Cassidy

I want to ask all of my friends to please pray for Cassidy. She is a very beautiful little girl who is fighting cancer. Their family received some tough news about her cancer today, so please pray for them. To read more about this beautiful little girl, please check out their web page.

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/cassidy

I got to spend some time with their family this fall, and she is a beautiful girl who loves playing hide and seek. Please keep her in your prayers.

More about size

Buddy is fascinated with the size of God lately. We are trying, but he still doesn't get it that God is the biggest. Today Princess picked up an apple and said, "This is a really big red apple," of course Buddies response "It is bigger than God"

Baby toys?

Who says xylophones are just for babies... He pulled it away from his little sister and had to sit down and bang on it. I am hoping she gets it back sometime soon, she loves it.

Mommy's Blocks

We have been playing with the Keva Planks again lately. Princess is getting to be a more accomplished builder and Munchkin is getting very accomplished at going to great lengths to knock them down.

Bigger

Discussions in the van are always interesting.

Buddy: I'm really BIG.
Princess: No you're not
Buddy: I'm bigger than God.
Princess: No one is bigger than God.
Buddy: Yes, I am, I'm 47 pou-nches.

I still haven't figured out what Pou-nches are, but they must be really big.

Biscuit

Princess is in kindergarten and it amazes me to see how fast she is learning to read. She loves books and we try to read to her often. When we went to the library on Friday I picked out a few "I can read" books about a dog named Biscuit. She loved them and we started having her read some of the words.

Then we went to the library again today (Daddy wanted some books too) and she picked out 2 more Biscuit books. Tonight she read one of them TO ME. She only needed help with about 3 words. She was sooo excited to finish it. Now it looks like we will be going to the library a lot more often to find books. She wants to find more books that she can read to me. We will have to find something different then Biscuit books because I think we have read a lot of those already.

Maybe soon she can read some books to her brother and sister.

The No-snow Snow Day

Only in Virginia do they close school for a chance of snow and it never snows all day. I discovered it is not too hard to entertain ourselves all day on a cold day. We made a complete mess in the play room. Assembled puzzles. Played pretend games for hours with chess pieces, we went to the dollar store to get supplies to make our own Valentines.

And we went to swimming lessons at the end of the day. It was a busy day, and we had lots of fun.

Buddy

Buddy has been absent in the blog lately, but he has been busy.... He started swimming lessons one morning a week. Last week when they did the letter M at school we had Muffins for Mom at preschool, he loved having mom spend some time at school with him. He was not so thrilled that Munchkin had to come too.

Sleep

My children don't sleep in normal positions, they have an amazing number of toys in bed and usually never have their heads on pillows. This was how I found Princess this week when I went to check on her one night. At least they sleep soundly, I can take pictures with a flash and never wake them up.

Small spaces

I will continue to wonder why children try to fit in small places and why they find it so much fun.

Lactose

Ever since the kids all had the stomach flu we have had some challenges with Munchkin. She has had an average of 7 poopy diapers a day. Plus she is really gassy and is waking up SEVERAL times every night crying and then goes back to sleep in anywhere from 1 to 20 minutes later after the gas has passed. Needless to say, we haven't had much sleep lately.


I finally made the connection that she may have a temporary lactose intolerance. I did some research and as of yesterday we have eliminated all milk from her diet for a week. She only had one poopy diaper yesterday and slept great last night. Now I just need to figure out when to re-introduce dairy back in her diet. From what I have read, I need to wait a week and then start with cottage cheese and active culture yogurt. Hopefully this will solve the issue and we won't have any long term impacts.

Cheerleader

She did really great at her first game. They cheer for the basketball teams. We looking forward to the end of the season when they know what to expect and when the basketball teams are improved too.

Pom-Pom's

Princess has decided that she wants to be a cheerleader... at 5 years old, it doesn't mean much, but she is on a team "The Rubies" and she has a uniform. She has her first game this weekend. I learned that Pop-Poms don't come fluffy when you buy them. They come looking like this. It takes a parent a really long time of separating little plastic ribbons, and pulling them apart to make them look like this. I really hope I don't have to do this every year, maybe I can convince her to play basketball next year.

pictures

I realized I haven't posted pictures for a while. I finally downloaded the camera today and found some. These are from the day we returned after Christmas. We had temperatures in the teens on our vacation and then came home to a warm 70 degree day when Buddy wore shorts outside.

The saga continues

Well, we got the machine delivered... It worked great, I did two loads. Then I noticed the floor of the laundry room was wet.

The first call was to East Coast Appliance. I left a really unhappy voicemail for the customer care representative. She didn't call back. (I found out later she was out sick)

I called the manager, after SEVERAL more phone calls and being told a repairman would be there between 3:30 and 4, a repairman finally showed up around 6:30. He found the leak and repaired it, so now finally I have a working machine.

The company called me today to ask ifI was happy with my purchase... My answer was a definite NO.... They called back to offer me a free major parts warranty for 10 years. (ONLY on the cost of the motor, not the cost of labor to repair it or ANY other repair) Since we are military and don't plan to be here for 10 years, this is worthless to us. I asked them to write me a check to pay for my laundromat expenses and some of my time. I havent' gotten a call back.... I will have to call them back tomorrow.

The saga of the washing machine

It has been a continuing saga to deal with our washing machine.

Saturday - We came back from vacation.
Sunday - Used the old washing machine, it only works for small loads, one child vomits.
Monday - Installed our new washing machine, one child has diarrhea and is vomiting.
Tuesday - Discovered new washing machine doesn't work. Called appliance store, they will send a repairman, 3 children vomiting.
Wednesday - Repairman comes, tells me he needs to replace the motor and the computer. Will take 5-7 days, mommy sick now too.
Thursday - Do 14 loads of laundry at the laundromat. Everyone seems to be better.
Friday - One child sick again.
Saturday - Repairman comes, spends a long time, can't get machine to work...
Sunday - Go back to appliance store, pick out new washer, pay more money to upgrade to a supposedly bigger and better machine.

Tomorrow the new washer is supposed to be delivered and installed, no fee. I just really hope this one works, I have a lot more laundry to wash.