Saturday, May 16, 2015

Sick kids and chickens

Sawyer has been fighting a cold since we got back from vacation.
He's had a runny nose and a cough, but nothing major.

On Thursday (2 days ago) I had to work all day, it also happened to be cub scout night for Marshall.
After work I met Kayleigh (our babysitter), with the kids at the school so that Marshall could attend cub scouts.  I pulled up behind her and she has a small trash can in her hand.  Sawyer was vomiting into it.  She said that he had been lethargic most of the day and he would hardly eat.  He vomited up this really thick mucous.  YUCK.  He was also complaining that his ear hurt.
I decided that I should run him over to Med Express just to have his chest listened to and his ears checked.  Luckily one of the other Mom's offered to bring Marshall back to her house after cub scouts, she lives 2 minutes up the road.

Now let me back track to last weekend.  Russ took Marshall to cub scout camp, and he had his wallet stolen there.  He happened to have my ID as well, so we were still waiting for our new drivers licenses to come in the mail.

I go to Med Express with Sawyer.  We have all been patients there, except for Sawyer.  There are two younger girls working the front desk.  I start to explain whats going on with him and she asks for my insurance card.  No problem.  Then she asks for my drivers license....
I explain that my husbands wallet was stolen and it had both of our ID's in it.  They say that they can't see him.  

Did I mention that I have a chicken in my car?
Yes a live chicken.  I took her to work with me because she has bumble foot.

Now I am pleading with them.  It's almost 8 p.m.  I really don't want to take him to the E.R.
It would cost me an arm and a leg, and expose him to something worse!

My child is visibly sick, laying on my shoulder in tears because he just vomited again in the parking lot.  They wouldn't see him.  I asked to speak to a manager.  Nope the manager wasn't there.

I have a minor meltdown.  I worked 11 hours.  Have yet to eat dinner.  Am worried sick about my baby.  I'm stressed because I still have a chicken in my car.  I get Russ on the phone and he calls another urgent care who agrees to see us, as long as I fill out a special form.  

On my way over there and it's so quiet in the car.  Sawyer feels awful.  I'm worried and stressed, Jaylee is worried and stressed.  The chicken is even being quiet.  The silence is broken by Jaylee asking me this question.
"Mom, is it weird that we have a chicken in our car?  I mean, is that normal?"

As I get off the exit on the highway the car in front of me has a big old hard plastic "FOR SALE" sign on it.  The wind catches it and it gets stuck on my windshield under the wiper.  
The kids laugh.  At the next light I pull up next to the car that lost their sign and we exchange an awkward glance.  I point to the sign and he just looks at me.  I unroll my window and say "Hey did you lose something" and we both laugh.

So we arrive at the Urgent Care and the Dr walks in the room.
Sawyer immediately says "Hi I'm Sawyer Jackson Lederhouse and I love you"
I just started to laugh hysterically.  The Dr says "Well I'm very fond of you as well"

His chest sounds fine, he has a minor ear infection and his strep test is negative.  Antibiotics and allergy meds are Rx'd and we are on our way home.

These children are the light of my world.  My life would be so incomplete without them.
I love watching how they light up other people's world.  I wonder if that Dr had a stressful day.  We were the last patients of the day, maybe Sawyer changed his whole day around by making him laugh so hard.  Maybe we were meant to go to the other office to brighten someone else's day.  Maybe the universe needed us to go in that direction for a reason. Who knows.  I do know that even though it was super stressful in the moment, it's something that we will laugh and talk about for years to come!

Never a dull moment that's for sure.
Peace and love....

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Spring Adventure - Part 6 - May 1-2 Magic Kingdom and then on our way home


Friday, our last full day of vacation.  We spent at Magic Kingdom.
The kids saw Pluto right off of the bat.
 


It's always so neat to see the castle in person.
 

The kids played "Sorcerers of Magic Kingdom"
They were given a bunch of cards and a map.  They had to find different locations throughout the park and use clues and their card to defeat villins.
 

Waiting for The Country Bear Jamboree to start.  This brought back memories from my childhood!


It's a Small World!  Sawyer LOVED this ride!
 
We all loved it!


 It was really hot!  We spent some time on Tom Sawyer's Island.  There was a lot of shade.  The kids loved playing in the forts.






I spent some time with Sawyer while Russ, Jay and Marshall rode Space Mountain.
Space Mountain is my favorite by the way!
 

He loved his Pluto face paint! He was walking up to everyone saying "Hey... I'm Pluto" and pointing to his face.
 

Another classic ride, Dumbo the Flying Elephant.  
 

The castle all lit up at night was really neat.  After the electric parade and fireworks the park cleared out so we could ride just about everything again, with hardly any wait.  Sawyer rode EVERYTHING, except for space mountain.  He LOVED the rides.

He was exactly 40 inches, and they would constantly remeasure him.  He would say
"I'm big enough!!"  It was so cute.

We opened the park at 9 a.m. and closed the park at midnight!!
Sawyer stayed awake the whole day, until the ride home.


 The next day we slept in until 8, ate breakfast, packed up and headed home.
Here are the kids with all 8 beads that they earned.
I'm so glad that we decided to do this vacation.  We almost tried selling it, but since Russ is back to work and things are slowly returning to normal we decided that we kind of deserved it.  We had a really rough 2 years, we made A LOT of sacrifices.  We made it thru stronger then ever.  

The kids were so so good!!  We only did 2 theme parks to save money, and we didn't buy a lot of things.  When we were leaving Magic Kingdom we let them pick one thing.  They never begged, cried or even asked for anything EVER.  I am so proud of how well behaved they are.  We had a great bonding experience together.  

We ended up driving straight home from Florida to Virginia.  We got home at 3 a.m. on Sunday.  We were tired, but it was soooo worth it!

Peace and love....
















Spring Adventure - Part 5 - Trip to visit the Nichols - April 29 & 30


We headed out Wednesday to visit family in Seminole.  Russ's Uncle Glenn and Aunt Cathy were nice enough to let us stay the night.  Russ's Uncle Glenn barbaqued a huge feast for the family to gather.

 We got to spend time with Grandpa and Irma too.
They got a kick out of the kids.
 




The next day Russ's cousin Mike and his Uncle Glenn took us out in the boat.
We took a boat ride to Caladesi Island.  There was a really nice beach there.

Sawyer absolutely HATED the boat ride there!  He was terrifyed.
On the way back he was fine.
 



Sawyer wasn't too sure at first, but once he got used to it he enjoyed it!
It was hard to get pictures of the other two kids.  They were out farther and stayed out there bouncing in the waves.
 











Marshall passed out on the way back, I got BURNED!
 

We were so thankful to spend quality time with the family!!

Spring Adventure - Part 4 - April 28th


This was a rainy day.  We decided to use this day for the kids to do their weeks worth of school work.  They also went down to do activities every 2 hours to earn their beads.  They ended up getting most of their beads on this day. 
 

 Here the kids learned about animal tracking.
They really learned a lot participating in the activities.
 


Lots of animal watching from our room too.
 


For dinner we went to The Polynesian Resort (Hawaii)
We went to an Aloha dinner and show.
 



The food was so yummy.  They had Hawaiian food, music and dancers.
 


This was getting to be too much for Sawyer, we ended up having to take him out.  I could see the show from outside where he felt more comfortable.
 

Jaylee learned how to do a Hawaiian dance.
 

Sawyer was playing peek a boo with this woman.  It was cute.
 


He was obsessed with finding lizards!!
 

The fire dancer was really neat!  Sawyer said "WOW he could roast us marshmallows Mommy!"
 


We then found a nice spot on the beach at the Polynesian.  You could see the castle at Magic Kingdom across the lake.  We stayed until dark and watching the light up boat parade and then the fireworks.
 

This right here is what happy children look like!