Robby’s Head

Anyone who knows Robby,
knows that his head always has a bruise or some other mishap.
April 4th was no different.
It was quite funny how it happened!
He was swinging on the swing set, and said,
“Watch me, Mom!”
He decided it would be a good idea to try to swing upside-down.
Problem being, the swing is too low for you to do that without
your head scraping on the ground.
And that’s what happened.
He really didn’t expect that!  And, he wasn’t too happy.
His poor “fored-head”!
(He did think it was fun to get a picture of it, though.)

So….

We have this dead tree.
It was messy when it was alive,
and is messier now that it’s dead.
(And, I won’t mention how it died… We don’t speak of such things…)
Anyway, we’ve tried and tried to get someone to come take it down.
Problems being, it’s surrounded by high voltage power lines, phone lines, cable lines, etc.
And, it’s dead.
Nobody wants to tackle a dead tree, because it’s more dangerous.
The bark sluffs off, so no one can climb it to remove branches.
(It sure would have been handy if it would have thought of that before it died… :) )
Well, we could have gotten someone to take it down,
but they wanted $1200 to do it.
I guess you can say that we don’t have that much pocket change.
Go figure.
So, about a month ago, I was looking out our kitchen window,
which faces the side of the yard that this tree is on.
I noticed a CITY truck pull up, with “Trees, Inc.” written on the side,
and the driver looking at our beautiful eyesore.
(I was thinking, “Ahhh!”)
He got out of his truck and took a closer look.
(I was then thinking, “AHHH!”)
THEN HE STARTED TOWARD THE FRONT DOOR!
(By this time, I was calmly panicking.  I was SO worried that they’d make us take it down.)
So, I answered the door, against my better judgement.
What he said surprised me.
“So, you have a dead tree in your yard.”
(uh huh)
“It probably wasn’t you guys that killed it…”
(I didn’t respond to that.)
“It’s now become a hazard.”
(It’s been a hazard for 4 years now, but I kept that to myself.)
“When we come to trim the Maple trees, we need to cut this one down.”
(*GASP*)
 I told him that we’ve tried getting people to take it down, but no one wanted the job.
He said that they need the ground to either freeze, or completely dry out.
I told him, “Good luck with that. :)”
But, anyway, the city will be taking our tree down!  YAY!
Well, at least the top part of the tree.
They will chop it down to just below the power lines, which is the hardest part!
We can take the rest of it down, no problem.
We are SO excited.
They came two weeks ago to start on it.
Then it started to get really windy, which doesn’t work too well with a cherry picker.
So, they left. Leaving a huge pile of sticks.
And haven’t been back yet.
Still waiting for the ground to dry or freeze.
But, they have to finish before they can say that this block’s trees have been trimmed.
I will post a picture of when it is done.
Can’t wait!
:)

More Pages….

I love being able to go through all my pictures of my kids
and see the memories we’ve made.
I guess I fear that someday I will forget everything,
so I want to get it all on paper right now,
so I can look back and know how much this life
means to me now.
I love my kids….I love my family!

:(

This is a hard post for me…
Our sweet Thomas kitty was killed yesterday morning.
It was a freak accident.
He tried squeezing under the garage door as it was going down.
He was hidden from view, so he wasn’t seen.
I LOVED that cat!
He was the sweetest little guy.
So cuddly.
And he had the cutest curly belly fur!
(Some may think this is odd to be grieving over a cat.
It wouldn’t be the first time I was made fun of for it.
Please be kind in your thoughts….
Cats are pretty special to me.)
Boy, I miss him!

Pages!

So, in between taking care of sick kids last week,
I worked a bit here and there on pages.
It helps me keep my sanity…
what little is left anyway!
Enjoy!
(I guess I did some of these before they got sick…
I know I couldn’t do all these then!)

Chicks!

We got some chicks.
To add to our collection, I guess.
They got out, though, last night.
They were in a box in the bathtub.
They jumped out and had a lot of fun on the bathroom floor.
It wasn’t too fun for me to clean up, though.
So, we got a rabbit cage for them, until they can go outside.
Meet Laverne and Shirley
or maybe it’s Shirley and Laverne…
I can’t really tell!

They learned how to jump up on the side of their box,
which is how they got out last night.
They LOVE to perch.
Of course, they are a lot bigger today than in these pictures.
I took these pictures last week.
They sure are cute.  Right now.
And stinky.
I will take more pictures and post them later.
Right now I’m doing good posting these! :)

Five Months!

Every month goes by so fast!
I didn’t post last month, because I was waiting to get Mallie into the
doctor for her Well Child check-up, so I could post her stats.
Well, I just barely got her in last week.  Oops.
Her stats are as follows:
Weight~ 14 lbs. 15 1/2 oz. (57%)
Length~ 24 1/2 in. (34%)
Head~  17 in. (ahem… 91%)
So, she’s short, chunky, and has a big head.  And SO cute!

She’s so much fun!  She loves to hear her own voice,
and let everyone else hear it, too…
She LOVES to eat.  She eats a big bowl of cereal twice a day,
and still acts like she’s starving!
I feed her her cereal in her bouncer.
Well, she’s recently figured out how to bounce.
And she bounces HIGH!  If she wasn’t strapped in….
She bounces highest when she’s excited.  And food makes her excited!
So, as I’m trying to get the spoon to her mouth, she’s bouncing high and wild…
 some gets on her hand because she grabs the spoon,
some on her “fored-head” and eyebrows, and some goes up her nose,
(thank goodness for the battery-powered booger sucker!).
It’s quite the task to clean up after.
We are really enjoying our little Mallie!  She’s such a sweetie!  :o)

Hannah…. again

Hannah has had a tummy ache for a year now.
I was hoping it would go away.  It hasn’t.
So, now we have to figure out what it is.
We started with allergy testing.

That was fun.
We were worried that she would have a ton of allergies, like her mother.
We were also worried that she’d go into anaphylaxic shock, like I did when I was tested.
She didn’t.  Thank Heaven!
The problem, and blessing, is, she isn’t allergic to anything.
So, allergies aren’t causing her tummy pain.
Next we had her tested for Celiac.
All her symptoms point to it- brittle bones, bad teeth, weight loss, tummy pain,
short stature.  Then there’s a family history of it, too.
Blood work came back negative.
Which doesn’t really mean she doesn’t have it, though.
So, for some reason, her doctor wanted her tested for Mono.
Negative.
Go figure.  She has NO symptoms of it.
Tested her for H. Pylori.
Negative.
Now, we have to get her into a Pediatric Gastroenterologist.
Hopefully they can find what’s going on.
It’s so hard to have her in pain and not know what it is and not know how to help.
Hopefully we find out soon.  I will let you know…

Girls’ Room

I finally got around to painting the girls’ room.
The paint has only been sitting in their room for four months.
And since it wasn’t painting itself, (HOW RUDE!), I had to do it!  ;)
Here’s how it looks now~
I would have taken more views, but this side of the room was clean.
The other side isn’t!  ;)
I still need to make curtains and get more nicknacky things for it.
But, I like it so much better than the awful purple that was there before!