckled in the van to drive a block to the hospital to get the labs done. They behaved so well! The lab technicians had to swab Alli's throat again and take some blood from her arm. She was brave, and they even gave her a purple teddy bear with a bandage on it like her own. Hannah and Carrie got matching teddy bears (without the bandage) for being good helpers. The nurse called with the results this morning. She said the blood work showed nothing bacterial, and the throat culture won't be done until tomorrow. She still had a temp of 104 today, but this afternoon it started to go down. By this evening she only felt a little warm and she was getting her appetite back! Thank God, because I don't think I could have gone a whole weekend of worrying and assuming the worst.

And my long, drawn out story about a fever being a problem is nothing. My friend Amy is at the hospital now with her 5 month old daughter who had open heart surgery yesterday. She is recovering well. Isn't it amazing to see how God can be watching each of us and He knows what we're worried about. He reveals himself to us as our Great Physician in times of great and small health problems.