Get the Leg Out

I think th eboy needs new pants. He just thinks he's funny!

Oh yeah and he's standing on the table and I'm okay with that....that's how we roll!

~Till They All Come Home~

Look What I caught!

This little guy was hanging out on the sidewalk this afternoon. Probably soaking up some much needed sunshine after all of these cold rainy days! He's hanging out in a pop bottle right now so Kirke can see him before we let him go.

~Till They All Come Home~

Poor Poor Scrappy

I've had Scrappy longer than I've had Kirke! True story. One in which I tend to remind Kirke of more often than necessary I'm sure! He's 11 years old now. He's still laid back and tolerant of all the kids antics and I have no idea how he manages! Especially on days like this:

Maybe he was just cold?

~Till They All Come Home~

HEY!!!

Who stopped following me? I was so excited to have 50 followers and now back down to 49. I must suck. I'll work on that and lure you back!!

~Till They All Come Home~

Don't Put Your Hand in Little Holes!

Last night Korbin came down stairs upset. He had gotten his hand stuck in a waffle block. The darn kid wouldn't let me take his picture. Why would a 6 year old stick his hand through a block that is too small? I thought we'd outgrown these types of situations. Seriously kid! If your hand doesn't fit going into a hole then it's probably not gonna come out so well either!!



And since the little punk wouldn't let me take his picture you can all laugh at this old video of the same sort of problem!

UPDATE: Korbin has agreed to a public service announcement/reinactment about yesterdays events for other children to keep them safe from the dangers of waffle blocks. (plus people didn't know what waffle blocks are)

~Till They All Come Home~

My Kids Spend Too Much Time With Adults

I'm not sure if I'd be happier having the boys come home from pubic school repeating the things they hear there or if it's better that they are picking up on things they hear around the house and out in public.

Here's a few things I've overheard recently:

~~

When pulling into a parking spot at Target some parking lot idiot (PLI) did something that I can't remember at this point. And then SOMEONE (James) in our car said "way to go numb nuts". As soon as Korbin opened the car door he loudly said "way to go numb nuts" within earshot of the previously mentioned PLI then laughed and kept repeating "numb nuts" until we were able to stop laughing and explain that he's not allowed to use that word. Ever.

~~

Tayton has been getting instant headaches recently every time he starts to cry about something. Today he hit his ear on something and was crying while we were at a party. I was in the bathroom with him getting him a little wet towel to dab off the blood and he said "I think that my hurts when I cry because it's taking so much longer for my brain to process it than most people. You know cause of my sensory integration disorder!" (silly kid hears and absorbs every single thing you say)

~~

We were chatting with some friends about our plans for our kids if something happens to us. We all have to have wills drawn up before deployments (well in AK we did anyhow) and my brother and his wife are the lucky winners of two naughty little blond boys if Kirke and I meet an early demise. Korbin overheard us talking and said "Mom if you and Dad both die at the same time I'm gonna have to go live with someone lonely, Grandma Vettel!" This is my grandma who is 77. I replied "I think she's a little too old to take care of you hunny." Korbin was quick to respond "that's okay, I can just take care of her!" They LOVE their Great Grandma Vettel. It's impossible not to!

~~

Tayton just told me that he'd like to someday get another type of animal that lives in a cages. "Probably like a reptile" he said. "They're my second favorite". So I of course asked "what's your first favorite?" He said "OH, mammals!" He likes to keep his options open.

~~

And last but not least while we were listening to the radio the other day Korbin started singing "I make them good girls go bad!" (By Cobra Starship) over and over. I'm pretty sure this might be true. Because a little while later he saw his wife walking out of the store (we were on a convoy to a haunted trail and their family ran inside for a quick stop) and when he saw Megan he shouted "hey baby" out the window to her. Her response was to run and hug him of course......

~~

Korbin said after one of the recent haunted house visits "I wasn't really scared I was just pretending to be so they would think they were doing a good job!"

~~

Silly Kids.

~Till They All Come Home~

Holy Crow You're Really 50??

Today one of the most wonderful people I know turned 50! Wow 50!

I remember when you were only 26 for so many years. Although I was too smart to fall for your crazy antics even when I was only six....and then seven, eight and nine. Nice try!


When I was a little girl you always kept an open dialect between us. I knew that I could talk to you about anything. Even when I was in 5th grade and thought I met the love of my life. You didn't laugh at me or shrug me off. Instead you shared details of your childhood loves. Even though you knew that it was something that would pass quickly you valued my feelings and took care to protect them. I remember that day by the kitchen sink as we talked.

I always loved the time that it was just the two of us and we'd get a chance to really talk. As I got a little older those talks often took place as we drove to Battle Creek to pick up dad from the trucking company he worked for through the weeks. I love that I could tell you anything without judgement or harsh words and lectures.

Later in high school I thought I met the love of my life again. This time everyone else thought so too. I know how hard it was for you when I was 19 and I told you that my 4 year relationship with that boy was over and then just 2 months later was truly in love and planning to marry Kirke. Most parents would have told me I was an idiot and was making a huge mistake. Instead you listened. You looked into my eyes and I saw that you were a little unsure but your words were loving and encouraging and full of support. You trusted me to make a good decision.

Later that year you turned 40. Another new decade and I turned 20 and I was marrying the man who truly is the love of my life. You were there for me even though I knew you were worried. You made sure that my day went smoothly. We went together, just the two of us to get our hair and make up done for the wedding and you were proud of the woman you'd raised me to be and I was proud that you're my mom.

Since getting married (almost 10 years ago now!) our relationship has transformed. We've gone from being mother/daughter to sharing a bond and a closeness that has no definition or label to clearly explain our relationship. Sometimes it's mother/daughter, sometimes its friends, sometimes its two girls giggling their heads off over something ridiculous.

The most important thing I learned from you was how to be a playful parent. I remember the times of playing sports (which you were terrible at, haha), hide n seek in the dark, board games and cards, our own lip syncing contests, and a gazillion other things we did just being crazy and laughing together.

I know that I can always call you and I value our relationship and it's many aspects. I wish that I could be there to celebrate your birthday with you today. I'll be home in two weeks and we'll have a day out just you and I.

I love you Mom Happy Birthday!!

~Till They All Come Home~

How Do You Forget Something Like That?

Today I got up got around, showered and went to some second hand stores with Brandy in search of some size medium/large maternity pants for the birth mom. While we were shopping for her the birth mom, aka Jane, called. She was at her doctors appointment and called me to let me (get this!!!) hear the baby's heartbeat!! It was 152! Hoping for a girl here!! Think pink! Although blue would fit in around here just here just fine! It was so great to get to feel like we're a small part of this pregnancy! All was good in the world.

It's 11:22 and we just left our friends house to come home for the night. It's a Friday night so we did our usual game night.

And it wasn't until just a few minutes ago when I took off my boots that I realized I only shaved one leg. That's right! I walked around all day with one shaved leg and one hairy beast of a leg. Fan-freakin-tastic!

Thankfully it's not summer so I wore long pants!

~Till They All Come Home~

No More Mama Drama

We heard from the birth mom today and she is doing fine since moving out of my moms house. We're going to get her a cell phone on our plan and we'll be able to maintain better contact. Tomorrow she has her 16 week appointment and will be calling me from the doctors appointment so we can hear the heartbeat! I'm so excited!!

Everything is still moving forward. And she's still very on board. The one statement she said that reassured me most was "I am not going to bring another child into this lifestyle". After I asked her about her feelings about the adoption and any second thoughts. She's very certain that she's doing the right thing for this baby.

Oh and big news!! She's also going to schedule her ultrasound in November during the time I am home visiting.

I feel better!

In addition our family is all well. No more sickness here! Woohoo!

~Till They All Come Home~

Today's Update

Well we all seem to be okay today. The boy are obviously still recovering. Tayton's drinking like a fish in fear of another IV they told him he'd be getting if we came back to the ER. That is really helping him a lot. We've managed to only medicate this morning and nothing since. Thank God!!

The bad news is that I'm not feeling tip top. I'm pretty sure I'm just exhausted at least that's what I'm going to be telling myself until it passes!

Thanks for all your well wishes, we'll be back to our normal selves soon!

~Till They All Come Home~

ER Visit #2

At about 5:30 tonight we took Taytons temperature and he was up to 103.6 again (I think). He had Tylenol around 3 and I gave him Motrin right then and I called the ER since we were there last night. They told me to bring him right in. So I did and they took his temperature and it was 102.8 they told him that he was dehydrated and if he didn't drink the giant cup of Gatorade they gave him then he'd be getting another IV. The went ahead and gave him more Tylenol. Then we waited for about 4 hours to be called back. They took us back and of course by then he had plenty to drink and the meds were working well and he was feeling fine. Little snot! The doctor sent us for more chest x-rays to rule out pneumonia and said he didn't have to get an IV unless he stopped drinking plenty and we brought him back in. They believe it's the flu which type we don't know. It doesn't matter much since they treat it the same with Tamiflu, which he's on.

Let's hope that we can finally get some sleep and that this is the end of the ER trips for the flu.

~Till They All Come Home~

Wow What A Night We Had

Korbin was feeling a lot better yesterday. But Tayton came into our bedroom around 6am crying, well screaming that his head hurt and he was running a fever and cried himself into an asthma attack. Good morning! We went back to bed after the medicine kicked in. We got up a while later and after lunch we did two hours of school. Sometime in that time period Tayton needed his inhaler again when he started with another asthma attack.

Around 3:30 I took Taytons temperature and it was 101. No biggie, he always runs fevers with any sort of sickness. A little Tylenol and sent him on his way. Korbin's fever was hanging around 99-100 without meds.

Well Kirke came home from work and I sent him up to check Taytons temperature. He said the reading shot straight up to 104 and he stopped and came to get me. I took it again and his temperature was 104.6!! We snapped into fight mode. I changed into pants and Kirke got Tayton dressed. Gave him Motrin and headed off to the ER.

Once we got there we waited a few minutes they took his vitals and sent us off to xray for chest xrays. With his asthma and frequent bronchitis we come to expect that. After his xray a nurse was waiting for us to take us not back to he ER but to an empty waiting room of one of the clinics. Weird. Then they took us back to a room and explained that they would be testing him for seasonal flu as well as H1N1. No worries here. I knew he'd be alright. They did those two tests, started an IV, took blood, did a urinalysis. His heart rate was 170 and stayed high even after his fever came down to 100. The IV seemed to help and his heart rate was 136 when we were released.

All the test were negative but the doctor seemed convinced that this is indeed the flu and the test isn't as reliable as we could hope. So with the decision that the flu test (regular flu, we don't have the N1H1 results yet) was a false negative. She sent us home and he's doing pretty well.

Tayton stole the hearts of his personal nursing staff in what turned out to be the fast track clinic not some kind of isolation chamber. He wasn't supposed to be on that side because he had to have blood drawn and an IV but they took him because they didn't have any patients and the ER was full. He had 3 nurses who were so attentive to him and answered all of his crazy questions and did everything they could to make him feel safe and comfortable.

I'm pretty sure this was our best visit to the ER in the 3 years we've been here. And we make plenty.

During discharge the nurse gave us his note to excuse him from school for the next 5 days......Tayton was very excited! Then I had to clarify that she meant public school not home school. I also told him if he'd like to follow the rules on the note then he should read the rest that says he can return (to public school) on the 12th! He didn't agree.

~Till They All Come Home~

Korbin's Sick and Miserable

Korbin was just fine, a tad emotional but thats typical on a no meds (ADHD)day for him. We were at Brandy's and he was running around and acting normal. For dinner he had two sloppy joe's (his favorite!) and went to play. A bit later Kirke found him laying on the couch in Brandy's living room. Kirke carried him into the play room so he could watch TV while we played Wii.

A short time later Kirke checked on him and he was sleeping and hot. We got him home and found he had a 103.8 fever. Both boys always run very high fevers so no need to worry yet. A little Motrin and a good nights sleep should help.

Here he is at Brandy's last night.

This morning the same thing. His temperature zips right back up over 103 every time the Motrin wears off. Poor little guy! It wouldn't be so concerning for us if he didn't have his kidney troubles but that always makes us a bit more cautious when he get sick. And I must admit that the whole H1N1 crap worries me too.

And here he is sleeping in my lap today. Poor little guy.

~Till They All Come Home~

Baby Mama Drama in a Family Fued Sorta Way

"Jane", the birth mother of the baby we're adopting in March, is having some problems. She was living with my mom and they had some issues so Jane has moved out. We don't know who she and her two girls are living with or where exactly they are living. I spoke with her briefly yesterday. She assures me that things won't change for us and the adoption because of the problem with my parents but it makes me nervous. I'm also worried about the girls. She seems confident in our abilities to raise this baby and that we are the best fit for this child.

We need happy thoughts and prayers that this all turns out alright. We are still confident that Jane will follow through with the adoption I'm just concerned about her taking care of herself, the girls and my baby.

Tayton told me two or three days ago that we were going to have to teach him to make bottles so he can feed the baby since he's the first one up in the morning! Too cute! Korbin chimed in to say that he also needed to learn since he was the last to fall asleep at night. They are excited to have a baby brother/sister. I'm excited too and so is Kirke I just hope the time goes by quickly and everything goes without a hitch!

~Till They All Come Home~

Help A Blogger Out

Manic Mariah has an equally manic teen aged daughter who wants to travel to Japan and fight off dolphin killin fishermen on her surfboard. True story! So she talked said daughter into staying home in the good ole USA until after graduation. Now all Mariah has to do is raise money for the cause. She's not asking for your money, she simply needs us to win free Ugg boots....Now for some people that might be a little painful but really, it's not so bad. Free is good!

~Till They All Come Home~

Adoption in the Eyes of an 8 Year Old

I just asked the boys if they knew what adoption meant and Tate replied "yeah its when you buy a baby!"

No baby, that's illegal!

An Innocent Moment

I'm sitting here minding my own business. Well actually I'm doing language arts lessons with Korbin and Tayton is on the floor in front of me working on math.

Out of the blue Tayton turns to me and he says "what does presence mean"?

I was confused because I didn't know if he meant "presents" or "presence" so I said "what do you mean"?

He looks at me with his innocent little face and very serious look of wonder and says: "like if someone says "never scratch yourself in the presence of a lady".

I'm struggling not to laugh and he says what does that mean? At first I wasn't sure if he meant the scratching part of the presence part because I was so caught off guard. So rather than answer I asked him where he heard that. He said "on Home Alone".

So I went on to explain the word presence instead of how to act in front of a lady!!

Thanks a lot Macaulay Culkin!

~Till They All Come Home~

Hinder & Saving Abel, Cracker Spelling and Hunters Bags

Each year the Fort Leonard Wood hosts a concert. Last year we went to see ZZ Top and Bowling for Soup. I love love love me some Bowling for Soup! This year we got Hinder and Saving Abel!! I love Hinder and only knew a couple of Saving Abel's songs but I loved it!

I'm too old to be so close to the stage and deal with the nonsense of others. I was "accidentally" groped, fondled and even dry humped more times in that 2 hour concert than I have ever been in my life! And I yelled at so many people and made use of my being a bossy, pushy witch more than my share of times. It got to the point that I was intentionally taking up more than my one square foot of space just to be able to block people who thought they could squeeze in a little closer!

Hinder

Here's Saving Abel

Buying a concert ticket is like buying permission to reach back into your closet where you stashed all of your bad 80's clothes and squeeze yourself into them and think you look great!

Here a few examples. Since were stuck so close to others I only got a few pictures this year as opposed to last year when I could actually turn my head from where I was sitting.

Yep the blue leopard print, skin tight skinny jeans!

And then we have the horrible zebra-ish print stretchy capri pants with a too short skirt and sneakers. I'll be finding me a pair of these so soon!

These three girls were some of my favorites! First is the hot pink skinny jeans with white sneakers and a stripped sweatshirt...weird. And Then the girl in the middle with her skinny jeans in red and flip flops...interesting. But their buddy takes the cake with her mini skirt with a tulle tu-tu under it and sneakers.

Here's a picture of some oddly dressed people. Weird, t-shirts and tank tops and blue jeans that aren't tapered, weird. Or hot! I think HOT! Aren't we cute? If only I could've fit into some skinny jeans.....wait I still wouldn't have!

Enough of that nonsense! Here's what we've been up to on the home school front.

I found these great Scrabble Cheese-It's at Wal-Mart (don't judge me, it's the only store within 30 miles. And even then there's only a K-Mart. The nearest Target is 70 miles away!)

The kids were each given 30 crackers and had to make 5 words and write them down. It was fun to see them asking for the letters they needed to complete their words from their friends. We had another homeschooling family over for group day.

We're studying the Revolutionary War right now and have this awesome book:

It inspired us to make these really cool hunters bags like they used during the Revolutionary War to hold their ammunition and the kids think probably a sandwich for lunch!



We also made these cool pierced tin lanterns yesterday.

Tomorrow is another group day and I'm gonna have my camera charged this time! We did other activities last week and I missed out on pictures because mine and Tayton's camera's were dead!

~Till They All Come Home~

We had a great weekend with great friends, great music compliments of Saving Abel and Hinder, good food and drinks. Tons of laughing & I made a fool of myself!

They Are Gone

With the move to New York in our future and the fact that I'll be spending about a month in Michigan with my family waiting for our baby to arrive, we had to let go of the chinchillas.

We loved them but knew that they couldn't live in a tiny travel cage for a month while we're in transition. Kirke's going to be taking the dogs and going on to NY to get us a place and get settled in a tad while I go to the last few baby appointments before he/she is born.

It was a tough decision but I guess it was the right one. We placed a free classified ad online and we got one call and they were sold. The family has an 11 yr old and 6 yr old boy as well as a 1 yr old girl. The chinchilla's will be loved and we'll miss them terribly.

~Till They All Come Home~