Abby's surgery

Abby's surgery went as well as a surgery can go I guess. We got there Monday at noon and it was so nice because we were already registered and ready to go. We just went straight back to the pre-op rooms. There all her vital signs were taken, we got our bracelets, they asked me about a zillion health questions and during all this they had brought her a tub of Littlest Pet Shop toys to play with and also put Sleeping Beauty on for her to watch (that's her favorite movie!). That's why I really wanted to have her surgery at Children's, they know how to keep the kids happy! We spent almost 3 hours there. Abby's Grammy came and sat with us for a while in there, then she sat with Noah in the waiting room. The waiting rooms are nice too. They have video games, t.v's, ride-on cars, a big playhouse, lots of stuff to keep those waiting happy as well. We also brought his GameBoy and Grammy brought a giant coloring book for him. He was really a good boy! When it was time to go to the OR, Steve and I walked with her. Each OR has a seperate little room to give them the anesthesia and we're allowed to stay with her there until she goes to sleep. This was probably the hardest part for me, just thinking about it breaks me up again. She had picked her "sleepy air" to be grape scented and she was fine until it came for the actual time to put it on her face. She said she didn't want to and then (boy are they good) the nurses and the anesthesia doc started asking her questions and it it turned to questions about Sleeping Beauty. I don't think she even realized she had the mask on, she was just busy answering their questions. Well after about the 5th question, she couldn't think of the answers anymore and then a minute later she was asleep. I did not enjoy for one second watching her go to sleep, it just really bothered me. When we walked into that room, I was really upset inside just knowing what was about to happen, but I couldn't let her see how bothered I was. But as soon as she fell asleep, we gave her a kiss, and walked out of the room, my emotions got the best of me! I felt better while we waited and I got to hold my boy, I think he could tell I was upset, he was being so sweet! It only took 20 minutes from the time we left the room until we saw the Dr in the the briefing room to tell us how it went. She said everyone was amazed at how large her tonsils and adenoids were! Who knew that would be our daughter's claim to fame!! Well about another 20 minutes later, we were called back to the recovery room and I got to hold her in the rocker as she woke up. She was such a trooper. When she first woke up, she asked for a drink and said "Daddy said I have to drink". That's like the thing they say probably a million times while you're there. She has to drink, has to drink, has to drink! She was still pretty out of it when they took us to her room for the night. My parents had arrived by then and all her grandparents greeted her when we got to the room. She was happy to see them all. She slept most of the evening only waking for 20 minute intervals. She woke up once and wanted to eat macaroni and cheese, so we ordered it for her, she ate it and then vomited it up! Apparently the anesthesia can make you very nauseated, she ended up vomiting one other time but then was much more settled. After the grandparents all left, we had one more visitore. It was MaryJane, the head of the children's department at our church. We hadn't really mentioned the surgery to anyone at the church, but had added it to the prayer list and she saw it there, called us to see what was going on and then surprised us with a visit. It was so nice. Abby felt special when she came. MaryJane is such a teriffic lady, I'm glad to know her and be able to call her part of my church family. Well after her visit, Steve went down the food court and got us some dinner, we ate together (Abby was sleeping!) and then Steve and Noah went home. I spent what turned out to be a very long night with her there in that room. I tried to stay up as late as I could because my sleeping options weren't really good and I knew that if I was really tired, I would't care how comfortable I was! Well that only worked a little bit, because not only could I not find a place to really rest, it was absolutely freezing in there, Abby had the blankets and everything so she was good, but I was soooo cold, and everytime I got my eyes closed, the alarms on the machines monitoring her heartbeat, respirations, and pulse ox level would go off from not getting a good reading. It continually happened all night. It was very frustrating. It was also a little difficult getting her pain medicine in a timely manner. Luckily the nurse we had from like 2 to 7 am, kept her well medicated, she was the best, the others seemed to busy to get in there on time. I walked out at 8:15am to tell them she was 45 minutes past due and it took them until 9:30 to give her the medicine. Luckily she fell back asleep and didn't feel the pain too much, but when they came to give her the medicine, she was in alot of pain and very grumpy about being woken up. She also was very tired of the i.v. and other tubes attached to her. They said they would take them off then because we were being discharged anyway. She had a lot of pain in the hand from the i.v on top of the throat pain until the medicine kicked in. She cried nonstop until it soothed her. It took about 30 minutes to feel better and then we were able to get things in order, sign the papers and leave. So we're home now, thank goodness! We've both had two naps, ate some food and when she's doped up she's very pleasant and sweet, eats and drinks well, but when the medicine is wearing off, she's in a lot of pain and pretty upset about it. Hopefully a few days from now, she'll be much better. She's such a special girl, I have not enjoyed this process at all, but I am so thankful I was able to be there to comfort her and give her all the support she needed. I love her so much! Here's some pics, yes I took pics! I wish I had pics when I got my tonsils out to show her, it might've made her feel better! So here's a few!



Just about an hour after the surgery, she was very sleepy!




Before the surgery, the nurse let her listen to her heart!




The always beeping monitoring machine!




Relaxing with Noah by her side about 3 hours post op.




We're going home yay!!




"See Mom, I do drink my juice!"

Well, I'm going off the air with the blog for awhile, it's just not doing it for me anymore. I dread having to post because it takes so much time and then I feel guilty for sitting there so long on the darn computer. There's just so much to do anymore and so much I want to do, that I think I'll just call it off for awhile. Maybe when everything settles down after our Disney trip, I'll pick it back up. I have school starting in three weeks, Abby's surgery in three weeks, Abby's Birthday in 8 weeks, Disney in 7 weeks, lots of house projects to finish before Abby's party especially landscaping outside, I'm still lesson planning, trying to plan out field trips, etc..for school, Riley turns one this month, we're going to Gatlinburg for Labor Day weekend 4 weeks away), lots of Big Brother, HGTV design star to watch, plus I'd like to take the kids to do some fun stuff before summer's over. It's just a lot on my plate right now and everyday I feel a nagging pull to get on here, check everyones, write a comment and post myself. I just need to get away for awhile, so I can not have it hanging over my head and who knows, I may really miss it and come back sooner! Well have a great summer, here's some pics from our trip to the butterfly show at the krohn conservatory! Love ya all!

The classroom

This is the before, when it was Steve's office. His desk was to the left of this photo, he was sitting there, alas not in the pic. The dog's cage resided in that room and now has been worked into my scrapbook room. I had to completely refigure the scrapbook room to fit it in, but it all works well together now.



This is the desk area. I took an temporary door we used during our build and painted it out and it's now the desk, I attached it to the wall in the back and on the right with pieces of wood screwed into studs and then I attached the door to the wood with screws going through it. Yes, I did all this by myself while Steve was downstairs working!! I get so motivated from all the design shows!! I used a storage shelving unit that we already had, to be the third leg, I put baskets in the shelves that we had and use those for my own stuff. The three clear drawers were in the scrapbook room, I bought the big maps at $5 each, I made their titles using the printer and laminator, I bought the alphabet (there's a regular one on another wall) at Dollar Tree for you guessed it $1, I got lots of the plastic pencil boxes for .50 at Meijer, the white board I got for $6 and it's magnetic which I thought was cool, the chairs were upstairs and we brought down the kids computer. I think it turned out pretty well, each kid has lots of room to work on that big desk!



This is the room from the door. You can see the kids playing v-smile on their new tv/dvd combo. That was the only big purchase for the room. We reused the book case in there, I attached it to the wall though, it wasn't previously. You can see here that the clue was polka dots, I used that as sort of a decorating theme for the room. I painted dots around the room in colors we already had, brown and bright blue from the kids bathroom, navy from the theatre and I kept the orginal green in the room. I used navy curtains that we already had and painted dots on them as well and hung them with Mickey curtain rods that we hadn't used since we lived in Texas. The green ottoman used to be in front of the chair in the room, but I moved it by the window to clear up some floor space. I took one of the back pillows from the chair, rolled it up and pinned it so it became a sort of arm rest/ pillow for the ottoman. Beside it is another set of clear plastic drawers that were in the scrapbook room and an old globe we got at Steve's Mom's house.



This is our KONOS timeline wall over the reading chair. We will get to put all different characters in history on the timeline so we can visually see where they relate to each other. The center is the cross representing Christ's Birth. After I took this pic, I put pictures of the kids up Noah right at 2000 and Abby just a smidgen beside it! Then I showed them where people they knew would fall on the timeline and already they are enjoying it. To the left of the chair is an Ohio map that I got free from ODOT. I took star stickers and put on all three maps where we are located, the kids liked seeing that too and how close or far away certain things are.




This is just a close up of the desk area and you can see my exstensive collection of flash cards. I got those at Target in the dollar bins (thanks for the tip Crystal!!) They had them for not only Math and Phonics things, but presidents, insects, animals, states, etc...I thought they would be fun activities to do while I needed to work one on one with the kids.




This is what will be music corner, it's not complete yet. One of the drawers will be filled with all kinds of little instruments and I plan to have the radio/cd player there with headphones, so the kids can listen to music or books on cd, plus we'll sing and dance and play instruments together. That should be fun!





These are my three flags, that I rested in sand up on top of the bookshelf. I didn't think any class was complete without them!


So, that's pretty much it. I still have a few small things to do, but the hard part is done. I have found some really cool things like Math, Colors, Letters, Shapes Bingo for a dollar each, I had tons of supplies like glue sticks, markers, crayons, paper, pencils, etc..that I bought previous years during the big back to school sales, so that was fun to unpack and put away. I also got some cool math things, like clocks, play money, counting animals, calculators, etc..in the dollar bins, they have been great this year! So other than the t.v. I spent very minimally and think I achieved a pretty fun room. The kids love it and have been in there every day since it was finished! Hope you like it!!

Abby's t-ball game

We missed Abby's first game which was last week, so this was her first. She played first, second and third base and got three hits (all the kids did!!), and we had a really fun time.

A high flying Sunday

We went to the last launch of the hot air balloons at the Ohio Challenge in Middletown. We chose to not go until late because we had been out and about all afternoon and wanted to relax a few hours before we went. So we arrived about 10 til 7 and the balloons were scheduled to go up at 7, but there was some wind issues and they didn't go up until about 7:30. We were able to sit very close even being so close to the scheduled launch time and we got really good views of the balloons filling up and taking off. It was really a cool experience. Noah wanted to stay home and play the new WII we just got, but when we were leaving he sayed over and over how glad he was that we came to this. It really was fun. The red and white striped balloon, filled up right in front of us and when they started to heat the air, we were so close we could feel the heat!! It was so awesome! This being the last night, some of the balloons weren't there, but we were excited to see about 15 take off. The bunny one was so cute! By about 8 they were all off and the excitement was over, but we're definitely going again next year, it was just so darn cool. I heard a man on a microphone say they have the challenge at least for the next 2 years and then it may move to a different city. I think we'll come either Friday or Saturday next time because they have a huge carnival type thing going on as well. They have big carnival rides, tons of food, inflatables, games, a car show, live music, skydiving demonstrations and all kinds of things. I really want to see the nighttime stuff, balloon glow and the pyrotechnic skydiving. Both sound really cool!! Well here's our Sunday!

Camping for the weekend

Umm Chilli!!




Ummm hotdogs!!




Baywatch at Hueston Woods!




Yummy chocolate marshmallows!




Cuties in the lake




Beach Babe




Noah...jungle boy!




Abby's enormous tonsils!




The only fish that was caught, a little catfish! My husband caught it!




Abby napping, after I got up!




The boys preparing to fish!




Noah shooting out the hook!




Abby's injured arm from the roller coaster accident




The boys by the lake




Abby's big bubbles




The scene of the accident, the car fell into the gap and she flipped over!




The kids table




Noah's bubbles




Abby loving the roller coaster!




Our tent




The geese crossing the road




The kids at the little carnival. They all got their face painted!


Camping was a total blast and that's all I have to say about that!!!!! SM!!!!!!!!!!!