Warm weather at last!

It seems like this spring has been unusually cool, but finally it's summer-like! Yesterday and today it has been around 90 degrees and humid, but we'll take that just to be able to get outside and play.

Carrie loves playing outside! As soon as she's done eating breakfast in the morning, she wants me to open the door for her. It doesn't matter if her sisters are out there playing or not, she will play alone for a long time outside. She's such a goof. You can see the ornery-ness in her. She teases her sisters and acts silly just to get a reaction out of them! And she says all kinds of things--loudly! She yells to Daddy when she sees him around camp like this, "AAAAAAAAAAAAA DAAAA DAAAAAAA!" And she says, "Bye Bye Dada" and "book" and "baby" and "Hot! Hot!" and "juice" and "shoes" (which she loves to wear, just like a girl!). She's so funny to watch while she's walking. She kinda waddles, and she keeps her arms bent at her elbows. But she never stops for long. She is so active and busy all the time!

Alli was playing "super hero" today. That means she was dressed in her floaty swim suit (panties showing out the back!), dress-up high heels, and a bright red cape! At lunch we were talking about flying in a plane through the clouds and she said, "If I was in a plane I would open the window and JUMP OUT (as she makes a gesture with her hands taking a flying leap into the air) and I could fly because I would have on my red super hero cape!" When she says silly things like that, Hannah says very seriously, "That's a great imagination, Alli, but that could never happen."

Hannah can draw just about anything! When Daddy leaves for work she quickly draws him a detailed picture "to remember me by" and tells him that if he thinks of her he can pull out the picture and be happy. This is a picture of a bird!

Camp started this week, and it's so much fun to see the campers running around and hear them playing again! There was a tornado a few miles from here the other day, and yesterday a huge branch fell out of a tree at camp just as a group of kids was walking under the other side of the tree. It would have been a bad situation had they been walking under the side that the branch fell out of. God has no doubt been watching out for us, with disasters just missing us by a hair.

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.

Funnies

A few things the kids have said lately have been too precious to forget, but then when they are finally in bed and I try to remember...I've forgotten. Tonight I came straight here to write it all down. This might be a little long because Hannah was the one talking. :) At bedtime tonight she said, "I'm gonna talk to God. 'God, I want to be an artist and paint and I really like to srite songs and play music. I want to be an artist and play songs for you. I want to be a preacher when I grow up.'" Then she said to me, "God can give me the words to say when I'm and adult and I tell others about Him. I want to be a preacher 'cause I know lots of Bible stories. I know all the Bible stories. I'm going to talk to God now, but I'm not going to pray because I'm not going to say dear God or Amen. 'God, I love you. You are so good and you can do anything we "axe" you to because you're so smart and strong and good. You're the only one that's good...and me. Please help Alli's cold and Carrie's cold to go away. And help Daddy to sleep a long time in the morning. amen.'" Then she said, "You know God is so strong and so big He's bigger than everything. In the morning I'm going to talk to Him some more. I'm going to axe him to help me not be bad to my sister. You know when you give away love, your heart gets bigger. It's like paying for something and they give you change back. When you give away love, you get more love and your heart gets bigger."

Yesterday at bedtime, Alli said something really quietly, but I didn't hear her. She repeated it really quietly two more times before we figured it out: "I saved the day." She said it so quietly! She mixes up the words to songs all the time. "Do you know the muffin man" becomes
"Oh do you know the muffin man,
the muffin man,
the muffin man
Oh do you know the muffin man,
so you can have some cake?"

Carrie has been saying lots of words lately. She can say "baby" and blankie (which sounds like "cakie")and she can repeat "I love you" one word at a time, but maybe I'm just anxious for it to sound like I love you 'cause it really sounds like "I fuff bbbb." Lately she's been taking all the canned food off the shelf and taking it all over the house. You can track that child pretty easily since she leaves a trail of things she gets tired of. She'll pick up something and seem really interested in it, but throw it down behind her as she's walking off to another room to find more adventures. She doesn't care about a room full of shiny toys, she'd rather dump a whole container of Q-tips on the floor, or play in the potty, or unroll the toilet paper, or take the pots and pans to her bedroom, or chew on the remote, or put anything in the trash can, or carry her "treasures" in a "purse" which can be a bag or basket or shoe. She puts the treasure in and then slings the "purse" onto her shoulder and walks around proudly.

And we did have an exciting day a week ago. Last Wednesday I took the girls to Angie's house so I could get a haircut. When I got back I watched her kids so she could take one of her kids to afternoon Kindergarten at noon. No sooner did she leave and Carrie fell HARD on their wooden deck step. She banged her lower lip really hard and it was bleeding everywhere. They didn't have any popsicles and she didn't want any ice on it, so I soaked a paper towel in lemonade and wrapped it around ice for her to suck on. But I could see cuts on the inside and outside and I thought she bit through her lip! When Angie got back, she watched my kids again so I could take Carrie to the doctor. The doctor said it was just a bad cut and didn't need stitches! It's still a little swollen today, and it's still scabbed up. But she doesn't mind!

I'm never leaving the house again!

Last week I scheduled doctor appointments for this week for Carrie's one year check up and Alli's three year check up. Monday morning I got the kids dressed and got their coats and shoes on and buckled in the van (with quite a bit of arguing)and came upstairs to get a cup for one of them. I decided to check the calendar for the appointment time, but it was for TUESDAY! So we went to Wal-Mart instead. There's no way I would let a van load of buckled-down kids go to waste. Then Tuesday, we started over again to go to the doctor. We made it there in good spirits, everyone was happy and behaving. I was feeling pretty about it. Well, pride comes before a fall...as soon as the doctor came in the room, someone replaced my sweet children with some of those other rowdy, misbehaving, rude, screaming kids! I was so embarassed! All three of them were awful! And is there a worse place to have your kids misbehave? There's no place for time-out, and even if there was, no one in the entire building could hear over the screaming. I couldn't spank them, of course, the doctor is right there. What's a calm, collected, patient, kind mother to do? I don't really know what happened next. The doctor took Alli on his lap and held her while I dressed her. All the while she was kicking and screaming. Meanwhile, Hannah was trying to take his otoscope! He sternly told her no at the same time as me, and she burst into tears. Carrie was on my lap until, during Alli's kicking, I had to put her down so she began to scream and melted into a little lump with her face on the floor. AAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!! When it was all over, the doctor said, "You know how to tell the difference between a terrorist and a toddler? A terrorist wears the diaper on his head." ha. ha. ha. Not too funny at that moment, but at least he was trying to lighten the mood instead of giving me a lecture.

Today we went to town again to pick up the prescriptions for Alli and Carrie (they had ear infections). While in the pharmacy drive-thru Alli said she had to go potty. I asked her to hold it a little while since we were going to Wal-Mart next. When we got there, she had already wet her pants! I didn't have any spare pants, so I tied a jacket around her waist and took her straight to the clothes and got the cheepest pair of pants we could find.

So between mistaken appointments, meltdowns, and wet pants, I think I'll stay at home a few days!!!

The Big 3-0!

Well, the big milestone has arrived, I turned thirty on Thursday. I had a great day! It started the night before when some friends surprised me with a birthday party at Applebee's. We sometimes go there for half-price appetizers after 9pm, but this time they were all there before me and yelled "Surprise!" when I walked in--fun! Then yesterday, Julie Proctor invited me to a cute little cafe called the Bread Basket. http://www.breadbasketcafe.com/ Mark had the day off so he watched all the kids while we ate really great sandwiches and salads and huge pieces of dessert--yummy! The kids had a great time with their cousins, too! When I got home, there was a bouquet of flowers from a friend who couldn't make it to Applebee's the day before. And Mike got me a new washer and dryer that I really, really like! And a couple at church offered to babysit this weekend, so they're coming this evening! Plus all the cards, phone calls, and emails from family and friends. So, I think I'm stocked up on pampering for the next few years! Thank you to everyone who made my day special. Here are some cute pictures we've taken lately.

Birthdays, Revival, Easter, etc.

Wow! It's been a long time since I've written. We've got a lot of ground to cover, are you ready? OK... We celebrated two birthdays in one week--Alli's March 9th, Carrie's March 13th. Carrie didn't seem to care that she was given a big piece of chocolate cake, she just ate it like it was the rest of her dinner. She did make a mess, though.
Then we hurried up and packed up and went to Iowa last week for revival at New Testament Christian Chruch (Mike's home church). His brother Matt was preaching, and his brother Mark was leading worship. We had a great time visiting with family and friends there. The church provided lots of lunches and things, so it was fun to have a chance to catch up with the folks there. The cousins enjoyed hanging out, too. I think the highlight was the last day when Papa Gene pulled them around in a wagon behind his lawnmower. They loved it! On our way to Keokuk and on our way back to Inidana, we stopped at my parents' home. My sister Sarah and her husband John were there the first time we stopped. We had fun talking with them. They just bought their first home, and Mom and Dad had been "dog-sitting" for them while John installed their new electric dog fence. While we were there Carrie took her first steps! She took three tiny steps! I think it was being cooped up in her carseat that inspired that. On the way back to Indiana we stopped in La Harpe again. We stayed two nights there. That way we could go to Burnside Christian Church's revival one night. Again, it was great to catch up with the friends we saw there. During the day, the girls had fun feeding the cows and playing with the toys I used to play with as a kid. I always love going home--it's such a sweet place, isn't it? Anyway, then we came back to Indiana. We've been desperately searching for signs of spring lately. It seems like such a long winter. We've been seeing robins for a while now, and today I saw a butterfly! The irises are starting to come up, and I saw someone elses crocuses blooming yesterday! So not much longer, right? And since we've been home Carrie has been practicing her walking relentlessly. She will stand up and fall over and over and over until she gets her balance. Then she can take up to seven steps without falling. She's enjoying carrying things around now. What an inconvenience crawling must be. You've just got to deal with things being where they are and you can't take your favorite toy to your favorite spot. Or like yesterday, you can't take your diper rash cream into the living room and throw it at Daddy! She's also getting really good at throwing a ball. She's always been interested in chasing one around the room, and now she will stand up and throw it, saying, "Uuup!" And at one year she can say lots of words: hi, bye-bye, dada, mama, tickle, What's that ("a dat"), no, uh-oh, woof, Bible, boom, and she revs like a car when she's pushing something ("v-v-v-v-v-v" usually with a lot of bubbles coming out her mouth!), and she can repeat lots of words.

Then there's Easter. We came back in time for the kids to hunt eggs at our church's huge Jesus is Alive party. It was freezing! But we went anyway, grabbed a few rained-on eggs, went inside to dump the candy into their baskets, and left. I had a bad cold on Sunday, so we had Dairy Queen burgers for lunch, and we went back in the evening to get ice cream. Not a bad Easter dinner after all!