Mom update

Her status is pretty decent. She remains heavily sedated and on the ventilator. The ventilator settings are reduced to 40% and will go a bit lower before they start her "breathing challenges." The challenges consist (from my understanding) of essentially turning off the ventilator and seeing how she does breathing on her own. We've already been prepared that it will take several challenges before they are ready to remove the actual ventilator tube from her throat. Once the tube is out of her throat, they will stop the sedation and let her wake up. The challenges will take place either Friday or Saturday. Even if she does well with the tests, they are not planning on removing the vent until Monday at the earliest. They were able to isolate the exact bacteria that caused her sepsis (blood infection) and have been giving her antibiotics specifically to fight that off. She started out with 7 IV meds and is now down to 3--the sedative and 2 antibiotics. She continues to fight off the double pneumonia as well.

All are wonderful signs and we are just going to have to give her time to recover.

Say a little prayer for you!

For the readers that don't already know, my Mom has been very sick since Saturday when she was life flighted to Riverside. Current update on her is that she's staying stable and they are continuing to wean her from the ventilator as well as the 7 IV meds she's on for the double pneumonia, sepsis, and heart issues. If things continue to go well, eventually she will have the vent taken out and they will allow her to wake up again in the coming 2 or 3 days. We continue to pray for her recovery and would love it if you would, too.

I've had some people ask about getting cards and such to Mom. Feel free to send them to my house and I will get them to Dad to read to Mom when she wakes up. Leave a comment if you need my address and I'll email it to you.

As a funny side story, on Sunday night when it was looking grim, a huge chunk of my family was sitting in the waiting room (probably a dozen or more of us), I was looking around the room trying to think who was missing and if there were any other people we needed to call to be with us. My first thought: I forgot to call Mom! Mom's not here and she would want to be here for this. My next thought: Duh.

Can somebody please hand me the Lysol?

A photo from healthier days when we traveled to the Medina Ice Festival, drank hot chocolate, and looked at ice sculptures

No lie, we've all been so sick for the last couple weeks I don't even remember what it's like to take the kids to school for the entire week and for me to go to work each of my scheduled days. Let me see if I can break it down for you:

• Ella was sick at the beginning of last week with vomiting and a fever. She was over it in a day.
• Luke was sick at the end of last week with a fever, sore throat, vomiting, and headache which lasted through this week.
• Luke went to the doctor Weds who found nothing wrong that she could treat (she concluded it was all viral junk that he would just have to wait out).
• I got sick by Weds night with night sweats that Aron said were so bad he could hardly stand to sleep next to me despite my bossy demands for cuddle because I was freezing. I sent the kids to school/my Mom's (GOD BLESS YOU MOM) as appropriate and begged Aron to make an appointment for the doctor. I went at 4:45 (do you know how hard it is to wait until the last appointment of the day when you would rather spit out your saliva than make yourself swallow it??). She didn't bother swabbing my throat but told me I probably had strep or tonsilitis of some sort. Either way, the treatment is the same. I can't take penicillin so I got a z-pack (yay!).
• Ella got sick again by Friday morning and threw up at school. Luckily, I was still at home with my own sickness so I just popped over and got her. I had to have smelled bad and I'm not 100% sure my hair was brushed when I picked her up but I was so sick I just didn't care. Ella was over it by that night.
• Luke's mish-mosh of sickness was better by Saturday morning so he could go to his basketball game but then got much worse in the afternoon to the point he was crying because he said his neck hurt. Neck hurt?? MENINGITIS??
• Aron started to get sick with achiness and feeling yucky around the time Luke started feeling worse. Aron still took him to the Minute Clinic despite his own yuck where they figured out that Luke had an ear infection. Oh and Luke's now impossibly skinny because he's been sick for-ev-er and is down to 39.5# with clothes and shoes on (so he might be somewhere around 39 or maybe even 38.5 without all that on). I think he started out around 42.
• Aron could still possibly get sicker but we're waiting to see how that goes. He claims he has a stronger will than the rest of us but I think that's rubbish. He went to bed around 9 and I think I heard the whimpers of crying.

Soooo...long story short, 2 of the family are on antibiotics, 1 should be in the clear at this point having recovered or fought off all of the assorted sick yuckiness that is in our house, and 1 remains in limbo.

Yes, the Health Department will be removing the QUARANTINE sign and caution tape sometime in the next 24 hours or so.

The School of Luke

Luke: "Hey. Did you know that a half eagle, half lion is a Griffin?"

Me: "Um...........................yes?"

Luke: "Yeah, those are pretty cool."

Me: "Griffins...real or pretend?"

Luke: "Pre-tend, Mommy" with exasperated voice followed by "unless you had a doctor that could take half an eagle and half a lion and sew them together to make a Griffin. That would be awesome."

pause

pause

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Luke: "Hey Did you know that half horse, half man is a century?"

Me: "A century? Are you sure you don't mean Centaur?"

Luke: "No, it's a cen-tur-y, Mom." (a long, expanded pronunciation for the not-so-bright Mommy, I guess)

Me: "Whatever. Just don't try to make one in my basement someday with your friends, ok? Cause that's a law suit written aaaaaall over it and before you know it we're "those neighbors." Mommy enjoys a high social status so why don't you just hush up about all the Greek mythology and start talking about how farts are funny again. Thanks, sweetie."

(P.S. Don't worry...I stopped at talking to him in a voice he could hear after "whatever")

Sub-par blogger!

Sorry I've been out of the blogging world lately. Trying to prepare for showings on our house, cleaning, making phone calls, fixing little things that need fixed around the house, and all the other assorted tasks that go along with selling a house/buying a new one has taken up 95% of my time lately. The other 5% of my life has been taken up by work, sick kids (puking, sore throats, colds, and coughing for the last couple weeks), and trying to stay sane.

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On a related side note, I am now accepting applications for an intern/personal assistant. The pay is non-existent, may involve me crying at certain points, and has no benefits. Email me with your resumes but don't be crushed if you aren't selected as I have super high standards.

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I'll beg your forgiveness for the lack of substantive blogging and provide you a cute picture of the entry way of the new house.

Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky, Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same**

**The Weeds theme song lyrics are for Aron XOXO

Know anyone looking for a great house in my general area? We like it here a lot (which is why we're staying in the neighborhood) but just bought a bigger/better/more lovely house. I'm not too proud to display it here on the blog and ask you to buy it :)

Anything good on the ol' telly?

I'm so miffed at you right now Mommy that all I can do is hold my baby doll and think angry thoughts.

You see this guy? You're looking into the face of an addict.

I came to the realization a couple weeks ago that the kids were watching more TV than I would care for them to watch. They want to watch it when people come over (in lieu of hanging out with their friends). They want to watch it when they go to someone's house (again, instead of plaing with their friends). They want to watch it after school. After dinner. After lunch. After breakfast. Before school. Before dinner. Before lunch. Before breakfast. I was tired of them asking me CONSTANTLY if they could watch it. The minute we stepped in the door. The minute we stepped out of the door to go somewhere.

IT WAS DRIVING ME CRAZY! Until I realized who was in control. (psst! it's me)

Back when I was a kid, there was no 24 hour a day kids programming (ehem, you can also add in there that I walked uphill to school both ways in the snow with no shoes on. That one's for you, Dad). There are so many fun shows to watch and there's no shortage of great marketing of the shows with t-shirts, the pencils, the notebooks, posters, videos, games, Valentines, books, etc. There are so many 24 hour a day kid television stations that I'm sure I couldn't count them all...although, my mother probably could because she gets many more of them than I do.

Sooooooo, I told them they were going cold turkey. Luke is allowed to watch one hour which he chooses to include Wild Kratts and Cyber Chase. Ella is allowed to watch one hour which she chooses to include Cyber Chase and Arthur. Other than that, I don't want to hear a single request for TV. If they ask me for more than their hour, I take time away. Yes, there has been much crying, pleading, and gnashing of teeth. They're slowly learning to deal with their new reality however sucky and unfair they think it is.

For my own sanity, they're done. DONE I tell ya! If the kids come over to your house and want to watch TV, the answer is no. A firm no. I'll take the heat if you need me to.**


**The exception to this rule comes at Grammie's house. The theme at her place is "what happens at Grammie's, stays at Grammie's" just like when you go to Vegas. I realized long ago that I cannot make Grammie do anything , she watches my kids free gratis once a week, and you get what you pay for.

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Oh and BTW, I stumbled upon these pictures the other day while looking through some old picture folders. Ella's is from 2008 and Luke's is from 2009. Cuties, weren't they?

State Bill 5

There's been a lot of buzz lately about the state budget crisis and how best to handle it.
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Reduce the amount of power the state union has to bargain their salaries and benefits? Eliminate their ability to strike? (as a side note, I'm not really sure how eliminating their ability to strike helps the budget. If someone out there knows, I'd like to hear it.). Reduce their salaries across the board? Quit letting them live so high off the hog so to speak? Don't do anything and take funding away from other areas? Not so much into their retirement? Let the voters decide on the ballot?
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What do you all think? Vote!

This guy

He's got his own email account now. He's VERY excited about it. He wanted his address to be SuperLuke but it was already taken so he went with IamSuperLuke. Let me know if any of you want the rest of the address to send him a message and we haven't already given it to you.

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Ella still has her account, too. She had to stay home from school today because she was sick. I just checked my own email and found this was sent from her:

"daer mom theacks for all you did for me today.

love
ella"

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Is she the sweetest or what?

Ch-ch-changes

Sorry for the lack of blogging but we've been busy the last week.

We're in the process of buying a new house (yay!) and selling our current house (boo!).

Buying this new house has made me really want to decorate. I'm not normally much of a decorator but I find myself really liking the things from this etsy store, Old New Again. My current fave for the house in general is this item and for Ella is this one. They also have other script words that I think might be cute for a kitchen...like this...plus this ... plus "be merry" but it doesn't look like they make that one...at least not yet!

If only money grew on trees...le sigh.