For Grandma Sarah

So Griffy has been seriously into trains in the past couple of weeks. I was thinking today that mom made this really awesome quilt for his baby bedding, but since I re-did his room in Cars I had taken it downstairs. Tonight I got it back out. It's so cute! Has train tracks on it and such. They had fun playing with it. I'm sure G will want to sleep with it- B is going to be irritated that he needs ANOTHER blanket in his crib, but this one is extra special! It's such super good quality and cute.

Mira has been throwing a fit ever since I got it out because she doesn't have one and I refuse to go get her crib blanket from downstairs because she already has about 25 blankets in her room/bed. It's starting to get irritating.....

Happy Birthday Daddy!

It was B's birthday weekend, but I had to work Fri, Sat, and Sun. Here is Mira playing outside on Saturday. Note the bandaid on the forehead and the sweatband. Whatever....

Fun sprinkler!
Here are some pics from B's birthday celebration dinner on Thursday night. Darin brought over some Toy Story cookies. Here is G counting the Woody Cookies!
B with his kiddos!!
Happy Birthday Daddy!! We love y0u!

Woody Boots!

Look what Griffy got at "Brama's" tonight!!!! Awesome!

Look closer!
And they light up! WOOT! I love this kid. He hasn't taken them off....
So cute siblings.
Mira got her teeth cleaned at the dentist for the first time today! She did FANTASTIC! She let them scrape, polish AND floss!!! YAY for Mira! Aren't they sparkly?!?!

I truly am sorry for the lack of updating. I blame it on facebook. When you update your life over there, it becomes difficult to do it in two places. I still have no pictures. I've been terrible about taking them!

This weekend Aunt Molly came back to help get things squared away with dad. Thursday we went straight to STJ to go through all the boxes in his apartment. We made piles for goodwill, piles for ourselves, a box for mom, and about 5 trash bags. Friday we headed back up there to clean. Grandma met us as well as Jared and Bob. Jared took quite a bit of stuff- the bedroom set, the guns, the fishing stuff, and an end table. We got mom's stuff home ourselves. The trip to goodwill was so easy! There'a store called the DAV (Disabled American Veterans) and you just pull up and they unload it for you! Awesome. It only took us about 2 hours to get everything out and cleaned up. We put the couch and chair out on the sidewalk and the neighbor picked it up in about 5 minutes. It was pretty funny. The apartment was terribly dirty, but I assume it hadn't been clean when he moved in since he only lived there MAYBE 6 weeks. Whatever, it's clean now, so we should get the deposit back and have a bit more money for some winter clothes for dad and gas for me.

After cleaning things out we went out to eat with Grandma, Jared and Melissa, and mom. There was a monsoon happening! Crazy rain. We stopped off to see dad for awhile on the way home.

Saturday we took the kids up to STJ to hang out for an hour or two with dad and Grandma Betty. I went and got ice cream for everyone at Culver's. The kids LOVE going to Grandma Betty's. She has a bunch of crayons and toys for them to play with and it's always a hit. It makes me happy that they like to go there.

Molly left for NC yesterday morning. The kids and I went to church and then to Lana's for lunch.

My dad looks terrible. Very much like an old man. He had stopped eating pretty much entirely before all this happened and was quite skinny. Since then he's eating normally and has gained weight, but he's also retaining fluid which makes him look horrible. His face is huge and his legs are always swollen. He's lost his hair on his legs and head which is weird in itself. He's so tired he can barely stand a 2 hour visit and can't always make it down to Grandma's by walking. It's really very interesting. It's hard to know if it's all basically caused by the disease process, or the treatment. Let's not forget to mention how he also destroyed many things on his body with alcohol. He starts another round of chemo today. I will take him tomorrow and he also has an appointment with the radiologist. I would like to see some scans of the cancer to see what's happening. Everything we read on melanoma says how fast it moves....well it's been nearly 2 months now. What are we looking at? It's so uncertain.

I don't feel stressed about it at all, but I apparently have an ulcer that seems to act up fairly often. It's nice. I'm probably not as organized as I need to be with everything, but I'm getting by. Sorry for the lack of pictures- bare with me. I'm sure I'll be regretful of these 2 months of forgetting my children's lives....oh well.

Short update.

Well, no pictures to post...sorry. Last Thursday I took the kids up to Saint Joe- we saw my dad and ate lunch with my grandma, cousin Jared and his wife Amanda. Then we went swimming at a childhood friend's parents' house. It was a blast! They had a slide and a diving board. Both of the kids did the slide! That night Mira mentioned in passing, "My ear hurts." I thought, ok sure, there's probably water in there. The same thing happened the next night after her being absolutely fine the entire day. "My ear hurts." The next night when B was brushing her teeth she started crying about how it hurt. Brooks finally says to me, "Aren't you going to do anything about it?" So I looked, and much to my surprise, pus was leaking out of her ear! AH! I had some antibiotic drops so I started those on Saturday night and decided to see what happened. Sunday it was more of the same- pus pus pus. ICK! After church I took her to the minute clinic at CVS. They told me that the drops were the right thing to do since she has tubes and isn't running a fever or really acting sick (her temp was 99). So we continued and sent her to school yesterday. Well, when B picked her up from school her temp was 101.5! Woops! I had to page Dr. M last night to give me some oral antibiotics. Her ear still looks terrible this morning, but hopefully we'll be on the mend. She is at Pepper's today so she can rest a bit more than at school. Crazy!

I don' t think much else has really been happening. This thursday Aunt Molly will be here. Mira is pretty excited. Molly and I will be cleaning out my dad's apartment. Should be fun job, eh? Good thing Dairy Queen is just down the road.

Griffy is doing fine. He still won't eat at school. I asked him what I was supposed to tell Dr. M when she's mad at me because he doesn't grow. I said, "Are you gonna tell her you won't eat?" He said, "Yes, I tell her. I no eat lunch." Nice. At least he's honest!

I've obviously been terrible about blogging. I don't feel like I have hardly any free time! I'm glad we made the most of June, because July and August seem to be passing unnoticed.

The kids are still doing well at school. Griffy even took a few bites yesterday! Today G is home with me until 12 and then he goes to Pepper's for lunch and a nap while I get my hair cut. I'm finally cutting it back off.

Not really much else to report here....just trying to make it...

Oceans and Boy Stuff

So this is just a pic of me....sorry you had to look at it.So we're regulars all of a sudden at Oceans of Fun! We've been 3 times in the last 2 weeks and plan to go at least once this week!!! It's so much fun!! There are 3 kids pools- this is one of them. I like it because I can lounge here.
Going down the tunnel slide which took a few trips to the park before she would try it out!
G loves the frog slide.
They like to go down this one together. G laughs and laughs.
Family pic! They also go down these really long slides, but we didn't get any pics of those. There's a pirate ship for them to play on too. SO MUCH for the kids to do!

Griffy discovered the drill today!! He's so good at it!
YAY!