The Puddles

Ainsley making her apple pie

Madie and her pumpkin pie

Ainsley checking on her pie

The finished products ready to go to Grandma's

Got to do something while the pies are cookin'

Ainsley's talking to Grandma telling her what we are cooking

I swear they are just like each other sometimes, but I don't tell either that.

Playing with all of the good toys at Grandma and Papa's house

A good end to a good day

A year ago, my mom and I were taking turns going down to the Ronald McDonald’s house for Thanksgiving Dinner.  Chris was trying to catch up on sleep from spending all night at the hospital and Ben was in ICU trying to recover from open heart surgery.  This year was way better than last year.  We had a nice relaxing day.  The kids and I woke up early to cook the two pies and the corn casserole that I was suppose to bring.  We had planned on purchasing the pies from a local pie shop, but after discovering it was $20 a pie I decided to bake instead.  Each kid got to pick one thing to make with mom.  I finally sent coffee up to Chris to wake him up around 9:30.  Coffee helps him to wake up happy on these kind of busy days.  I thought for sure that we were going to leave by 10:30.  Nope. The pies took longer to cook.  But oh they smelled good in the house.  Then Chris decided to clean out my car.  Vacuum. Wipe it down.  The works.  It was so nice, but the timing could have been better. But his heart was in the right place.   We finally headed out to Grandma and Papa Grace’s house.  The food was good. The company was good. Madie was disappointed that none of her cousins were there, but she managed to have a good time once she realized that she had less people to share Grandma and Papa with.  Much better.   We headed home after the football game ended.  But we managed to wash and put away all of the dishes for Grandma.  Even Chris dried dishes.  Again a good ending to a good day.  I remember thinking last year that I would look forward to being on the other side of this.  It felt like we might never see the end of that drama last year and yet here we are. Thanksgiving meant a lot this year.  We have so much to be thankful for.

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Done. The Sunday school Christmas program cds are burned and ready to be handed out.  I am ready for the lesson for my class. My chores are done except for the laundry.  And I updated the blog while I burned cds.  So I’m done.  And I am really ready for bed.  It is going to be hard enough to drag myself out of bed in the morning.  And to actually go to church.  The kids want to go see a movie tomorrow and I don’t know if I can make it.  I just might fall asleep during the movie which would not be good.  But I got a lot of things knocked off my list tonight ( and this morning) so that is good.  I will reward myself with sleep. Good night.

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After we all got home from all of the fun at school.  The kids hung out while Papa enjoyed the grands before he had to head home.  I was amazed.  He managed all three kids at the same time.  He watched Madie do tricks outside while Ainsley sat on his lap on the ipad and Ben told Papa a story.  A good ending to a good day.

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My apologies for the awful camera work, I didn’t realize that I took so many blurry photos that day.

It was a really good day.  It started at 7:00am with Donuts with Dad that even Papa G came up from Friendswood for.  He and Chris took the three puddles to school for some juice and donuts which followed with tours of the classrooms from the kids.  I stayed home to cook and prepare all of the items that I had to bring to school that day for three class Thanksgiving celebrations.  By 8:30am I was at school prepping the kindergarten classroom with a couple of other moms for their feast.  All five classrooms were to put all of the food in the hallway and then we were suppose to make plates for each child.  Talk about chaos.  All of the food sent was in various stages of preparedness.  From an unopened can of green beans to a fully cooked turkey in a roasting pan.  But the end result was good, the kids all had a plate of food set in front of them by the time they came back from their fun outside.  Papa and Chris arrived just in time to enjoy a feast with Ainsley.  I headed to the first grade celebration to help get that one started.  I showed up and I was the only parent there.  Luckily other parents showed up closer to the start time and were willing to pitch in to help.  Even Papa and Chris passed out hotdogs and napkins.  That’s right hotdogs.  Ainsley had a turkey dinner with all of the fixings and Ben had turkey hotdogs.  Both were tasty and fun!  After cleaning up for both classrooms and checking the younger two out of school, we headed home quickly to pick up a quick bite to eat for me (who didn’t have time to eat at either meal) and then head back to school for Madie’s family celebration.  The entire class prepared slide show presentations to share with their families.  It was cool to be there.  And we were all glad that Papa got to join us for everything.  I think he had a good time too.

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Ben is just so excited about being in scouts.  His enthusiasm is infectious.  His troop is new and needs a little help with communication, but there are a lot of boys and it is neat to see that.

You can tell from Ben’s smile that he loves being there.

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Busy week. On Tuesday Ainsley’s troop went to visit the EMS station for a tour and on Thursday Madie’s troop went to the  Animal Shelter.  Ainsley took notes at the animal shelter.  After getting to see almost 900 animals, the notes were interesting.  Luckily it wasn’t a list of all of the animals that she wanted me to get her.  Madie kept asking for a cat.  Not going to happen. This one demon cat in the house is enough.

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Our beloved tree finally died.  It has been sick for years.  We have had two different tree experts look at it and none could save the poor thing.  I love tree and don’t want to cut it down, but the prospect of the dead tree falling on our house was not an option.  So down it came.

It was awesome.  Chris had all of these big plans to work on the yard, but he ended up spending the entire time watching these guys work their magic.  When the kids came home from the school on the bus they spent the next hour watching the workers finish taking away our lovely tree.

I cried when it was gone.  I am not looking forward to summer in the garage.  That tree was the only thing providing shade for the garage.  It certainly makes the kitchen brighter every morning.  Really bright!

But all good things must come to an end.  We tried to take care of the tree but it needed to move on and be used for mulch somewhere else.

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She’s our star.  Adorable.  She had her lines memorized after the first day she received her script.  She really wanted more lines, but she took pride in the few that she had and really worked on them.  She is dedicated to her craft!

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Finally, no fever.  The girls woke up today with no fever.  Thank you, God.

I decided yesterday to take them in to the doctor.  I looked at their throats in the morning and decided that it didn’t look good.  Huge tonsils and nasty white stuff covering it all.  So we went it and an hour and a half later we left with a prescription for antibiotics and a diagnosis of strep throat (Ainsley had a sinus infection too.).  It was almost 3pm before we finally got home with filled prescriptions in hand.  Just in time to get Ben off the bus.

It has been a long three days.  I will be glad when it is over.  I still pray that Ben doesn’t get sick.  But we will deal with it if he does.

The girls will hopefully go back to school tomorrow.  They are happy.  They are just chillin’ today getting their energy back.  I’m ready to get them back into a routine.  And is wonderful to see them smile this morning and tell me that they are feeling much better.

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It is Sunday morning and normally we would be sitting at church listening to a wonderful sermon on love.  Instead I am finally getting a break and drinking coffee at my computer with the office door closed.  It is nice.  Our world has been chaotic since Saturday morning.  First, Ainsley woke up with a fever.  By the evening, Madie was sick with a 103 fever.  Like dominoes.  Ben and I are desperately trying keep healthy.  Cross my fingers it will work.

Chris came home from the wedding last night exhausted.  I tell him my frustration of not getting anything done that afternoon and watching three Harry Potter movies in a row, and he responds with jealousy.  I guess I can see that.  It was nice to sit for several hours.  But I was sitting with Ainsley who insisted on being held while she struggled with a high fever (which meant she was constantly moving in my lap).  Any time I would get up she would yell for me to come back.   Then there was Madie who when she finally started running her fever wanted to be held too (a little hard to do for all of them at the same time).  And poor Ben just wanted to talk about the movie all during the movie.  Geez.  Poor kid just needed some attention too.

I closed my eyes during one of the movies and Ainsley was curled in my lap going through her sight word flash cards.  It was at that moment that she decided she needed my help.  So she would periodically pull open my eyelid and ask if this word was ____.  I would correct her or tell her that she is right, and she would let go of my eyelid.  After the tenth time, I told her to leave my eyelids alone.  It had been a long day.

Of course, it didn’t end at 10:00pm.  After I finally got everyone tucked in, I started cleaning the house.  And low and behold . . . Ainsley started screaming for me again.  Her fever had spiked and she had started throwing up mucus.  Lovely.  I tried to get her to crawl into our bed, but she kept writhing and screaming about her head (poor baby) and it was actually waking up Chris (poor baby).  I took her back to her bed and we both finally feel asleep around 4am.  Only to be awaken by Ben at 8 this morning.  “Mom.  There’s a phone call for you.” Thanks Ben. This is good and bad.  This is good because my son knows to get me up to answer the phone instead of doing it himself, but bad because it meant I had to finally get up.  Yuck.

So this morning started as a repeat of yesterday.  The girls’ fever has broken so they are feeling well enough to eat breakfast and change their clothes for the day.  So I am taking a moment to be by myself.  Yeah for me!  Hopefully this will last the rest of the day, but odds are not with me.  This will be short-lived and we will be back to the sick routine by the afternoon.

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