Singletons always get things in multiples....

Good Morning!
I am at home today, for the second time in a week. It's only fair, Dan has been home for 3 days with the sickies... Cam and Elli are both having respiratory issues and I don't have vacation time yet, so we swap. Since Dan has a laptop and can work from home, he does bear the brunt of it.
I remember being sent for an u/s with Mikayla because the doctor was convinced we were having multiples. So as we waited for 2 weeks, the thoughts of multiples always came to mind in a positive way. Two or three of everything? Less pregnancies? It seemed good to me. But alas, we did have four singletons. To this day everything comes in multiples though, multiple fights, multiple loads of laundry, and multiple kids with illness. I just can't seem to figure out why we can't have just one sick kid? Is this an anomolie in larger families? To have one kid sick, one to snuggle with, one to rehabilitate? I guess I just never saw that side of multiples back then.
On the other hand, there are two little girls snuggled together on our couch enjoying each others company and I can't complain. The site is adorable!
I guess we all get what we want, just not the way we thought we would get it.

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Was there ever any doubt?

We are booked for the niner!

Can it be? Did we get the room we wanted? Did we just book with 5 people? Are we paying less than previous years? OMG!
We are officially booked on the Carnival Destiny for January 17th-22nd of 200niner! There will be 5 of us. The original 3, Veronica, Sandy, and myself. Then we met a girl named Jenna on TRBVII (2007) and she was probably the only bigger normal Collective Soul fan, other than us. We have loved talking with her over the years, seeing her at concerts, and just plain hanging out on the boat. So since prices went WAY up this year, we decided to ask if she wanted to room, she was already rooming with someone but would check. At the last minute, they decided to room with us, so we then changed our strategy last minute! We are now booked close to the elevators, best when you are 3 decks from the bottom deck. We just need to figure out some other logistics. We need to get all of our room reservations made by the port, we need to get our flights booked, and we need to make sure that we have our plan of actions set up for the day before. (We usually hit up a concert the night before)

All of this is such great news and was done with a little worry. I have been working through Robert Half at Vital Images knowing that they wanted me hired on since June of 2007. However, budget issues, industry issues, and other factors involved, we couldn't get it worked out to get hired on. So then yesterday, my boss asks me if $xx amount a year was the range I was thinking. I was caught off guard and thrilled! I can't believe after almost 11 months it might be here! Some of the highlights:
15 days vacation to start, WOW.
unlimited sick days (need a doctor's note at 3 days)
50% match on 401K
They pay my life insurance 2x my salary (free is always good)
And the dental is Delta, always a plus here

So if that is the bottom line number and he said it would be more than that, then I am golden! So excited! My hard work has paid off and I am going to enjoy it. In 10 months, 4 days, and 8 hours, but who's counting, right?

Has this day really come? I feel butterflies!

This is something I live for (other than my children, of course!) and the day is upon us again. Time to book our cabin. This is the toughest most stressful day of the whole experience. You research the boat to make sure you know the eligibility of quints, quads, and triples, and what floor has what amenities that you don't want to listen to at 4 am when you're the only one trying to sleep and so on. Then you go on the community message board and figure out what other veterans are planning on booking so you know how many people you have to get confirmed. And then you book, tell everyone you know that you will be out of town and hope that by tomorrow morning the face muscles will relax that have shown everyone you have seen in person just how damn giddy the boat makes you feel. It's insane. Then it's over. The rush, the adrenaline, the stomache knots. Then it's just waiting. Waiting for march to pass, memorial day to come, summer to be over, school to start for the kids, and the holiday hub-bub. Then when all of that happens it's like the rush starts to build all over again. The time starts to fly by so fast that you swear every morning you wake up it's 3 days later and the thing that I am booking today becomes a reality.
It amazes me that in one paragraph I just flew by an entire life of my year. But after all the shows, the concerts, the personal encounters with the artists, and all the memorobelia that you get to bring home I realize one thing.
I will not let a day pass me by, a month pass me by, or the years pass me by. I will live every last moment of that with my family, my friends, and myself.
Party on Garth!

My first real sick day since I started this job

Hello,

Yesterday was my first sick day home since I started working at Vital.  It felt good to decide I was going to stay home and I couldn't have told you why.  But like Dory and Marlin when the light revealed it was a killer fish, my hopes of what the sick day would feel like changed.  

For some reason, Dan always seems to think that a sick child is my responsibility, I take the time to cuddle with them when they don't feel good and realize they have to go to the doctor and then I take them (most of the time).  Then I have to get the meds, or remind him 10 times to pick them up, and then I have to make sure they get them, and make any follow up appts.  Since when did me working full time not earn me the right to share these responsibilities with Dan?  Why do I need to do the cleaning, cooking, and shuffling of kids while he is home sick?  Did I miss the purpose of MY sick day?  So anyway, Elli has pneumonia, like me.  I still managed to clean the kitchen, bathroom, Livingroom, family room, dining room, mop the floors and do 7 loads of laundry, all between taking kids to school, taking her to the doctor, and then he had the audacity to say, he was working and couldn't take a 20 minute break to pick them up.  Jerk.  

So now he has suffered his concenquences, he has to be home all day with Elli since she is still sick and I don't get paid for the day off.  I love when he makes plans, it's like I can hear god laughing...

Ok, well work to be done, kids to take to school, yk...

With a booking date upon us...

With booking day upon us on March 12th, I find myself missing the boat. So this is what I have to remember it with, photos and videos that people took We ate dinner with these ladies last year, and we hung out with them at the Marc Broussard concert, so it's a pretty good representation of where we were, what we did and how much fun it was!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WegFop6K7Uo

Seeing a woman about a Baby Taylor

Thank You Dan from
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=20853393

When on the Rockboat this year, I decided to ask a cabin neighbor about guitar selections. I knew that Davin wanted one, but we just couldn't figure out what we really needed and what was just over rated. He told me to get a baby taylor, so I searched, 300-699 was too expensive for our blood. So I looked on Craigslist and sure enough, there was one with case included for $200!!! So I thought, maybe it needs work, upon arrival I saw it was in mint condition with a beautiful case! I snapped it up! I just wanted to make sure I said thank you!

So now that I am no longer sick, I am going looking for guitar lessons for this beauty!

http://www.taylorguitars.com/Guitars/Baby-Taylor/BT2/

Check out my Slide Show!

The Passion Continues

Good Evening All,
As the kids are in bed, and I have most of the house picked up, I realized that voice in my head saying "Girl! Where are those pictures?" That's right, Andrea is in my head! So I took some pictures, uploaded them and will be calling her to tell her they are up. It's funny to me that just bringing the stuff out can strike up my passion. I do have fun with it, and I know that this is something I will continue. It's interesting to me that all this time has gone by with such a popular activity and I didn't pick it up sooner. I am preserving our memories as time goes and it's great, because if, god forbid, something would happen to me my children would have this to remember me by. It gives me such a good feeling. I know that alot of this is stemming from the waiting of my mother's test results. No, they are not in. I am just waiting to get a phone call, but I don't want to push her, this is her medical care and it's her decision to tell us. It is driving me nuts tho!
Ok, off to scrapbook as we now have pictures from dinner last night!

TTYL!

Stressful Events with Sleepless Nights

So as you all know, Davin and Camryn had surgery on Friday. We knew they needed this, it was called elective, but in reality it was not. Davin has had sinus infections every three months for about 2-3 years. They have told us it would get better with age, but with bloody noses occuring every time he would get one, a resolution was necessary. Camryn's last MRIs showed that her tonsils were large and the doctors felt she was at high risk when sedating because they weren't sure the tube going down her throat to help her breathe would fit. They recommended we have them removed, but upon further examination, the adenoids needed to be pulled as well as they were large, too. So knowing that two children were having issues that we couldn't completely explain, we went in with a plan of Davin getting his adenoids pulled but a possible sinus irrigation to flush out what infection his body couldn't get rid of on his own. And for Camryn we would do the tonsils and adenoids and possibly replace the tubes as they seemed to have been barely hanging on. Well we arrived at 8 am for the 9:30 and 10:30 appts and as they were checked in, pajama'd up, and had their laughing gas scents picked out, we watched in marvel how calm they were. Then as we waited for the doctor to arrive (working on a different floor OR that ran late) Camryn started to take a turn into the beast of hell. She was crying, whining, screaming, and throwing a very a-typical tantrum. Then after about 20 minutes we figured it out. She was going through low blood sugar issues. This child eats every hour, it's how she keeps her sugar levels balanced. We hadn't seen it in so long that we had forgotten why we feed her the way we do, LOL! So we asked if we could swap OR slots and they kindly abliged. I guess she was bothering their ears, too. *grin*

So Camryn went in, Dan and I rand downstairs to make sure we ate something (Can't starve my kids without starving myself) and then we could focus on them when we got back, as we really didn't know what to expect. So after we came back up, they gave us the "penthouse" since we had two going in. Camryn woke up with emergence dilerium. Not fun, basically flailing, whining and crying until the general wears off. We did have this after her last two MRIs, but this one was worse due to a longer run of the medicine. I began to here my heartrate increase worried that Davin would wake up this way since it was 5 years since his last sedation. So Davin came out of his with flying colors. And about 20 minutes later, her's stopped. Thank God!

The two of them side by side, smiling, playing, watching a movie and eating popsicles, about the cutest thing I have ever seen! They discharged us about 4 and we were on our way. After waiting for prescriptions for almost an our, we were ready to go home!

The first night went pretty well, we did have to medicate Camryn every 4 hours with the capital codine, but she slept without crying for most of the night. Davin we kept on the capital codine because they warned us about sinus headaches taking much longer to get rid of. Davin's procedure ended up being the adenoidectomy, the sinus irrigation, but also, he cut his sinus opening and expanded it. Apparently his hole wasn't big enough to drain properly on the right side, and it in turn flooded his adenoids with infection and in turn the adenoids blocked the sinus opening explaining why he didn't get better for long. Ever. Camryn had the tonsils and adenoids, but the tubes looked fine, just blocked with wax. So they told us not to have high hopes for Cam eating much and that she would be down for 7 days. Boy, they don't know this kid. What a tough trooper! By Saturday, she was eating jello, pudding, yogurt, smoothies, chicken noddle soup, and drinking a ton! Davin had pizza his first night because he said that there was no flavor to the chicken noddle soup. The sinus headaches have come now and again, but we have them both on tylenol as the capital codine was evidently over drugging them. Camryn was laughing and playing with everyone yesterday afternoon and though she does need more naps, she seems to be doing well. My tank strikes again!



So onto the rest of the day. My parents have been thinking about buying the escape back from us because my step-dad might need an owned vehicle instead of a company vehicle and Dan and I were thinking of getting a bigger second vehicle (Buick Enclave?) so they were super adament about meeting with the two of us and we just didn't understand it. So at dinner last night, they slipped in that my mom had an abnormal test result. WOAH. Hold the phone! What kind? Well basically blood in the stool. Now at first the doctor was like , well we can run this test, they are scheduling about a month out and my mom is thinking, do they know my history? So she calls them back, says my father died of colon cancer, are you sure? Then all of a sudden it's come here tomorrow, pick the stuff up and we should have results in a week. OMG. All this time, not telling us because she wasn't ready to come to terms with what it could be herself. So she gets sick, starts puking, diarrhea, and she can't help but think, something must really be wrong. So she picks up the stuff, starts doing the 3 day test at home. Brings it in Friday and is told, results will be in Tuesday. So now, my step-dad is grilling her because she hasn't told my brother, myself or Dan. So they finally talked to other people and they agreed that she needed to tell us. So now they tell us. Crap, do I ever feel like crap for telling her all that stuff. Basically, the day we got in the fight was the day she found out. YIKES. So basically, she doesn't know, she won't know until tuesday, and I don't know what this means for us. What if something is really wrong? How can I move to TX now? I still want to go, but I would feel awful for missing out on time. The worst part? Her colonoscopy 2 years ago showed nothing which means it's probably related to the intestines or pancreas and that is never good. Now working for the company I do, I know that we have virtual colonoscopy software that picks up 100 times the images of traditional ones and we have machines in WI that are operating. I am going to try to get her on the demo list here and see if we can find something that way.

So then it all comes full circle. I could have left this contract a while ago, working for the wage I am for this long is not something I wanted to do, but the fact that it's saved two family members lives has kept me there. I felt I owe them something, A big something. And now my mother? Am I still here to get access to some tests that will save her life too? I know that we don't know she is sick yet, but like Jill, my thoughts have started whirling too... When did I become the younger caring for the older? And how did it happen so quickly?

I will post when I hear...