2 Birthdays

Sarah's birthday was on the 15th. She turned 8. We originally planned to have a birthday sleepover on the 20th, but her little party guest had the flu so we put it off a week. Last night was the big night! (You may remember this same little girl from last year's birthday sleepover pictures--it's Sarah's best bud Madison...who happens to be the daughter of a dear friend of mine who I've known literally since birth!)

First they sat at the coffee table & ate pizza & opened Sarah's gift.

Then they changed into their PJs & sat at the bar & sang Happy Birthday over a plate full of cupcakes. I LOVE the look on Sarah's face in this one. Larry was standing beside her & was making the song sound silly. The pride & the giggles in her eyes make my heart smile!

Madison brought her Littlest Pet Shop toys & they compiled them with the ones we own. Oh my goodness. It was an evening of a million tiny animals in the girls' bedroom! Savannah even joined in to play!

I know this one is a little hard to see, but the girls made a big fluffy blanket & sleeping bags pallet on the floor & piled up pillows to watch movies til they konked out...sometime between midnight & 1am! They had a great night.

Today is the day we're celebrating King's birthday as well. Yes, our dog. :) Last year, we adopted him on Leap Day (Feb. 29th). Since we won't see that date again for 4 years, we're celebrating on the 28th. We have no idea when his ACTUAL birthdate is, so we're using the day we got him as his birthday! Happy Birthday sweet boy!!!!!!!!!

prayer request news

The diagnosis my friend received on Wednesday was confirmed today. Please be in prayer for this sweet family in the days ahead.

URGENT prayer request

If you are reading this prior to Thurs 2/26 at 1:30pm Central Time, please get on your knees & pray with me!

here's why:
A dear friend of mine received a fatal diagnosis of the baby she is carrying today. She is going to Dallas for a more high-tech ultrasound tomorrow (2/26) to confirm the diagnosis.

Join me and so many others who are praying for a miracle tomorrow at 1:30.

If you don't like the weather.....

There is a saying around here. If you don't like the weather in Texas, just stay for a few minutes & it'll change. That sure seemed to be true this morning.

When I took the kids to school, I noticed the heavy clouds in the sky. It wasn't quite as dark as it appears in this picture (I took it with my phone's camera) but I couldn't help but look at the pretty way the clouds were put together & think "Yep...it's gonna rain!". This was about 7:55am.

Less than an hour later when I left for work (about 8:40), the sky outside our house looked like this.

What a difference an hour makes!

Know where I can find a mute hair stylist?

For weeks now, I've been sitting in the driveway of the kids' school where the sunlight is just right at 3pm and picking. No, not picking my nose....picking at my hair. I'll admit it. I'm a picker. If I see a piece of lint on your shirt, I'm likely to pick it off. If I have a zit, I'm going to pick at it. If I see a hair on your head that's out of place & looking all wonky, I'm too OCD to let it just lay there. I will walk over & fix it for you. (& I'm the friend who will tell you that you have food in your teeth or a booger clinging to the side of your nostril! See...it works out for all of us!) But I've been picking at my hair because I've had split ends something awful. I learned to mess with split ends from my big sis. When we were kids, she'd sit on the couch in the sunlight & find split ends & split them. I'm sure at some point I asked what she was doing & she showed me, so I joined in. She has always had super long hair, so it wasn't hard for me to sit beside her & split her split ends for her. And now, I do it to my own hair if I have any dead, dry, yucky ends.

Like most moms, I don't have time for a regular haircut. Honestly, that's why I've never tried any other colors on my hair. While I think it would be great fun to be a redhead, I'd never do it because I know I won't keep it up like I should & before long I'd be a redhead only from the ears down. Yeah, that wouldn't look good. So once every 4-6 months (yes, I really said MONTHS), I find my way to the salon for a cut. Yes, I realize that it's best to cut/trim your hair about every 6 weeks, but really......that'll never happen. Well, maybe when my kids are all out of the house and/or I'm retired.

Now, I realize that many women go to a fancy salon where they are pampered & treated like queens for a couple hours while they have an all-out therapy session with their stylist. They get their hair washed & dried, cut & styled and then have a cup of coffee afterward while they hang out with their (nearly) best friend the stylist. All of this to the tune of $75-150.

I don't do that.

I go to whatever cheap, quick place I can find & sit down for a 10-15 minute cut & then I leave. Period. I've gone to SuperCuts & ProCuts and these days, I'm going to Great Clips. It's 5 minutes from my house. Once I get in the chair, I'm in & out in less than 1/2 an hour. Oh and the best part? I pay less than $20 even if I give a generous tip.

The unfortunate side effect to visiting shops like this is well....the people cutting my hair. Somehow, without fail, I always get the country bumpkin who wants to share a bunch of inappropriate and weird stories with me while she laughs it up & slaps my shoulder like she's told me the most hysterical thing ever.

Today's visit was with a lady whose hair would put Crystal Gayle to shame. She told me the story of her morning as she got ready for work. She went to take a shower & when she came out she walked into her bedroom (naked) and found that her 13 year old son had crawled into her bed while she was in the shower. Of course, they were both shocked & surprised. The boy quickly threw the covers over his head & she retreated to the bathroom. yikes! But really...I don't know this lady at all. WHY did she tell me this?

Of course, I think the BEST chatty hairstylist story is the one I experienced a year or so back at a different place. This lady was yakking away about all her relatives & the most recent family reunion when I cut in to get her to hush. I commented that her perfume smelled nice & asked her what it was. She replied that it was Vanilla Musk, but then quickly added "It only SMELLS like vanilla...it doesn't TASTE like vanilla." OH MY GOSH. Seriously, did she add that because she was concerned that I'd lick her arm to find out? yuck!

So I tell ya what. Sometime around August when I start talking about getting another haircut, remind me to look for this sign in the salon window.

Samuel's ears

Oops....Lisa from Blessed with Grace (see my sidebar) just posted a comment that reminded me of something. I updated on my 4th child (King!) in the last post, but didn't update on my 2nd child (Samuel).

He has now been on the steroid nasal spray for 5 days. So far, no change. He is STILL saying that his ears hurt every day. Today he was upset about something else (namely, having to clean his room...oh the horror!) but while crying over that, he started holding his ears saying that they hurt. I have a feeling that, with the fluid already in there added to the tears he was crying & snot it was producing, there was probably extra pressure in there & it probably did hurt!

I talked to Larry tonight about the fact that I am almost ready to take him to the after-hours place tomorrow just to make sure this hasnt' progressed into another infection. I realize that the ENT told us they were not infected on Tuesday when we were there, but he also told us that there was fluid on both ears, which of course could very quickly BECOME an infection given Samuel's history. It makes me worry about how long we let the fluid sit there with him complaining of pain because at any point, if it becomes infected, he could have a burst eardrum very quickly. And without an otoscope at home to check his ears every day myself (I had one in the past but it died a while back), it's hard to know when they move from hurting to REALLY hurting. Ugh. Since we have an after hours place we can go to for the cost of a doctor's office copay, we might do that tomorrow afternoon if he seems to be MORE in pain than he has been.

We're giving him antihistimines (trying to dry up the fluid) and tylenol/motrin for pain, but we've been doing that for over a month now, which worries me for his little liver!! Thankfully we have had some days in there that he complains less & we skip the medicine on those days. But I hate to leave him hurting the rest of the time.

yuck. Being a mommy is hard work!

So that's where we are!

King update; Blue & Gold 2009

First, an update on King. (this is an old picture, but definately shows the level of LOVE we have for this sweet old dog of ours!)

The vet is 99.9% sure that King has something called Cushing's disease. It's a malfunction of the adrenal system. Although his current haircut (umm...butcher job!) looks terrible, I'm glad we had it done or we might've never been able to see his big belly's lopsided shape--the whole reason we went looking for what is wrong! Basically, a benign tumor on his adrenal gland messed w/ his body's production of cortisone. When his body went into overdrive producing extra cortisone, it caused a bunch of symptoms. One of those is the big pot belly. From what I've read, lots of older dogs have it. Some may go undiagnosed, though, because some of the symptoms mimic things that dogs do in the normal aging process & pet owners may mistake symptoms for regular aging. You can read more about it here if you'd like to learn more. Anyway, the big thing is that it's treatable with medicine! The doc is waiting for 1 final bloodtest to come back before determining which medicine is needed to get this under control. We will then take all the results back to our regular vet & let him find us the best price on it at local pharmacies. (It's a people-medicine, so we'll be able to get it at Walgreen's or CVS, etc.) My mom also did some reading about Cushing's in a natural remedies book & found that, at least in humans, you can also treat Cushing's with a variety of vitamins & homeopathic things, so we might give that a shot as well if the vet says it would be OK. I figure he will be OK with it, assuming there isn't anything that would be HARMFUL to a dog. After all, at this point, if it's not HARMFUL, why not give it a shot? I guess we'll see!

Tonight was Samuel's Cub Scout Blue & Gold ceremony. Here he is, in uniform. Doesn't he look nice?

The Blue & Gold is the annual awards ceremony for Cub Scouts. It's always so sweet to see the little guys receive their awards....and then watching the 2nd year Webelos bridge over to Boy Scouts is pretty cool. It always makes me tear up when I see them bring out the bridge for the boys to walk across. I know it's a rite of passage that I never went through myself (heck, I was never even a girl scout...I thought they were dorks!), but it's exciting to see the little ones promote up to Boy Scouts! Sam will be there in 2 more years!! Samuel is finishing up his year as a Bear, so tonight he got to pin me & he received several awards (patches). Way to go little man!

These are all the Bears in our pack. (Samuel's the only one in khakis so it shouldn't be hard to pick him out!)

We tried to get a shot of him pinning me, but the picture turned out bad. When I got back to the table, Sarah took a picture of the mother's necklace/ribbon I wear for the Blue & Gold each year. The new pin is at the very top.

One last picture....mama & her little Bear cub!