Halloween is in the Air

Sorry it's been so long since I've gotten the chance to update this. I'm taking two classes this semester and it's taking up a bit more time than one did! At least both classes are interesting :) I'm taking Theories of Personality and Ethics. I'm almost through week 4, so only 6 more weeks to go! Next quarter I'm only taking one class.

We've tried to work Halloween stuff into our schedule between me working on my homework assignments. We took down all the fall leaves the kids made for the paper tree in our front window, but left the tree up. The kids each decorated paper pumpkins and ghosts. Megan wanted to decorate a bat as well, so I cut one out for her. The other three wanted spiders instead.




The kids told me where they wanted their decorations. It's hard to see, but the spiders are hanging upside down from threads attached to the top of the window. The ghosts are all sitting on tree branches and the pumpkins are sitting under the tree.


A shot of Jack and Brittney playing while Megan does Brittney's hair. We haven't gotten to see nearly as much of Brittney since school started. The kids miss her and she must miss them because she called and wanted to come over just to spend some time with them :)


On Tuesday night we went with Kiki to Boo at the Zoo - basically trick or treating at the zoo. Kiki was given four tickets from a friend who works at the zoo, so it was very affordable. The kids talked about it incessantly from the time we told them we were going. They were very excited!

I made their costumes this year. They went as various decades. Beth was the 50's in a poodle skirt. Meg was the 60's, complete with a peace symbol necklace. Jack was the 70's and I made him a one piece outfit that looked sort of like the suit John Travolta wore in Saturday Night Fever. Kylie was the 80's and loved wearing different colored socks, jelly bracelets and blue eyeshadow. Rob and I were going to dress up, but after working all day to finish Jack's costume in time and getting all four kids dressed up, I didn't have the energy :) Kiki dressed up as a pumpkin though, which was a big hit with everyone except Jack, who told her she didn't look like a pumpkin.


We had so much fun at the zoo! The traffic was lighter than we expected, which was nice. Kiki brought glow in the dark necklaces for everyone. They turned out to be very helpful when the adults would get separated by the crowd (we each took care of specific kids so they never got lost). The kids loved the gorillas and the impalas (I think that's what they were). They weren't crazy about the clowns - they must have talked to Kiki about that because she doesn't like clowns either. They were very excited to discover that they got to go trick or treating! They loved the ghosts hanging from the trees with gold glasses on. The girls and Kiki watched a show while Rob and I walked around with Jack. The show had two actors, one of which portrayed an alien who came to Earth to study lifeforms. Kylie was thrilled to tell me that she got to see an alien! Jack watched part of it - the part where the animals came out. The last animal was a huge dog and Jack got very excited and kept informing me that a dog was on the stage and that dogs say "woof".


Beth refused to pose for pictures after the first shot, but the other three kids enjoyed it :)




Kiki got a picture Rob and I with the kids.


On our way out, we stopped to look at all the painted pumpkins. They had some really cool ones :)


It was definately a hit and I'm sure will be something the kids remember for a long time!

This morning Beth told me she needed to wash her dishes in her play kitchen, but didn't have any water to do so. I let her get a little bit. Jack noticed and came running. I decided it was just water and wasn't going to hurt anything, so I got them each a mixing bowl full. They had a blast. We put a towel on the floor under them and they mixed and poured for quite a while. Beth told me they were making toothpaste soup. That made me check to make sure that there was nothing other than water in her bowl, but fortunately the toothpaste part was imaginary!






After finishing up with the water, Jack and Beth decided to put on a show for me. They practiced for a while first, then announced to me that their show was ready. I took a break from working on homework to come watch them. Beth played the piano with one hand and held a microphone with the other while singing a song of her own making very loudly. Jack played the guitar, alternating between the various songs his guitar features and adding occasional rifts with the strings. He sang back up apparently and was quite the dancer :) It was a wonderful show and I really need to charge the battery on our video camera so I can get the next one on film :)

Blessings

First a few pictures ~

These were taken of Megan a week or two ago. She really wanted to wear her flow-y pink dress to school, but she had gym that day, so she decided to wear the dress with her pink high-tops. Quite a fashinista :) She posed for me after school :)




Random pictures taken by various people of Jack ~

Playing in the playroom


Fell asleep on the upstairs couch, so his sisters covered him up with a quilt and a towel


I love this shot taken by Beth! I wish it was clearer, but it looks like Jack is ready to star in a Broadway musical :)


Kylie walked up to me yesterday afternoon, handed me the camera, balanced her bear on her head and insisted "take a picture of me Mom!" So I did . . .


Beth decided we needed some group photos yesterday. First she had me take several of her and me. Most she rejected immediately. This one she thought was a bit better ~


But she said we needed an even better one. This one met with her complete approval :)


Then she posed Kylie and Jack with me ~


And finally got Megan in on the action as well ~


It has been a somewhat difficult week. Our trip had many fun parts, but the whole horse attacking Jack thing really made an impression on Rob and I and for us much of the trip then focused on keeping the kids safe. We had a lot of fun going to our various vacation activities and even staying in the cabin. Kylie developed a fever the morning we left. We thought it was just due to the cold and dampness of the cabin (it was unseasonably cold - in the 40's at night and 50's and 60's during the day), but the next morning Beth had a pretty high fever as well. Kylie never got all that sick and by Tuesday was feeling much better, but Megan had a fever by Tuesday, so I called their dr and got them in to have them tested for swine flu. They only tested Kylie and the test came back negative. By Thursday, Jack had it too. Kylie was feeling all better and returned to school on Thursday, but the other three got sicker than Kylie had. Rob was home from work on Monday and Tuesday as we had planned to go to the pumpkin patch one day and the state fair the next, so at least I had some help :) I discovered Sunday (meaning the day we had left the cabin) that I had a small spot of poison ivy on my neck. I'm sure it was from Simon running around in the woods and then brushing against me. From experience, we have learned that my body tends to greatly over-react to poison ivy, but we hoped since it had been so long since I had gotten it and since it was such a small spot, that it would be manageable this time. By Friday it was obvious that I needed to go see a doctor. Rob had missed Monday and Tuesday, left early Wednesday and Thursday, and was working at his second job Friday night as soon as he could get off work. It would have been very difficult for him to take any more time off to watch the kids so I could go to the dr and I really couldn't ask any friends to watch them since they were so sick. I didn't want to bring them into the doctor's office and expose them to more germs (or expose anyone else to them), but didn't know what else to do. Christy of course came to the rescue :) I made a late appt and she left work a bit early and watched the kids for me. Thank you Christy!!! The dr took one look at what had been a dime size rash on my neck (that was now about the size of an orange, spreading up my ear and down my neck, looking something like I would imagine leprosy to look like), and said "looks like it's developed into a staph infection." She had the nurse give me a shot of steroids in the office and gave me prescriptions for more steroids and an antibacterial cream and said if it wasn't much better by Monday, I needed to come in. Discovering how serious it had been made me feel much better about sleeping so much for the last day or two and feeling so exhausted. I slept a lot of the weekend away as well, but am feeling much better. It now looks like a healing burn covering the side of my neck rather than leprosy :)

By Friday it was also obvious to me that Meg, Beth and Jack did not have the symptoms of the 48 hour virus they had diagnosed Kylie with. I called one of my best friends, who happens to be a nurse in a pediatrician's office, and described the symptoms to her. She instantly diagnosed swine flu. I told her they had tested Kylie and the test was negative. She explained that there were two tests they can do for swine flu. One is instant (obviously the one they did for us), but is only 20%-60% accurate (depending on the study you believe), meaning it had a really good chance of not catching it, especially if Kylie had a much more mild case of it. The other is $300, not usually covered by insurance, not offered in most dr offices and takes 6 days to get the results of (the current swine flu usually takes about 5-7 days to get over), so by the time you get it back, you're pretty much all better anyway. She assured me that this season's swine flu was usually more mild and most dr's weren't even treating it (which the pediatrician's office had told us as well) in most cases. As long as they stayed hydrated, and didn't have problems breathing, they should be ok.

Friday evening, my sister Molly called me. I hadn't spoken to her in a few days, so I gave her an update - basically, saying they kids have the swine flu, but at least they seem to have more mild forms of it (no vomiting - thank goodness! - one part of parenting that is hard for me to deal with plus it really helped keep them hydrated if I didn't have to worry about that), my poison ivy had developed a staph infection, but since I caught it early enough, it was fairly easily treatable - good thing I didn't do what seemed easier and just wait for Monday! Molly's response was, as usual, very insightful and put the whole situation in a new light for me. She merely said "wow, you've had a lot of lucky breaks lately!" and meant it.

She's right. We have been so blessed. If that horse's hoof had been 1/2 inch over, it would have crushed Jack's foot. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if he had been stepped on anywhere else. Kylie had a very mild case of swine flu and now hopefully has developed some immunity towards getting a more serious case. The other three kids are doing much better. They could have gotten so much sicker than they did. We had the money to get the medicines to treat their symptoms so they didn't have to suffer more than necessary. We had money to buy flavored water that they love and don't get very often - that made it so much easier to keep them hydrated. I got to the dr soon enough that the staph infection was a mere annoyance rather than a major health issue. Christy was able to watch the kids so it was so much easier.

My goal for this month has been to read my scriptures every morning. Rob and I get up and get Megan and Kylie off to school, then he called me from his cell phone on his way to work and I read out loud to him over the phone. It's really helped me organize my life better and handle issues that come up so much better. One section we read last week talked about how if we are doing something God wants us to do, He will help us accomplish it. I think I read that part Thursday. We have been working really hard to get out of debt and have done well, but we are still struggling to accomplish this. After reading that chapter, I decided to take God up on His offer. I told him that we knew he wanted us to be out of debt and we were trying to do all we could, but we needed help. I asked for a way for us to be able to pay off our debt. Friday Rob worked at his second job at the country club. This has been a very slow year for him - he's only worked maybe three times all year. He came home from his job that night and said they asked him to work at least two days the next week, possibly four. It looks like it's going to be three days this week, which means he will have gotten more work in the last week and a half than he has for the rest of the year. Prayers are answered.

Glen Rose, TX

First a few random pictures from the past week that haven't been posted yet . . .

I love this shot of Jack! It captures his personality perfectly :) He looks so much like both Rob and my brother Travis in this picture!


Wednesday night, after Rob and I wrapped up what we were doing downstairs to prepare for our family vacation, we discovered that Beth had not gone upstairs to bed as we had asked her to do after she had come back downstairs following being tucked in. We nearly stepped on her. Kudos to her though for finding a place downstairs where we could not see her!


We decided a while ago to make our family vacations more simplistic, easier and cheaper. This year Rob took a couple days off work around Columbus Day weekend so the kids wouldn't have to miss much school. I found a bed & breakfast on a farm a couple hours south of us that was comprised of multiple cabins, one of which was a converted railroad car. I reserved the railroad car cabin for us for three nights. We picked Megan and Kylie up about an hour before school got out on Thursday (they had a half day on Friday, which they missed), having spent the morning doing last minute things and loading the car. The drive down was fraught with questions such as "are we there yet?" and "how much longer???", making both Rob and I very glad we picked a place relatively close by. We found the farm without too much difficulty. It seemed idyllic and a perfect place to spend a long weekend with small children. Our cabin was about a quarter mile from the main house and barn, set up in the woods. Just outside the front door was a circa 1950's playground with a metal slide, a jungle gym made of metal bars, a tire swing (that was touching the ground, which made it somewhat difficult to use, but our kids certainly did their best), a merry-go-round that resembled five bicycles, and a sandbox. There was also a hammock, a picnic table and several outdoor chairs.

We unloaded the car as the kids played. Simon ecstatically ran and ran through the woods and the fields, never going too far, but clearly enjoying the freedom - he had never seen anything like it before as he was born in a shelter and raised in a kennel at a vet's office before we adopted him. It made me wish we had a bit more land for him to enjoy.

Megan and Beth discovered a basket of croquet mallets and balls in the cabin and launched a game of their own creation, which bore little similarity to croquet, but they certainly seemed to enjoy it!


We had packed light and tried to keep things simple, so it didn't take us long to unpack. Rob and I found our books and relaxed for a while outside before dinner.


Jack and Kylie gravitated towards the sandbox. Jack found a child-sized rake and had a blast using it, with Simon's help ~


Kylie built mountains and hills and had a wonderful time ~


A shot of the cabin ~


Jack on the slide, which by the way did not have much at the bottom of it, so every time a child slid down it, they ended up face-planting. It didn't seem to lessen their enjoyment though, so Rob and I just tried not to watch.


I went inside to make dinner and discovered that "full kitchen" meant a tiny stove, a bucket turned into a sink, a tiny refrigerator, and a very small microwave. There was one largish pot, a small skillet-type pan, and a glass dish that could have fit about two sticks of butter. There were six plates and lots of random pieces of silverware, but only one slotted serving spoon and one very small ladle. Having decided I was creative enough to tackle the challenge of cooking for a family of six with only the above materials, I boiled hot dogs (we weren't allowed to build fires due to the proximity of the woods and didn't have a grill) and corn on the cob together in the large pot and we had clementines as well.

After dinner, we took a walk down to the farmyard to meet the animals. Simon had to be on a leash as the chickens were free range, but he didn't seem to mind much. The kids loved meeting the goats, the calf, the turkeys, the pigs, the geese, the donkey, the colt, the bunnies and the dove (named Lonesome Dove)who lived with the bunnies. There were barrels of animal food next to each pen and old-fashioned metal water troughs turned over so children could stand up on them and feed the animals.


The girls discovered a tire swing and all three girls happily took turns on it ~


Beth kept asking me to push her faster ~


Jack spotted a little wooden rocking horse and spent quite a while riding it, yelling "NEIGH! NEIGH!"


We headed back home as the mosquitoes were out in full force. The horse was grazing by the gate to the pasture the road to our cabin crossed. The kids gave her some grass they pulled up and we headed back to the cabin. About 20 feet later, the horse, who had been grazing peacefully by the gate, came charging up the road, forcing herself between me and Jack, and pushing Jack down. Jack's ankle got nicked by one of the horse's hooves and immediately started swelling up and turning black and blue. I had Jack and Rob grabbed Beth and each of us grabbed one of the older girls' hands and we headed home as quickly and cautiously as possible, completely freaked out by the image of our tiny two year old pushed to the ground by a huge horse, inches away from being trampled.

There was a cattle guard at the end of the pasture, so we decided the kids would be allowed to play outside by our cabin, but we would not be walking to the barnyard often.

When we gave the kids a bath that night, we discovered that the sand box was apparently home to a booming civilization of sand fleas, most of whom had bitten Kylie's rear end as she sat in the sand, or the bottoms of her feet (she took her shoes off so she wouldn't get sand in them), or Jack's face as he had dumped sand on his head. Jack still looks like he has chicken pox, mostly on the left side of his face, which has at least 20-30 bites alone. His neck is covered with bites as well and there are several on his arms and legs. I got bitten all over my feet when I stepped over to take pictures, but thought it was mosquito bites when they started itching several minutes later as I was on the hammock reading.

The cabin itself was fun. That night a storm came through and listening to the rain on the metal roof of the cabin was very homey. The girls shared a double mattress on the bottom of a bunkbed and Rob and I shared another. Jack slept in a portable crib. We didn't have much room, but it was as close to camping out as I would like to get :)

The next morning we slept in until about 9am (and we had all gone to bed very early - around 8pm) and lounged around the cabin for a while. The kids learned to play checkers with a large checker tablecloth-thing that came with the cabin. We had instant oatmeal in cups because there were no bowls.


We let Jack watch a bit of TV, which he tried to do standing directly in front of the TV. We made him move back every time we caught him.


Rob taught Megan and Kylie how to play checkers ~


Jack, Beth and I made sandwiches for lunch ~


After lunch we headed off to Dinosaur World. Glen Rose, TX is "the dinosaur capital of Texas" as multiple fossils have been found in the area. Dinosaur World is a collection of over 100 life-size models of dinosaurs, placed along a walkway. The kids, especially Megan, loved getting to see them all. Megan and Kylie learned how to differentiate between meat-eaters and plant-eaters by appearance and to tell for the most part if the dinosaur walked upright or on four legs.




This was Megan's favorite dinosaur ~


After our walk, the kids got to "dig" for fossils. They were each handed a sieve and a small container. They sifted through the sand and found various items such as fossils of shells and plant stems, pieces of amber, and shark teeth. They got to pick their three favorites and keep them ~


Following the fossil dig, we spent a while letting them play on the playground. It was unseasonably cold (in the 40's at night and the 50's during the day) and wet this weekend and there were very few people out. I think we saw two other families. It was kind of nice to have the place virtually to ourselves :)






When we got home, we spent some time outside, although we told the kids the sandbox was off limits. Jack and Beth had fun swinging in the hammock with me ~


The four kids sat on the merry-go-round while Megan and Kylie pushed it around. They discovered going backwards was easier than going forwards ~


We got Mr. Jim's pizza for dinner - my one night off cooking :) That night I tried to teach the girls how to make corn husk dolls with the husks from our corn the night before, but they weren't really interested and it was harder than I remembered, so I ended up just letting them make whatever they wanted out of them. Beth brought one over to us, enthusiastically telling us she had made a "ball bat" that you could hit balls with. She had rolled one up and demonstrated to us that it could be swung through the air. Kylie made a ball by crinkling one up and got a bit frustrated when it wouldn't stay crinkled up if she let go of it. Megan, however, made a set of croquet mallets and balls. We were quite impressed with her creativity!


Rob watching TV with Kylie and Beth (who was doing "exercises" while lying on top of Rob) ~


Saturday we had a continental breakfast in the barn. Jack and Kylie ate fruit loops. Beth and Megan opted for frosted flakes. Beth LOVED the blueberry muffins and ate several. The owners handed out carrots to feed to the rabbits.

We spent the morning resting and playing in the cabin. After lunch we headed off to Dinosaur Valley State Park. There are dinosaur footprints that are visible in several areas of the park, however due to the rain the day before, all of them were under water. We took some short walks and read lots of signs that talked about the footprints and the dinosaurs that made them. We stopped and saw two dinosaur statues, made for the New York World's Fair in 1964-65. The kids loved seeing them and hearing the story behind why the brontosaurus's head is not the right one (it has to do with the "bone wars", but apparently the brontosaurus is merely the creation of one scientist who stuck the wrong head on the skeleton in the hopes that it was a new species).




We stopped and got ice cream cones after the state park and then stopped at a local park known as "Big Rocks Park". I don't know how it was formed, but the kids had a wonderful time climbing all over the rocks (we didn't let them climb on the highest ones though, or the ones with really big drop offs, or the ones that hung out over the river). Beth kept telling me "I'm king of the hillmen, Mom!"




We had breakfast again in the barn this morning and then headed home. We spoke to another family before we left, warning them about the horse and they told us they had several run ins with various animals on previous visits. Their daughter had been bitten by the turkey and attacked by the donkey and the goat. We wondered to ourselves why in world they chose to come back. The trip itself was fun and we think the kids had a good time. I would never recommend the bed & breakfast as apparently the animals belong in an Alfred Hitchcock film entitled "the Farm" rather than "the Birds". Seriously, if you were running a bed and breakfast geared towards families, wouldn't you have animals that were friendly??? I know all animals are unpredictable, but we've taken the kids to other farms and never had much of a problem.

Predictions

As we were running errands this afternoon, the girls and I had a wonderfully interesting conversation regarding their plans for the future. I decided I needed to write them down so we would remember them for 20 years from now :)

Megan is going to be a mom, a teacher, a doctor and a storekeeper. She will be a teacher mondays through fridays, a doctor on tuesdays and thursdays after school, and a storekeeper on mondays, wednesdays and fridays after school. She will get married at the age of 15 (!!!). She will have her first baby when she is 19. It will be a girl and her name will be Savannah Rose. Seven years later she will have another baby girl and name her Aisha Rose. Two years later she will have a baby boy whose name will be Jackson Lee.

Kylie is going to be a mom, a cowgirl and a zookeeper. She will get to sleep at the zoo and feed the animals in the ocean. She will get married at the age of 26 and have her first baby at the age of 30. She is going to have four children. A big girl named Mary Rose, a medium girl named Mary Rosalie, a little girl named Mary Rosalina, and a baby boy named Jonathon John.

Beth is going to be a mommy and have one baby boy named John. She will also have "a big children" (yes, that is singular) that is a girl named Flower. She will have "a little children" whose name will be Megan. She will make bread with butter and honey and peanut butter for her children. Sometimes she will shout. She will make dinner and her husband will do the dishes.

Sound asleep

Rob got home just before I published my post last night. I told Beth it was time for bed and she requested a slice of bread with butter and honey on it before she went upstairs. Rob and I talked while she ate and a few minutes later, I looked over and spotted my little Beth, conked out standing up :) What a funny munchkin!


I carried Beth upstairs and put her to bed, then checked on the other three kids. Jack had been very upset with me because I told him that he couldn't wear shoes to bed. We compromised by putting the shoes in the corner of his crib so he could put them on first thing in the morning. Apparently he decided not to wait once I left the room. It looks like he fell asleep while trying to put the second shoe on :)


And just for good measure, one of Kylie and Megan snuggled up together. They have separate rooms, but prefer to sleep together. As long as they go to sleep early enough, we have no problem with that :)