Defeat

Well, I almost made it. It has been 8 months (I think) since I have been on antibiotics or steroids, the longest ever. Today I admit defeat. I have been struggling with a cold off and on for weeks and this morning I woke up with the first signs of bronchitis. I gave in and went to the doc, most of my home remedies have been working well and I even managed to ward off the doc back in Dec. Today when I went in I was pleasantly surprised not to even have to plead my case. The doc took one look at me and listened and said here is my plan... two weeks of antibiotics and up my inhaler to a bronchodilator. This is good news for me... no prednisone! I hate prednisone it has horrible side effects and tastes gross. Now I am crossing my fingers and hoping it works. He did say if I get any worse then oral steroids, lets hope not. My plan is to rest and watch lots of crappy TV, this is just a plan and Kami hasn't yet figured out what a plan means. I still am pretty pleased, I was shooting for just three months of drug free life then I made it six. I was hoping for twelve, but eight is pretty close and very good for me. I have started using my nebs in the early stages of a cold and also my netti pot. The netti pot is the key for me and it helps with my allergies. Since Kami is still resting I am going to lay down for awhile.

Double weekend post

First I need to post pictures of my narcissus paperwhite. These are from the 15th, it has grown a couple of inches since then and it has bloomed from another pod.

I think it looks pretty good.

These picts are from last weekend. I have been waiting for George to send me his photos before I post, still haven't gotten them! This was our last weekend with Harriet she went back home to England last Friday. So, last Saturday we headed up to the cabin and had lunch and then headed for Yellowstone. I thought George should have taken her on a snow coach tour of the park, I guess you can't do everything in one trip. We did see the Imax movie of Yellowstone, very different than I thought it would be. The girls were mesmerized and Kami just kept saying "wow"it was so cute! We then went to the grizzly bears/wolf discovery center, imagine my surprise to find out they have LIVE animals! However, we got there an hour before it closed and feeding time for the wolves, that is something for the girls to see, not! George and Harriet went in and saw some neat stuff, I of course had my camera in the CAR. Those are the picts I am waiting for. These are from the gift shop. The girls had a ball climbing up on the giant bear while we waited for Harriet and George.

We found some really neat stores and spent some time shopping before we headed back to the cabin. We had to get some huckleberry jam for Harriet to try. We found the neatest little furniture(?) store, my new favorite store. They had the cutest candles, lamps, sconces, and everything else all locally made. It was a perfect day and the roads were great. I was quite surprised by the lack of snow, there was only a couple of feet. On the way home Ky got called to a search, luckily just lost snowmobilers and not an avalanche. Sunday we went to my fam's house and had dinner and played board games all night. I will miss Harriet she was very nice. Also, Ash gave her very first primary talk all by herself. She was so excited. I think she did awesome! I am still in shock my baby girl is in Senior primary! A big thanks to everyone who acknowledged her achievement.

These pictures are from yesterday. We finally got some snow and got snowed in. Unfortunately, there was a wedding reception at the barn so Ky spent most of the day keeping the driveway clear. We did enjoy some fun time outside. We both got in on the action with the girls.
He did hit his sled on the way down!
Kami looks so cute in his helmet!
Now we are back to the regular schedule. Ash had a three day weekend and we enjoyed having her home and sleeping in!

Election & Welfare

I stayed up late last night to catch the results of the Massachusetts senate election. They had a special election to fill Senator Kennedy's seat, a seat he held for 46 years. The democrats outnumber the republicans 3 to 1 in that state. However, they voted in a republican. This will put 41 republicans in the senate, enough to filibuster the health care reform bill. I don't normally follow other state's elections so close, but due to the power this held I stayed up. I was hoping the race would go the other way. See we are in favor of health care reform and especially the public option. For the last 4 years we have been paying for private health insurance out of pocket. I know how expensive it is, our premiums go up at least $150 a month every year. We have even upped our deductible but still pay enough to feed a small country. Also, I have asthma, which means if our insurance was to ever laps... good luck getting that covered ever again. So, yes we support health care reform. I would like to see a public option drive down the cost of private health insurance. I understand people not wanting it and I say to them, pay for your own private health insurance. I know people who don't currently pay for health care would have to pay, this is a sore topic with me. I feel if you can take extravagant vacations and have brand new vehicles sitting in your driveway you can more than afford to pay a monthly premium. I know a ton of people who do this and it is frustrating to see my tax dollars paying for their lavish vacations and lifestyles. We too could go on one or two even three extravagant trips a year if we were on medicaid. We could own brand new $45,000 vehicles if we didn't have to pay health insurance. However, we actually claim all our income and do not qualify for a free ride. We are still paying on Kaitlyn's appendectomy which cost over $5,000 for our share, plus our monthly premiums. Our health care is so messed up in this country. I have a sis-in-law who racks up hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in hospital visits, she also has thousands of dollars a month in prescriptions, yet she has to fight to get help from the government and she doesn't drive a brand new anything! She should qualify in a heartbeat. This is why I feel our health care needs a major overhaul, I think a public option is a good place to start. I am not so sure we would actually use the public option, it would take some serious research, but it would be nice to have the "option". I know people feel strongly about this but this is my opinion, we are all entitled to that.

On a side note I want to make sure I stress that we are grateful for what we have and we know that it could be worse. We could have a child with brain cancer down at Primary Childrens right now, but we don't. We do have a slow economy and finding constructions jobs right now is not the easiest thing to do. Right now with everything going on in congress it does affect us and we are hoping to catch a little bit of a "break".

George's Picts

These are George's pictures he sent me. These are the pictures of London. They visited some really neat cemeteries and Harriet lives a five minute walk from the ocean. They also went and visited the lake where King Arthur supposedly through Excalibur, no pict of that though.

This is from the airport on the way back to the USA.

These ones are from the barn. Kaitlyn was much happier for these ones!

I am still very jealous and want to go someday! He had fun!

Tea Time

We had another busy but fun weekend. Friday we went to the local bridal show. The cakes there were amazing. I even learned a few good tricks, Kyle was there for the food! It was so energetic and fun I wish I could plan another wedding! I guess I just need to wait like twenty years and I will get three!
Saturday we got up and had some fun in the morning.

It was such a nice day and we could FINALLY see the Tetons. We had some fun pulling the girls around and Kami loved it!

Saturday afternoon we hung out with these people.

Katie was extremely happy in this picture!
George's girlfriend Harriet is visiting from England. We went to the barn and had dinner and played some good games. Ashley enjoyed having everyone play sardines. George hid in the best spot, of course, under the bean bag and it took awhile for me to find him and then even longer for everyone else. We played a very heated game of Scattegories. And then I gave out some haircuts. We were down there pretty late on Saturday. Kyle also took everyone out on the snowmobiles. Since England doesn't get much snow Harriet had never even seen a snowmobile, she had a blast. Marianne and Amy (my cousin who is living with my parents going to college) had a ball too. We even got to visit with James before he headed back to Boise.

Sunday everyone stopped by on the way out for a short visit. Harriet had some presents from London for the girls.

Kami got a book and a stuffed rabbit.

Ash got some really neat finger puppets and a cool egg dish set.

Katie got this really cute music box and some hand painted wooden toys.
I think me and Ky scored pretty good with some chocolates, yummy.

The new foosball table was a big hit with everyone. We had a guy give us this table at one of the jobs Kyle was doing, we have had so much fun with it.
I really enjoyed visiting with Harriet and George. George spent Christmas and New Year's in England with Harriet, so we got to hear all about his visit and neat things he saw. I am so jealous and now really want to go. Harriet was super nice and very shy. She is so polite and proper, I hope we didn't all scare her away from us rude Americans! I am looking forward to spending more time with her next weekend before she heads back to England.

Craziness

When I checked my email this morning I found these pictures.

And Marianne said this one would be my fave. She has been wanting me to post a decent pic of her.

I think these are from our Christmas visit. Mar enjoyed dressing Kami up. She never had a little sis or bro to torture so Kami is her ginny pig!

This is what we did before Ash went back to school this week. I did flip poor Kaitlyn once though, good thing she is such a good sport!

I even let Ash drive, but NOT without some very close supervision and only on my sled, it is lighter than Ky's. She only tried to hit a tree once! She did really good and we had a ton of fun.

Kami has decided that she loves to listen to my MP3. She always steals my ear buds when I have them on. However, this presents a challenge when I am on the treadmill. She has the cutest personality!

Here is my Paperwhite Narcissus. It has really taken off in the past week. Ky said "it is because he has been watering it and I haven't touched it" this is probably true!

Here is one of my New Year's resolutions, to get rid of this rug!
I don't like this rug, maybe I would like it in our bedroom. I have NEVER like this rug. Ky picked it out and I thought maybe I would come around, NOPE! It is very soft so I think it could go in the bedroom, but not in the living room. Every time I see it I cringe, I just don't like it. I wanted to put carpet in the living room, more cozy, but we didn't want to cover up the hardwood. Our solution... a rug, but PLEASE not this one! So, we are going to get a piece of carpet and bind the edges and have a carpet-rug, a solution for all! I am hoping we can do this before the end of the year, basement first though!

It should probably be outlawed to do this to a child... no one should have to look like Cindy-Lou-Hoo EVER!

I attempted more photos of Kami. She has some cute dresses she got from Grandparents. I think I was successful this time!

Cindy look close she is wearing the red barrette you made for Kaitlyn, it looks so cute with the dress!
If you look real close you can see that her face is looking tons better! Kami had an appointment with the new doc last week and he gave me a really good suggestion. Vaseline has been working the best so far and he said "put lotion on first and then Vaseline, it will help hold in the lotion and moisture, 4 times a day". I think this is the most successful so far, hurray for a $2 jar of Vaseline! Her stats at that visit were 24Lbs (34%) and 34in. (90%). Who would have thought I would have kids that were so tall! The girls loved the new doc. I used to work with him when he was a resident, he was a good resident. He is a family practice doc, I have never been a big fan of family docs, but so far so good. He referred to Kami as a "very white peanut" I like it, that one might stick. I didn't time this visit very well and forgot Ash was out of school, so we had a three ring circus going on... great first impression! I did manage to snag a flu shot while we were there!
I still don't have my Christmas cards done, I honestly don't know if it is worth it at this point. I have got to start doing our taxes soon, Ky doesn't keep the best records so this could be a very long process.
Kami has taken all her clothes off again! I do dress my child, I promise! Sometimes life is just completely out of control, I am sure I will miss it someday!

A New Decade- 2010

We rang in the new year in style. Kyle was chaperoning a dance and I was at home, the little ones in bed. I did watch the traditional ball drop and enjoyed watching Daughtry sing. We had planned to drop the girls off at Grandma's for the night and I was going to be a wall flower with Ky, but due to the "big storm" moving in we didn't chance it. I did manage to find a bottle of Meiers sparkling Cold Duck- our fave, which we drank later. What a way to celebrate, not at all like I used to ring in the new year. I thought I would do a quick look back at 2009.

Things we would like to forget: biopsies, surgeries, stitches, dermatologist visits, vaccinations, H1N1, skunks, bats, pulling teeth, economy, cinder blocks, and turning 30!!

The good things we remember: canning, jam, fair, fair food, birthdays, diagnosis, fresh raspberries, our first garden, fireworks, cousins, air shows, graduations, 11th anniversary, sledding, snowmen, zoo, starting our own business, learning to swim, new bikes, riding on two wheels, museums, learning to read, making it through the last half of the year without steroids or bronchitis, and leaving the hospital with a healthy girl!

We have definitely had a roller coaster year. I am glad that there are a lot more good things than bad. We did have a good year though. We learned and grew from all our struggles and trials, and are still growing. 2009 was a good year, but I am hoping 2010 is even better! We have set our new year's resolutions and hope we can stick to them for awhile!