Easter Sunday
Sunshine turned 4 in March
Ice Cream Anyone?
I have a new familiy blog address. If you would like the new blog address please email me or cantact me through facebook. If you don't have either one of those please leave me your name and email address on a comment. I have turned off public comments, so no one else will see your info. Thanks.
As you can see the girls are in pink and the boys are in brown... funny even the dog is a boy.
A very nice picture with Alan's parents
Little Man has grown up so much
Princess G, what a sweetheart
I think we are in trouble when they get older...
This is Princess G at the Ronal McDonald House in Denver.
Tag Part 2: Crazy Threes
1. 3 show I watch
Ugly Betty
Grey's Anatomy
7th Heaven (reruns)
2. 3 Favorite Restaurants
Texas Roadhouse
Taj Mahal (Indian)
Olive Garden
3. 3 Things That Happened Yesterday
Went shopping with a friend
Decorated the Christmas Tree
Played games with friends
4. 3 Things I'm Looking Forward Too
Christmas at home
Going to ride the Polar Express next weekend
Playing in the snow
5. 3 Things On My Wish List
Princess G getting better for good
Taking the family to Disneyland
getting my house clean and organized to stay
6. 3 Things I Love
My family
My dog
My friends
7. 3 Things I Can't Stand
Telemarketing phone calls
my kids yelling at me
bad drivers
8. 3 People to Tag - Your IT!
Natali
Lisa R.
Linda
I will admit it, I went to a midnight showing of Twilight. OK it was really 12:03 am. The theater that we went to had 4 showings, 12:01, 12:02, 12:03, and 12:04 am. I was really lucky to have got tickets the day of the show in the 3rd showing. I was able to talk two friends into going with me. I think I may have even been brave enough to have gone alone. But thankfully Anya and Holly were die hard too. We got to the theater over and hour early and the theater was almost full. We still were able to find 3 pretty good seats.
As for what I thought of the movie. I really enjoyed it. I think with a lot of books made into movies you can tend to spend a lot of time comparing the movie to the book. I did a little but I got into the movie pretty quickly and really enjoyed it. I liked that it was clean, they still leave a lot of the intense stuff to the imagination, so it is not very bloody or too graphic. I liked that a lot. I really enjoyed the music. I thought that the music really pulled you in. I have to say that I really loved the movie. I think it was worth the midnight showing, and being a little tired today.
I have been very behind this week. Princess G has been sick, so everything got behind. I am trying to get back on track. I know lots of people have wanted to see the kids all dressed up for Halloween, Sorry it took so long to post the pictures.
Halloween was a three night event for us this year. On Thursday night we went to a Trunk-or-Treat for a friends ward. The kids had such a good time. The ward we went to is the ward we spit from just over a year ago. It was nice to see everyone and visit. On Friday night we went to our ward Trunk-or-Treat. We also had a chili dinner. I really enjoy seeing all the kids dressed up and how much fun they have. Of course our kids love getting candy. Sunshine is a true candy-aholic, so she loves Halloween. We think it is her favorite holiday. On our third and final night of Halloween, a few of our neighbors thought it would be fun to do a little neighborhood Halloween carnival for the kids. We all set up games at our houses and the kids went house to house playing games. It was a really great way to get to know some of our neighbors better. We had dinner at one of the neighbors house. It was a ton of fun. We are hoping this will become a annual event. By the time Saturday night was over I was Halloweened out. I am glad the kids had fun, but I am more glad that it is over.
Now on to the kids costumes. I don't know about everyone else but "helping" pick kids costumes is a big pain. If you ask them too early what they want to be they will change their mind 5 times, if you ask too late then they get what ever left overs you happen to find. Well this year we were the latter one. Little man found a great Pirate costume that he actually really liked and was happy to wear. That was after 3 stores and nothing better. I have to say thought that after I bought it, he got really excited and didn't even complain. Princess G was a little harder to work with this year. She had been sick the whole week before Halloween so one, I did not want to get anyone else sick, and two, I didn't want her to get anything else. They my brilliant friend Linda said you should dress Princess G up as a Doctor with the mask and all so she will be protected. I loved it. From then on poor Princess G had no choice. I told her if you want to do anything for Halloween she had to dress as a Doctor. She was not to excited about the costume, but she wanted the candy more. Smart girl. Well luck for us we have a great friend who happens to be a Pediatrician at the hospital and got her at the Doctor necessities to look the part. The best part was her costume was free, and disposable. Then there was sunshine. What to do with her. Well I happened to pop into Marshals to look around and they had a very small selection of costumes. I had not even gone in thinking to look for a costume. Well I thought I am here I will look. I found the cutest Skunk costume. It was so perfect. I told Sunshine she could be a skunk because she was my little stinker. She loved it. And let me tell you she played the part so very well. She even would go around and pretend to spray people. I just had to laugh. What else could I do?
This really was a great Halloween. The weather here was so beautiful. It was pretty warm even into the evenings so everyone really enjoyed themselves. On a side note I decided to not dress up this year. Alan however decided to go as a rock star. It was pretty funny.
Now it is time to prepare for the Holiday season. I am so not ready for this.
I just thought I would take a moment to share. I have found a website that I can not live with out. It is www.edhelper.com When I started looking for resources for home school this site was recommended to me. At first I just looked at it and moved on. I have now come to appreciate the full value of this site.
My biggest fear when starting home school was that I would miss some major concept for reading or something dumb like that. Once I bought the curriculum for Princess G that fear was gone, thankfully. As we started doing school I realized that my biggest problem was keeping Sunshine busy. Edhelper has been our answer. I have been able to make coloring sheets, writing practice, and any thing else I need for her. To have full access to the website it is $20.00 a year. Trust me after everything I have seen out there this is so cheep. As I have surfed this site I have found even more value. I have been able to make activities for Princess G that go along with her lessons, and I have been able to make some worksheets for Little Man who is not doing as well in Math as we would like. (He is an amazing reader and has focused all of his time there, so his math has suffered) I am so excited to help him get caught up with the work I have found on edhelper. I just thought I would share in case anyone has a child who needs a little extra work, or for preschool aged children who need to be kept busy. Check it out and enjoy.
Just a idea for you...
- Sunshine is learning her letters by sight and sound. She also enjoys tracing them in a work book I had for her. However she was not ready to try to write her letters on her own. I was able to make pages that are just tracing the letters. So I printed them, then I laminated them, one letter in the front another on the back. She can trace the letters with a crayon or dry erase marker. I can wipe it off, and she can do it again. Everyone is happy.
I had heard about the movie Fireproof a few weeks ago and I watched the trailer on line. I could not wait to see the movie. So tonight Alan and I went and saw Fireproof for our date. The first thing I noticed was that the theater was packed. I am not exaggerating when I say there was not one empty seat. And you have to understand that this movie has been out for several weeks. For the most part it seemed that it is a couples movie.
As for the movie. It was so good. We laughed and cried. OK, so I cried. For those of you who are not familiar with the movie here is a link so you can check it out. Go To FireProofTheMovie.com
This is a wonderful movie about the importance of communication, love and support in a marriage. The movie is about a couple on the brink of a nasty divorce, and both are ready to give up. The husband is challenged by his dad to try the Love Dare for 40 days. The movie follows the husband (played by Kirk Cameron from Growing Pains) as he tries this challenge to save his marriage.
We loved this movie because the whole point is Christ and our relationship with him, and how that relationship affects our relationship with our spouse. The church who produced this film did an excellent job with the script, and casting. We can't wait for this movie to come out on DVD.
We feel that our marriage is doing pretty good, however we can always learn something new.
Alan says we should all support movies like this, I have to agree with that one. I would love to hear opinions from anyone else who has seen the movie.
I know I have posted a ton lately about Princess G, but we have had a lot to deal with for her. I promise the other kids are doing well. I will write more about them soon. Tonight though I have to share something I have found.
I was channel surfing this evening with no luck of finding anything to keep my attention. We decided to put in a DVD. As Alan was putting in the DVD, I happened to to stop on the TLC channel. As I waited I started listening to the program. The show was called Mystery Diagnosis. The things that were being described sounded exactly like Princess G and her illness. WOW. I was stunned. I stopped and just watched. I wanted to know more about what this Mystery was. The illness that the child in the show is call CCAM (Congenital Cystic Adenomatoid Malformation). The child had a surgery to have a large cyst removed from his lungs. This then fixed his breathing problems. I was so amazed. In fact I am recording it in full at 10:00pm. First I want to note, the child on the show had the following symptoms, runny eyes, runny nose, sounding junky, very sick within a day (most respiratory illnesses take a few days), and sick every 2 weeks. I have to say I am freaking out at this point. This is Princess G to a tee. They even showed a picture of the little boy, he had this circles under his eyes just like Princess G. I went to the Internet, I needed more and NOW. Princess G has had so many tests, different kinds of tests and some of the same tests many times. I have a four inch 3-ring binder full of medical records on my little girl. One of the things they have noted is that she has something know had ground glass appearance in her lungs. They saw in a CT scan when she was three, and saw it again from a High resolution CT scan done in Denver earlier this year. All of this got me wondering if CCAM and Ground Glass Appearance in the lungs are found in the same cases. Sure enough I have found a case study that shows both and that they are related. I am going CRAZY. I have a Doctor appointment already set up for Thursday. I wish it was tomorrow. I need to talk to the Doctor about this. This is so hard to diagnose. Mostly because the symptoms are so close to Asthma, or phenomena. They say that a lot of times this can go undiagnosed and teenagers and adults can die without any warning from this. I need answers.
I have been searching and praying for answers, for a way to help or really to fix my little girl. An interesting note. Since we pulled Princess G out of school almost a month ago, Princess G has not been sick at all. After being sick so much while in school this is great news. It really makes me feel that the decision to pull her out of school, and keep her out of church was the right one. I am grateful for her being healthy for the past month, I just wish we did not have to shelter her to keep her that way. I do have to say though she is a real trooper over it. I just hope that this new information could lead to an answer for us. I will follow up soon. In the mean time we ask for all the prayers that we can get.
We followed up with Princess G's pediatric pulmonologist today to see if things are getting a little more under control. He decided it was time to try a new medication. I feel good about the change, but I am a little nervous. I told him that we had pulled Princess G out of school as asked by our Pediatrician. He said that was old medicine, they use to do it a lot more with kids. I asked if he felt it was unnecessary to do this. He said no in this case it is very necessary. To be so sick 3 times in six weeks is way too much. He went a little further and said that he also does not recommend Primary on Sundays (once I explained how church went), or any other large gatherings where there will be lots of kids. We have not really explained it to Princess G yet, and I don't know how much she really gets it yet. I feel really bad for her. It does not help that she is totally my child and VERY social. I just don't ever want her to think she is being punished. I have decided that I am going to talk to the parents of the kids she plays with and set up some regular play dates. As long as the kids are not sick. I think that will give Princess G something to look forward to every week. I have not told her yet that we have to cancel her Birthday party. I just feel bad for having to take away everything from her.
I am excited that as far as home school goes, I have found a great curriculum to follow. I found it after hour and hours of Internet research. What a task that was. I found a couple that I thought looked pretty good, but every time I went to purchase one I would not feel right about it and wouldn't buy them. Then I thought I should look up what other parents thought of the curriculum. Each one I was interested in other parents had negative opinions about. It came to a point that we thought that people where only leaving an opinion if they were unhappy. We thought we would have to pick a curriculum and hope for the best. Then like what seemed out of nowhere, we found a curriculum that we liked and so did every other parent who had reviewed it. YEAH!!! We bought it. This program has everything we need for a full year of teaching. It breaks everything down into daily lessons. It looks really good. I am so excited to start on Monday, and so is Princess G. I feel so blessed that everything has fallen into place. We even got real school desks and chairs for our little home school classroom. I wanted Princess G to be able to transition hopefully next year back to school with as little of a problem as possible. I felt having a small school desk and chair may help with that. I am even a stickler about her writing her name on her papers before she "hands them in". I hope it works. Ask me in two weeks how it is going. We did though get Sunshine a desk too, that way both girls have their own desk and I can teach Sunshine preschool at the same time. Wow I have my work cut out for me. Wish me luck, I need to go do my lesson plans.
I am sure everyone will agree life Never goes as planned! We learned that once again today. Princess G has again been sick. This is her third illness since school started 6 weeks ago. Not good. I took Princess G to the doctor today, and we had a discussion about what we need to do different. The Doctor has decided that it is not a good idea to keep Princess G in school. She wrote a letter asking that Princess G be taken out of school until further notice. Wow, not what I expected today. I have spent a crazy amount of time today on the Internet researching our options. We have decided that home school is our best option. In bound teachers didn't seem like a good option, so her we go. I have to say I am so scared to doing this, but I feel it is the only option to keep Princess G healthy. We have really struggled over the years with Princess G and her health problems, so I am going to do what ever it takes to keep her as healthily as possible. My main goal this winter is to keep Princess G out of the hospital. Now I am on the look out for home schooling curriculum. Should be fun and interesting. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.
There are days that being the Mom are more fun then others. I would say today was fun, mostly because I got to teach my kids a fun lesson. I know that Alan had to go home teaching tonight, so I decided to have dinner ready about the time he got home from work. I thought that would make our evening be a little more calm. About ten minutes before I was expecting Alan home, I called upstairs and asked the children to come out and set the table for dinner. I then heard arguments that went like this. "I did it yesterday" "Its your turn" "I don't want to do it" "me either". I thought to my self, I could get mad and yell, or not. I instead called back up and said in a very nice voice, ok that's fine. Well Alan arrived home to find the table set for two. He smiled and looked at me then asked what was going on. I explained that our children decided that they didn't want to set the table so we would be having a nice quite dinner. He laughed and said sounds good. We enjoyed talking uninterrupted. What a treat. And as luck would have it, the kids decided to play upstairs and get along. (for once) About the time we where done eating, I thought my point would only be made if the kids caught us. So I did something that I was sure would get the kids attention with out actually calling them down. I went to the front door and rang the door bell :) It worked. All three came running, and we where busted. Just what I wanted. It was so hard to not bust up laughing when I saw their faces as they realized we where finishing our dinner, with out them. There was cries of "I'm hungry" "Don't we get to eat" "Where is our dinner". POINT SET MATCH!! What a great opportunity to teach them that when I ask them for help that they should do it. I think they have learned a very valuable lesson. We shall see.
I got tagged by reading another blog. I love to read other peoples blogs. So now I am tagged again.
1. I enjoy watching TV. I have to be careful or I get nothing done.
2. I really love to cook. It is so much fun to make something and have your family or friends really enjoy eating. I am always looking for new recipes. (hint, hint)
3. I struggle with depression. Sometimes it is really bad. It worries Alan and he is amazing to help me pull out of my ruts. He is so kind and patient. I don't know what I would do with out him.
4. Travel is my love. I love to visit new places. I love the sights, the sounds, and the food of new places. I look for new places to go and love it if I can go for cheap. (I went on a cruise to the Bahamas for $200 per person for 5 nights with Alan)
5. I hate to do Laundry. I think it is evil. You do it everyday and yet it is never done. I hate that. I don't know why it bugs me so much, but it really does. I am trying to teach Little Man how to do his own laundry already. That is how much I hate it. Actually I should be doing laundry right now, and yet here I am.
6. My first name is not Elizabeth (I think everyone already knows that, let me know if you didn't know that one.)
7. In a weird way I am very proud that I can say I had an 11 lbs. 1 oz baby with out a c-section. My first baby. I think that is amazing. Thankfully the next two where only 7 lbs.
8. I am done having kids. In fact I can't have anymore even if I wanted to. So good thing I am happy with 3. Who knows there is always adoption. But for now I happy with my 3.
Hopefully you found out something new about me. If not you know me too well :)
As for tagging, if you want to do this great, if not thats fine too.
