First Day of School

Well this week was a first for two members of our household. Julianne started her first day of second grade and Mallory started Kindergarten. Julianne was really excited and transitioned very well to going back to school. She has been pretty relaxed after school and has been playing with Mallory pretty well. Mallory went today to school for an hour and fifteen minutes and then she starts tomorrow for her first real day. So she was a little clingy but went in energetically and did not cry. So the big test will be tomorrow when there will be more classmates and she attends for the entire 2 hours and 45 minutes.





Mallory was not too thrilled with me taking her picture.


Mad, sassy face.

She was happier when she found out where to put her backpack.

Nathan's new soccer outfit from Grandpa. He loves it.

This is what I have resorted to in order to keep Nathan from scratching his legs. He has repeatedely taken off his extra large, waterproof bandades and scratched his ezcema leaving his legs weeping, bleeding and in terrible shape. I just feel like this is our constant battle, keeping him from scratching his legs open. His poor skin must be so scared from this. I can't get it cleared up long enough to see what the damage is. So we will see how long this lasts. After nap he was really scratching but at least he could not really sratch his skin and more importantely he could not take off the bandages.

The kids spent the weekend at Mimi's house and we went out and shopped for a new car. D's car has been slowly dying the past few months and he called last week saying that his car was shaking. So we thought this might be the best time so that we do not have to put any more money into it. So we went to a Honda place and looked at their used Odyssey's and they were nice but they did not have any that we liked and what we wanted. So then we went to a Toyota place and looked at the Sienna. They only had about four at the place and they did not have any used ones. They did however have a used Odyssey so we took it out for a drive and really liked it and thought it was priced well. It has been at the dealers for awhile and they had already reduced the price once. It was basically the same price as one of the used ones at Honda but with all the extras. So we took the plunge and bought it. So it is a 2007 with about 30,000 miles on it. So it is perfect for us. We did not tell the kids that we bought one since I knew that they would be extra excited and would want to see it. So we kept it a secret and picked them up in it. D picked them up and he said that they were so excited. Julianne was the most excited. So it was nice for him to see them in that state of happiness. They still love it and fight over who opens the doors and where they get to sit. It is a pretty nice car and it drive amazingly smooth. Even D likes it. So we are happy with our purchase.

The kids got back on Sunday night and D's mom told me that Nathan had a cough and a runny nose Sunday morning. So I knew what that meant. Sure enough around 6:00 p.m. he started breathing hard and it continued until the next morning. I slept with him and his exhales would make the bed kind of move. I was reading and I thought why is the bed shaking. We wer in the basement so I thought maybe we had an animal friend but I soon figured it out. It was Nathan breathing. We already gave him a treatment that night and then I ended up giving him one at 4:00 a.m. because he was still breathing hard. So this one seemed to last longer and it seemed more severe but it may have been because I was sleeping with him and more involved than at other times. Additionally this was his second episode in one month which is more frequent then his usual once a month episode. I write all this stuff down because it gives me a place to record his episodes in case we need to see a specialist or just to document them so that I know when and what degree they were. So if you get tired of reading about this then just skip this part.


This is Nathan's other Soccer outfit. It is usually worn on Mondays after wash day and is missed and talked about the rest of the week since he can't wear it when it is dirty. Now that we have the other soccer outfit this one will get a break.

This is his sword that rarely leaves his hand or bed.



Ooops!!


Some sweet calm pictures.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Seeing Mallory begin a new school chapter in her life.
-Seeing Julianne act so old and brave during her first day of school.
-Julianne telling me she wants to stay at home with me and not go to school (even though every morning she is excited to go to school)
-running on a trail at a local park with hubby last weekend.

Local cavern visit

Well this week we are getting ready for school and doing things that I have wanted to do with the kids the entire summer. One of our trips was to go to a local Cavern where we went into a cave system, mined for gems and was attacked by local donkey's. We had a blast. Nathan was a little weary of entering the caves and kept turning around and going back up the stairs. I had to carry him down the stairs and once he was in it he was fine. You are not suppose to touch the wall since it stalls or kind of destroys the natural formation process of the caves but that is hard to do with a 2 year old. But he managed to not get his greasy, oily hands on too many walls or formations. The kids loved mining for gems. That was their favorite part. The least favorite part but the most talked about part of the trip was having two donkeys and one goat want to aggressively eat our picnic lunch. The kids were so mad and screaming at the animals that we had to move our picnic to the back of our car. We noticed after we were eating that feeding the animals the food that the caverns provided was foreshadowing into the aggressiveness of these animals at the sight and smell of food. The poor kids trying to feed the animals tenderly from their hands turned into the animal grabbing the bag of food out of the child's hand and running off with it. I later heard the lady at the desk tell one person who bought the food to not let the animals get the bags or they would eat the bags. I was thinking in my head, "good luck with that". So anyway, the animals were the talk of the trip but I think that Julianne really enjoyed the caves and she was in the front of the line listening to the lady talk about the history of the caves.








Look at this goat's pupils. They are square. It was really interesting and wired to look at them.


I put the girls in Jail for a time out!! Just kidding.



We received the girls school teacher names in the mail this weekend and they both have the teacher that they wanted. Julianne really wanted her teacher and she is very happy with that except all of her close friends are not in her class. There are a few other acquaintances in her class that we are aware of and her next door neighbor but that is it. So it will be interesting to see how she does the first day of school. Additionally it will be interesting to see what friends she sticks with over the coarse of the year. She has three really good friends of which two of them were in her Kindergarten class so this will be a new start for her. I hope she stays friends with her existing friends since they are great girls, but I know she will meet new people. Mallory got Julianne's old Kindergarten teacher so I am excited about that. She is a pretty laid back teacher with four kids so she understands kids. Mallory's teacher's daughter is actually in Julianne's class this year and it just so happens that they have the same birthday. So that will be interesting also.

Other things we have been enjoying are playing in the pool. The kids are enjoying it and I actually got into it the other day in order to clean the slippery bottom. So it was fun and it has warmed up considerably since the first few weeks we installed it.




Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Nathan saying "I want to bite you" after I told him I wanted to kiss him.
-Nathan sleeping with his sword every night since my friend gave it to him.
-Beginning school soon. We have enjoyed our summer but some structure will be nice.

My new spike mat

Well my spike mat, aka nail mat or acupressure mat, arrived today. Yeah. I have been waiting for it for over a week. I just used it and it hurt for the first 5 minutes and then it did not hurt as much. I rested on it for a little more than 10 minutes and it felt really good to get off of it. I did not feel extra relaxed but I also was not really mediating or in a mediative state. The kids were around and wanting to try it so it was not the correct time to do it but I had to give it a try regardless of the chaotic state of the house. Right now my back is still a little tingly and my head is a little light headed so I don't know if it is from that or just a coincidence. So we will see. Right now Mallory has been lying on it for almost 20 minutes. Granted she has a shirt on with it which makes a big difference so we will see how she feels afterwards. I am excited about it and I hope it becomes a regular part of relaxing. I am really excited for D to try it to see what he thinks.

We got to watch cousin Lexee for the last time on Monday. My brother and SIL are moving to Colorado this week and we were sad to see them leave. Lexee takes after her older cousin of being very sad when her mother or father are not holding her. So she cried for about 5-10 minutes and then got on the floor and played with the kids. She did great. The dogs loved her and tried to keep licking her but the kids shooed them away. She ended up having a good time and she looks just like my brother. She has the same expressions and relaxed look to her so it was fun to see that. We are definatly gong to miss her, uncle B and Aunt C since we saw them on a regular basis. I am sure they will have a good time in their new house and environment.

Tucker really wanted to lick Lexee but she was not too sure of it.

Mallory was trying to fan Lexee

She definitely had a lot of action going on around her.

The entire cousin gang.

Julianne took good care of Lexee and acted like she was her baby.

Lexee and Mel stare down.

I think Mel won.

I think this is confused and preplexed look to Lexee. I don't know if it was all the activity or she was thinking about her parents. Too cute.

We went to the local Goodwill store to see if there were any good finds. We bought several outfits and a light for 43 dollars. The light for Julianne's desk was actually 7 dollars and the rest were clothes. I bought two shirts for myself and Nathan got one pair of shorts. The rest were the girls clothes for this fall. We got some really cute outfits from all the brand name stores.


This was the girls favorite outfits. Julianne shorts are very cute and so is Mallory's shirt.

We bought new TV room furniture a couple weeks ago and D bought a new chair for our desk. So we are going to move all the furniture from the TV room down into the basement and then get rid of our nasty smelly 10 year old couch from the basement. So it will be nice to be rid of that couch since it just stinks and it is ripped and it takes up a lot of space in the basement. So the kids had fun with the old computer chair.




Daddy lovin'.

My CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, buddy was out of town this week so I took the entire share. This is what I recieved: 20 ears of corn, 4 zucchini, 4 squash, 2 banana peppers, 2 spicy peppers, 2 red hot peppers, 4 eggplant, a bag of potatoes, 2 pints of blackberries, 10 peaches, 8 tomatoes, 1 pint of cherry tomatoe, 1 large bag of green beans, one head of cabbage, 2 green peppers and I think it was it. Anyway, it was a lot of food. I have been pretty good at using it. We have had several pasta dishes with the zucchini and squash. I made zucchini bread yesterday. Last weekend we had a few family gatherings which I made green bean dishes and used my tomotoes. I think I will freeze the green beans. I gave away the cabbage, some ears of corn, and the eggplant. We love the peaches and we have already eaten all the blackberries. So I think I have done a good job of using all the produce. We really do love getting all these different veggies. Like I said before I tend use the same veggies and dishes over and over again so this has been nice to make different dishes using different ingredients and to use things in season.


Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-my new spike mat
-Nathan saying he looks beautiful when he puts in his "soccerr outfit".
-some loving time with Nathan
-Seeing how the girls made a pretend village from all the toys around the house. The village is located in our playroom and contains cars, Little People, Noah's Ark, two car garages, and some matchbox cars.

Not much going on

Well the last week has been somewhat busy for me and kind of relaxed for the kids. About a month ago my neighbor mentioned that I should run for city council. There are currently four seats up this election and she was ready for some new leadership and thought I would be good with my background and commitment to the community. I briefly thought about it and did not really consider it. Well she mentioned it again and said that she would get the forms for me and kind of sponsor me if I was more interested in doing it. Well she got me thinking again and I kind of thought more about it and thought, "Hey what the heck". Life is short and I would be putting myself out there for a possible defeat but I was up for the new experience and the new challenge. So on Saturday I started getting signatures and started talking to neighbors and they were happy to see someone from the neighborhood going after it. I gave the petitions to some of my friends who also live in the same city and they were getting signatures for me. So getting the 50 signatures I needed to get onto the ballot was pretty easy. My other neighbor who is very political and who was very involved locally in the Obama campaign said she would help me out. My good friend from college who used to work on the Hill in DC said that she would help me also. So from the campaigning perspective I was set. This was also my greatest worry was the campaigning. I am not really into saying "You should vote for me because....". It is not really my style. I would rather be appointed to a board based on my experience and desire to be on it. So I thought that I could handle it for a few months in order to get elected. I know that I could be a good councilwoman. I love getting the community's ideas and wants and forwarding those onto the city officials and making policy or decisions based on those needs and wants. Additionally I have a lot of experience in local governments and I know the processes and procedures in order to get things though the pipeline so I was confident in that aspect. I was just not really comfortable with the campaigning.

On Saturday night my neighbor brought over a book on how to win a local election. I read about 100 pages and started freaking out. The petitions had to be signed a certain way or they would not be counted. The circulator getting petitions signed for me had to do it in a certain way or they would also not be counted. I had to have a treasurer. So there were a lot of things I had not even thought of because I had not really researched this decision very well. So I keep reading more and I kept thinking that I am not ready for this yet. I am a planner and I like to know what I am getting into and this could have been more that I bargained. I know that we could have done a good job and possibly won but I was not really mentally prepared. So I think I am going to wait until maybe another election to see if I am still interested and in the meantime I can read up more on the city's happenings and see how I can get involved in other ways.

So I feel better knowing that I have made a decision and now I can concentrate on other things. I am starting some consultant work for a local company. I am working on a sustainability plan for the main office. This will entail looking at their current recycling policies, waste management, packaging and paper usage, electrical usage and other environmental issues that may come up. I will make recommendations as to what they can improve on and outline cost considerations and implementation timeline and strategies for these recommendations. So I am suppose to start September first so I am also trying to line up a babysitter for one day since D will be taking one day off to watch the kids the other day that I am gone. So we will see how it goes. I have already been in contact with one potential babysitter so I just have to interview her and see how it goes.

So that is what has been going on since I last posted. The kids are doing well. They are finishing up their bridge books and hopefully they will finish with their summer reading program before the 8th so that they can claim their last big prize. Nathan had another asthma attack last week. After his nap on Wednesday he woke up with a barking cough. He kept doing it so I ended up giving him a treatment because I knew that it had helped the last time he had it. I could also tell that it was in his esophagus and not his lungs. Earlier in the day he had a runny nose so I knew that something was coming. He was better on Thursday morning but after his nap woke up and was still barking and so I gave him another treatment. So this time I was trying to be more proactive with his breathing treatments than I have in the past. Then a couple hours later he started breathing a lot harder and actually spent one to two hours laying on the floor of our playroom. He was not crying or upset I think he was just relaxing. He also had a fever of 101.5. Before bed I gave him another treatment and then he went to bed still breathing hard. I tried to sleep with him when it was my time to sleep since he was still breathing hard but that did not work too well since he was really hot and kept moving and getting made at me. In the morning he was not hot and he was not breathing rapidly he was just coughing a lot and a more mucus cough versus his dry cough he had a few days earlier. He has gotten all the junk out of his lungs and is back to being his crazy self. This episode started a little differently than the others with the barky cough so I have resigned to the fact and they are not similar and there will not be a predictable pattern to his asthma. What is consistent is when the labored breathing occurs it comes on kind of sudden, like within an hour he goes from being fine to breathing rapidly, however, I know that it is probably coming since he usually has a mild fever and has had some kind of cough and/or runny nose before this. Additionally, the labored breathing usually occurs for 8-12 hours. Then after that he is very mucus and coughs a lot. This is still the pattern even if I give him regular treatments or just treat him when he is breathing hard. Giving the treatments more often before he gets into his labored breathing pattern may help with the after mucus part, like the amount of days after he is coughing for, but I am not confident on that either.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Great neighbors
-Getting my toenails polished with a friend
-Celebrating by friends son's birthday with him and our family