A Year in Review

I thought I'd show you how annoying my kids can be when it comes to taking their pictures. Of course you normally just see the good and cute pictures. Here's how it really is in my family.

First off I get a lot of the "sticking out the tongue" pictures. I give Lauren an A on this with Kristin getting an A-.

Kristin is just so attractive!

Even Zach gets in on the action.

Apparently it doesn't even matter if your cute little cousin is sitting on your lap!

At least this one is a part smile.

As you can see Megan is not one to stick out her tongue. She's one to just make a weird face.

Oh I have so many of her, I could just go on and on. But I won't. I'll move on to the "Don't you dare take my picture" look.

This one is just frightening. Kristin reminds me of the Grudge.

Megan looks about as excited as her pumpkin does.

Now we're moving on to just the plain weird poses. Of course maybe this isn't so weird for Paul...

A rather strange position to fall asleep in.

Could you smile any weirder Zach?

Lastly there's the "let's get in your face" picture. Zach is most famous for this one but unfortunately there's not many of them since with the beauty of digital cameras you can just hit delete. Here's his latest from Christmas Eve.

And that's it! We hope you all have a wonderful 2011!

A Trip to the Doctor

...for Megan. There's nothing unusual about my kids getting sick so why write a post about it? Well this trip caught me off guard so I figured I'd tell you about it. It started about a week, maybe a week and a half ago, with Megan having a little bit of a cough. No big deal, I had her use her inhaler. That's what I'm supposed to do, she coughs, I give her her inhaler. If the cough doesn't go away then I take her in to see the doctor. So she gets up today and her cough is no better and even a little worse despite her using her inhaler 3 times a day for the past week. So I go to the next step, call and get her a doctors appointment.

Well I got lucky with that since her doctor was only in the office for that morning and was only seeing patients that were really sick. The office staff know me there (been going to the same pediatrician since Lauren was born) and know that I don't call unless it's important so the receptionist doesn't even hesitate and puts Megan on the schedule that morning. (Two weeks ago the doctor even came in on her day off just to see Zach since once again she heard who was calling. Sure enough he had tonsillitis. But that's a whole other story.)

So we go in and sit in the waiting room. There's one other little girl there with her mom and that little girl was just coughing up a storm. She sounded so bad I thought she was going to cough a lung up! I look at Megan who hasn't coughed once since we got there and at this point I think I'm a little crazy for bringing her in. All along Megan has said she felt fine so why was I sitting there? I guess you can call it mother's intuition or something. I just knew she wasn't quite right. So now I'm going to fast forward to the diagnosis...pneumonia! Megan has pneumonia. No way was I expecting that. At the worst I was thinking bronchitis and even mild bronchitis at that. But pneumonia??? Geez! I'm soooo glad I took her in.

Paul thinks I'm paranoid every time she coughs. He's right. My paranoia started about 4 years ago when Megan was coughing and by the time I got her to the doctor she could hardly walk, she just didn't have the energy. (She started coughing on a Monday night and her doctors appointment was Tuesday afternoon so she went downhill rather quickly.) Her pulse/ox was 88 which is extremely low, like, emergency room low. I realized how serious her condition was when they told me that if they didn't get her pulse/ox up then they were going to take her by ambulance to the hospital. When her pulse/ox reached 92 I was happy but they said, nope, still emergency room material. They finally let us leave when it hit 97, after being there for 3 1/2 hours. So yeah, you can say I'm a little paranoid every time she gets a cough.

The diagnosis today still floored me though. (Her pulse/ox was 98 today.) I thought I was keeping on top of everything but I guess I should have taken her to the doctor at the beginning of the week instead. She talked and acted fine all week, including today, and never once had a fever. Honestly, if you saw her right now you'd think I was making this all up. She so does NOT look sick. But apparently she is and is now on an antibiotic plus prednisolone and we're past inhalers and now doing nebulizer treatments. I'm sooo glad I didn't wait until Monday to take her to the doctor.

Snow

We were supposed to have a major snow storm starting this past Sunday and continuing until Monday. What we ended up getting instead was a couple of inches of snow and lots of heavy wind. We really got lucky with the snow since the forecast was predicting at least 8" and up to a foot of snow. We did not get lucky with the wind though because by Monday evening we had lost quite a few of our shingles on our roof. That was just one spot, we also had a smaller spot of missing shingles too. While I was watching tv in the family room on Monday I kept seeing shingles fall outside of the windows, one even fell on our deck!

Since it was more than just a shingle or two Paul called someone to come fix it and they came out on Tuesday.

So now our roof is fixed. Hopefully the wind stays pretty calm for awhile so we don't have to go through that again. That sure was one expensive wind storm.

Christmas Afternoon

We had the pleasure of seeing our family again on Christmas this year. As long as Paul and I have been married we've invited everyone over on Christmas. So what's that been, 18 years? It sure doesn't seem like it.

So we socialize a little (well, a lot)...

...and exchange presents with one another...

...and just enjoy the day...

We also enjoyed dinner together. Well, except Kristin, she was in her room when we were eating and didn't realize it was dinner time. Oops! She did get to eat though but it was after everyone else was done and half of the food was already put away. She didn't even realize there were sweet potatoes until the following day. Next year I'll have to do a head count!

Despite Kristin not eating we had a great Christmas and loved being able to share the day with the rest of the family. Lots of great memories were created not only for our kids but for Paul and I as well. Thank you everyone for coming!

Christmas Morning

Zach was the first one ready to go downstairs Christmas morning. He couldn't wait to see if Santa came! He had to wait though until his sisters were ready. Lauren and Kristin were not enthused about being up so early (it was 7:00 am) and we reminded them that they were the same as Zach when they were his age.

We did our annual picture on the stairs before heading down.

They checked out the tree and Zach said, "Whoa!" when he saw all the presents. Then he announced that "Santa came."

After checking to see if Santa ate our cookies and reading the note he left us we opened our stockings first and then opened the presents under the tree. Zach was very good at handing out our presents, he took charge of that and made sure we had at least two in front of us at all times. Here's one of the presents he got, a Texas Longhorns sweatshirt. Now he can really look like his dad.

Paul got a head massager. It kind of tickles when you use it.

This present, Criss Cross Crash, was the one thing that Zach asked Santa for. It was probably his 4th present that he opened and he was very excited.

Here's Megan with her zebra Pillow Pet.

They all got one. Lauren got a panda, Kristin got a penguin and Zach got a monkey. They're so soft and cuddly, I want one too! Megan also got her DSi that she wanted and a few new games to go with it. She got some clothes, books, stuff for her hair, and a game she can play with her friends too.

Here's Kristin with a new DS game, a cooking one. This game has tons of recipes that you can make and I guess it tells you step by step how to cook them. Plus there's a shopping list you can check things off as you buy them. She's excited to start cooking now.

She also got a new bike (picture of that later), a jewelry box, lots of clothes and books and new slippers.

Like I said, Zach was very good at handing out the presents. We took turns opening them so we could see what everyone got. We went youngest to oldest with Paul and I included. It got tough after awhile though because Paul and I didn't have as many as the kids did so Zach crawled under the tree looking for more presents for us!

I didn't plan this but Lauren's two big presents she didn't open till near the end. She asked for Uggs and a North Face jacket. Here she is with her jacket...

Besides those two things she also got a bare escentuals starter kit, a few clothes, some Flyers gear (yoga pants and short sleeve shirt, NOT a jersey!), books and some lotions and hair stuff.

We also got a few family gifts like games and a new DVD. Santa was good to us this year, we got a Blue Ray player too!

Kristin's bike wasn't wrapped, it was just sitting next to the tree with a blue bow on it. It's been so cold that she has yet to try it.

So presents are done and now it's time to play! Here's a short video of Zach playing with his Criss Cross Crash.

More about Christmas later...

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve began with the kids giving us the presents they got us and each other. Lauren got Paul this Phillies Santa hat... Here is Paul's mini me...

Kristin got Lauren this plush soccer ball...

Zach even handed out presents. At his school they do a cute little thing where you send in money with your child and then parent volunteers take the kids to the Santa Shop to pick out presents. Even though I work at his preschool I had no idea what Zach got everyone. He was so proud to give everyone something, it was cute.

When they were all done it was my turn to give them what I made/put together for them. I always tell the kids that I come up with the idea and make it but Paul pays for it!

Zach is really into signs, like traffic signs. This past summer I took lots of pictures of various signs and made him a photo book...See that #48 gift bag next to Zach in the above picture? Well the sign book was on top of other stuff. I just figured he would toss the book aside to get to the other stuff on the bottom but he surprised me by looking at each page. Not only did he look at each page but he wanted to know what each sign said.

The other things in the bag were different kinds of cars that he didn't have already like a color changing car. He also got a box of sign lollipops. Another box had 12 different mini wooden signs. He unwrapped every single sign until finally the last one was a stop sign. I think he was waiting for that one...

Megan's turn was next since we were going from youngest to oldest. I put together a box of different types of drawing tablets and drawing utensils and even included a few how to books for her. I also got her an artist set that has crayons, markers, pencils, etc., it even folds up in the middle to form an easel. That was one of my black Friday purchases.

Kristin received her present in her room. I did this for Lauren either last year or the year before so it wasn't exactly original. Her tree though is different from Lauren's, her's is a metal tree that she can reuse to hang necklaces off of it if she wants to. When Kristin first saw it though she saw it wrapped in red garland with lots of candy, gift cards and various other things hanging from it. There were even a few presents under the tree.

Now for Lauren ...it took me forever to come up with an idea for her. I finally found something that was perfect for her. I made a giant card...

It wasn't just any card though, it was a card that had lots of surprises in it. There was a toy (whoopie cushion), lots of candy (Mr. Goodbar, Nerds, Lifesavers, etc.) and even a few gift cards (Deal$, Auntie Anne's and Forever XXI).

Click on the above picture to make it bigger and read it. Where it says NUTRAGEOUS on the second page there was supposed to have been an actual Nutrageous bar taped there. I had bought one but somehow misplaced it in the house and was unable to find a replacement one anywhere. In desperation, on Christmas Eve I just taped the name down instead. Oh well, one of these days that nutrageous bar will show up.

I'm not done with our night yet. I feel like this is the never ending blog entry...

I had two more little gag gifts to hand out. Megan received one. I'm not going to explain it on here but feel free to ask her what it was.

The second went to Kristin. A lot of times when I ask her something in a text she'll reply, "Okey Dokey Artichokey." So she got some Okey Dokey Artichokey dip mix.
Our night is almost ending. We can't forget to feed the reindeer. Zach did a good job at scattering the reindeer food on our deck and our lawn.
I can't believe that I was able to find matching pajamas for them this year. Online at The Children's Place they sell adult ones that match the kids. I guess I could have had Paul and I match too!
Whew! That's it. We put the cookies and milk out for Santa and hung our stockings. The kids all went to bed and then the wait for Santa began...