{ Woop Woop for 32!! }

Before I get into the birthday week I just had...here's some new photos I just downloaded! Enjoy!That's my Gab and my Luke Luke. Aren't they cute reading books together?
Lucas thought it was hilarious to cover his face and peek out the hole of the book every time I took a picture. He would just giggle away. Such a smart little one.
One of the many snowy days we have experienced here. Snow has been on the ground since Christams Eve. Seriously, people...I am so over this snow.

I love that Lucas is walking - it's so cute!!

Is that really a picture of ME?? I even look like I may have fit in a shower that day! Woop Woop for me!!
Love you Lucas!!
Little BFFs.
My kids are getting so big - hard to believe. 5, 4, almost 3 and 1. How did that happen??

Now time for some adult pics....first let me explain my b-day festivities...
I have been celebrating my 32nd birthday for quite a few days now...I LOVE, love, love birthdays. I don't care how old you are, how can you not enjoy your birthday? And I have the best friends and family who didn't even get annoyed with me mentioning here and there (ha) about it being my birthday. Shawn and I got to go out Friday night to a fancy dinner with his work so we even got to dress up and have a fancy meal free of charge - nice. Had a great time (and as always - thanks mom and dad for watching my wonderfully behaved children). Saturday morning I got to have a birthday breakfast with my mom and sister. The best gift of all was just to get to hang out with them - NOT in a hospital. Mom is doing so much better and we even got to go shopping for several hours on Saturday!! Man, have I missed that! Then, Saturday night I had a little b-day party with some friends - so so fun. I won't give too many details, but I did beat someone in boxing (michelle) and according to the Wii, Shawn is 58 years old. The good thing is that according to the wii I am 54 - so I guess Shawn and I really are a good match! Oh, I almost forgot - Friday morning (on my real b-day) Shawn had made and hung a banner that sad Happy Birday Stephanie! How cool is that? And no, that was not a typo - that's actually what the banner said, Shawn had a bit of a spelling issue with the sign, but it was the thought that counts. I love banners. I don't think I have had one made for me in over 20 years.

Here we are playing a little Mario Kart. And yes, that's what Jennie (far right) looks like when she is driving her mini van too.
This is wearing I was demolishing Michelle in a little boxing match.
Yes, Michelle knows - she just got knocked out...Thanks for all the b-day wished everyone!!
I think 32 is going to be a great year.
Bring it on 3-2. Show me what you got!

Time for an update

I decided I had better take time for a little update real quick. Things got pretty hectic last week so I never had a chance to post anything about our wonderful world here. Last week I got to help out a friend with her daycare - she had sick kids of her own so her daycare kiddos were sent my way. It made for a busy (and fun) week. I'm glad I'm here to help her and take the stress of it off her shoulders. Always feels nice to help out a friend. And of course, I had lots of help handed my way when I needed it last week too. Mom had to be back in the hospital for several days last week. She had surgery on Thursday - she had to get the implantation device taken out as her body was rejecting it. Shawn's parents came out on Wednesday night so I could spend the whole day at the hospital with her. So so kind of them - and it helps so much to know my kids are in good hands when I need to be away. Thanks Ed and Norma for helping me out! And thanks to my BFF, Kim, for watching my 2 littlest ones on Friday so I could spend some time at the hospital again. I have the best friends ever. And to all those that called and emailed to check on us and my mom - thank you so much, your prayers and kind thoughts are what get us through. Mom is doing great and is really looking forward to getting back to shopping sprees and playing with all her grandbabies. It's been a long road, but I really think she is doing well and things are looking up. As for me, I'm good. So glad mom is out of the hospital, glad my kids are all well, and actually a little excited that the kids don't have school the rest of the week. (I may not say that by the end of the week - we'll see). We have some fun things planned for the week - one of which is staying in our pjs and sleeping late - sure hope the kids got the memo on sleeping late (doubt it). We have 2 birthdays coming up - MINE on the 19th and Gabriella on the 28th. We are both in need of b-day parties - Gabriella has requested a Diego theme party and I think I'm going to go for a "wine" theme. Sound good? Yes. Lucas is doing great - asthma is back on track and he is being ornery as ever. He has a hilarious personality. Gabriella is definitely his keeper - she guards him with her life. She loves her Lucas. Austin has another tooth just hanging by a thread. He also started TaeKwanDo and loved it. He was so cute! Ashlyn is loving school these days and loves having play dates with her girlfriends. I can't wait to get to parent teacher conferences this week - should be an interesting day!
And now it's time for bed -

No umbrella...just a raincoat.

I think I can put my umbrella away, but I'm gonna go ahead and keep my raincoat on for a few more days...
We started our week out at the asthma doc Monday morning. Gabriella had been puking in her bed the last couple nights from not being able to stop coughing (don't worry - no stomach flu). I should sooo get mom of the year (or callie should... ha!). We just lay towels down under Gab when her asthma gets bad because we know she's going to puke and poor little Ashlyn just sleeps thru the whole ordeal. We have the lights on changing the beds, cleaning up puke and she just lays there sleeping with a bit of a scowl on her face (with good reason). Lucas's asthma was pretty bad over the weekend so after I took the kids to school Monday morning I just went straight to the asthma building. They are both being treated for asthma right now which means lots of breathing treatments and steroids - which make Gabriella a very fussy and hungry little girl. I will say Gab has stopped puking in her bed at night - woo hoo!! I'm sure no one is as happy as Ashlyn about that one. And Lucas is still trying to get over the coughing and wheezing. He's been on steroids since the peanut mess, but is still having to take them since he's wheezing so much. ugh. Luckily he doesn't puke every time he coughs - I couldn't handle two kids like that. As far as the peanuts go, we haven't had another outbreak (although not from lack of trying). Yesterday Ashlyn gave Lucas a fruit snack which I had told the kids he can't have because the package says it was packaged in a plant that has peanuts. Well, needless to say she gave him one which caused me to go into a frantic state and do A LOT of deep breathing so I would not throw Ashlyn out the window. I cleaned his mouth out best I could and then just watched him like a hawk to see what would happen. Luckily nothing happened so that was good. Right now we don't know how strong the allergy is or what exactly can make him go into shock so we are kind of playing the waiting game for now. He gets a blood test in a couple weeks to see about the peanut allergy and we'll go from there. I will say having the epi pen here yesterday when I didn't know if he was going to have a reaction made me feel a bit better. I knew giving that to him would allow me time to get him to the hospital if need be. Ok, so no more talk of that mess. Now we can talk about me. I went and had my shoulder checked today and ended up getting a cortizone shot in hopes that it will allow me to do some physical therapy and get it healed up on it's own. If my arm physically won't do the exercises then we know that it is not just a partial tear and I will have to have surgery. For now though, we are hoping for a partial tear and that I can get it back in working order without spending more money on it! Thanks to Dr. Punswick for listening to me and helping me find alternative ways to fix it rather than just sending me straight to MRI's and surgery. Hard to find good docs these days who really want to help you and not just do a quick fix. Dr. Punswick happens to be the husband of one of my girlfriends and he rocks (as does she). So if you need a good family doc I highly recommend him! We'll see how my arm does tonight - to me, that's the real test. I haven't slept in weeks because the pain constantly wakes me up so I am hoping this shot will get me some rest - here's to healing!!
Good news - Lucas is walking everywhere now! No more crawling unless absolutely necessary to get somewhere extra fast (or to get away from a sibling).
Today Gab hasn't coughed all day, Lucas is taking a nice long nap, Austin has a friend over to play and Ashlyn went over to a friends house to play. Sounds like a good day to me! Maybe I'll throw that raincoat away afterall.......

When it rains it pours - get an umbrella.

Alright, life is throwing all kinds of things at us lately. Or at least it seems that way. We have to buy new heat/AC unit, ugh. My mom has gone through so much - I wish I could take it all away and make her feel better. My ankle is all messed up so I have to limp around everywhere while it throbs and swells up like a balloon. My rotator cuff is most likely torn - grrrrr. And now I learned today that Lucas is allergic to peanuts. Yes, he had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. He ate one, maybe two bites and decided he did not like it and threw the rest on the ground. I noticed a little later that he had a little welt on his back, but figured it could be from anything - not worried. Then he took his nap and when he woke up he was super fussy. As I was trying to calm him down I noticed a couple welts on his neck...lifted his shirt to find the original welt - huge along with several others. At this point his breathing wasn't sounding too good (remember he's my asthma kid). So, I thought I better get him a breathing treatment - at this point he is screaming his brains out. So, I stop the treatment and call the asthma doc. I left a message for a nurse. Then noticed that now Lucas's armpits were fire red and covered in welts. And his back and stomach had gotten worse. So, I called back and talked to the receptionist who transferred me to the nurse. Eventually they figured out how much benadryl I could give him and told me to get in the car and get to the office asap. I gave lucas some benadryl - and now his whole face is turning red with welts and his eyes are red and messed up - scary! Grabbed ashlyn who was in pjs and snow boots, grabbed austin whom I didn't even look if he had shoes on and headed to the doctor. They had to give him an epi shot because his breathing was bad and the welts were horrible. And of course they told me he has a definite peanut allergy. I am to keep the epi shot with me at all times and really watch what he eats. ugh. I can do this. I can do this. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself. I guess I'm not worried about us giving him peanuts, it's what happens outside our house that is going to be scary for us. I guess we'll just take it one day at a time. Right now we are just suppose to keep a close eye on his breathing thru the night as he could have a secondary reaction. So scary - keep him (and us) in your prayers, we could use them right now.
On a happier note - Pulmicort went generic!! Ok, most of you don't know what that is, but that is the asthma medicine that we have to use as frequent as water here. We use to spend $120 on it and today it was $8!!! EIGHT DOLLARS!!!!!!!!! YIPEE!!!! So excited about that.
On another happy note Gabriella got to go to the farm with grandma and grandpa turner all by herself. She is spending the week there and she was SO excited. I love that she will get to have special time there without the other kids. I know she is having a blast - I hope she isn't wearing grandma and grandpa down too much!
I am going to attempt to relax now. Long week here and it's not even Thursday. Come on Friday - please get here soon.

AGAIN??

As I'm looking out my back window at the sea of snow, I am a bit befuddled (sp?) as to how it can possibly be SNOWING?? Really? Snowing again? How is that even possible? I'm thinking maybe the global warming fanatics have their terms confused. Oh well - snow day again here! I believe the temp right now is -2. Awesome!

Really, 2010? Really?

So far 2010 has proven to be a bit of a challenge.
We are back at our house now with a temporary motor in until we can get a new unit put in ($$$), which could take a couple weeks. It's so nice to be back home - we actually got to move back in Monday night - yipee! Thanks to mom and dad again for letting us bombard them. Now we are just hoping the motor hangs on as it is below zero here and crazy windy. We got another several inches of snow - it's crazy how much we have here.See the bike that is almost totally covered up?!?


As you can see there is a bit of snow in our backyard. It's almost as high as the chairs - and our picnic table for the kids is hard to even see - so crazy! I just wish the kids could go out and play in it. Unfortunately they can't since 1. I would probably lose a kid or two since the snow is so high and 2. they would all certainly get frostbite. School has been cancelled the last two days which must be because of the cold - not the streets since we were out and about yesterday when the kids should have been at school. School was cancelled the night before when it hadn't even snowed yet - totally takes the fun out of waking up in the morning to see if you have school or not, but oh well.
On to more interesting news...I was driving over to Michelle's house to play yesterday afternoon and guess what happens? I hit a bird - on the highway. First of all, what the heck is a bird doing here in sub-zero temps? Second, what the heck is it doing FLYING AT MY CAR?!?! It hit the passenger side window and tore it completely off. It happened so fast that it took me a second to figure out what happened. I am trying to stay positive about things here, but seriously, no heat and now I lose my mirror?? I hope we win the lottery next...$$$ - I have plenty I can spend it on at this point.
That's all for now...oh - just found out school is already cancelled for tomorrow too - yipee...I'm running out of things to do here people...although - I do enjoy staying in my pjs all day! (not that I actually do that - I'm just sayin')
Here's to stayin' warm!

{Just like Old Times}

Remember back when we lived with mom and dad for 6 months? Well, we're back. No, we didn't exactly "lose" our house - it just has no heat. Yes, you heard that right. We have no heat on the coldest days of winter. We still have a foot of snow outside covered with ice since it's been about 4 degrees out. New Years Eve around 4pm I started smelling something burning, or melting, I wasn't sure, but knew something wasn't right. If something smells funny in our house it's usually Lucas at this point - and it wasn't him. Luckily Shawn was home and eventually found that our heater had melted or the motor had or something of that nature - not fixable at this point. We have calls in to a couple heater guys, but still haven't heard back. We're assuming no one will show until monday at the very earliest. So, needless to say we had to pack up and move down the street. It could be worse I suppose - we are so lucky to have family so close, and family that doesn't mind an extra 6 people in their house (that are not quiet people by any means). It's been a huge pain, but oh well. Not exactly the way I wanted to bring in 2010. We did have an awesome New Years Eve though - we spent the night with the Punswicks and had a blast. The kids were awesome and all stayed up til 11 - our kids have never stayed up that late and they thought they were pretty cool. We hardly even saw the kids all night - they were so good. Thanks for hosting a great night guys! Anyway - I'm off to crawl back in my old bed.
Hope you all had a great first day of the year!! I'm hoping tomorrow goes a bit better...

I'm out -