Random Tuesday

We are home again from our trip to Dallas and Hawaii. I will have to try to post some of my favorite pictures. We had a wonderful time there without any kids. Thank you to my sister and mom for watching the girls for us!! They said they had a great time and Emily said it was the best summer vacation ever! :) Sarah was having so much fun she didn't even miss us so I was glad about that!

We found out who Emily has for her teacher this year. School starts NEXT WEEK. The summer just flew by. We looked online at the teacher's website and she seems like a really good teacher. Emily is so nervous. For the first time since she started going to school, she won't have lunch or recess with her best friend.

I signed Eliana up for another session of gymnastics today. The lesson will be once a week right after school. I figure that way Emily can do her homework while we wait on Eliana. Then, Eliana will be able to concentrate on homework when we get home since she let out all of her energy in the class right before.

I finally got all of the school supplies for both girls. I bought the last few things this morning. It's crazy how you have to have specific items...must be Fiskar scissors, Must be 8 oz or larger of hand sanitizer. Emily needs 60 pencils for some reason. That's almost two pencils a week.

I still need to get shoes for all of the girls and a hair cut for Eliana before school starts. I also need to complete my training for being a Girl Scout leader. I just have one more class to take.

I have lists for everything so that I will hopefully get it all done before next week in addition to getting this place cleaned up. I am ready to tackle it! :) I hope everyone else is enjoying the last few weeks of summer!

Talking More?

I told Emily I was going to lay down on the couch for a couple of minutes to rest since I was tired and still had a lot to do tonight. She comes over, lays down beside me, and starts this dialogue as I try to follow with my eyes closed...

"Wow...it is so peaceful and quiet right now. Don't you think it's peaceful and quiet? It's so nice to be able to lay down here and not be bothered...hey, Sarah, quit climbing on me! Owww, you are pulling my hair! You are about to get down onto Marvin! Marvin, don't lay down right there! How old is Marvin? Is that in human years or dog years? What about in dog years? How old is Sarah in dog years? Did you hear that, Eliana? Wow...So 9 x 7 must be 63, huh? I read in a book one time about a man who had a dog. He said the dog was 10 in human years and 70 in dog years. I saw a show today about a talking dog. The dog couldn't speak until she ate some alphabet soup one day. She started talking and her family took her to the doctor. The doctor said that the alphabet letters must have gone up to her brain instead of into her stomach so she was able to start talking. I'll bet if I ate alphabet soup, I would be able to talk more!!"

I had to ask her to repeat the dog story because I had zoned back in just in time for the "I would be able to talk more!" line. I told her that I wasn't sure she had that problem... :)

Random Tuesday -- Happenings and Upcoming Trip

-- Eliana had her last gymnastics class for the summer this morning. She has learned a lot since the first class and practices every day on her cartwheels, handstands, and summersaults. She has asked to continue it this fall which is a first for her. She usually wants to quit after the first session so she must really enjoy it!

-- Emily is going to be in a musical at church called, "Joseph - From the Pit to the Palace, A STOMP musical". She brought home the CD and book last week. Every night as they are going to bed, she and Eliana will listen to it. I also hear it on upstairs when they are supposed to be cleaning their room. The performance isn't until the end of August so she has plenty of time to practice. She will miss the next three practices though because we will be gone next week.

-- Speaking of being gone next week, we are going to Dallas this Friday. The girls are going to spend the week at my sister's house while Andy and I go to Hawaii to celebrate our 10 year anniversary! I am praying that things will go well while we are gone. I hope my sister will still talk to me by the time we get back. She will be dealing with my 3 girls along with her 2 1/2 year old and 13 month old AND she is due with her third girl in October!! She is definitely a hero in my book!! Thankfully, she will also have my mom to help her out while we are gone. They have some really fun activities planned so I'm hoping the girls won't miss us too much while we are gone, especially Sarah.

-- I am really nervous about flying over the ocean. I have a fear of crashing into water, any water, no matter what form of travel. When we drive over bridges, I roll down my window so that if the bridge collapses, we will be able to get out of the car without having to wait for the pressure to equalize. I also keep one hand on my seatbelt latch. I want to be able to quickly unlatch my seatbelt as we are going into the water to make sure it doesn't get stuck somehow under water. To me, the ocean means sharks. Being in the frigid ocean water after a plane crash doesn't scare me. I picture sharks swimming around me and I freak out. I'm hoping that I won't even realize we are flying over the ocean until we have already flown over.

-- In preparation for our trip, Andy has suggested that I dye my hair blond. While I would LOVE to get rid of my gray hair that keeps popping up, I keep trying to tell him that I would NOT look good as a blond! My features are too dark and I would have to dye my eyebrows to match. The salon would have to bleach my hair and then dye it blond in order for it not to look orange. Then there is the issue of my old color growing in since I wouldn't be able to keep up with getting it dyed all the time. Black roots do not look good on blond hair. He thought if I wouldn't go all out blond, maybe I would do a lighter color, but he didn't have any idea as to what color. I'm thinking I will just get some kind of highlights done, but I'm not sure about what color either. Maybe I'll wait and see what the stylist suggests...if I can find a stylist before it's too late. I called a couple of places yesterday and left a message, but I haven't heard anything back yet.

-- We sold our old Montana van FINALLY -- not that we actually did any real advertising or anything...I was just getting tired of having to move it in and out of our driveway to the street and back. Our city ordinance says you can't park a vehicle on the street for longer than 48 hours. Our neighbor down the street is going to buy it from us. It will be a relief to have it gone.

-- Emily had a birthday party at Build-A-Bear last Friday. While she was gone, Eliana and I had a mother/daughter date at the outdoor mall there. I don't remember the last time I went anywhere with Eliana alone and we both had fun. We went out to eat at a cheeseburger joint, read books at Barnes and Noble, played with kittens at the Animal Shelter, and finished up with an ice cream cone from Ben & Jerry's.

Sarah Update #2

Thankfully, Sarah is MUCH better today. The rash had started to look faded yesterday. Andy stayed home from church to be with her today because she was still asleep and we weren't sure how the rash would look today. Apparently, she was really tired because Andy said she slept until 10:00!

I got home with Emily and Eliana around 10:45 and took a look at her. It looks like it is completely gone, although I keep wondering if I can see traces of it when the light shines right, but I think that's because I've been seeing her with it for a week now. I'm thinking she is over it and I plan on taking her to the gym in the morning.

I was talking to a friend at church who said her daughter had the exact same thing when she was 2 years old. She broke out in a rash all over, had swelling, and the rash faded to a bruised look. She said it lasted about a week, just like Sarah's seems to have lasted. It was nice to hear that someone else had heard of a reaction like this.

I'm just glad she seems to be over it and we can move on without having to worry every day. Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers! They were very much appreciated!

Password Ideas

Andy and I were in our room when Eliana walked in...

Eliana -- Dad, Emily and I tried to figure out the password on your computer.

Andy -- Yeah, I noticed that it had been messed with...what words did you try?

Eliana -- Well, we tried "Andy" and that didn't work. So then we tried "computer" and that didn't work. So then we tried "3 girls, 1 dog, and 1 crazy wife".

Andy starts laughing hysterically while I glare at them both...

Sarah Update

Last night, we noticed that Sarah's feet, legs, hands, and arms seemed kind of swollen and puffy. I called the after hours number at the doctor's office because we weren't sure if we should be concerned or not. Maybe it was a side effect to the Benadryl?? A doctor called me back and said that it didn't sound normal to him so he made us an appointment for first thing this morning.

Andy took Sarah this morning. Her regular doctor said that some swelling was normal and as long as she acted like she was feeling ok, she was eating normally, and she wasn't running a high fever, then we should just monitor her. We should expect it to last at least three more days and possibly a week or more.

Andy brought up the blue fingers again and her doctor said that she didn't believe it was related to being cold, but we should keep an eye out for it again as she might have some circulatory problems.

So we are back to just waiting and watching...

Poor Little Spotted Girl

This past Monday as we were eating supper, we noticed that Sarah had a rash all over her entire body. We freaked out at first thinking that it was a reaction to some insect bites that she had gotten on our trip. She didn't really seem to be bothered by it so we gave her some Benadryl and decided to see what it looked like in the morning. The next morning, the rash looked really bad and she was running 99.9 temperature. So I took her to the doctor only to be told that it was a rash caused by a virus. I was only told to give her Benadryl every 6 hours as needed.

The next morning, the rash had spread even further and looked absolutely terrible. Sarah was shivering and as she is eating her cereal at the table, her little hands are shaking. I took one of them and noticed that her fingers, from the upper joints to the tips, were blue tinged. I called Andy wondering if she was just really cold, but then I noticed that her hand and wrist looked blue also.

I called the doctor, threw some clothes on me and the girls, and raced back up to the office. On the way there, I'm crying thinking that she has caught Lyme disease or West Nile virus from Yellowstone bugs. Thankfully, the ruling still came back as being a viral rash. The doctor wasn't concerned about the insect bites at all. She said the blue on her fingertips was from her being cold. The doctor said this rash will cause the skin to look bruised when it's fading. So that's why her hand and wrist were blue. She said by the end of this, Sarah's entire body will look like one big bruise. I was cautiously relieved. I was relieved that it wasn't anything serious, but in the back of my mind, I'm praying they are right.

Sarah still has the rash today. It looks worse each morning and looks slightly better in the afternoon. She was scratching her arm so bad this morning, it started to bleed. I was told that it should be gone within a week. If it's not, then I'm supposed to call back up there. She doesn't really have any other symptoms at this point. Her fever never got above 99.9 and was normal today. She was acting clingy this morning and didn't eat much breakfast, but seems to be fine right now. She is supposed to be contagious until the rash goes away. I keep hoping she will wake up one morning and it will be completely gone.



As soon as the rash clears up, I will schedule her 18 month pictures, 18 month well check, and get a new picture and background for July on this blog. :)

Yellowstone National Park, Day 2

The last couple of days of our vacation flew by so I'm going to do some of my favorite highlights of the last day at Yellowstone and move on to the routine of our daily lives.

The most exciting thing we saw on that last day, Friday, was a grizzly bear and three baby bear cubs.



We were standing in the middle of the field watching bears in front of us, coyotes over to our right, and buffalo coming towards us from the left. I was trying to think of how we could get away, when the buffalo veered off and went away from us.

We also saw the famous Old Faithful Geyser:



I was expecting something a lot more dramatic...something with more noise...like a BOOM as the water comes shooting out of the ground. Instead, the water gradually shot up, went back down a little bit, shot up a little bit higher, went down a little bit, etc. until it got to its highest height. Then, it went down the same way it went up...very gradually. It made no loud noise, but a hissing sound from the steam that was pouring out with it. It was still neat to see, just not what I expected.

Yellowstone Lake was absolutely gorgeous. We wondered why no one was swimming in it, but found out later that the surface of the water stays at 60 degrees and the bottom can get around 40 degrees. Way too cold to go swimming!



My last favorite thing to see was the Yellowstone Grand Canyon:



We took this last picture as we were leaving the park:



It was a great trip with lots of beautiful things to see! It is another reason why I am very proud to be an American. Our country is so gorgeous! The girls did amazing on the trip as well. They didn't complain at all about all of the driving. They only asked one time if we were there yet. Even Sarah watched movies, slept, ate snacks, and played with her toys. We are already planning a trip to the beach next summer! :)

Yellowstone National Park, Day 1

We got on the road early on Thursday morning with a lot of things to do on our agenda. We were headed to Yellowstone, but wanted to take a detour by the battlefield where Custer had his Last Stand. I wasn't sure what the girls would think about it. Wouldn't it just be a big field with a lot of history being thrown at them? The first thing we saw when we got there was a huge national cemetary with some tombstones going back to the late 1800's. They had fun reading all of the grave markers. Unfortunately, there were a lot of children buried there.



We decided to do the tour of the battlefield led by American Indians. We didn't realize until after we had already bought our tickets that the tour was in a van and took an hour long. The tour was extremely interesting to Andy and I as our tour guide went into detail about how the battle played out. There were markers set up for where certain men had died as the dead had just been left untouched after the battle was over. It was very hard for me to hear at times though because Sarah was not having a fun time. She was trying to climb all over the van. We hadn't brought the diaper bag because we hadn't planned on doing the tour so it was difficult to entertain her. I still learned a lot and as the tour guides were telling the story, it was like watching a dramatic presentation. They did an excellent job.



There was a fenced off area where Custer and some of his men had their last stand.



We entered Yellowstone by going through Bear Tooth Pass. It had just opened up on Memorial Day weekend. The road took us up into the mountains. We started out at the bottom amazed at how tall the mountains were. We ended up being at the same height as some of the mountains that we had marveled at at the bottom. We got up to almost 11,000 feet. It was GORGEOUS!



The girls got to play in some snow that was on top of one of the mountains. They were a little cold in their shorts and tank tops. :)



We stopped at some of the lookouts off of the road to take pictures.



The girls were excited to see chipmunks come right up to them.



Once we got into Yellowstone, a buffalo decided to cross the road in front of us.



We went to Mammoth Hot Springs for our last activity of the day. Our only mishap here was that Andy's hat blew off Emily's head and landed in the dirt outside the boardwalk. There are signs everywhere about staying on the boardwalk to avoid sinking into the ground. Andy used the stroller as a tool to hook his hat and get it back.





There was a sulphur smell in the air from the hot spring coming up from the ground.



As we headed to our hotel for the night, the animals were starting to come out a little more. We saw lots of buffalo. A coyote (or wolf?) came right up beside the car in front of us and grabbed a bungee cord that had been dropped. He must have thought it was a toy.



We also saw some mule deer grazing by a field close to the road.



We took so many more pictures. I can't possibly put them all up on this blog, but I will try to put a lot of them up on Picasa when I get the chance. I'll email out the link in case you want to take a look. We would be driving down the road and take pictures as we came across some beautiful scenary. I'll try to get my last post about our trip up sometime tomorrow...