Monday, March 12, 2012

Geez -- I'm a loser

So, you have no idea how many times a week I tell myself that I'm going to become a blogger...a fun one, like the ladies that I keep up with via the internet.  But, to be honest, like I've said before, I'm not totally sure on how to do all of this fun stuff.

1)  I'm not a huge picture taker.  I so wish upon a million stars that I was one of those mommies who carried around their camera on their necks and snapped beautiful pictures all day long, but, I'm not.  I have a little camera that is always in my purse, but, to be honest most of my pictures have been taken on my iPhone (gasp!).

2)  Really, I'm not that smart, funny or great.  Who in the world is really going to read my blog?

3) I want a super cute design and stuff, but have absolutely no idea how to do it. (Anyone out there wanting to help, let me know!)

But, I've decided that I'm gonna do it.  I'm really going to keep up with it this time (I know, your probably thinking, "yeah, we've heard this before.")  There are so many things that I want to keep up with and do, and so I'm gonna do it darnit!

Anyways, there have been a lot of things that we have been up to since October.  Of course the holidays, which were not too bad, but I had pneumonia.  I started feeling bad about two weeks before Christmas and went to the doctor (who happens to be my neighbor) and she said that I had bronchitis.  Well, about two days later I was feeling worse and by 5 days later I felt like death.  She sent me to the hospital for blood work and a chest xray because they thought that I might have a blood clot (holy hell, you have no idea, I was so stinking scared).  The test results came back the next day and said that my lungs were clear, but my blood work was indicative of a blood clot, so I then had to do to the hospital for a CT scan.  All good news though as they told me before I even left the hospital that I didn't have a blood clot, but I did have pneumomia that the chest xray had not picked up. So, I did a lot of laying around a resting, and ended up getting to spend the entire Christmas break with Scott and the kids (and totally depleting any vacation time and sick time that I have accrued at work).  It was nice to be off, but I will say that I NEVER want to have pneumonia again, and I'm hoping that it was the first and last time.

While I was off and everyone was home, Scott and I had noticed that Parker had been acting a little out of sorts.  We just kinda figured that it was because the both of us were home and his routine had been interrupted with being off of school.  But, then we noticed that he would run a really low grade fever one day and then the next nothing and then a couple of days later he would have a low grade fever again.  And, he looked terrible.  We took him to the doctor and they did some blood work, which came back positive for mono.  Mono...who in the world has my sweet little 6 year old been kissing! lol.  First off, I had no idea kids could even get mono when they were that young, but yep, it can happen and it did.  He came home that night from the doctors and slept from 3:00 - 9:30 the following day.  Then from that day on he seemed to be feeling pretty good.  Since he was getting ready to start basketball the pedi wanted to see him back just to make sure he was okay to play (they usually do not like them to play any sport for 4-6 weeks) but since we thought he had not been feeling well for a couple of weeks prior to his diagnosis, she thought he might be okay, which he was, so she cleared him to play and said that everything was good on the Mono front.  We had been home for maybe two hours and he started throwing up!  AWESOMENESS!!!  And, of course that was just two days shy of his big 6th birthday party sleepover and family party...and he got better pretty quick and made it through.  Then Beckett got it the night before the family party.  But, as they say, the party must go on (because mommy and daddy spent too much money on food, cake and supplies for it NOT to go on!).  All turned out well!

Parker during his birthday dinner at the mexican place...his favorite place ever!
Parker and his cousin Ty (left) and his best friend Daxton (right) before they went to see Monster Trucks
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Ty, Parker and Daxton at Monster Trucks (daddy went a litte crazy on them and the souvineirs while they were there!)


Parker getting ready to blow the candles out on his 6th birthday cake!

 Honestly, I still cannot believe he is 6....I do not even feel like it's possible for him to be so big.  Sometimes, when he is talking to me about something, I stop and just think of how quickly this is all going...it's just going way to fast for me!

So, as if our 2012 wasn't getting off to an already bad start, we found out that my dad had skin cancer...on his tongue.  Worst news ever, and news that I've always been afraid of hearing and dreading.  He had surgery a week later and they removed part of his tongue.  It actually turned out wonderfully as he is cancer free and did not have to have any kind of radiation or chemo, which he was very scared about.  He missed a couple of weeks of work and he was not very happy for the first week because he was on a liquid diet (and, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but my dad has a SUPER limited diet as it is.  He only eats the following foods:  french fries, bacon, peanut butter sandwhiches, some cereals, chips, popcorn and waffles.  I'm not joking, this is it.  He has never had a steak, never ate a Thanksgiving dinner...it's weird! lol).  But, once he got past the two week hump, he seems to be doing pretty good.  I'm just glad that he is so healthy otherwise (this was the first time he has ever had surgery in his entire 52 years).  But, he is doing fantastic now.  So many prayers were said for him and I just appreciated every single on of them.  Hopefully, we never have to hear that stupid "C" word again.

Since then we have been moving right along.  Parker was sick again a couple of weeks ago with some kind of virus, which sucked because all he did was run a fever, but he missed 3 1/2 days of school.  There has been some super nasty stuff going around this year, and I'm looking forward to warmer weather and not so many icky sicknesses.

This has also been the most unusual winter ever here.  We normally have very cold winters with a lot of snow.  This year...it's felt like mid-October almost the entire winter.  We've had very little snow (and no snow days for Scott and the kids) which is extremely rare.  LAst week at the beginning of the week the weathermen (who are known in these parts to be wrong most of the time) started talking about a round of stoms that were going to be coming through and they were going to be very bad.  Tornado's, high winds, hail.  Now, last year we spent a LOT of time in our basement because it seemed like every other night we were getting really bad storms and had tornado warnings non stop , I really didn't want to do it anymore and am not looking forward to a spring spent dragging my kids out of bed in the middle of the night and hauling them down to the basement.  So, all week long they had been talking about the storm and that we might be getting some fairly severe weather that day.  Well, Parker was sick again that whole week and on Friday, when it was day 4 of his fever, I took the day off to take him to the doctors and I'm glad that I did.  Schools let out early and canceled all of their Friday activities, people I knew got their kids out of school early.  I knew it was serious when Reed Timmer, the storm chaser was in our area...you know shit is going to go down when there is a storm chaser in the area.  And, boy oh boy did it ever! When Scott got home was right when they were giving out the first tornado warnings about an hour from us and heading in our direction.  We have a finished basement, but we have a walk out and the back half has a door and windows, so I mentioned to him that we might want to go to his parents house (which is just 5 minutes away and has a full basement completely underground).  He kinda looked at me funny and said, "but we have a basement" and I told him that I kinda liked our chances in his mom's basement a little better.  So, we packed up the kids and the dogs and headed to his moms house.  She was home, my sister in law was there with her two kids and my neice and nephew were there as well along with us and then my father in law came home (and they said he has NEVER come downstairs during a tornado warning and he came right in from work and headed straight downstairs with us, so I knew it was bad).  So, there was 5 adults, 6 kids and 4 dogs...fun times.  I called my sister who just moved into a new house to make sure she is okay.  She is like me and absolutely panics when there is a storm let alone a tornado warning.  She was freaking out of course, and I told her just to stay calm (I love how I can tell other people that but can't do it myself).  We watched the news and it was so scary because even the weathermen were giving those, "Ewww..this isn't good" (Which myself and my sister in law continuously made fun of because they did it so much it was cracking us up!  But, it was no joke.  My sister called crying hysterically saying that the tornado had gone over her house and done damage to her home (minor, but still so thankful!) and that the apartment complex acrossed the street from her was missing the whole second floor.  Her town was hit very hard, and was ours and the one by us.  We were so thankful to have made it out without a scratch, but there are so many people who did not.  People's lives were torn apart and many killed.  It's amazing what kind of damage Mother Nature can do.


The kids playing on the iPad during the warning (Tyler, Parker, Chloe and Beckett)

The big kid playing on the iPad (he tried to stay away from all of us and get a little bit of peace)
Tornado that hit my sisters neighborhood
So, there has been a lot of clean up work and a lot of fundraising going on in our town.  It is amazing to see so many people come together to help out their friends, family, neighbors and strangers!  Sometimes, it's good to live in a small town.

Alright...so who thinks this post is long enough!  I do!  My hands are hurting from typing, so I think we're gonna end this one for the day, but I PROMISE this time, I'm gonna keep up with it!

Have a good one!

Alisha