A whole lotta weird

This week has been one to try to forget! We were home for exactly one day, and then Jim left for Wichita for training. Jim was gone for one day when Harper had a febrile seizure and even though I knew what was going on, and even what was causing it, we could not get it under control and I had to call 9-1-1. Now, for anyone living in a small town, you know that calling 9-1-1 is truly a last resort. Not to say that you don't get some of the greatest, fastest care in the world because you do, but it opens a whole other ball of worms. For example precisely 8 seconds after dialing the phone, you are on every prayer chain for all the churches in town. Prayer chains are awesome - except that my ability to go out in public quickly has now been compromised as everyone in town knows that Harper is sick, and even people I don't know stop me to ask how she is doing. Small town life! Harper has an ear infection. The infection caused the fever, the fever caused the seizure. The ambulance ride was nauseating, but I am thankful that our little pumpkin is going to be fine! She is on more antibiotics and is almost back to her sassy old self. I am also thankful that grandma was willing to drive to Topeka in the middle of the night to pick us up and take us to Walgreens for an amazing freak show while we waited on her antibiotics!

The girls were supposed to play their first softball game this evening, but it got cancelled due to cold/rain. They now have to play tomorrow evening instead. Colin's track practice got cancelled as well. That worked out ok though, as Jim came home today and we had all missed him, so it gave us a chance to catch up! I also made an important discovery today - Velveeta's new Queso Blanco. Truly a life changing invention!

I enjoyed our vacation last week, but I think it truly is exhausting to come home - as we have been swamped with trying to catch up. It has been a very long week and I am more than a little happy to see the weekend on the horizon!

Vacation Highlights

After an 8hourdrivethattookus10hours, we arrived at our destination - Louisville, KY.

The kids were so excited to get out of the car and into the pool that they did not even care that we hadn't eaten dinner! They swam and swam and it was just so nice to be out of the car!

The highlight of the trip to Louisville was the Louisville Slugger Bat Factory and Museum. The kids had a blast learning all about which famous players get their bats specially designed, and getting to feel the different types of bats. I really enjoyed watching the machinery in the factory...it is fascinating to me that they can carve a bat in about 8 seconds! Very cool tour! And at the end, every person -including 15 month olds get a souvenir bat!

Louisville definitely has a lot of traffic, and the kids were both intrigued and freaked out by the downtown area! Madison thought they should do a little more cleaning up of some of the properties! I spent the entire time thanking the good Lord that I live in a small town!

As for me, I loved seeing Churchill Downs. I have seen so many Kentucky Derby's and I remember being fascinated by this as a kid. I still really like horse racing, and I was thrilled to get to see the most famous track of them all! The kids were not as impressed with the place....except for the virtual jockey video game! One thing that I stupidly didn't realize is that this track is smack in the middle of the city! I always see them showing the Quarter Horses in the pastures running in green grass and thought it would be in the country. Apparently the horses are brought in from other places! Learned something new!

On Friday, we left Louisville to head to Evansville, IN for Jay's wedding. On the way we made a pit stop at Marengo Cave. It was a bit pricey to get in, but after Preston was majorly impressed and begged to go again, and talked about it and really picked up a lot of cave information, I was very glad that we stopped there!

Once we got to Evansville, we made a mandatory stop at the Willard Library to look for their ghost. We did not see the Gray Lady, and when we left Quincy proclaimed "that was stupid - I really wanted to see her....why did she not come out?" I am not sure that Jim was unhappy about us not finding her!

And then we arrived at the main, most important part of our trip...the wedding of Uncle Jay and Angela! It was a very beautiful wedding. Uncle Jay and Aunt Angela are either the craziest, or the bravest people I know, as they had six of our kids in the wedding! Plus Jim! I was very worried, but it was a great wedding and nobody misbehaved (at least not noticeably).

Quincy was even the flower girl - brave, brave Uncle Jay!

We are very excited for them - it was awesome to see Jay so happy!

While in Evansville, we stayed at a Motel 6 and the kids got some lessons about life in a big city. We were a little concerned about the noise level, fire alarms, disgusting rooms, and police coming in the night. If ever visiting Evansville, Do NOT stay at the Motel 6 on Highway41! It was very scary! We survived the night, and moved to the much nicer Clarion - I would recommend this highly!

On the way home today, I had promised Preston that we would stop at the St. Louis Arch. He had seen it on TV and even though he has been up in it before, he was about 3 and doesn't remember. He was devastated to find out that they had sold out of tickets to the top for the day, and he could not go to the top! I wanted to cry - his little face was so sad! We do get to St. Louis pretty often, so I am sure he will get another chance! He did get to walk around it and touch it, but it wasn't quite the same!

Since we couldn't ride the on the Arch, daddy made a pit stop at the Columbia Mall to ride the carousel instead! It wasn't quite the same thing, but Preston was happy about it!

Harper, however was not amused! She screamed at the top of her lungs the whole time!

I am sure I will add more photos in the coming days, it was a good trip! I am happy to be home again though - there really is no place like home!

beehive

Cameron's mentor came by tonight to begin the process of getting the beehive together. Cam said that once he saw the process, it wasn't hard at all. He has a couple more boxes to put together on it. He was very excited!

I am very glad that the mentor knew what he was doing, because to me it looked like a box of sticks! Cam will have to paint the outside of the hive and place it before the bees arrive around the middle of April.

Solo!

Stacy perfecting her 'play dead' look!

We got a lot accomplished today, which is good! All 4 girls needed shots, so we had a notsomuch fun trip to the doctor's office. Quincy got her kindergarten shots, she laughed through all 4 shots! The nurse said they had never seen that before! Madison was not laughing - she has a fear of needles and she whimpered and cried like a baby! Harper had to have blood drawn, she did not cry with that, but was very unamused with the shot nurse!

My cousin, sister, neighbor and I have started a walking group. We are the "fair weather walkers." The first week was a giant flop, as it either rained or we had junk going on that interfered with our time. So we walked tonight. It is so much more fun to walk with people you can visit with! We walked a while and then I had to quit to go to Library board. It felt good to be out there!

Actually, the walking was much better than the library board meeting. It was a work session. It was planning for the future. To me this is very hard....to try to project what we will be needing space wise, book wise, technology wise 10 and 20 years down the road...I am sure my mind is not large enough to grasp what is coming! I am convinced that DVDs, CDs, Books on tape, and most paper books will probably be a thing of the past. I see the way my kids just download the stuff they want off the computer - they do NOT even own any CD's - and I have to believe that there will be an improvement to the DVD - those things scratch/get ruined so easily! To me, it is just hard to predict, and with a huge donation to the library, a lot is riding on making the right choices.

Which is why I am so looking forward to getting away for a few days! Tomorrow is my 'Friday"!! :)

Spring Break

Yesterday did not feel much like a 'break' with all the running everywhere. So I decided today was the first official day of the kids spring break! Of course, if you are on spring break, it is mandatory that you go fishing. Colin and Quincy headed right over to the city lake after church this morning. They did not catch any fish, but Quincy did bring home a bucket full of crawdads and snails. Colin thinks he is going to use them for bait tomorrow. Quincy thinks that Aunt Amy is going to baby sit for her new pets while we are on vacation later this week! Not sure who I think will win this little disagreement! The crawdads were evicted from my living room into a nice home in the garage! Quincy walked them all over the yard and fed them some cat food. I am not sure that crawdads eat cat food, but since cats are the only pets we have we went with that!

Harper "escaped" during mass this morning. She ran right up to the altar. I don't know if she would have done that, had the church been full? Our mass time was moved to the 8:00 am early spot today. That meant nobody was in front of me to stop her or slow her down, so right up she went! Luckily, our priest likes her!

I am so excited about taking a vacation! We haven't left the state for a long time! We are very excited for Jay and Angela (who are giving us a great reason to go on vacation)! Their wedding is going to be the highlight of our trip....unless we actually see the ghost of the Gray Lady at the Evansville Library of course! A two day work week - life is good!

Saturday with the most 'stuff''

We started out our Saturday bright at early at Regional 4-H club day. Mallory, Madison and Cameron danced. Colin had district wrestling, so he did not dance this time. They did a really, really great job! I am telling you that the dance they did this time had a lot to it, and they did amazing! I do not know how they placed though, because we had to 'dance and run.'

My mom's parents celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary today! My mom took all 4 girls plus Preston to El Dorado for the party. I wish I could have been there, but we had other obligations today. The girls told me all about it, and Madison took a bunch of great photos! They also told me that despite a little fit throwing by Quincy in the car on the way down, it was a very nice day!

Colin had a pretty good day on the mats. He went 2-2 and got 5th place, which is awesome for District wrestling. Unfortunately, they only take the top 4 to state next weekend, so he is the first alternate. I drove over and got to see one of his matches, but forgot my camera in the car, so I had to use his cell phone and it is not the greatest piece of photography equipment! I am so proud of Colin. I have watched him grow so much, have so much determination and learn a tremendous amount about the sport. He really is a great wrestler! I know he is disappointed in not making state, but the upside is that we are planning to go on vacation next week - so now he doesn't have to make a choice between wrestling state or going on vacation! The one match that I saw was so stinking exciting...I yelled and yelled like a freak (like one of those wrestling moms). He did win when I was watching!

I did not stay for much of Colin's tournament because Cameron had a Beginning Beekeeper's meeting. Luckily, his meeting was in Overland Park and Colin was wrestling in Olathe, so I was able to go to both! I did enjoy the beekeeper's meeting. It was really interesting. I have no idea what we have gotten into with this 4-H project, but I am very proud of Cam for being brave enough to try something new! He got his hive, gloves, smoker, and met his mentor today. (We do know his mentor - he lives right outside of town here). He was told his bees would arrive around April 15, so we have to assemble his hive, paint it and place it before then. He learned a ton about bee care, honey extraction, smoking bees, cleaning hives and more! I also have to say that there were 5 kids given this opportunity from across the state. They pulled the scholarship recipients up in front of the group - which was about 200 people I would guess. They were supposed to say their name, where they were from, and who their mentor is. Cam was the ONLY one who spoke up and was clear! They then had the scholarship kids pass out the door prizes. Cam had a little too much fun doing that - he had everyone laughing. I am not sure that a career in theater is not in his future?

We were supposed to attend a Bingo night for the 4-H livestock auction tonight, but we just didn't get home in time. I am going to say that this was an extreme case of having too many things on the calendar!

When Daddy's Away...

We Play and Play all Day!

(thank you God for the beautiful weather)

Madison made sure that NOBODY got pinched on St. Patrick's Day!

Quincy got to go with cousin Melissa and the boys to the St. Patrick's Parade in Topeka today. She LOVED it! She did get sunburned a little though - who knew a parade could last for over and hour and a half?

Quincy got a clown nose at the parade - so of course she then had to wear the clown wig, except that Harper decided that the wig was HERS!!

And the car is HERS!

And sand tastes GOOD - no matter what mom says about putting it down!

I am now breaking the cardinal rule of parenting and letting the big kids stay up late (on a school night -shreek) to watch KSU. One more day until spring break - I seriously doubt that they will be doing anything too productive at school tomorrow anyhow! Madison spent the evening baking so that they could have 'food day' in one of her classes! As I said - real productive stuff tomorrow!

Colin got knocked in the nose at wrestling practice tonight. He is ok, but I am not making any promises about the white shirt he had on!

We are all looking forward to Jim coming home. Quincy got so sad when I tucked her in tonight- she misses her daddy. Me too!