Enjoying the Snow

At least with this snow we could build a snowman out of it.
The past snows were either too dry or not enough snow to build a snowman. We sure got enough this time, about 10 inches, that came two separate times. The first was early yesterday morning and the second was last evening and through the night. The girls got out of school early yesterday (really surprised they went at all) and then had off today. Zach and I had off both days (woohoo.) I haven't had a full work of week since I agreed to working five days...which was 4 weeks ago!

What am I going to do with him?

Last Sunday morning I woke up to find that Zach was playing barber and that he practiced on his own hair! Yeah, he looks like a doofus. I guess he's going to be getting a buzz cut really soon.

Kristin gets Braces

She got them put on this past Monday. Now I've got two kids with braces on. Here's her before picture:
And afterwards:

I think they look good on her. She only got the top set on this time and in a few months she'll get the bottom set.

Lauren had her appointment right after Kristin and surprisingly it took longer for Lauren to get an adjustment then it did for Kristin to get hers put on. I think that's because they're trying to fine tune Lauren's since she should be getting them off soon, at least that's what they've been telling her for the past few months. We'll see.

Here's hoping that Megan and Zach keep their nice straight teeth so they can skip the braces.

Having Fun in the Snow

Zach sure has played a lot in the snow lately. Three different times we have been out in it and that's just been this year (2011). On the 7th Zach's school was closed so him and I got to do some shovelling while the girls were at their schools.
He was big into making snow angels that day.

He kept wanting to take his mittens off so we ended up not staying out very long that day. He was miserable when we came in and it took awhile to get him warmed back up. The hot chocolate helped.

The very next day, the 8th, we got another coating of snow. This time, with it being a Saturday, there were lots of helpers to clear the driveway. Lauren helped...

And Megan helped...

And Zach even used his little kiddie shovel to do his part...

That brings us to today, the 12th. Last night brought us the most snow yet, 4" of the white stuff. That was enough for all of us (except Paul) to have a snow day. This time I got cold before Zach did, he didn't want to come in.

Nobody else came out with us, it was just Zach and I. I didn't even have to shovel the driveway today since Paul did it before he left for work. Yay! I actually got to play with Zach.

Megan was outside too but at her friend's house who lives in the neighborhood. Here she is sledding, she's the one part way down the hill...

Since we can see Megan's friend's backyard from our front yard Zach and I got to watch them sled. Here's Zach yelling and waving at Megan...

Is it spring yet???

Megan's a Winner!

Every year her school participates in the Reflections contest that is sponsored by the PTA. It's a national thing with the first round being local. This year's theme was, "Together we can."

Last week Megan brought home a sealed envelope for me that told me that she won but until today I had no idea in what area (there are six and she entered in two of them) and in what place she came in. The two areas she entered in were literature and visual arts. The letter also said to keep it a surprise so Megan had no idea that she was a winner, well, that is until this afternoon.

They started with literature and I had my camera ready just in case she won in that category. In past years she has never placed at all in this category so I wasn't too hopeful though I did think her piece this year was well written. They called Honorable Mention...nope...wasn't her. There was another Honorable Mention, once again, not her. Third place was called and still not her. Then, for 2nd place, they announce Megan's name. Wow! My girl that struggles to write sometimes won 2nd place! She had a huge grin on her face. Here she is reading the first paragraph of her entry.

A side view of her posing with the rest of the winners. I could have gotten a better picture if antsy Zach wasn't with me. I was just happy to get any picture that I could with him. So then they go onto the next category which just happened to be visual arts, the other category Megan entered in. Would you believe she got 2nd place there too? Here she is reading what she wrote on it:

And since you can't really hear her it's titled, "Together we can save the world!"

Posing with the rest of the winners in visual arts:

I was totally surprised that she got two medals. I was so surprised that I had to scramble to get my camera back out when her name was called the second time. If I remember right I think she was one of two kids to get more than one medal.

So now her works of art go on to the state competition. Way to go Megan! I'm so very proud of you!

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...