Sad thing: I am looking for a new pediatrician. We love our doctor, just not the process it takes to get in to see her. It is hard for me to justify waiting for an hour every time I get to actually see her and most of the time I just end up seeing a different doctor. I don't like that. It makes me upset that Mary has had strep throat 4 times this winter and probably needs to have her tonsils out but her doctor never would've known it because of those four times guess how many times she saw her pediatrician? 0. Not once. Emily went back today-- after we waited for an hour she got a new antibiotic that hopefully will get her out of her funk. On my list for tomorrow is to call a few smaller practices and see if they are better about managing their caseload. I switched myself to a smaller practice a few years ago and have been much happier than with corporate medicine.


Happy thing: We got to have dinner with my grandparents tonight! They are traveling from Alabama, where they winter, back to Michigan, where they live. They brought some delicious shrimp that we cooked several different ways.

So far I am checking things off my spring break to do list. That always feels good. Am I weird that I put fun things on my list? I think I am a micromanager that way. I blame my dad and his crazy list making genes. I took the kids on a spur of the moment trip downtown on Monday. We picked Elijah up from school and went to McCords to get a real soda fountain coke and some candy. We ended up walking down to the pedestrian bridge and watching the trains go by. The kids had so much fun!!

Before I can even start this post I have to share this picture. Maybe it is getting old watching Emily do ridiculous things and kind of, um, laughing. You be the judge. She fell down at the state park on Saturday morning. Totally biffed out on the sidewalk. Yes, she cried. It was painful to be sure. I held her and wiped her tears and that part wasn't funny at all. But the next morning when she woke up and looked like Rudolph I just couldn't help but snicker.

Over the last two weeks we've had various people on Spring Break. This week it is my turn. We had exactly half of one school day of overlap so we decided to take advantage of it. Brian kept Elijah home from school and Friday afternoon I grabbed the girls from daycare and we all took off for the Indianapolis Zoo. We've only been with Elijah once and the girls have never been. We all had a blast! I think our favorite exhibits were the shark petting, the walruses, and then maybe the giraffes or tiger. We crashed at home on Friday night and I literally went to bed at 8:00, barely after the kids. But it was good because when I woke up Saturday morning my sore throat was gone and I didn't need to take ibuprofen to get through my day. We packed the van and grabbed the dog first thing. We got coffee at k dees and drove out to Prophetstown state park to walk the trails, play on the equipment and see the farm animals. Carter did really well with the other dogs there. It was pretty chilly here on Saturday morning. I was glad we wore our winter coats and we commented that having a dog is helping us to acheive goals that we have for our family every day. There is no way we would've journeyed out just for us if it were that chilly. However we had the.best.time.! When we got home it was only noon so we got to relax for the rest of the day. On the downside, Emily is sick again. I am taking her in tomorrow (I called too late to get an appointment today) because she is still full of snot and coughing again. Last weekend I took her to the pediatric clinic on Saturday with hives. The dr. told us to discontinue her anitbiotic that she got the weekend before and he didn't want her to take something different. I am not convinced that this isn't the same infection that didn't get cleared up because she didn't finish her medicine. Oh joy. At least I am home on Spring Break. And it might not be freezing today.

When you give your 4 year old the camera, here is the shot you get of a tiger.

A before school post

She saw me spinning my composter and wanted to give it a try too!


I don't normally post in the early morning hours, but I just had to share these pictures of Emily that I took yesterday as we enjoyed the beautiful spring day. She has never really been out in the yard walking around before. Last summer she was barely crawling and mostly just hung out on a blanket while we were outside. Plus I just bought her her first pair of hard soled shoes so she is tremendously enjoying toddling around doing the frankenstein walk.

I haven't been taking many pictures lately. I feel bad about it. I guess just not bad enough to take more pictures. Elijah had his final game of basketball on Saturday. I brought the camera, but then left it in the car. It seemed like too much work to climb down out of the bleachers and walk all the way out of the building and down the street to get it. So, we were the lame parents not taking pictures of their kid getting his trophy. I did, however, take pictures of my newly cleaned and organized book shelves. We have our living room blocked off with the entertainment center so that Carter can only go in the kitchen and dining room for another week, so I've been spending a lot of time in there. In fact, I really haven't even been in the living room in a week.

We finally went to the doctor this weekend. Brian was about on his death bed. He's been sick for 3 weeks now. The doctor gave him a z-pack and some medicine with codeine, so we haven't seen a whole lot of him this weekend. Mary and Emily are on antibiotics too. I started playing in my garden yesterday. At least getting some of the existing space dirt turned over. We're planning to expand some, but I was too tired to dig up grass. It's a lot harder than dirt.

I'm sure that this is way more than you wanted to know about me, but I'm telling anyway. I was about out of deoderant. So when I was at Target last night I bought some Tom's of Maine all natural deo without antipersperant (you know the stuff that keeps you dry). I've heard a lot of the negative press about the aluminim in antipersperant and I just thought, hey, I'll give it a try. It got me thinking though about smells. I am certainly one of those people who has what I call a "sensitive sniffer". I can smell things a mile away good or bad. But, back to the body odor issue. At what point in history did people decide that it was socially unacceptable to have a natural body scent? Why do we cover up what our bodies naturally smell like? In fact, if you think about all the different products we buy to cover scent, it's probably a little excessive. For instance, I have a scent tree in my car, a glade plug in in my kitchen, Yankee candles in just about every room in the house. We use scented soap, shampoo, perfume, laundry soap, dryer sheets, etc.
I noticed as I was reading the back of my old deoderant bottle that was "unscented" that it actually had a masking fragrance listed in the ingredients. That just seems strange to me.

Brian has been going dog crazy. He discovered the Monks of New Skete. Orthodox monks who train dogs. They even have a show on Animal Planet. WOW! He is already planning our trip to visit this summer. Which brings me to summer. It seems like we have an awful lot to accomplish. Trip out west, siding on the house, trip out east, walks to the farmers market, work in our garden, relaxing around the house, working in our classrooms...

Lazy Saturday

I never thought that a "lazy" Saturday would be getting up at 7:00. I actually woke up at 6:30--which sadly is about an hour and a half later than our usual wake up time these days, but Brian and I laid in bed and talked until the kids came in at 7:00. This is the first Saturday in a long time when I didn't take a shower as soon as I got up because I wouldn't have time otherwise. I made coffee, fed the girls, leisurely put away dishes and then...PLAYED WITH MY CHILDREN! Holy cow. It's been a while. Mary and I made block towers and Emily toddled around us and I read her books when she would plop down in my lap. It was so warm even this morning that Mary and I took a magazine out to the front porch and read for a while. Brian and Elijah took Carter on a long walk, so when they returned I took my shower. I am looking forward to going to the Seeger basketball sectional game tonight--without kids! We hired a sitter. We need to get out a bit. I even packed up all three kids and took them to hear The SmallTown Heroes play at a coffee shop last night. I think we've had so much going on that I've been under more stress than I thought. It felt good to be out of the house and not doing a task. So tonight should be great!

We were walking the dog yesterday around 4:30. Elijah says to me, "That way's west. Where the sun is setting. You know mom, when we go out west this summer, I bet we'll see the best sunsets." I then asked him if he was going to be a cowboy when we go out west. His reply: "We're gonna find some horses and daddy's gonna teach me how to ride." (I love how he thinks his daddy knows how to ride a horse!) I think they've been watching The Man From Snowy River too much.

Well, I guess that seals the deal. We're going out west.

Here are a couple pictures of Carter for those of you (and you know who you are!) who have been nagging me about seeing him :) We've had a pretty eventful weekend with him. I'll spare you the details, but it entails bowel movements. We've been walking him like crazy. He is such a good dog! We just love him already.