Another Bug In The House

Luckily, not what you are thinking! So far, all signs of lice are gone, Wahoo!!! But Kurt is sick. Its weird because we still think maybe the Lice treatment made him sick somehow, he has some strange allergies and a touch of asthma. Last Monday after the initial "treatment" he was home sick on Tuesday feeling miserable and it crossed my mind that it was the lice stuff. Then this past Monday we treated again and sure enough on Tuesday he was pretty sick as well. He had been complaining on Monday but had been to a sleepover (loose on the "sleep") and was really tired, so when he was sick Tuesday I still wasn't sure what was up. Finally, yesterday when he was still down I thought I should take him to the doctor and the poor kid has strep! Can anyone say Mother of the Year?!!

Just hoping nobody else gets this bug - but... at least it doesn't crawl!

Recipe of Love

1 huge box of garbage bags
1 gallon of vinegar
2 jars of mayo
5 shower caps
4 large bottles of Nix shampoo - Nit combs included
4 cans of Nix upholstery spray
1 gallon of bleach
1 very brave, loving friend
1, maybe 2 chill pills! - more or less depending on your stress level

We have started new office hours at church, 10am-2pm - the awesome thing with that is that I am no longer responsible for answering the phones every day so I can get my hours in when its good for me. Instead of 5 days a week partial days, I can do 2-1/2 days in the office and 2-1/2 at home. I have decided to go in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and then pick up my 1/2 day on Fridays at some point through the day when it works out. I'm pretty excited about this because the every day was hard for me. If you know me at all, you know that the daily housework thing is just not my cup of tea, so I'm happy about the new arrangement.

Last Monday I was so excited to get the kids out the door - and Tim! I'm relaxing around here getting laundry going, picking up, making my plan for the week when I get it - the call from school saying I need to go pick up Emma . They tell me that over the weekend that had received a call from a parent saying their child had head lice so they had to check the whole class and Emma had them! I said, "Oh, thats just great, I've been itching for 3 days now!" The school nurse was kind enough to check me too and sure as anything - I had them too!!! They pulled Lindsey out of class and she had them as well. So, after some choice words and many words of wisdom from everyone in the office we left to go pick up Kurt - had to assume he and Tim had them too. We never did find any on the boys but we treated them anyway.

We pick up Kurt and much to my surprise, he's happy - excited even. He says, "This is so cool, I never got to have headlice before!" As we drive home I hear the girls telling Kurt all of the home remedies we have been told so far. Emma tells him we are all going to put mayonnaise on our heads and he just gets more and more happy about the whole thing - they all are! The more excited they get, the more mad I am. Then it happened, that small still voice that speaks to you when you sometimes don't want to hear it, tells me to chill out. There is nothing we can do now but press on and get the situation taken care of as efficiently as we can, and if they are in a good mood about it - whats it hurting??

So we plug away at bagging everything up, and start in with the treatments for the humans - luckily animals can't get it! Our steps so far have been to bag everything stuffed or made of material that I can't wash. We turned the water heater to high and I began washing. We got the Nix stuff at Walmart, actually the Walmart brand, its the same and it included the spray and comb. We sprayed beds and furniture, vacuumed beds and furniture and sprayed them again. We soaked our heads with the special shampoo, rinsed it and rinsed again with the vinegar and applied the mayo and a shower cap before combing through with the Nit comb. Not sure it was all necessary but it was everything I heard and read so we did it. Now 7 days later we have all shampooed again and I have washed sheets and sprayed beds and pillows one last time.

I gotta say the kids were awesome about the whole thing. Helped with everything and were very patient with me going through their hair. Not sure it was as much fun as they were thinking - at least they now know they don't want to have to do it all over again! I hope and pray we got them all. The girls were allowed back to school the next day after the nurse went through their hair, I wasn't so lucky - Tim sucks at Nit-picking. The shampoo kills everything but you still have to get them out. By the time I left school I had to let Tim know he had to come home and do it again, something he wasn't too happy with. I was not surprised, he had gone through Emma's the day before and I found more after him. He gladly came home... but I could not stop itching - to the point that I ended up shampooing again, something you apparently shouldn't do. Pretty much destroyed my scalp and - you guessed it, made it itchy!! I did not sleep at all that night and finally came to the conclusion (aka GOD!) that I would call my friend Amanda. She works at a Preschool and I didn't think she'd be too creeped out by helping me. She came over the next day and sure enough found a bunch more to come out. But I was so glad she did! Mentally I was loosing it. The good news is that she checked again yesterday and it looked good so now that we've all shampooed again today we should be out of the woods, right???

Ok, I'm done - you can stop itching now!

Relay For Life

Stacey, one of my best friends back home, works for the American Cancer Society and has always been passionate about the Relay For Life. She actually lost her dad to cancer this last year and that has not stopped her desire to help search for a cure for this crazy disease. She contacted me last week and asked if I'd be interested in making bracelets for her team to sell as a fund raiser. Each bead represents a different kind of cancer. I love the idea and went to town on it so I thought I'd share what we came up with and offer you a chance to pre-order one! They will be $20 and will come with a business card size list of what each color represents. They are 7 1/2 inches and on stretchy string, we can easily make them bigger or smaller if you want. You can contact her by email at stacey.dutton@cancer.org to place your order (you'll have to cut and paste it because I don't know how to link it). All of the proceeds go directly to the American Cancer Society/Relay For Life. This is just a test run so they may change somewhat from this design but you get the picture. If you'd like to pay by PayPal, let her know that too and we will set that up. Thanks everybody!

Purple – General, Thyroid, Pancreatic
Black – Melanoma
Teal – Ovarian
Orange – Leukemia
Gray – Brain
Periwinkle – Esophageal, Stomach
Green – Kidney
Brown – Colon
Pink – Breast
Light Blue – Prostate
Lime Green – Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
Peach – Endometrial
Orchid – Testicular, Gynecological
White – Bone, Lung
Gold – Childhood
Yellow – Bladder, Liver, Sarcoma

Happy Mother's Day

A few years ago I heard a speaker say that the average age of children when they move out of the house for good is 25... are you kidding me? She said that what we need to do as parents is start to train our kids with our language so they understand that, at some point, they need to leave. Like, "Today you are going to learn to cook a pizza... so when you graduate from high school - and move out - you'll know how to cook something." or, "Today you are going to learn to do laundry...so when you graduate from high school - and move out - you'll know how to do laundry!" and so on, and so on. So, I have started slowly incorporating some of these things into our daily routine. A few years ago when I broke my leg, all of the kids learned a lot of things like running the microwave, unloading the dishwasher, etc. But a couple of years ago for Christmas we decided it was time for Kurt to learn to do his laundry. It was awesome, I bought him a huge basket and filled it with laundry soap and laminated directions on what to do. He gloated for weeks with it being the biggest gift under the tree. Not exactly happy when he opened it up!

A couple of weeks go by and I go downstairs to put a load of clothes in the dryer only to find it screaming at me! And guess who had just done his laundry??? Days go by and Tim has no opportunity to check it out and finally caves and lets me call the repair guy. He walks in, takes the back off of the dryer only to find a pencil stuck in the back = $80. Poor kid did feel terrible and after threatening his life, has done pretty well all in all with the whole laundry thing. Until this week. I had hair day (another post for another day) on Tuesday and had asked Kurt to get some laundry going. Not sure what exactly happened after that but Tim came home and told me that apparently Kurt had tried to cram every piece of clothing he owns into the machine - hey, gotta commend him for trying to get it all done, right!? Well, it busted the piece in the machine that makes it spin and left all of the clothes dripping wet and the machine not working.

I guess the good news is that we needed to call the repair guy anyway as my oven crapped out last weekend too - in the middle of baking brownies no less! Good thing they were in a glass dish and I could zap them in the microwave! Needless to say, over $200 later we have our washing machine and oven working again. Lucky me. Did someone say "Happy Mother's Day"?

I'm Gonna What?

Last fall Tim and I stumbled across, "The Celebrity Apprentice" and ended up watching it almost all season off and on. We had our favorite actors, (mine had a normal tongue!) and I totally fell for Trace Adkins. I've been an on again, off again country music listener, more so since we've moved away; my mom is a huge fan and listening makes me feel closer to her sometimes and Lindsey likes it too now. Anyway, since we got to know Mr. Adkins I have started listening more again and on one of the last shows Trace sang his new song, "You're Gonna Miss This" and the first time I heard it I was all nostalgic and everything but since then I have had many days where I think, "Really? Are you Sure??" Everybody says to be careful or you'll blink and miss it all and sometimes I just want to sit in a dark corner and blink, blink blink!! Please let me miss just a little! And then the moments come, when you can almost see the light switch come on, when they do actually act like they know you in public, when they are actually all getting along, if even for a moment... Last weekend I had a great moment like that, I looked outside and saw my oldest 2 shooting baskets together - it was really awesome, until Kurt accidentally hit Emma in the head with the ball so Lindsey slapped him in the head and then he of course had to hit her back... and poof! it was gone. I'm Gonna Miss This? Whatever you say... I have a t-shirt that my friend gave me with funny sayings on the back of it that you never thought you would hear or say like, 'Dinosaurs don't belong in the toilet", "Please don't leave worms in your packet" or "Who took a bite out of my lipstick!" and my all time favorite, "You take care of you and we'll take care of them". Lately its been at my house things like, "Who put Tupperware down the laundry shoot?", "Why is there Grilled Cheese in your bed?" or the most expensive question of the week, "How much laundry did you put in the washing machine anyway?"

I know life is so busy for everybody and we are no exception to that. Sometimes too busy. And its the times when I see them playing outside together (even for a minute) or catch them talking to each other with a tone that does not sound like they hate each other, or receive a fistful of dandelions that I realize I will miss this time. And I'm glad that a simple song can make me stop and realize that for a minute. So, I want to "miss it" later when its all gone instead of wishing it away to fast by blinking too much!