More Pictures

OK, I blogged from Picasa and it onl let me add 4 pictures at a time, so now they are a little out of order. Anyway, you can see there are pictures from our wet basement, Jack's 1st birthday, dying Easter eggs, and a day at the farm.

Catching Up on Pictures

The Great Outdoors

We have been watching the news here and seeing some amazing pictures of the flood. Roads, schools, and so many homes under water. We have been affected, but very minor considering what it could be. Looks like the family room carpet will be replaced as well, or at least the padding. It is starting to smell pretty bad down there. Benjamin makes sure to tell everyone who comes over about the "flood in our basement". He always wants to go down to check on things or try to help Rob.
Yesterday we went to the farm in Troy. We had a really great time. It started out cloudy, cold, and windy, but ended up really nice. Some of us ended up with red noses and cheeks. Once the sun was out it was really nice and warm. We had fun flying kites, watching a turtle, building a fire, going on a long nature walk, and even finding eggs the Easter bunny hid while we were on our walk! Micah loved his first nature walk around the property. I held him so he was facing out and he just babble and screamed with joy. It was so cute! Daddy even put him on his shoulders for a while. The kids really love the farm and it is so fun watching them enjoy the outdoors. Benjamin and Rob even took some shots at cans with a bb gun. I think this was Benjamin's favorite part of the day. I am working this weekend, including Easter, so hopefully next week we will get out to do other fun things. It looks like it might rain again which we don't need, but we'll see.

The flood of 2008

We have had a lot of rain over the past few days, well I guess it was only two days. Yesterday morning Rob woke up and went downstairs for a shower only to find our basement rather soggy. The carpet in our office is soaked. I think we will just pull it up and replace it. We have done nothing yet to save it because we have been working on the family room carpet. One half, where our sofas and tv are, is soaked. We have done some shop vacuuming and fan blowing with no improvement. I even rented a commercial carpet blower and dehumidifier yesterday. After 24hrs Rob just left to rent a heavy duty carpet cleaner to suck up the water. We are trying to save the family room area carpet. I am not even sure where most of this water came in and it came so fast. We went to bed at 10pm all dry and by 6am we had this huge mess. Yesterday Rob had to work and then parent conferences followed, so he didn't get home until 9pm. Good thing Maureen was in town so I could run around and do a little bit of "cleaning". You have to love Mother Nature. I guess we are lucky in that we did not have to evacuate and never had standing water in the basement. We were suppose to take the kids to the Zoo today since Rob's spring break just started. Guess that will have to happen next week. It is nice to see the sun shining brightly and know it will be warm with no rain forecasted for the next 5 days.

Dear sweet Micah

Here is Micah at 10months. Such a charmer! He looks so much like Benjamin too.

Being Creative

Here are some pictures of us just hanging out. I decided to be creative on Monday and we made some dream catcher windo things and some silly putty. I am getting really bored being inside. Today was nice though. It was almost 70 degrees. We went to a train store with Katie and Zach and then had a picnic at a park. The kids loved to be outside, run around, swing, throw rocks, and slide! Benjamin broke out in some serious hives. They were really itching him. The only thing I can figure is he had some strawberries. They've never given him problems in the past. Who knows?! I bought some bendryl for him tonight and he fell asleep watching American Idol. Can you blame him? Micah is getting so big so fast. I really feel like he has grown up right before my eyes. I have been so busy caring for 3 toddlers that I can hardly remember when he was a tiny baby. I do love his indepence and character. I can now get stuff done while he plays with Ben and Ellie. He still just loves to smile. He NEVER misses a beat and can crawl just about as fast as a kid his age could walk (maybe faster). His favorite is beating me to Molly's dog food when I leave it on the floor. He'll just take a big handful and put it right in his mouth. Gross! He seems to love it. He puts EVERYTHING in his mouth. I don't remember Ben and Ellie doing this. He puts carpet, paper, fuzz, toys, trash, kleenex, you name it into his mouth. I have gagged him to the point of puking before to get stuff out of his mouth. Such a stubborn little tike. Well enough rambling...

Fun in the snow

Yeah! I now can add picutes! Get ready to see a few more. These were from just one week ago-hard to believe! The snow is still melting. Tomorrow should be around 70!

A Night in the ER

After being called into work Thurs. night for a 7pm-3am shift (YUK!!) I started feeling bad around 8:30. I was checking my temperature watching it rise to about 100.5. I told the charge nurse I felt terrible with chills and aches and she said she'd try to get me home early. Funny thing is I clocked out at 2:57am. She helped me by 3 mins.!!! Praise God for Ibuprofen which I took around midnight and it sustained me for 3 more hours. Got to sleep around 3:45 and Micah woke up at 6am. I ached at the thought of taking care of the kids all day on little sleep and still feeling rather sick. Thankfully Rob came home from work at 9:30. I retreated to bed and stayed there til 6pm. I told Rob "I felt like I was dying" when my fever reach a whopping 105.3!! I was so nauseated, but was diagnosing myself with strep throat since my throat was a problem as well. To make a long story short I decided to go to the ER at Missouri Baptist. I was way too sick and weak to make it to my doctors before 5pm. I got some toast down and we left. Rob took me. I was triaged by a nice nurse and doctor who decided to give me IV fluids and medication. At this point my lower back was hurting worse than my throat. I received an IV steroid for the swelling in my throat, pain medicine, tylenol, and zofran for nausea. I had a throat swab (WOW was that bad) and a swab up the nose to check for influenza (NOT fun either). Now I can really empathize with my poor sweet patients who are 3/4 my age! After getting results back that I do have strep throat I knew I was on my way to getting better! I should start feeling better by Monday after getting some amoxicillin in me. It's really amazing how IV fluids and some drugs can make a person go from a feeling of dying to "OK I can get through this." We were there about 3 hrs which wasn't bad. Now I am following my wacky ER doctors recommendation to gargle with salt water 4 times a day to help with my throat pain. The gargling isn't wacky the doctor was, but that's a whole different story. My nurse Brian was awesome!! We found out he graduated from CBC in '86. Rob can't go anywhere without having a CBC connection. All is well, I am on the mend and Rob's wonderful mom and sister split up the kids last night so we could rest without any interruptions! Oh, and Rob was a great companion in the ER with me even though I was a little delusional at times.

First Entry

Well here is my attempt at keeping you updated on our families happenings. I am new to the whole blog thing and thought I would give it a whirl. Of course Katie insisted I try because it's fun. Which I can't disagree. This seems like a great way for me to keep track of family memories and events. For instance today I took Elizabeth to the doctor because she has a rash all over her body that has been there for 5 days and it is not getting better. I found out she has 5th disease or the parvovirus. She is not longer contagious since she has the rash. Kids are contagious prior to getting it, which was who knows when. She has no other symptoms and is not effected by this at all. I am frustrated that I couldn't diagnose this myself. Oh well, I am only a nurse. The doctors get paid the big bucks to diagnose (or nurse practioner in our case). I am now an expert at recognizing 5th disease!
On a lighter note, we had almost a foot of snow on Tues. Rob recieved yet another day off of school which is always great. The kids really enjoyed playing in the snow although Elizabeth kept saying "I can't walk"! It really was too high for her to move around. We threw snowballs and even made a snowman. Wednesday we went out for about 2 hrs and good thing we did because it has been melting ever since. I will try to post some of our snow pictures as soon as I figure out how to.