Where Did the Time Go?

I can't believe that it's been two weeks since I last updated this blog! I guess I've just been really busy doing completely boring stuff. What was I doing?

Well, I had a garage sale, for one. The turnout wasn't great, but I did make a little more than $200. Of course, between dinner out and shopping for new clothes for Katie, there wasn't much leftover. And, we still have so much stuff to get rid of. I'm going to go through all of the clothes again, and figure out what to just donate and what to list on eBay.

My garage sale completely wore me out, and I was still too exhausted to attempt to fight the crowds for the Grand Opening of the new IKEA in town on Wednesday. I had been looking forward to being there on opening day ever since I heard they were building one here. I still haven't been yet, but since it's not opening day anymore, there's really no point in going until Phil gets his bonus check and I have money to spend.

Thursday, Emily came home from school complaining of pain in her appendix area, and she also had a bit of a fever (only 99.6). Since she didn't have any of the other symptoms of appendicitis, I decided to wait until the morning to see how she was feeling. Friday morning came, and she said the pain was worse, though her fever was completely gone.

So, I took her to the pediatrician just to be sure that I wasn't just ignoring a case of appendicitis. The pediatrician sent Emily for a CT scan, which took forever to get done because she had to drink this nasty contrast drink over an hour before they could scan her. After waiting impatiently all afternoon, we finally found out that she did not have appendicitis, but she does have ovarian cysts, with the one on her right side being much larger than the one on the left.

Saturday was spent trying to convince Katie to take a nap before the birthday party she was to attend in the afternoon, shopping for a gift for the birthday boy, and then actually attending the party. Katie had a great time at the party, and I had a good time, too. They rented a bouncy house, and now Katie is intent on having a bouncy house for her party, too.

After the party, I had to take Sarah shopping for her 8th grade dance dress. I attempted to do this on Friday night, but she was extremely uncooperative, so I just took her home. She had changed her tune by Saturday morning, so I decided to give her one more chance after the party. She wasn't extremely helpful in picking out a dress for herself, but we eventually found a couple of dresses for her - one for the dance and one for her confirmation that's coming up in June. Thank GOD I don't have to take her dress shopping again now!

I had a pretty decent Mothers' Day on Sunday. It was nothing spectacular, but I wasn't at all stressed out and I was able to relax most of the day. That's really all I ever want anyway.

The chaos started back up first thing Monday morning, though. At 7:40am, Sarah informed me that I needed to drive her to school because she had to be there by 8:00am for an NJHS event. When I demanded to see the information from school that stated this, I also found out that the NJHS induction/awards ceremony was that very morning. So, I had to rush to get myself and Katie ready and drive Sarah to school. When we got there, I found out that the ceremony wasn't going to start until 9:30am, so Katie and I left to go have breakfast at Dunkin Donuts before going back to the school. Later that afternoon, I got a phone call from Sarah that she had left her money for her dance ticket on her bed, so I had to drive back to the school to take it to her since it was the last day to purchase tickets.

So, I'm exhausted from all of the running around, to say the least, and I really only have today to relax because the rest of my week is jam packed again.


ETA: I just got a call from Emily. She's feeling sick, so I have to go pick her back up from school. Oh, Joy!

Time to Relay

Today is the day! Phil just left to take Sarah to her friend's house to get ready for the ACS Relay for Life. The event doesn't actually begin until 1:00 this afternoon, but the team is meeting at one girl's house so they can get all of their equipment they've been storing there and get it to the event site to get set up.

It's not too late to make a tax-deductible donation, so if you'd like to, but just haven't gotten around to it yet, please click on the Relay for Life link over there >>> in my side bar.

Just a Reminder

Sarah will be walking in the local American Cancer Society's Relay for Life in just two short weeks. If you haven't already donated to this wonderful cause, or if you'd like to donate more, please click on the link over in my side bar and do so.

Cancer is a bitch, and we need to kick its butt hard!

Another Week Sick

Here we are. It's been another week since I've posted anything, and I'm still sick. I think I may have had the flu last week, but I'm not 100% sure about that since since not everyone in my house got it. Whatever it was, though, it has left me with a lingering nasty cough.

So, I went back to the doctor this morning to get checked out. I saw my asthma doctor today, since my problems seem to be located in my lungs. First, they checked my lung function, and it was pretty low. Amazingly, though, my oxygen levels in my blood weren't that bad. They weren't great, but they could have been worse. After a breathing treatment, my lung function improved slightly, but it still wasn't good. Now, I get to get pumped up on steroids for the next ten days.

Backtracking a little bit now, I saw my OB last Monday morning for my regular monthly check-up. Because of my illness, I had lost two pounds at that point. But we listened to the baby's heartbeat on the Doppler, and it was nice and strong.

Then, I asked my OB about my test results. I figured that everything was okay since they hadn't already told me that there was a problem. However, after looking through my chart, I was told that the measurements from my ultrasound for my nuchal translucency test were "a little high." My doc said that he wasn't going to worry about it now, though, that they were going to wait until after they get the results from my second round of blood tests before they make any conclusions. I will be having my blood drawn for the second round of tests in two more weeks, so I have at least that long to keep worrying about this stuff.

I also got a phone call last week from my OB's office to let me know when my Level 2 ultrasound at the hospital was scheduled for. I will be having that done on April 6th, and I will be one day less than 18 weeks pregnant then, which means we should have confirmation on the sex of the baby then. Less than one more month to wait for that. I'm pretty excited about it.

In other news, I've been having a very difficult time with Sarah recently. One of the things that has been causing me (and Phil) a lot of headaches has been the fact that Sarah has been going around telling lies about me and our family. It's made for some very stressful times in my house, and I'm at my wit's end about what to do about it. I sent her to stay with her bio-dad last night to see if he could make any headway with her. I'm hoping that she'll come home from school today with a better attitude, but I know that it's not likely that she'll change her attitude overnight. Please pray for us.

Illness Update

They're all sick now. All of my girls are sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching - basically they are walking advertisements for Ny-Quil. Emily never returned to school this week, and Sarah decided to stay home today, too. I took them to my mother's house near Ocala so Phil and I could get a break and a little bit of rest ourselves this weekend. Hopefully, they'll all be feeling better when we get them back on Sunday.

Nothing But Phelgm

So, I'm still sick. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever get over this nasty sinus cold. I'm just glad that I don't have morning sickness on top of all of this.

Last Wednesday night was Emily's first school soccer game, and I had to miss it because I was so sick. It was also the coldest night of the year, so it was really a good thing that I didn't go out. Emily's team ended up winning the game 3-0, though I really feel that the other team should have had to forfeit the game since they showed up a half-hour late.

In other news, Katie is completely and totally potty-trained now. We've been putting her in pull-ups at night, but she has woken up completely dry every day for more than a week now, and has even gotten up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom on a couple of occasions. She is so proud of herself, and we are proud of her, too.

As for Sarah, there's not a whole lot of exciting news there. She's just working hard at school and getting great grades. She's been really enjoying her science class lately, as they have been working on lots of fun projects. A couple of weeks ago, she and a friend had to design and build a self-propelled car for class. Over this past weekend, Sarah had to build a container that would keep an egg from breaking after being dropped from the second story of the school. They dropped their eggs today, and Sarah's egg did not break.

That's pretty much all that's been going on in my household. I'll be going back to the OB office next Friday for my next ultrasound, which is part of my nuchal translucency testing. I can't wait to see my baby again!

Oh, and I dyed my hair today. No, I don't have any photos to show you what it looks like, but it is definitely more red than my last attempt.

Happy New Hair

Since I couldn't stand for that awful photo from my previous post to be at the top of my blog anymore, I thought I'd share with you a photo of Sarah's new hair cut. Phil took her to get it done yesterday, so I had absolutely no say in the matter. It was all her decision.

So, what do you think?

Photo Meme

My friend, Heather, tagged me with this little photo meme. Here are the rules: Post the fourth photo in the fourth file in your Pictures file, and tell the story of it.


This photo is from my "07-2006" photo file, and was taken at Sarah's 11th birthday party. In the photo, she's posing with the fifty dollar bill that my mother gave her for her birthday.

BTW, this photo was taken shortly before Sarah started wearing contact lenses.

Sick, Sick, Sick, Sick

You may recall that I had to take Katie to the doctor on Thursday for her throat infection. Well, her cough kept getting worse over the weekend, and this morning she was so congested that she vomited up a bunch of phlegm that she had swallowed.

Then, Emily came to tell me that Sarah was sick and she didn't think she was going to school.

And did I mention that I haven't been feeling so hot myself?

So, I got on the phone and started making appointments for the three of us to see our doctors. My appointment was first.

I have an upper-respiratory infection. No surprise there - story of my life! I got some antibiotics and a decongestant.

After my appointment, I decided to call the girls' doctor back and see if they could get Emily in with Sarah and Katie. Emily has been complaining off and on about her throat hurting, so I figured that I might as well take her in, too, just in case.

After picking Emily up from school, we went to lunch at Chick-fil-A, and then headed to the pediatrician's office. Our regular doctor, Dr. Bob, is in Rome this week, so we saw one of the other doctors for the first time. We all really liked her a lot.

The verdict? They're all sick. (Duh!) Katie's throat infection has spread to her upper respiratory system, so she was given a different, stronger antibiotic. Emily has a nasty ear infection and a mild throat infection. Sarah was actually the least sick with nothing more than a mild throat infection.

The doctor left it up to me whether or not to give Sarah an antibiotic. Since the rest of us are taking them, I decided it would be best for Sarah to do so, as well. This way, we'll all be infection free at the same time and we won't keep passing this junk around to each other.

Hopefully, we'll all be feeling better by the weekend. Especially since my birthday is Friday AND Twilight comes to the theaters the same day.

Dear Daughters,

You are obviously unaware of how a garbage can works. Since you are so smart and sweet and completely obedient girls, I can only assume that you have no idea that this is NOT how a garbage can should be handled.


So, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. When the garbage reaches the top of the can, it is time to change the bag. It is NOT time to continue piling garbage up on top of the full can. Not only does this practice make it impossible to close the lid to the garbage can, but it makes it very difficult to change the bag in a neat and tidy manner.

Now that I have made you aware of how these things are supposed to work, please refrain from allowing the garbage to overflow like this ever again.

Sincerely,
Your Loving Mother

School Portraits

So, I was cleaning off my desk - not because I wanted to, but because I was searching for something - and I came across Sarah and Emily's school portraits from this year. Then I realized that I had never scanned them into my computer or shared them with anybody. They've probably been sitting on my desk for a good month, too.

First, we have Sarah's portrait. It seems that Sarah has lost just about all of the baby roundness to her face. She's really starting to look more mature now.


By the way, instead of using the check that I gave her for her portraits, Sarah volunteered to work Picture Day at school and got her portraits for free. I sure did teach her well, didn't I?

And here is Emily's portrait. She's still losing her baby face, but it's definitely on the way out. Obviously, this was taken pre-haircut.


Can you tell that I love showing off my beautiful girls?

Finally Some Good News

Sarah and Emily got their report cards this afternoon. This was the third quarter of the deal that I made with Sarah about her grades, and Emily's first quarter of middle school.


As you can see, Sarah is still on track to earn that laptop computer. I'd better start saving my money! Oh, and did I mention that Sarah is taking high school credit math and science classes?


Even though Emily made straight A's all last year, we weren't sure what was going happen in middle school, especially with her being in advanced classes. Obviously, there was nothing to worry about!

Congratulations to my beautiful daughters on their great grades!

New Blogs

I don't know why they decided to do this all of a sudden, but Sarah and Emily have decided to start new blogs. Yes, they had blogs before, but they set them up themselves, and quickly forgot their passwords. I have their passwords for their new blogs, so if they forget them, I can remind them. Also, I can edit them as I see fit. No, I'm not censoring my daughters, I'm just keeping them readable.

They've done pretty well with their blog posts so far, but they did get into a little insult war with each other this afternoon. I had to threaten them with losing their blogs if they didn't delete the nasty posts.

If you'd like to check out their blogs, email me for the URLs.

Did I Mention

that this party Sarah is attending tonight runs until 11:00PM? I've had a difficult time staying up late enough to go get her. Thankfully, it's almost time to leave.

I should be able to get in bed within the hour. Wish me luck!

All Hallows Eve

What an eventful All Hallows Eve we've had so far! Katie was too excited about Halloween today to take her nap, so by the time we needed to get her dressed in her costume, she was all out of sorts and refusing to get dressed while screaming that she didn't want to go Trick-or-Treating.

Sarah had a Halloween party to attend at her friend Rowan's house, so I went ahead and took her there while Phil stayed home to fight with Katie. Sarah let me put make-up on her for the party since it was Halloween. She was so beautiful and mature looking with it on, I had to take several pics of her before we left. Here are just a few.




While I was dropping Sarah of at her friend's house, Phil called me to say that Katie had changed her mind and was now ready to go Trick-or-Treating. So, I had to rush back to the house so I could go with Phil and the girls. Because it was a bit chillier than we had expected it to be, we had to put long sleeves on Katie under her costume.

The second house we went to had this really cool, yet really scary, animatronic monster at the front door. Katie did not like that, and got scared that there was going to be a monster at every door we went to. Once we got through a couple more with no scary monsters, she was finally fearless enough to get really excited again. Of course, when we finally got home, Katie got SUPER excited about digging into her bucket of candy.



Emily dressed up in her Groovy 60s costume. It's actually a lot cuter than it looks in these next two photos. For some reason, Emily was in her "pose like a complete dork" mode when I snapped these pics of her.



Emily has a costume party to attend tomorrow afternoon, so she'll get another chance to wear her costume. Hopefully, I can get some better photos of her in her costume. Oh, and she WILL be getting her hair cut tomorrow. I've had enough of her not taking care of it.


To check out my Ghosts of Halloween Past post, click here.

Ghosts of Halloween Past

Since today is Halloween, and I've only been blogging for about a year and a half, I thought I'd go back into my photo files and share some pics from Halloweens past.

Halloween 2003: These photos were taken during the Halloween Horribles Parade at one of our local libraries. Sarah was a cat, and Emily was a lady bug.




Halloween 2004: Sarah and Emily were both cute little witches.



Halloween 2005: For some reason, I don't have any photos of the girls in their costumes this year, but I do have some cute photos of them at Sea World's Halloween Spooktacular to share with you.





Halloween 2006: This was Katie's first Halloween. I wasn't planning to dress her up, but then I found an adorable flower costume for her at Walmart for $10, and I was sold. Sarah went as a pirate and Emily was some sore of Angel-Devil hybrid. Oh, and don't blame me for their skimpy costumes - their grandparents took them shopping for them.




Halloween 2007: Sarah dressed up as a pirate again (though she didn't ToT), and Emily borrowed a Little Red Riding Hood costume from my mother. Katie dressed up as Tinkerbell. Sarah and Emily had both dressed up as Tinkerbell when they were Katie's age, so I thought it only appropriate that Katie should do the same thing. I also bought a hot dog costume for Maggie, and my mother tried to dress Bella up in a Halloween sweater, but it didn't last long.







I can't wait to snap some new shots of my girls all dressed up for Halloween tonight!

Halloween Spooktacular

Hello! And welcome to my highly anticipated Sea World's Halloween Spooktacular post. Let me warn you up front that this post will be heavily laden with photographs. Anybody got a problem with that? No? Good, now, let's proceed.

We never made it to Sea World on Saturday. Well, technically that's not true. We did make it to Sea World, but it was getting late in the afternoon, and we were all tired and hungry, so we left after I got a couple of new passes printed up for Sarah and Emily. We decided to get up early on Sunday and try it again.

This first photo was taken while we were waiting in line to get in. I've never had to wait so long to get into Sea World before, but the park didn't really seem especially crowded, so I'm not quite sure what was up with the delay.


Once we got inside the park, we got our maps, synchronized our watches (not really, we just made sure the girls had Sarah's cell phone), made a plan to meet back up, and then let Sarah and Emily go off on their own for the first time. I was a little uncomfortable with letting them go, but I'm a bit overprotective of my girls. My dad drops my little 13 year old brother and his friends off at Busch Gardens whenever they have a work day off from school, so I know that other parents do the same thing.

Anyhow, after letting Sarah and Emily go, Phil and I went off with Katie. Sea World had the entire park decorated for Autumn and Halloween, so we had to stop and take a few photos here and there.






Phil and I took Katie on the Sky Tower ride, which she quite enjoyed. She loved looking down at everything and trying to spot Shamu in the water. I took this photo of Katie and Phil while we were waiting to go on the ride.


After the Sky Tower ride, we walked around some more, and eventually made our way to the Sea Lion and Otter theater where we were to meet up with Sarah and Emily for the Clyde and Seamore show. Katie is posing here while we waited for the girls to show up. In case you hadn't already guessed it, Katie dressed up as her favorite Sesame Street character, Abby Cadabby.


When the girls caught up with us, we all went into the theater to watch the show. In case you haven't seen the show before, it's a pirate themed show, starring a pair of sea lions, with a bit part by a sneaky little otter, and a cameo appearance at the end of the show by a large walrus.







After the show, we got lunch and rested a bit.




One of Katie's missions for the day was to go see the penguins. She had watched Happy Feet on Friday and was excited to see the real penguins. When we finished eating our lunch, we all headed over the the penguin exhibit.


Just in time for Halloween, the Headless Penguin!


No, he wasn't really headless; he just had his head turned all the way around and bent down to pick at his back. I don't know if he was scratching an itch or cleaning himself or what, really.

From the penguins, we headed over to take Katie along the Trick-or-Treat path. They had little Trick-or-Treat stations set up every so often along the path, and the kids got a different prize (mostly candy, but sometimes not) at each station. They also had people dressed up and posing for photos with the kids all along the pathway. Katie really liked some of them (the pretty ladies), but others she ran away from. Whenever she got scared, she would say, "I want to go home," so we knew to get here out of there quickly.





After making it all the way through the Trick-or-Treat path, we stopped for a photo op with the Shamu statues.


Here, Katie is enjoying some of the loot from her bag - a lollypop, to be precise.


Next, we went to catch the Shamu show, Believe. We've seen the show before, and I really find it be rather boring compared to some of the other Shamu shows I've seen, but Katie just had to see Shamu before we left.














Emily took this photo of Phil and me when we paused for a moment on our way out of the park. I was hoping to get a nice shot of the two of us, but I forgot how tired we both were and that my lipstick had disappeared quite some time before then, so it is what it is.


All in all, we had quite a nice day together at Sea World. Although, I must say that by the time we made it to the Shamu show, my feet were absolutely killing me. I had bought a new pair of shoes the night before to try to keep from hurting my feet and hip (I've been having trouble with my hip lately when I walk a lot) while we were at Sea World, but it obviously didn't help. I'm not sure if my feet hurt so much because they weren't used to being enclosed (I always wear flip-flops), or if there was some other reason. I ended up trading shoes with Emily, who was wearing flip-flops, so that I could walk out of the park relatively pain-free.