Weaning

No, not weaning Ethan. Weaning myself from the computer for awhile.

I will be around here and there, but I am trying to concentrate on the important things. In particular, one thing. "But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her." Luke 10:42

I am re-ordering my priorities. Putting "that which will not be taken away" at the top of my list and putting everything else under that.
1. God
2. Hubby
3. Kids
4. House
5. Church
6. everything else.

I caught up with all my blog reading tonight and my commenting. I am very behind on all my email. I will work on it a bit more, but please forgive me if I haven't answered you.

We have doctors appointments everyday this week and we are getting Brittany ready for her mission trip which starts next week. We only have nursing on and off right now because, besides not having a nurse for one night anyway, one of our nurses is dealing with a family member dying, so she is not able to always come. Michael has a "bigwig" coming this week, so he needs his sleep. We threw a mattress on Kaedy's floor and Ethan and I will be staying there.

I am working on a lot of stuff for school right now. If you are interested, you can check out my other blog and see what's going on. I need to spend some time planning and scheduling next year.

With all this going on, I need to tear myself away from the computer and get working on the important stuff. It's a real challenge for me because I love the internet, always have, but it is even more appealing now that I have been introduced to the world of blogging. :-)

As I said, I will still be around, just not as much, at least until Britty goes on her mission trip. Then I'll either have more free time or NO free time because I will be chasing all the little ones myself! LOL

Kaedra's IV update

Good news!!! Today when we called to make sure we were getting more penicillin delivered, the delivery company said they had found a better pump for her. WOOHOO!! They did a great job!

Here is the old pump system and the purse she had to wear or drag around all the time:


Here is the new system. We can put it in a little mesh bag they brought, too, and clip it to her clothes. (although if she does end up staying on this, I will probably crochet her a little bag)


Check out the difference:


I am so happy for her!! This is SO much easier!

We go to the Infectious Disease Doc tomorrow and we are still praying that he will say that the penicillin is not needed. Unfortunately, Kaedy is having some tummy problem with the penicillin and is not digesting her food. If he does want to keep us on the penicillin, she will have to go on another med to help her digest the food. For now we are feeding her pediasure 24 hours a day again. With no nurse tonight, you now know why I am staying up late. Might as well get another feed in before I head to bed floor.

I'm so excited, I just can't hide it...

I TOTALLY revamped what I had planned on doing for next year. I am SO excited about it. It has been bouncing around in my head for the last few weeks and I have been praying about it and I got a WONDERFUL CONFIRMATION of it yesterday. I can't wait to tell you all........


But I can't do it now. ROFL!!

You'll have to wait. heehee.

Next verse, same as the first

Okay, just redoing everything from 6/9/07 post. I did good on that one until we ended up in KC on that Wednesday and stayed there for 3 days. I didn't jump back on the bandwagon, but I am ready to jump now.

Here is my repost:

I have not been feeling as "peppy" lately so I am going to work on doing things to make myself feel (physically) better. I am going to add a few habits this week, instead of just one, because I need to see results quickly. They are all on my mind quite a bit, so I think it shouldn't be too hard. It is all just one BIG habit of "taking care of myself." Here are the parts:
1. no soda, just water all day and more of it
2. take vitamins and iron everyday
3. walk everyday
4. fruit with breakfast
5. veggie with lunch
6. no junk food (we have a bunch of junk food from the trip, I am going to throw that all away tomorrow night)

Okay, those are my goals for this week.

I can do this! In fact, I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me.(Phil 4:13)


Here is a recap of my goals:
wk 1: praying and bible reading yes
wk 2: referring to planner everyday no
wk 3: get off computer at 9am and off for rest of day well I did really good on this since I didn't have easy access to a computer for most of last week! LOL
wk 4: new laundry schedule and laundry put away every day mostly
wk 5: stopped caffeine --started again yesterday
wk 6: added fruit to breakfast --no
wk 7: added veggie to lunch --no
wk 8: portion sizes --no
wk 9: writing down what I eat every day --on hold
wk 10: walking every day only one day
wk 11: re-working on everything
wk 12: getting Kaedy bug fed on time didn't have to worry about it while she was in hospital!
wk 12: making a schedule and sticking to it on hold
wk 13: no TV during day for kids I think that's all they did while I was gone! They are grounded from it right now, so it should be easy. :-)


If you are interested in seeing more people's SHS check out Lazy Organizer's site. Feel free to jump in and join us at any point!

Because their little armpits get so sweaty...

Brittany was getting ready for church camp this weekend and checking her list to make sure she got all her stuff. She came downstairs and, as she passed by, said "I need some bug deoderant."


After I picked myself up off the ground from laughing, I gave her a hard time for the rest of the day!


"Are they stinky or just sweaty?"


"How are you going to lift up their little arms?"


"Do they know they need deoderant, or do you just think they smell?"


When I dropped her off for camp, I MADE SURE to tell her counselor. I wanted Britty to feel right at home, so her counselor promised to give her a hard time for the duration of the trip. Isn't it good to know she won't be homesick. ;-)

Show and Tell Friday

I am really excited about Show and Tell Friday today! When my parents came a few weeks ago, my mom brought me a suitcase full of things of my grandmother's. My grandma died about a year ago and my mom has been trying to weed through all of the stuff and decide what to keep, what to give to me and what to toss. I come from a long legacy of pack rats. LOL But this suitcase is special. My mom told me to wait until I had some time to open it, and since I have a little time, I decided to open it this morning.

Here is the suitcase in my living room, where it has been since my parents left.

Here is what it looked like right after opening. I didn't know what the cloth was, but the books were yearbooks (or annuals, as my grandma would have called them).

okay, the cloth is a pillow case. (not very exciting)



Here are two of the annuals. One is the 1926 yearbook for East Orange High School in New Jersey. The other is the Epitome, 1931 Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. These are my grandfather's annuals. (In the High School one it says "Yale will be honored to get this gentleman" under my grandfather's picture. However he went to Lehigh. I will see if my mom knows that story)


I easily found my grandfather's picture upon opening The Epitome. He was in wrestling. You can see him here third from the left, in the back row. I haven't found the other pictures of him yet. The annuals back then didn't have indexes in the back so I will have to go through page by page to find all the pics of him. I know he was involved in a lot of sports. There are lots of other annuals, too. Maybe a total of 8 or so.


This is amazing!! It is a travel journal that my grandmother kept from 1948-1953. It has a few pictures in it, some calling cards, newspaper articles, luggage tags and lots of other neat things! Just by looking at it quickly, it seems that she went on a cruise or two, went to Norway, England, France, Brussels and Stockholm.




It came in a little box, here is what was on the front.


I tore myself away from the other stuff and found this doily.




There are lots of pictures in here. Here are some of my grandfather. These were on my grandmother's wall as long as I can remember. (He died before I was born)


There are also some Christmas ornaments in here.

Here are some of her passports and her immunization record.



There are LOTS of photo pages. I can't wait to go through them all.

Here is a picture of my mom at her wedding.

And somehow I managed to get this whole thing done without showing one closeup of my grandma!! Here is one of her dancing with my grandfather.

I can't wait to go through this suitcase more thoroughly. My mom was right. This needs LOTS of time. I can see that my grandma was starting to write down her life story for me on the backs of bank deposit slips! Someday I will get this all together and make a journal type thing.

Thanks for looking at it with me!

If you'd like to see other people's show and tell Friday, check out Kelli's page.

The Stars and Stripes forever

20 little finger and 20 little toes

Make sure you click on the pictures to enlarge them and see the details!

Saw this in Family Fun magazine and we had to try it! It came out so cute. Just wish I could do it to my own nails.

Thankful Thursday

I am thankful we are back from KC and we get to stay here awhile. On that same subject, I am so thankful the ID specialist in Tulsa took Kaedy's case.

I am thankful for having such wonderful kids who made a surprise stay in KC enjoyable. My children are truly a delight to me. And I am so proud of them.

I am thankful for fireflies. They are a fascinating surprise from God.

I am thankful that I have a good friend who is a nurse and she truly understands some things that no one else can. I am thankful that she is a good listener, too, and let me voice my fears without judging me.

Speaking of fears, I am thankful for the answer Dr. Carey gave me today. While in KC this last month, I heard someone refer to Kaedra as a 'terminal' case. We have never thought of her that way and haven't heard anyone say that in years. When I asked Dr. Carey about it today, he gave me the best answer I can think of: she should have a normal life span and be able to live a full life. Of course he also said 'barring any complications; infections or such' but we DO bar all that.....in the Mighty Name of Jesus. It was just good to hear him say it. We had heard the same thing in San Antonio almost two years ago, but I let fear slip in this last few weeks and I had disregarded that. I am thankful that God doesn't give up on me. ;-)

I am also thankful that Dr. Carey thinks it's okay (and good) for Kaedy to go to church, even with the picc line and machine! We haven't figured out how we're going to do it yet, but I am thankful he is wanting us to go.

I am thankful that Tuesday when Kaedra was bleeding out of her picc line, that it was fixable and did not require an ER or any other kind of hospital trip.

I am thankful for the help we have with Kaedy: our overnight nurses, our RT, our speech therapist, our picc line nurses, our doctors, TEFRA. I am thankful for the handicap parking pass we finally got - especially this week with her back on the oxygen and needing her other equipment more as well. I am thankful we got approved by TEFRA for 16 hrs a day of nursing. Now we just need to find some more nurses. ;-)

I am thankful for a Pastor that teaches The Word and how to apply it.

I am thankful for all the people who have given me curriculum suggestions (or let me look at theirs) in the past few days.

And I could keep going on and on but I need to get off the computer this morning.

To see other Thankful Thursdays, click here

The very raisin-ness of Ethan

There! did you catch that?

Hmmmm, let's try again:

Did you catch it this time? No?

Well let me explain.....

There is something very raisiny about Ethan. No, he isn't purple or wrinkled and he doesn't dance around to "Heard if through the grapevine" with sunglasses on. (although that would be really cute!)

He SMELLS like raisins! SMELLS LIKE THEM!

(I bet you forgot to scratch and sniff your screen above.
Go on back up, I'll wait.....


....

....


....

oh, do you not have that feature?? Well I promise, he SMELLS EXACTLY like a box of just opened raisins. Or maybe it is more like a pudgy, child hand grasping them on a hot summer day. Something in between those two)

And, no, I don't eat a lot of raisins. Or even grapes. And I don't drink wine.
It is a true mystery! This raisin-ness is all his own.

(and this will now go into the archive entitled "things to embarrass Ethan with later" surely to be pulled out when he has met his special someone.)

(unless he still smells like raisins, and then that could be a problem)

(unless he finds a special someone who LOVES raisins)

Amazing video and update on Kaedy

Got this from Ty's Triumph. It moved me to tears twice this morning. Thanks Ty! (and Corrie) ;-)



They can't change Kaedy's equipment or the amount of time she is on it. So we are just believing they will get her off of it sooner. We did get the infectious disease doctor in Tulsa to accept us as a patient! YAH! So we are praying that he will disagree with the docs up in KC and he will get rid of her picc line asap. We see him on the 26th.

Yesterday I had 53 people come to my page and 3 comments. What's up? Do I smell funny? You could at least let me know. ;-)