Lots of pictures!

I finally have the yard just about finished. All I need now, is for the leaves of the bulbs that had bloomed in the early spring to fall off, and the flower gardens will be finished. Hopefully, the flowers won't get killed by the neighborhood cats that love to come use my garden as their litter box. We are borrowing a cat trap from Kristen, haven't caught one yet, but we will, then bye-bye kitty. Before the planting:

Just about to start.....you can see my little helpers, and they did help. They just about dug up the big, big bed while I was working under the trees...like their little shovel and rake? They were $3 each at Lowe's, I highly recommend them, the shovel actually digs well, and they were completely entertained the entire time I was working.

After:

Janae loves to do art. She drew a picture at school, and all the teachers voted on which pictures that they liked best from what all of the students had done. I'm sure that they did it by grade, but one of hers was picked. She was incredibly, incredibly excited, and it got put in the 1st Annual Frenship Art Festival which was held at the Civic Center yesterday.

She's my little artist, can draw and color all day, and is quite good at it. I am very proud of my little 9 year old girl. The sleepover was a success, thank goodness it's over, I was soooo tired, but they all seemed to enjoy themselves greatly, and that's the main point. I am wanting to go back to Clay Cafe again, I just had to supervise, I wasn't about to start some big project with 8 little girls, so somebody come be my friend and let's go paint! (And soon!!)

Pray for me.....

Today is Janae's 9th birthday. We are headed to CiCi's pizza, will meet all her little friends there for dinner, then go over to Clay Cafe, and after that, we're coming to our house for a sleepover. Need I say more? I think not......

hmmm....don't know about this.

Well. I'm attempting to make my blog cute like some of the other ones I've been seeing. Not so much. I got the background changed, but having trouble with the text and layout. May have to keep working on it.

Just as a note, we have an appointment for a second opinion for Hunter's ears. It's in a couple of weeks. We'll see what a different doctor says, if there isn't anything we can do, or if he has a brilliant solution. Will keep you updated.

And as for the two posts that are not really posts, they are from me trying to change up the blog. When I deleted them, the blog went right back to how it was, so I guess they will stay!

Hang on....

I have alot to talk about today, so hang on and try not to get lost. I can't get my blog to make paragraphs, so everything runs together, and I'm sure it gets confusing, sorry! First of all, I found out that yet another person was trying to leave a comment and couldn't. That makes several, so I went in and changed my "comment" section to allow the anonymous comments, I guess if you didn't register with blogger it wouldn't let you leave a comment. So, if you have tried and it wouldn't let you, just for kicks, try again. I'd like to know if that was the problem.

Thursday morning, I took Hunt to school, happened to glance at his right ear (didn't until he was in his class at his table, bad mommy), and he had dried yuckies on the inside of his ear and on his earlobe. I promptly forgot about it until I picked him up, and it was on his shirt by that time. We had to take Emily to the dentist, so I called the ENT, left a message and we went on to the dentist. Now remember that we had just been at the doctor's on Tuesday, and this is Thursday. SAME WEEK!!!!

Well, as I was sitting there in the dentist office, the doctor's office called back and said that it wasn't unusual for that to happen, it could have been the tube, put antibiotic eardrops in it. Thankfully I already had some from another time that he had a rupture. So, then it starts to rain. Then hail. And hail, and hail. It was coming down hard and fast and I was just sick. My car was out in the parking lot of course, and both of our other cars were sitting in our driveway at home, because our garage was packed with all of our garage sale junk. My car got pummeled. We were under a tornado warning, the wall cloud was just by the dentist office, probably about a mile away, we could see it out the front window. They quit seeing patients during the storm, so we sat and waited and waited. She finally got in and got seen, and the diagnosis: 7 cavities, and she needs a full set of braces. We now have dental insurance, thank goodness, last year we had to have 5 cavities filled and had to pay cash. That was about $800. This time it will be about $225. I can handle that. They will split it up, so I will pay about half each time. Without insurance it would have been over $1100. But....at this dentist, the braces are $4850, our insurance will only pay $1500, and they want the other $3300 up front. Whatever......that's not going to happen. I'm going to call the orthodonist that had previously done work on her and see if they still accept payments. We also have Janae coming up, and she's going to need orthodontic work as well, just not sure how much yet. So, after being at the dentist for 2 1/2 hours, I went out and saw my poor car. (I already called the insurance company, I'm going on Wednesday to have it checked out.) The good news is that both of our cars at home seem to be fine. We don't see any dents on them. The hail was just as bad at our house, we thought. So, onto Friday. Hunter's ear drained all night, was yucky in the morning, so I cleaned it out, cotton balled it, and sent him to school. It's not hurting, he's definately not contagious, so off he went. I got a call at 1 from the school nurse, who requested I come get him and take him to the doctor. It was draining so much that it was running through the cotton ball down his jaw. Sorry to be gross. His ear doctor doesn't work on Fridays, so we headed to the family doctor. Only waited about 10 minutes (yea!), and were diagnosed with a massive ear infection. It was draining through the hole that the tube, which had only fallen out a few days ago, had left. Thank goodness the hole hadn't closed up yet, otherwise, he would have ended up in massive pain with all that fluid pushing against his eardrum, and probably would have ruptured. (That's my diagnosis, the doc didn't say that.) So, now we are on oral and otic antibiotics, AGAIN, and wondering what in the world we are going to do with this poor boy. John is fed up with his ENT, thinks that he's not doing a good enough job, but I really don't know what else we can do. I feel that he's going to have to have another set of tubes, #3, probably very soon, but I don't want to put my son under anesthesia every 6 months to put tubes in his ears. I'm going to call the ENT tomorrow and see what he says, we may be going for a second opinion. We just don't know what to do anymore. We are afraid that he's going to end up with permanent hearing loss if we aren't extremely careful. This month was going to be a "trial period" without tubes and we are scheduled to go back in May, but we may not last that long. Please pray for wisdom for the doctor and for us. I like the doctor, but John never has, and I'm feeling very much like a go between, so to speak, trying to keep the peace when I get back from an appointment, but doing what's best for Hunter.

Ta-da!! The garage sale was a success, and our cars go back in the garage! We got rid of most everything that we were really wanting to, and made $400. We still have dresser that has been spoken for, just not paid for yet, and some exercise equipment and weights that we're going to put on Craigslist to try to get rid of. I would say that it went well, we had a great turnout, and I was impressed with everything that did get bought. The rest went straight to Goodwill, so except for those 3 things that we still have, I am officially finished with garage sale"ing" for a few years. Then I went and bought loads of flowers to fill up all our front flower beds with some of the profit. I'll start planting all of those tomorrow. I bought 6 flats, 24 flowers in each one. I'll be busy, and will post before and after pictures when I'm finished with that. I love to plant flowers every spring, one of my favorite times of the year. I'm sure that I have waaaay outdone what anyone wanted to read, but now you are all caught up on what's going on here....

Getting ready.......bit by bit

Okay, I somewhat mentioned in one of my previous posts about having a garage sale coming up. This is what my normal garage with 2 cars parked inside of it looks like as of tonight.....

Obviously, there is no room for the 2 cars right now. I have been through this entire house, and hubs helped me with the attic tonight, and this isn't even all of it!!! We have a dresser and a desk that is still in the bedroom, that I need to finish cleaning out. But that's okay, not like I have a place in the garage to put it right now!! (The dresser and desk) Now, I have to finish going through it, organize it, and price, all by Saturday. This is Wednesday night. I'm feeling the pressure. I have to work the next two days, so it may be a couple of late nights. I have 2 tables set up, just needing to be priced, so I think that it's not going to be as bad as it looks. Of course, the furniture takes up tons of room, and that will all go out into the driveway first thing Saturday morning. If anyone has anything that needs to go in, bring it by....I'll never know!!! tee, hee

Doctor Day

I just got back home from taking Hunter to the "ear doctor" and then on to school. Guess what??? After only 6 months, his tubes have already fallen out!! I'm still paying them off, for goodness sake!! He went to a clinic the end of February with ear pain, and that doctor said they were in, so I guess in the last 6 weeks they have fallen out. His left one is just lying in his ear, the doctor could see it. The right one, he wasn't sure, so we did a pressure test, and it's out. He thinks maybe it just fell out and is lying against the ear drum, because that ear's pressure didn't look good. It's either that, or he already has fluid back there. But Doc says he's optimistic, he was looking at Hunt and mentioned how "long and lean" he's getting/gotten, and that surely his ears canals are following along, and straightening out like they should. We go back in a month....he said we'll use this month as a trial to see if we get any infections. Hunter was delighted, no more ear plugs in the bathtub, I on the other hand, am not. Ah well....we'll just take it day by day and pray those ears into shape, literally!!

Happy Easter! (A day late)

We had an Easter Egg Hunt at church on Saturday morning. It was a brilliant plan by our Children's pastor. Have some light lunch, then go outside and let the kids loose to go hunt eggs. There was only one flaw......it was raining. Yes, raining, here in Lubbock TX, where it very seldom rains. There are certain days that you can count on it to rain, as in when you've just washed your car by hand after months and months of living with it dirty. Or, when you're making big church plans that need to be outside. And don't forget the wind...when it isn't raining, the wind is blowing 400 mph. My, my, my this spring has been seemingly windier (sp??) than most. I probably think that every year, but even during the middle of the night, I'm waking up because the wind sounds like it's going to blow our brick house clear across the county. Now, mind you, I'm not complaining, I actually would rather have the wind blow than to have it snow. As some of you know, I'm a little bit cold natured. And the rain is always welcomed by me, even if the plans have to be changed a bit. Anyway, I didn't intend to get into all of that, I just wanted to show off my beautiful/handsome children. Aren't you all just terribly impressed?? I also have to give a shout out to my friend Staci, who actually posted for this quarter on Saturday. Way to go Staci!! The blogging buddies have been falling down on their posting as of late. I hear that somebody has a new car, and I have yet to see pictures. Now, I am going to complain about the next 2 pictures......

Hunter's teacher is asking for a mother/child picture this week for a Mother's Day project. I had Janae take these two, hence mom not having the top of my head in the first one, but what is it with a 6 year old boy who absolutely cannot smile for a picture without it looking incredibly cheesy??? These are NOT going to work, we're going to have to keep trying. He's also started chewing on his shirt collar, can you tell? How do you break that habit, besides nagging him to death about it? Well, maybe IF I can get a decent picture to send to school, I will post it. I really need to quit facebooking and blogging and get my rear in gear for a garage sale that is supposed to be on Saturday. I still have to go through some of the house, find out about advertising in the paper, and start pricing. I may be up late on Thursday and Friday nights!!!

It's a girl!!

I'm having a little niece! How fun and exciting!! They just found out today, and the most important thing is, that she is healthy!

What a Gentleman!

I have to brag on my son today. I did for Janae last week, and now it's his turn. We've been out shopping and running errands yesterday and today, and my 6 year old boy is opening the car door for me each and every time we get in to leave. He is going straight to my door, before he tries to get in, just to let me in first. What a little man! I'm so proud, although it feels so odd, I've opened the door and put him in first his whole life, and now all of a sudden, he's starting to take care of me. I don't know why he's doing it, I haven't talked to him about it, but he's very conscious about it. I don't really want him to stop, but it's going to be a hard habit to break and get in while he's still outside the car. Such a little gentleman!