St. Patty's

More and more I am enjoying St. Patricks Day every year.  It's just a simple little fun holiday without lots of plans or expectations.  Just fun.  This year on St. Patricks Day we started the day off with Lucky Charms (a first for my kids) and green milk.  Eli wasn't feeling well that day so he wasn't impressed with breakfast (as you can see from the picture)- but he perked up after his medicine kicked in!  And later in the afternoon we did our 2nd annual St. Patricks Day clover hunt in our living room.  Once again Lily loved this (and remembered, with great excitement, doing it last year) and Eli was also quite excited to hunt for clovers this year!  I hid one of the clovers on top of the ceiling fan in our living room and it didn't take long for the kids to realize how fun it would be to put all of the clovers on top of the ceiling fan and then turn it on!  Over the next two days we did this over and over again enjoying "showers" of clovers!
After the clover hunt the kids enjoyed a rainbow of rice that I made in the sensory table.  It didn't stay a rainbow for long, but even I have to admit that the rice was fun to play with!  What a fun little St. Patricks Day...and it case there was any doubt you can be assured that there is in fact Irish blood flowing through my sweet fair skinned, strawberry blond haired babies!

You Are My Shelter

"Complexity haunts me for I am two men

Entrenched in a battle that I'll never win

My discipline fails me, my knowledge it fools me

But You are my shelter, all the strength that I need."

The hits just keep coming...

I've mentioned that I'm an optimist.  But I think I'm past the laughable stage right now and I just sort of want to cry-really.  Eli is thankfully doing better...sleeping has mostly returned to normal and his eyes look so much better this morning. Though yesterday he rubbed his eye with his hand that was covered in sand from playing in the sand box.  Now, sand in the eye is never fun, but I can only conclude from the prolonged full out screaming that getting sand in your eye when you already have pink eye is AWFUL!  I tried to get it all out, but eventually the only thing that would calm him down was me laying with him pressing a cold, wet washcloth on his eye.  He fell asleep, out of sheer exhaustion I'm sure, that way.  When he woke up Joe and I had to flush his eye...which he responded to with sheer terror, but it seems to have worked.  Now today Eli seems to be doing quite well.  But in what's turning out to be true Cousins fashion, just as Eli started to get better I started to get sick.  Yesterday I woke up feeling a bit crummy and by today I feel flat out sick...with pink eye in one eye and some sort of virus(?) that's making my head and throat hurt and my body ache all over.  If the throat gets any worse I'll head to the doctor to be tested for strep (which would make sense since Eli had it).  And then at dinner last night Lily threw up.  And that's when I just wanted to throw my hands up in the air in surrender and cry.  Instead I comforted my baby, cleaned up the mess (Joe was on a climbing trip), put on Lady and The Tramp and waited to let my husband take over when he got home.  Please pray for our family, we are exhausted.  We've had as much sickness in the last three months as we usually do in years and it's wearing us down.  Thanks for lifting us up in prayer.  And one of these days (hopefully soon) I'll get back to posting regular pictures and stories!

Snuggles

There aren't very many benefits to have a very sick two year old.  But...I have to say that I have enjoyed the many, many snuggles I have gotten from Eli over the last week...hours and hours worth actually.  In between medicine doses when his fever spiked ALL he wanted to do was be held, be snuggled, and to watch a video.  I hate seeing him sick, but I'm trying to remind myself to enjoy these snuggles while I can.  He's normally a bit snuggly anyway, but I know that the day will come when he just won't want to curl up in my lap for comfort.  For now I will enjoy these snuggles.

Not our best afternoon

This was the view in our home yesterday.  It was warm and sunny outside but our poor little Eli (in overalls and a sweatshirt) was so cold he wanted to be very bundled (in the new blanket that great grandma made for him).  He was actually rather feverish.  And he woke up with a rather red looking eye.  So on his 6th day of being sick off to the doctor we went yesterday and sure enough he was diagnosed with pink eye (in both eyes) AND was diagnosed with strep (that part we weren't expecting).  Ironically I was just joking with a friend yesterday afternoon that we must have gotten every illness going around except strep...guess I just should have kept quiet on that one!:)  And as if that weren't enough on our way home from the doctor Eli and I were in a car accident.  Thankfully nobody was hurt (other than a little shaken up) and there was no damage to the other car.  The hood of our van was a bit crumpled, but it looks like that's the only damage.  It was NOT our best afternoon.  It's the next day now and Eli is under quarantine at home for the whole day, but with some good medicine in his belly and in his eyes he should be feeling quite a bit better by tomorrow!  Please pray that Lily, Joe or I don't get either of these illnesses (they are both fairy contagious) and that we would be able to fix the van with as minimal cost as possible.  It's got to get better from here, right?:)

Health Updates & Homemade Blankets

Well, it's been a rough week around here once again.  We took Lily to the doctor on Monday certain that she had an ear infection.  She didn't.  She also didn't have strep (which is apparently going around these parts).  Nope, just a plain old regular virus as far as they can tell.  That plain old virus though pretty much took it's tole all week long.  Most of the week Lily was running a temp around 104.  We could get it down a couple of degrees by piggy backing meds and it would get her at least comfortable enough to sleep a little bit and lay on the couch watching crazy amounts of PBS.  As soon as the medication would wear off though she was so miserable that she would just lay there and whimper.  It was very sad.  Thankfully she started to turn the corner yesterday and today she seemed quite a bit better (though we decided to keep her home from school just one more day to make sure).  Unfortunately as soon as she started to turn the corner Eli started getting sick.  He spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening throwing up (4 times- 3 of which were on Joe) and just burning up.  He was up on and off throughout the night.  He was still feeling crummy today and running a fever, but he managed to keep his food down thankfully. 

This winter has been BRUTAL on us!

On a happier health note, however, we did get some good news yesterday!  I've been going through testing since August for my gestational trophoblastic disease and my doctor called yesterday to tell me that my latest pathology reports were PERFECT!  That means there has been NO continued abnormal tissue growth!  PRAISE THE LORD!!!!  My doctor wants me to go through two more months of testing just to be sure, but it appears that I am in the clear! 

Now onto Homemade Blankets...

See the cute Hello Kitty blanket that Lily was cuddling with the other day (while sick on the couch)?  Her great grandma (my grandma) made it for her and sent it to her the other day...just in time for lots of cuddling on the couch!  She LOVES it!  She has said that it's one of her very favorite things.  Looks like you hit a home run grandma!!!  She made a cute puppy dog one for Eli too- though I don't have a picture of him with it yet.  Thank you so much grandma for thinking of Lily and Eli- we have gotten some great use out of these blankets this week!

But here's hoping we don't need them quite as much next week!:)

Teepee

Here are a few more pictures of the teepee that we made the kids for Christmas!  When my mom visited over Thanksgiving we worked a number of nights on this project.  It was my first time following a pattern and my sewing skills are pretty minimal so there is absolutely no way I could have done this without my mom...I would have been totally lost!  But with mom's sewing skills and patient teaching we did it!  And Joe finished out the project by finding the wood on our friend's land and making the poles.  It's not perfect (it's a little bit difficult to get up at first and the fabric slips down a bit after a while) but I kinda love it...it's so fun and simple...and the kids really seem to enjoy it too!  And I have to admit that I love it even more knowing that we made it just for them!

Valentines & Missing School

So, I didn't take any good pictures of just the cute valentines we made this year, but I did find these pictures I took with Lily and a valentine butterfly that I had forgotten about- so these will have to do for this year!

In other news Lily is still sick.  Her fever hung on around 103.5 yesterday afternoon and I was only able to get it down a bit.  She was up on and off throughout most of the night and she hasn't left the couch all morning.  And she's complaining that her ear is really hurting her.  So, instead of going back to school today after being off for two weeks she gets to go to the doctor instead this afternoon.  She's bummed...she was SOOOOO excited about going back to school today- but she's been such a good sport about it...even she knew she couldn't go to school today (which is a sure sign that's she's quite sick).  So far the rest of us are holding strong, but I can't help but wonder how long that will last!

Making Up Fun

Somedays you just need to make up your own fun!  We are towards the end of winter and Lily's school has been on spring break for two weeks so we've been struggling a bit with the...I don't know what to do's...though they are able to come up with some creative ideas from time to time.  Such as riding the shop vac like a horse (they did this all on their own while I was doing dishes one day)!  And the other two pictures are of Lily using her Eboo Tell Me A Story cards (which we love) to make up her own fairy tale (she's a pretty good story teller).  Oh, these two make me smile (most of the time)!:)

P.S.  I just told my mom on Friday that we are finally all healthy.  It seems as though I spoke a bit too soon as Lily woke up feeling sick in the middle of the night and had a fever this morning.  Well, at least we had one week where we were all healthy!