Catching up

Oh my, I'm so far behind in posting stuff. We went on a field trip today to the Arboretum with Grace's class, and I realized that before I put up some of those pictures I needed to put up a few from the LAST field trip. We took the kids on another trolley ride over to a Chinese restaurant to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

Grace's class in their tie-dyed field trip shirts, waiting for the trolley to arrive. Two girls and seven boys.

This is Santiago, who recently moved to Houston. Grace was heartbroken - he had just become one of her favorite people in the class.


Grace, Cole and Andy on the trolley.


Brayden and Dalton also on the trolley.


The class and the WONDERFULLY helpful manager of Lovers Egg Roll. He was very accommodating for the class, and the kids had a great time. Everyone came home with a pair of chopsticks and stuffed full of chicken, edamame and fortune cookies.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

The annual revelry occurred again today in our neighborhood. Greenville Avenue was turned into a big street party, and since we are two blocks down our street turned into a drunken parking lot. This year must have been a banner one - St. Patrick's Day is actually on a Saturday and the weather was beautiful in the low-70s. The parade starts at 10am further up Greenville, people start coming down here soon after, so by 4pm you've got drunken people roaming back to their cars.

This is the one time during the year that we are guaranteed to get traffic from Greenville (our street is nicely located between two entertainment areas, so it normally is not worth it for people to park along it). Jim and I last attended the street party almost 10 years ago. We decided then we are too old to enjoy crushing crowds of drunk people, plus drinking alcohol starting at 10am (or earlier) has little appeal because you end up wanting to go to bed with a headache by about 5pm.


Grace and I walked out on the porch around 3:30pm to see this. Grace looked at me and said "Mom, is this a parade?"


A picture from a slightly different angle showing the line of cars extending much further down our street away from Greenville.


Cutie Grace on the porch swing. Cousin Joey can note that she wore absolutely no green today.


And my wonderful surprise that arrived today from the mailman. My elisalou bag showed up, created by my awesome sister-in-law. I recommend everyone hopping right over to that website and picking one up yourself. I love it!

Have I just accepted it already?

I was talking recently with a friend of mine about her husband turning 40 in May. He's apparently pretty very freaked out about it. I too am turning 40 in May (less than 2 months away), and I realized it doesn't bother me in the least.

We'd originally planned on having a great evening out. My birthday actually falls on a Saturday, and even though I'll be volunteering that morning at the school carnival (yay - big 4-0), Jim and I planned on dumping the kids off with the grandparents and hitting a high-dollar steak restaurant that night. Yes, even though the parents are going to be getting in that afternoon from a week long vacation, I was still going to take advantage of Kamp Kennemer.

But then we were talking at dinner the other night about my birthday, and Grace said "Well, Mommy, we're going to Cafe Madrid for you birthday, right?". What could I say to that? So now the big night out is no more. I just can't deny my almost 5-year old daughter's wish to celebrate my birthday with the family at out favorite restaurant.

I also realized that I'm not freaked out at all about my impending birthday. In fact, I think I've come to see that I already feel like I'm 40. I don't know when it hit, but the years all seem to blend together now. And I don't know how long I've felt like I'm already 40, but it's apparently been a long time now.

Now don't get me wrong - I do plan on having fun this year. The girlfriends and I have decided to do a weekend away (no kids, no spouses) to celebrate all of us turning 40 this year. But I don't feel like I need this weekend to deal with turning 40. I just like that I have a good excuse to have a girls weekend.

All our love

All our love and prayers go out to Grandma Lu that the surgery tomorrow goes well and the recovery is speedy!

We love you!

Blackberries

Alex surprised me with a new little word that I thought he'd been saying recently but was never quite sure. He was eating breakfast and I got him some blueberries to go with his waffle. Here's how the exchange went:

A: Blackberries too, Mama.
J: We don't have any blackberries.
A: Yes Mama, blackberries too.
J: Alex, we don't have any blackberries. We have to get some next time we go to the store.
A: Get some more blackberries, dammit (fist pumping while saying this).
J: What did you just say?
A: Get some more blackberries.
J: And then what did you say?
A: (very matter-of-factly) Dammit.

Unfortunately he did learn this one from me. So I had to explain how Dammit is not a very nice thing to say and that Mama shouldn't be saying it either and that he should tell me not to say it if he hears me say it.

J: So Alex, what happens if I say dammit?
A: I say "you no say dammit, Mama. It's not nice."

I'm very proud of myself that I didn't laugh through the entire exchange.

The power of the bill

Wasn't sure what to title this one. An addendum to the previous post:

Grace's 101-102 fever continued all Friday night and through Saturday. The only respite was when we could persuade her to take some Motrin, which once it kicked in had her feeling great for at least a few hours. The hives continued itching horribly, and still covered most of her body (seeming to have shifted into areas not previously hit). She would periodically get the shakes, and still couldn't stand to be touched or moved when not under the influence of the OTC drug. I'm pretty certain that even though that flu test came back negative she actually had it.

You know, the thought just hit me that maybe they got the snot swabs mixed up between the two kids, because Grace sure was the one exhibiting flu-like symptoms.

Anyway, early Saturday evening we noticed that Grace's hands and feet were swollen. Called the 24-hour nurse line and were told that since a rash was involved that she couldn't diagnose anything over the phone and we needed to take her to the hospital.

So Jim stayed home with Alex and I bundled Grace up into the car to take her to Children's Medical Center. It was awful - she was burning up with fever and was in pain anytime she moved. Luckily we didn't have to go to the ER; Children's has a "referral center" for cases just like ours where a nurse tells you to go in. We were there for probably only about an hour total, they gave her a big dose of Motrin and determined that everything was still the fallout from the allergic reaction. But we do have an actual medical term - Erythema Multiforme. Which pretty much means multiple rash spots. By now Grace's huge swaths of red welts had changed to these weird red rings with discoloration in the middle, but were still all over her body. They did say she was slightly dehydrated and we needed to really watch that. So I ended up sharing a bed with her again last night, and every hour or so waking up to her whimpering to rub more cream on her itchy spots and to urge her to drink water out of her cup.

Now to the title of this posting. She was still somewhat sick this morning, though not as itchy as she had been. Jim gives her Motrin while I was at work. By the time I make it home at 1pm, her fever is gone and the nasty spots on her are almost faded away. And the fever didn't return once the Motrin wore off. So I figure it was kind of like watering your lawn and then it raining the next day - maybe her body knows I'm going to get stuck with a hospital bill for last night and figured it could finally fix itself. Because it certainly couldn't have healed itself BEFORE we took her in to the hospital.

I don't care. I'm just overjoyed that my little girl isn't sick anymore.

Whew, what a week

Well, after Grace's strep throat diagnosis last week, things have just gone downhill. She had a couple days of 102 degree fever, and Alex started having a fever on Thursday night (much lower than Grace's). When his continued all the next day I decided to take him to the doctor Saturday morning to try to nip what I figured was strep in the bud. His strep test came back negative, so we assume it was a virus that Grace also seemed to catch since she started taking on his symptoms even though she was on an antibiotic.

Sunday grants us 24 hrs fever-free for Grace, but not Alex, so she goes back to school on Monday. I have to pick her up early Monday due to the fever returning, but Alex is now fever-free. Both kids are clear on Tuesday and running around like they feel totally fine, so they both go back to school on Wednesday.

Wednesday night Grace breaks out in HORRIBLE hives. They are covering her entire body. We don't realize it until about 5am the next morning, so she gets Benedryl then. Alex also has a 101+ fever on Thursday, so a visit to the doctors office yesterday afternoon gets us the following news: Grace is apparently allergic to Amoxicillan and needs to start new antibiotics for her strep, Alex tests positive to both strep and flu. Grace was negative for the flu, but they want to treat her with Tamiflu to try to keep it from hitting her (I am told to have my doctor call in prescriptions for Jim and myself too for preventative measure).

Jim picks up $350 worth of prescriptions on the way home. After dinner Alex takes his two doses and then promptly spits up all of it plus his dinner on the kitchen floor. Grace takes her three doses, fighting it all the way, then goes to sleep in our bed for an hour until waking up and barfing there. Today Grace has a 101 fever and is on day two of hives hurting her so much she can't hardly move. Alex acts as if nothing is wrong with him at all and has no fever. Mommy has loads of spit up laundry to do and just wants to run away for a couple hours to escape it all.

Jealous anyone?

Here's a few pictures to share.

Grace on Valentine's Day. I was praising her outfit (telling her how much she looks like cousin Emma when dressing this way). She is such a "dress" girl that I have to do whatever I can during this 30-something degree weather to get her to dress warmer. This was her "cute" pose she kept wanting to do. Don't know where she learned the head-cocked-to-the-side thing.


This is after I made her open-up to show off the outfit. For those of your former dancers out there, don't you just love the pointed toe she has in this stance.


Here is a couple of attempts to show her hives. Of course, it doesn't do justice to the extent of the coverage. She has huge swaths of red on her back and belly, and tons of spots on her arms and legs. The circle on her forearm in the first picture is actually the bruise left over from the bite(!) her brother gave her last week.


Alex today. He's been very reticent lately to having his picture taken, but once I had him show me the Playdoh alien (hair squishes out the top of his head), Alex was all for the photos.


He'll also proudly show off his dinosaur. Is the love of dinosaurs ingrained in boy DNA? Because I sure don't know where it came from.

Sharing the wealth

So we've had two days of no school due to teacher training. Yesterday we had a wonderful playdate with Justin, Sarabeth and Aidan (Grace's "boyfriend"). Last night weekly dinner with friends so Grace got to play with Bella. Today I had to work so Grace and Alex were in the nursery with other church friends. And immediately after work we went by Brayden's house so Grace wouldn't be freaked out when she went home with her tomorrow.

And then we went home, Grace was wiped out, found out she had a fever, and after a trip to the doctor we end up with a POSITIVE test for strep throat. So I got to spend the next half hour or so contacting parents for all the kids we saw over the past two days. It's like we were trying to pass this bug around as much as possible.

Here's a few pics from the playdate yesterday:

The musical parade that started the festivities off. Poor Alex couldn't navigate the stairs quick enough to keep up. Aidan is the one in the green shirt.


Art time after wearing themselves out playing Superheroes outside. We discovered pool noodles make awesome superhero swords.

Cutie-pie Sarabeth.

Good day today

So I had a great day today. Yesterday turned out to be a tough one. Started out with attending the funeral of a friend's mother. That in itself was sad, but it really was a beautiful service - Catholic mass that both mourned the loss but also gave blessing that the pain associated with the 5 year fight with cancer was finally over. I had a nice lunch with two other friends who also attended the funeral, but then the rest of the day dealt with rushing back, putting an hour in at work, taking both kids to the grocery store after school (what hell that is!), laundry, dinner, etc. Just one of those days that wiped me out by the end of it.

Today was quite different. Still busy - work was crazy this morning. Plus when we left school at noon, I had to go get into the safe deposit box which ended up being an ordeal because the bank has switched over to this futuristic hand-scanning system to eventually eliminate the need for 70-something year old Betty who used to have to let you in to open the box. They had to get our account up to speed with the new system, which took much longer than I expected it to with two kids once again in tow. So I treated the kids to Happy Meals, eaten on the picnic table on the deck in the beautiful 70 degree weather we had today. And other than Alex's freak out this morning, there were no major tantrums from either kid.

Maybe it was the weather that kept me calm today. With apologies to the Ohio Kennemers dealing with frigid temperatures, it was pretty much a perfect day today. Hopefully tomorrow will be the same. We have no school, so I've got three of Gracie's friends coming over to play and I'm planning on them spending most of their time in the backyard.

On one last (totally unrelated) note, Grace had to create more "No Alex" signs for her bedroom door to keep her brother out. They crack me up, so I figured I'd share them here.

This one shows frowning Alex next to Grace.

Here is Alex's frowning face in a sea of "No Alex" x's.

And this is the one I like the best. Frowning Alex (wearing bunny jammies), big "No Alex" x's, and a big block of "No No No's" to really get the point across.

Are you on the list?

Yay - Heroes starts back up on NBC tomorrow night. If you haven't been watching it yet this season, you need to start. It's one of the best damn shows on TV right now.

Neighborhood activism

Can't believe I didn't post that last week the expansion of our neighborhood conservation district passed the final stages. Vickery Place was made a conservation district a few months ago, but the area covered was just a portion of the neighborhood. We then fast-tracked additional blocks into the district, our block included. The conservation district designation puts a few limitations on what can be built with the hopes of maintaining some of the charm of our 90+ year old neighborhood. Jim and I are very happy about this. And I'm quite proud of my husband. He was our block representative and spent many hours pounding the pavement looking for support among our neighbors.

In some sad neighborhood news, we discovered that Whole Foods will be moving into the Minyards location in Lakewood. Good for the company in that the building here was unable to expand so they can now build an 80,000 sq ft store and still be in East Dallas, but bad news for those of us who have gotten used to a Whole Foods being four blocks away.

A few photos

Just pulled some photos off the camera and thought I'd share a few. A couple from the Kennemer Christmas celebration (held on December 16) and some from a gorgeous day we had last week.

My kids love spending time with their cousins. I'm sure something very important was being discussed at the top of the slide right here.


Emma was watching Alex pile leaves at the bottom of the slide, for reasons only his tiny mind knows.


Grace wanted to show off her new Disney Princess scooter Santa brought her for Christmas this year. I had to take lots of pictures because she wanted to be sure I caught her right leg sticking up in the air just so.


I looked out the back door and saw Alex decked out in his cowboy hat, riding around on the stick horse Santa brought him. I could barely keep from laughing while taking taking the picture.


For some reason Grace decided to pull out the boogie boards so she and Alex could surf on the lawn. Not moving of course - they were having a great time just standing on the boards.


Alex shows off his surfer moves.

Big milestone?

So proud of Alex tonight. After bath he tells me he wanted to pee on the potty. We had a back and forth discussion of whether he wanted to sit on the potty seat or not, and I finally understood that he wanted to "pee like Daddy". So my little man actually STOOD up and peed in the potty! I know that doesn't sound like it is too exciting, but it is in our house. He tried that before in months past, but always chickened out once he got on the stool and ended up just sitting down. Alex couldn't wait to get up the stairs to tell Jim all about it. I love that little guy.

What a wonderful Christmas

Once again we had an amazing Christmas season. Beginning with my family Christmas on the 16th (so we can all be back in our own homes for Christmas Day), which was a wonderful gathering. The Ohio Kennemers were very much missed. One of the best things is seeing my kids playing with their cousins, who they love.

Christmas Eve was spent over at Jim's parents' house. We are lucky that our family traditions work out nicely without overlap; plus everyone is local so we are never required to travel for the holidays. I had to work early in the day on Christmas Eve (curse of working at a church), but it wasn't bad. I got to go to mass that morning, and got to see all the little kids I love up there. And Jim got to make sure our two were bathed and dressed for the day. Grace and Alex had more cousins that night to play with - nice for us because since the girls are older we really can say "Watch Alex for us" and don't have to be peeking around corners or through windows to make sure he's not destroying everything in sight.

And Christmas Day was exciting. Other than the hitch with the scooter, the kids were overjoyed by the presents (and Grace was very accepting of the "Santa's elf forgot a part" explanation). I get to enjoy myself by cooking the big holiday meal for our family and Mom, Dad and Luella. Beef tenderloin again this year, with mashed potatoes, peas and glazed carrots. Plus I took a stab at making homemade rolls - maybe not beautiful, but they seemed to taste okay. My big accomplishment of the meal was dessert - Irish bread pudding with caramel-whiskey sauce. Yummy!

At the end of the day I just was able to revel in the beauty of the season. Grace declared twice (once at Grandma and Pawpaw's house and once Christmas morning) that "This is the best Christmas I've ever had in my whole life!" I was able to cook a wonderful meal and have other hands cleaning up in the kitchen, which is my most-hated part of it. New toys were strewn all over my house, but we were all still full from the food and wine of Christmas dinner so we didn't care. Just hanging out on the couch that evening as a family, kids crawling all over us, was the best place to be. Alex zonked out on top of me on the couch, and Grace quickly fell asleep after a couple of books.

And in case anyone was wondering, I got up this morning to hit Target at 7am and found a replacement Princess scooter at the second store I went to. Stuck the box under the tree with a big bow on it. Grace discovered it a couple hours later. So she has her scooter only one day late, and now I get to make a trip to Target again to return the first one and get names for writing my complaint letter.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Damn damn damn

11:45pm on Christmas Eve and we discover that the Princess scooter Jim is assembling is MISSING THE REAR AXLE.

Yep, the most-wanted Christmas gift of the season in our household is incomplete. So we've written the letter from Santa explaining that the elves made an error, and I'll probably go hit a Target at 7am on Tuesday morning to try to find a new one.

Stupid Target. Probably didn't check the package when it was returned the first time before taping it up and sticking it back on the shelf. I'm writing a letter...

All I want for Christmas is...

everything, which will change next week if you ask a 4-year old.

Last year was easy to sway Grace's Santa requests to match what had already been brought. But this year she sees a commercial targeted to little girls and something new pops up on the list. The latest is a scooter. Originally a Barbie scooter (don't ask me where that came from). But of course everyone is sold out of the three-wheeled Barbie scooter. But I discovered a Disney Princess scooter, which once I mentioned it has now shot up to the top of the list. So Fairy Princess Dora is in the back of the car waiting to be returned to Target.

Alex is a bit easier. For the longest time you'd ask him what he was going to ask Santa for, and his response would be "toys". Now he's changed it to be "monkeys, dinosaurs and toys". So I'm going to have to run out one last time on Thursday (when both kids are at a special drop-in day at school) to try to find some monkeys and dinosaurs for the boy.

Family vacations are fun!

Yes we did it. Rented the RV and hit the Texas state parks last week. Despite the fact that I was sick the first couple of days (including on Thanksgiving the day before we left - great), Grace was sick in the middle of the trip and Alex picked it up at the end, we had a great time. Had to patronize WalMart twice and discovered that the stores in small towns are much nicer than the ones in DFW. Stayed at Ft. Parker near Mexia the first night simply because just about every other park in the state was booked the Friday after Thanksgiving. Then two nights in Garner State Park and two nights at Pedernales Falls SP. We were going to spend a night at Dinosaur Valley SP, but decided to just make that a stop on the way home after having two sick kids for the past few days and realizing the cold front was coming in that night. Originally planned on reaching Big Bend, but changed our route after the first night when we realized we wanted more park time and less drive time.

Our sweet ride.

Alex adopted this weird stance for a while when throwing
rocks into the river at Garner SP.

Grace said "Throwing rocks in the river is more
fun than...ANYTHING! Even Coloring!"

Checking out the recently deceased butterfly next to one of the
biggest trees we'd ever seen (Garner SP).

The butterfly.


Helping Alex navigate the rocks at Pedernales Falls SP
(to get to a good spot to toss them into the river, of course).


Not only could we throw rocks, but we could stick our
feet in this river while we did it.


Helping Grace cross back across.


Grace shows off hers (and my) bedroom. Alex and Jim shared the
MUCH more comfortable bed in the back.


Alex and the smudges he helped decorate the entire RV with.


A sunset at Pedernales Falls.


Me watching the deer roaming through our campsite. Not much fear in those guys until you really make a lot of noise. We also saw feral pigs (from a distance - about 4 adults and a mess of babies), rabbits and numerous cool birds. That was the live animals. If you count the roadkill you can add a lot of raccoons to that number - there was a stretch of road from Garner to Pedernales Falls where we saw one probably every two miles.


Picture of the family taken the last night using the camera on the computer.

Fun in the Fall

The leaves are really starting to come down, especially in the front yard. I don't know if our ash tree out front just loses leaves before all the other trees on the street, but I know we always have a time every Fall when you look down our block and all the other yards are fairly clear but ours looks like a tree exploded on it. Grace and Jim raked a big pile today and had lots of fun with it.

Whew

Well, I just finished one of my busiest months ever. So here's a few updates (for anyone who cares).

1. The Lakewood Home Festival is OVER!!! If you are not aware, I have volunteered tons of hours to this for the past couple years. It is a great cause - raises lots of money for one of the local elementary schools. And honestly the main reason I worked on it was to try to get a little leg up in getting a transfer for my kids into that school. But after I'd committed to being the Underwriting co-chair for the second year, all the school boundaries were changed. And this particular school went from one allowing lots of transfers to a true "neighborhood" school, with no room for transfers AT ALL. Since I'd already committed, and this particular position is pretty important and pretty hard to fill, Jim and I decided that I should ride it out and go ahead and do it. Over 100 hours later, I'm almost finished with it all. Just some follow up, getting books straight, tax letters sent in January, then hand everything off to the next person. Yay!

2. My catered speaker dinner I hosted at church is OVER. Occurring last Friday, the same night as the beginning of the Home Festival, both events together almost caused my head to explode last week. But the dinner went off great, and the speaker was awesome. She's coming back to do a Lenten women's retreat that I am for sure going to attend, and will probably try to convince Mom to attend with me.

3. I missed Halloween with my kids due to a nasty 24-hour stomach bug. Luckily Jim was already coming home early that day, because I couldn't do much of anything other than lay on the couch. He took the kids over to a friend's house and the dads took the kids out to get candy. I'm sad I missed it, because apparently once Alex figured out how the whole trick or treat thing worked he was all over it. He was wide-eyed excited when they came home that night. And now I have a big bag of candy we didn't hand out at our own door because I couldn't get up to answer the phone, much less hand out candy.

4. Cousin Amy's baby shower was Saturday, and she looks so cute all pregnant! Wonderful time catching up with aunts and cousins. I got to make some of my yummy appetizers and Audra's punch recipes. And Grace loves the baby doll I won in one of the games. She's already christened it Ava and carries it around all the time.

5. I start work tomorrow! I'll be the new nursery coordinator up at church, mainly in charge of making sure any nursery needs for church meetings or events are adequately staffed. Not great pay, but half price tuition for my kids school which makes it worthwhile. And finally now when Jim complains to me "So are you getting paid for all that time you spend up at church?" I can say "Yes I am!".

6. Lastly, I made a tasty chicken noodle soup out of the last of my homemade chicken stock last night. Mmmmm! Not a cold day, but overcast and a little rainy, so the soup was a good fit.

Even with the job starting, I feel like I finally have a little breathing room in my life again. Aahh.

Birthday party pics

Here's a few pictures from the birthday party last weekend. Despite the rain, it turned out pretty good. It would have been nice to have everyone play outside, but since it was just family and a few close friends it was manageable inside the house. It was hard to find ANYTHING having to do with robots for the party theme, as you will be able to see by the homemade aspects below.

Alex waits patiently for his birthday brownie.


Blowing out the candles.


Brownie robot-man Grace and I created for everyone in lieu of a birthday cake. Didn't look real pretty but sure tasted good.


Opening presents.

The birthday robot made out of two Pampers boxes, aluminum foil and various things found at Elliot's Hardware.

Alex holding his robot's hand.

Alex with two of his favorite toys from the day.


My two kiddos, after the party with cute but dirty faces.