Goodbye 2008, hello 2009

So tomorrow is New Year's Eve. I've never really found this to be a particulary exciting "holiday." My best memories of it are of spending the night at Ma-Maw's and getting to stay up until after 10:00 to see the late news. Now that was living! I remember coloring pictures and dating them, and can still picture exactly what it was like. Now, it's just a night to go out kid-less and have dinner with Jessica and Reid since we rarely go out to do stuff. And when we do do things sans children, it's with them! We did plan on meeting Christopher in St. Louis after work to eat over there, but Christopher has what looks to be hand, foot, and mouth disease (just what we need now) so he's not feeling the best. It looks like we'll be heading somewhere locally to eat and to J&R's house for a bit afterward.

You can guarantee there won't be any wild partying for me this year as I still feel like crap. And today we got some pretty encouraging evidence that what we had was in fact, food poisoning. Everyone Christopher talked to at work agrees that it can not be anything else. Anyone else getting sick at around the same time that was not at dinner on Christmas Eve, is purely coincidental. It's a source of comfort that we know for sure what it was. I know mom and Granny will still refuse to acknowledge the truth, but oh, well...

So, with that, I wish you all a safe and happy new year!!!

Nothing says Merry Christmas like food poisoning

That's the delightful gift that Kate and I recieved the day after Christmas- along with my mom, John, Seth, Diana, and Pa. Thankfully, we all survived, and are still recovering! I'll spare the bad details, but I will tell you that I have NEVER been that sick before. And to still be continually nauseated 4 days later, and barely able to eat... it's HELL! There were moments where I seriously didn't think that I would make it, and many times I almost had Christopher take me to the ER. I was delirious and in the worst pain of my life (worse than a broken nose and unmedicated childbirth). It also attacked my nervous system, leaving my arms tingly, cold, and numb. My arms are still cold feeling (as in poor circulation), which is concerning, but considering I'm still getting over this, I'm hoping it goes away. Everything I've read about food poisoning says that it takes 4-7 days to recover.

Now, if you ask Granny, this is not food poisoning, but a stomach bug, that we all got from Baby Glen on Christmas Eve. In fact, she's very upset with me and offended that we've figured out that this was no bug, and are calling her on this. She's VERY upset. But for one, it takes a week for a stomach virus to multiply enough after exposure to even make a person sick. If we get sick from Glen, it will be Wednesday or Thursday. And considering none of us had all been together in months, the source of the exposure was at Granny's on Christmas Eve. Think about this one... how VERY, EXTREMELY odd is it that 7 people from one family get violently ill, all within 24 hours of being together, and it NOT be food poisoning? Especially if a virus takes a week to make someone sick? And how VERY, EXTREMELY odd is it that the ONLY people that got sick, are the ones that ate the special ice cream dessert, and the ONLY people that did NOT get sick, are the people who did NOT eat the ice cream? Let's wrap our little brains around that one!

So yes, I'm back on THE list after that one! But hey, I was only speaking the truth! Christopher goes back to work tomorrow after being off for 6 days, and I know he'll be discussing this one with the doctors there and I have no doubt that he'll call on his way home to tell me that without a doubt, it was food poisoning. They're some smart people! His mom agrees that it's too impossible for this to be anything else as well.

But I must say, that we did have a pretty awesome Christmas this year! I'm glad that it's over, though! No pics as of yet, because I've been too sick to even see what pics Christopher took (I laid low on photographer duty this year). That, and we've been way too busy building a doll house (or at least trying- check back in 6 months), playing with all the new toys, and having a gazillion Wii bowling tournaments (did I mention Preston is almost at the pro level already?)! We're enjoying break, and I'll be sad when next Tuesday comes!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Who knew what the cold would bring to our house! Heck, I didn't even know it was going to get so bitterly cold this weekend! Oy!

We woke up yesterday morning to no heat... again. Yes, it was a lovely 60 degrees again inside, and an even uglier 8 degrees outside. Then as we're leaving for church, I notice we have no water. I go down to prime the reservoir, and it won't prime, so that leaves one problem: the well pump was frozen... again. The well pump froze, which left no water for our hot water heat, so our boiler had no water to heat up, and stopped. The guys put the heat lamp back into the well after church, and by 2:00 we had water again, but still very little heat. the boiler was working, and the baseboards were hot, but it just wouldn't heat up. Still, at bedtime, it hadn't warmed up, so the kids and I slept downstairs where the heat from the furnace kept the basement warmer than the rest of the house. WE had someone come out today and he fiddled with the zones and by afternoon, it was back at a toasty 70 degrees! It was just a combination of the heat turning off when the pump froze, and it being so freaking windy and frigid, that it couldn't keep up enough to warm the house. I hope this isn't a sign of what's to come this winter!

Crazy times!

Today was our first official "snow" day of the season (more like ice), and for once, Kate was NOT happy! Why? Because today was her class trip to Hillsboro to see Bolt. She was sorely disappointed. And she's also bent out of shape that she still hasn't gone to Santa's Cottage at school. Since they were expecting 1/2 inch of ice Monday and didn't know if there'd be school, they didn't have it set up. Hopefully her class can go before Friday when break starts! I hope they can arrange for her class to see the movie too, since there are classes going tomorrow.

Ahhhhhh, and I can finally see the light at the end of my Christmas shopping! Tomorrow I'm going to pick up a gift for Kate's teacher, get some junk food for gift buckets ( it's a guy thing), and exchange the car for Preston's gift exchange... again. Yes, the first car broke before we even got home, and the one I picked up today, didn't even work, so tomorrow I need to find one that does! Then, I am DONE! Christopher is on a mission to find some Sea Monkeys for Preston, and I'm THRILLED to have him volunteer to stop at Wal-Mart and Target over by St. Louis to find them! Or course, our WM doesn't have them...

Tomorrow, I have to bake the Happy Birthday Jesus cake for Preston's preschool! It's my own fault for getting in this mess, and it's a project I'd rather not be tackling, but I can't back out. What do you even put on such a cake? I think I'll do a cross. Maybe if tomorrow goes well and I feel ambitious, I'll do a manger scene. And I asked P how old he thought Jesus was. His reply... 62! Yes, some of you may actually be older than Jesus!

My nose!

Thanks to my sweet son, I may have a broken nose. And since I don't consider it something that needs medical attention (pay to have a piece of tape put on it? NOPE!), I guess we'll never know. It all happened when he tried to jump up on my lap last night and put his head down, getting me right square in the nose. I can't even begin to describe the pain- and I've had two unmedicated births! My entire face hurt so badly last night, not to mention my nose! Today there is some slight bruising under my left eye, and it is still sore with a lot of pressure, kind of like someone pushing on my nose. It hurts to chew anything hard... I still can't shake how horrible the pain was... It was bad... really bad.

A run-in with Santa

Preston has always been scared of Santa. The only picture I have of him with Santa, is when he was 2 months old, and really, he didn't have much choice.

So yesterday we're parked in the pick-up line waiting for Kate to get out and I see Santa walking out of the school. I get excited, and tell Preston to look. I roll down his window as Santa is walking to his car (what happened to his sleigh?) just so P could wave to him (yeah right, wave at Santa?). The next thing I know, here comes Santa toward our car! Preston frantically screams, "Roll the window up! Roll the window up!" But it was too late. Santa was at the window and Pres goes blank. He did tell him what he wanted, and took the candy cane without a meltdown, but he was NOT happy about it once Santa left and the window was closed. I thought it was hilarious! And guess who showed up at preschool this morning? Mrs. Claus. He was a little more receptive toward her, maybe because he didn't have to talk to her, but he still wasn't thrilled.

Poor kid!

Laughing my little butt off!

I can't even begin to tell you how flippin excited I am about Blagojevich being arrested! Maybe now the government realizes what the rest of the people in Illinois have known for the past 6 years... he's NOTHING but a CROOK! Goes to show you really can't trust a Democrat (oops, did I really say that?).

So to commemorate this special occasion, Preston sported his Weepublican shirt to preschool this morning. Can't blame us for his sorry butt being in office!

Kate, the Dime Novel Girl

As promised, here is Kate as the dime novel girl in the 4th grade musical, "How the West was Really Won." The entire musical was awesome- those kids really did a fantastic job! They've been working twice a week for about 2 months, and all day, every day, this week! Even though they haven't been doing any school work this week, I think Kate is ready to get back to it and not have play practice anymore! But I think Kate did the best job (yes, I'm partial)! She spoke very loudly and clearly, and knew her lines well! Great job, Kate! She's really come out of her shell!

Troublesome Thursday

We now have 2 cars, and both are currently out of commission. Yeah, just great, huh? We all know what happened to Christopher's car (which is still awaiting approval from the ins. co. for repairs), but what about mine? Well, as we went to Kate's musical tonight, right as we pulled into the parking space, the brakes went out. They had acted up about 3 weeks ago and Christopher replaced the front brakes and bled them out, so I figured they would be fine when we left. WRONG! I have NO brakes... ZERO! I rolled up and over the hill by our house, going as slow as I could, and managed to roll into the driveway and garage without an accident. So tomorrow it looks like the Explorer will be taking a trip to the shop (which hopefully won't be costly), and I'll be driving Christopher's mom's car in the mean time since I have to have a car to get them to and from school.

Funny, though, I had just told Christopher when the brakes started acting up a few weeks ago, that the Explorer had hit the 10 year mark, and after that, they start going downhill. I told him that again, and he asked how much longer we were going to have it (hopefully less than a year). Come January, we're going to do Dave Ramsey's total money makeover, and it would be SO nice if we could pay off his car by the end of next year. I definitely do NOT want 2 car payments, not after just having 2 cars owned outright.

And guess what happened last night, on of course, the night that it happened to get down into the teens... Our thermostat reset, and when we woke up this morning, it was 60 degrees inside! I wondered why it was so freaking cold! It took all day to warm back up to 70, and that we even after Preston and I did some baking and left the oven open afterward to warm it up faster! I don't do well with cold, so to wake up and freeze... NOT good!

I"ll post pictures of Kate's musical tomorrow morning while P is at school. She did a fantastic job!

The kids' Christmas tree

One nice thing about having a bigger house is being able to have 2 trees up. The kids have so many keepsake ornaments that they need their own- and it is FULL! Maybe next year we'll have to put up three! Well, maybe not... But here's theirs in all it's glory, all decorated by them. This is the tree that Nonni likes to de-ornament and carry them upstairs and leave them in various places. I swear, he's part dog.

Pics of the real tree coming as soon as I get my camera back out- I still haven't taken any of it!

Another update

For lack of clever titles...

Preston had his follow-up with the ENT today, and as for now, he doesn't want to put a new set in as soon as this set falls out. If he has another infection, though, new tubes are in order. I'm not holding out much hope that we'll make it through winter without another infection. We shall see, though. The left tube is all but out, but the right is still in place for now. We have to go back Jan. 2 for another follow-up, so we'll see what happens then. But there was no sign of infection today, so the antibiotics must have worked!

Christopher got his rental car today, and we've had the best laugh about it! We had to drive to Greenville to pick up this sweet, white pick-up truck! Insert extreme sarcasm. It is something that he would NEVER drive if he had the choice, so I have been bursting into laughter each time I pull into the driveway! We're sure it will get some pretty sucky gas mileage compared to the new car, and he'll be driving it until at least next Friday (if his car is done by then). So if you drive by and see this sweet truck with Missouri plates sitting in front of our house, that's just Christopher!

Off to work on my Christmas projects!

Little update

Since it's been a week since my last update, I thought I'd recap the last few days. I'm still up to my neck in my Christmas projects, which are coming along, but I need to get the show on the road! I'm having a mental creativity block tonight, so I'm taking a break.

Thanksgiving was a blur with so many things to do, and the weekend was packed full. We seriously had no quiet moments. We have both trees up, and I'll post some pics of them later on. Only a few more gifts to buy, and the rest are wrapped, so that's nice to have finished! Preston's ears are better (or at least we think) after Dr. Smith called in the other antibiotic, and he hasn't complained a bit since he started them. We have to go see Dr. S tomorrow for a re-check, so I'm crossing my fingers that the infection has cleared completely and that new tubes are not in the immediate future. I'm feeling a little bit better about it than last week when he was screaming in pain! Kate has her 4th grade musical Thrusday night, and she's getting excited/nervous. I can't wait! Tonight, they picked out costumes for the Honor Chorus program on the 13th, and she's doing a dance in that program. Zipper, the sick kitty is finally back to her normal self thanks to the medicine. I was pretty worried that we were going to have to put her to sleep, but she's gained her weight back, and she's no longer in hiding or throwing up.

So that's a quick update! I'll try to update later this week with some more pics, but that will have to wait and see when I have time!

The wreck

Christopher called me at 6:30 this morning, waking me from a deep sleep to tell me that he'd had a wreck. A bad wreck, but he was OK, and that was all he told me until he called back 2 hours later to say he was finally on his way home.

It all happened right past the I-70, I-270 interchange by Troy. He was going up over the hill/bridge, and noticed a car flipped over in the middle of the road, so he slowed and began to skid on the ice. As he skidded, a car from behind ran into his car, sending him spinning. and luckily, keeping him from going off the side of the hill. Four cars were involved, and there were no injuries at all, and they were all checked out by paramedics at the scene. Right now, no one was at fault, and no tickets were issued, but because of that, the case has to be battled out by the 2 insurance companies to determine who pays for what. The car wasn't totalled, thank goodness! We're going to go ahead and pay our deductible and get it fixed and then hope that the other guy's insurance will reimburse us, although that guy says that Christopher hit him. Um, from the damage, there's NO possible way that Christopher hit him. Impossible. So he has his mom's car until the rental place has a car for him tomorrow. Again, thankfully our insurance covers rentals!

But what's sad, is that if *$**#%& Blagojevich wasn't such a freaking crook, and hadn't blown the state's budget, there would've been salt on the roads this morning! The trooper told Chris that he was getting calls left and right about accidents, and said, "You're not seeing this over in missouri!" Apparently, his budget cuts are affecting when and how much salt they can spread on the interstates this year. Nice...