What we've been up to:

Teething - She finally got her first tooth on the 25th of September
First bath together!
Seriously...this was a huge hit with both of them. They both equally laughed, splashed, giggled and delighted their mom's heart!
We already had the boots and hat and now we've got a fireman raincoat!! He is thrilled and he rescued lots of imaginary people in the backyard today!

McKenna splashing in the tub!!

You've gotta watch this one! This is McKenna talking about her daddy. She's sitting up on her own, therefore a little wobbly. Hopefully it doesn't make you sick to watch it! She is just so darn cute I can hardly stand it!

Just a little ER visit

So for the first time in my entire life I made a trip to the emergency room this morning!! As you already know, we've all been sick around here. I was at the doctor on Thursday and I have bronchitis. I've had a million times, it just comes with the territory of being a teacher and now being a mom. Most of the time I bounce right back, most of the time I would hardly miss a day of work because of it. But this time has been different. For five days now I've felt like I can't breathe. I would carry McKenna upstairs to change her diaper and I literally couldn't get my breath. I felt like I was hyperventilating every time I tried to do anything. Of course, Ryan is out of town for a week which definitely doesn't help anything. I really feel fine except for the fact that I'm tired (nothing new) and I can't breathe. And it's the kind of SCARY-can't-breath-feeling that put me in the hospital this morning. I woke up at about 5am and could not get my breath. I thought I was going to pass out right then and there. I think I panicked a little because I just could not get my breath. I was hot and sweaty and breathing rapidly. So I called my dear sister and she woke her sleeping children and brought them to my house. I drove myself to the hospital, taking shallow little breaths the whole way. Apparently, no one else in Franklin County Pa was having an emergency this morning (literally there was no one in the ER waiting area), so I was seen immediately.
They put that little monitor on my finger that checks oxygenation levels, and I wasn't doing too good. The respiratory specialist came in and gave me a breathing treatment with a steroid in it and within two minutes I was starting to feel better. Then I got a nice steroid shot in the rear and started to feel even better. I've never had steroids before, but I must say, they're pretty good!! I had a chest x-ray that showed that I did not have pneumonia. At this point I was feeling like I wouldn't die after all (seriously, that thought had crossed my mind around 5am).
The diagnosis: Asthma. Remember how my doctor told me back in August that I had asthma and they gave me an inhaler. I really didn't take it too seriously. I mean, who gets asthma when they're thirty years old? Apparently I do, and it's pretty serious. This morning I had an asthma attack. An asthma attack is the episode in which bands of muscle surrounding the airways are triggered to tighten. This tightening is called bronchospasm. During the attack, the lining of the airways becomes swollen or inflamed and the cells lining the airways produce more and thicker mucus than normal (can you tell I just copied that last sentence from WebMD?).
So I got a nice pep talk from the attending physician about how you can die from asthma attacks and they have to be taken seriously and managed correctly. And after three hours I came home with 2 inhalers (one of which cost me over a hundred dollars - good grief), some oral steroids and an antibiotic. Right now I feel all jittery because the only medicine I'm used to taking on a daily basis is a multi-vitamin. I think my body's in shock right now.
On a side note, I must say that my husband works for a great company. He's supposed to speak at a meeting in a couple of days and then he's going to MC another day of meetings. It's a big deal, an important meeting. And as soon as I told him I was heading to the hospital his boss told him to come home. I felt quite silly about this because millions of people have asthma, my husband shouldn't have to rush home because I have an asthma attack. So I told him to stay and do his job. But it was nice that they let him put his family first, even when it would have been a huge deal for him to leave. Lots of other people would have had to scramble to try to cover for him and it would have been stressful for them. But it's nice to know that our family's best interests are important to Ryan's company!
McKenna's sleeping and Christian's watching TV, so I'm going to take a little nap! Well, at least I'm going to try :)

Gift Ideas

One of the other blogs I read had a post asking readers to comment about their favorite toys in their house and I've decided to be a copy cat and do a similar post. Abby and Nate have birthdays coming up in October and then there's Christmas. What we don't need is more toys that get dumped out of the toy box, played with for 10 min. and then forgotten. I really want to be purposeful in how I spend my money this holiday season. So what I want you to do is leave a comment telling me what toys actually get played with in your house. What are the favorites that you couldn't live without. And don't say Polly Pockets or Thomas trains....you know we already have tons of those (and they are great). Okay, if the only thing you can think of is Thomas trains than go ahead and say it. I truly could do an entire post about how much we love our Thomas trains, but I'm also going to introduce you to something ((hopefully) that is new to you!

This is a zip bin!

This is the farm one and Christian keeps all of his tractors, farm equipment, farm animals and even a few tractor books in it.
You unzip it and it becomes an adorable playmat.
It's colorful and gets his imagination going.
I must tell you: I love zip bins!!! We have a farm one, a car one and one for blocks (don't buy the block one, it's not that great). You can see all the different kinds of zip bins at www.zipbin.com You can't buy them at that website. I've gotten all of mine on ebay (If you look them up on ebay make sure you search for zipbin as one word and zip bin as two words). I've given the castle one as a gift several times with My Little Pony stuff inside!! These make great presents because it keeps a certain category of toys organized (are you picking up on the fact that I LOVE to be organized??) and it's portable (I can't tell you how many places this thing has been. I just counted; it's been in six different states). My favorite thing about zip bins is you can put them away for a week or two and then when you get them out again there is renewed interest in them. They've started making mini zipbins. I wouldn't buy them, they're too small. They have a dinosaur one that I know Christian would love. So check out their website and let me know if you end up buying one!

Back to the most important part of this post: Please leave me a comment and give me some gift ideas. And remember I have a few three year old boys to shop for, as well as a baby, an almost eight year old, several four year old girls, an almost five year old girl, a three year old girl....I could keep going!

Thanks for helping me!

Something New

Check out this new blog that I've been working on. It's for our playgroup at church. My sweet friends Millicent, Heidi and I started it four years ago as a way for moms in our community to connect and it's been such a blessing in my life. We've got some wonderful moms, Kristi and Candi, in charge of it this year and they are full of energy and creativity. I just created the blog because as you guys already know, I love blogging!! So if you're a mom in the Franklin County area, I hope you'll come out on Thursday morning to join us! Everyone is welcome!

Just waiting for tomorrow to come

Coughing, sneezing, throwing up, very long naps, fevers, noses running....that's what we've been up to today in case you wanted to know. I'm very annoyed with our doctor's office. We can never get an appointment. They're always booked. Grrr...11:30am on Saturday is the best they could do. Daddy's leaving tomorrow to be out of town for awhile. I don't even know how long. Overall, we're all just pretty depressed and miserable. So I keep telling myself that this could be much, much worse and it won't last forever. That's all for now! Hopefully I'll have something a little more cheerful to say tomorrow! Oh yeah, and a big thanks to Nate who got us all started with this. And by all of us I do mean; Emma, Abby, Nate, Amy, Christian, McKenna, Uncle Ryan and me!!

Goodbye Summer

We'll miss you!

But, we have some great memories of friends and family and lots of adventures!

Strawberry picking
Blueberry picking
Outside with no coats
Wading
Flowers
Special trips
Parades
The beach
Playing in the sand
Cousins

Grandmom
Swimming
Family time
The infamous zip line
Daddy time

Fireworks season (and it wasn't that bad)
Tree climbing
Birthdays
Grampy
Becoming friends

Growing up
Laughter
Water on a hot day
Yummy food
Fireworks

Stay tuned for all our fun fall adventures. Apples, pumpkins, hay rides and more...here we come!

These two...

fill my heart and days with indescribable joy!

2.5 Hours

In two and a half hours this morning I was able to:
1. Go to the bank
2. Get a haircut
3. Have a doctor's appointment
4. Get everything I needed at CVS
5. Go to the post office (Jamie, that means your pocket is finally in the mail)!!
6. Vacuum my car

It was a great feeling to be so productive and the only reason that I was successful was because my mom had all the kids!! She came out because I had a an appointment that I couldn't take any children to and instead of shipping them all off to someone else, she came to help! What a glorious morning! Now I'm off to clean my carpets!! I love days like this!

Soccer Girl

We all went to Emma's soccer game this past Saturday! She does a great job of keeping her eye on the ball and paying attention to what's going on.
She's not too agressive, but the whole idea of being aggressive is new to her, so she's getting better about going after the ball (instead of just waiting for it to come to her).
This is about how she looks the whole time. Hot, sweaty and ready for a break!
There was another soccer game going on during Emmas.
Aren't they the cutest! I can't wait to see them playing for real on the same team one day!

Bathroom Make-over

As promised, this is my little bathroom make-over that I did two weeks ago. For those of you who have been to my house, this used to be the "monkey bathroom." You know, the kid's bathroom with the jungle theme. I'm not quite sure what we're going to call it now, but the monkeys are now in the master bathroom and this one just looks pretty now. I basically changed all the "jewlery" of the room. Shower curtain (I bought 5 different ones, just trying to find the perfect one...don't worry I returned the other four), light fixture (my proudest moment! it only took me 10 min. to rewire it), mirror (the previous mirror was just a piece of mirror glued to the wall...time for a change), pictures, towels, rugs, etc.

I love doing stuff like this, but I've promised Ryan that this will be it for awhile!

Bone Marrow Donor Update

As you read in our previous post, Ryan is a possible bone marrow donor for someone that we don't know. He has done everything that he needs to do at this point (medical history & blood donation) and now we're just waiting to find out if he's the best match or not. This wait could be quite extended. What we do know is that this person in need of a donor is very sick. They may not survive to even need a donor at this point. We also know that there are very few possible matches for this person. They won't tell us an exact number, but we know that it's around three. We will only have two weeks notice if Ryan is asked to be a bone marrow donor. It could be sometime in February before we hear anything at all. So we've kind-of put it all out of our minds for right now. We're just praying that this person will survive and that they will find a donor! And we're praying for God's will to be accomplished in Ryan's life, whatever that may be! So that's the update for now. We'll let you know the conclusion to all of this whenever it happens!

Our Mastercard Moment

Very cute Thomas the Tank Engine desk at a yard sale - $10.00

Little boy who loves his desk and can't wait for Emma to get home to be his teacher - PRICELESS!

McKenna's Room

I took a few pictures of McKenna's room last night for her scrapbook (that I'm just getting started) and I can't remember if I've ever showed you guys her room, so here it is. I think it's cute and cozy, although not quite what I would do if I had started from scratch. The yellow paint color is what was already on the walls and since I was super pregnant I didn't really feel like re-painting. So we left it and found stuff to match it. I'm sure I'll change it all around one of these days (I hope Ryan isn't reading this). I love to paint and give things a face lift. I just finished re-doing our bathroom last week. I'll have to post some pictures of that soon!