Remembering my sweet uncle

My mom is one of 6 children. My grandmother suffered with infertility for 12 long years. During that time she adopted my Aunt Beverly & Aunt Elizabeth. She then became pregnant with my mom and was thrilled to have a complete family of 3 girls. She was surprised to find out that she'd accidentally become pregnant and even more surprised to find out that she was pregnant with triplets. So, she ended up having 6 children under the age of 4!!!

Sadly, three days after Ella was born my sweet Uncle John, one of the triplets, took his own life. My mom was with us in NWA helping me with Ella when we got this devastating news. Unfortunately, being that I was just days out from having a baby I was unable to make it home for the funeral but they taped it for me. Today is the triplets birthday and it's so sad that we cannot celebrate another year for all 3 of them. Uncle John was such a sweet, soft spoken & caring man. He is greatly missed.

Happy birthday Aunt Maureen & Uncle Pat!

roid rage

Last Monday Reese woke up with some minor red splotches on her face. The child has skin that gets strange splotches at random times so I didn't think much of it. On Tuesday after waking up from her nap her school called me to let me know it was looking worse but it didn't seem to be bothering her. By Wednesday afternoon it was so bad and swollen and irritating to her that we had to skip swimming class (the 1st one of the season that I'd gotten her so excited about) to go to the pediatricians office.

The pediatrician really was not much help and suggested Benadryl and hydrocortisone cream (which we were already doing). Since that was not helping and she was scratching sores on her arms an face I decide to get her in to see a pediatric dermatologist on Thursday. She thinks it may be a sun allergy (terrible :() and wanted to take part of her skin to send off for verification. Since Neal was traveling and I had 2 under 2 by myself I decided I did not really want Reese to be dealing with stitches. She prescribed a steroid to clear up the rash and gave us a hypoallergenic sun screen to try. I told her if this persists through the summer we may consider sending a skin sample.

Reese and steroids have not been a good combination. She has been whiny, moody, mean and sad for a whole week. Everything causes a melt down and she doesn't want anything you offer her. If she asks for milk and you get it for her she then throws a fit for juice and if you give in and get her juice she throws a fit for water and if you get her water she then just throws a fit so you have to give up and let the fit happen. My best guess is that the steroids have made her feel awful. My mom said that they make her and my youngest sister feel awful so it's possible. I am pleased to say he has been off of the steroids since tuesday night and last night my happy, somewhat easy going, funny, super sweet girl was back. We had such a fun evening and I'm SO happy to have her back. She also got to go to swimming lessons for the first time this season and had a blast.

Below are some photos of the rash & her silly new "cheese" face:

girls trip to dc

A few months ago Chelsea, my youngest sister, found out that she was accepted to participate in an internship program through the Salvation Army in DC. When she told us about this Neal decided that he wanted to make sure that we prioritized a trip for me while she was there. He has been and loved it and I had never been to our capitol city. I decided to tell my mom that I would be going and try to coordinate the same weekend, because she was planning to visit while Chels was there also, and I asked her to let Carrie know about it as well. I never really thought it would work out for all of us to go together but it did and I am so glad we got to do this.

Below is an overload of pictures but I wanted to have these memories on my blog. I have found that I look back at my blog often for memories and I am so thankful to have this as a tool to capture sweet memories like this weekend.

This first photo is of us waiting for a table at a great Mexican restaurant that my sweet friend suggested we try. We had a long list of restaurants to try but only one was Mexican and we all felt like Mexican on Saturday night. The wait was an hour and half (didn’t end up being quite that long) but it was worth it, the food was great.




We thought the sign was a cute opportunity for a fitting picture. This was taken in Old Town Alexandria, VA. It was such a cute area with great shops.

Neal and I thought about visiting DC a few years ago and if we did we planned to go on a Segway tour. Neither of us had ever ridden a Segway and thought it sounded like a really fun way to see the city. I mentioned this to my sisters and mom and they were all interested too. I am so glad that we did this. We were able to see all of the major attractions in 3 hours and have a really fun time doing it. Our tour guide, Eric, was very entertaining, a wealth of historical knowledge and so funny. We were hoping for a love connection between he and Chelsea because there were so many things about the two of them that seemed to be a fit. It made the tour fun teasing Chelsea to fight for her position next to him. They really did get into some in depth conversations but he made a couple of comments that caused us all to think that there may be some differences that could be deal breakers. Who knows maybe it could end up being a really fun friendship.

The trip was such a great time with the girls of my family. I am thankful that Chelsea got the oppotunity to be up there and that the house she is living in is owned by a very gracious lady willing to open her home to all of us (the house is huge and is her second home so she was not there). I hope we are able to take more trips like this in the future!

Poor sweet Ella

My poor baby has been running fever and horribly congested for 5 days now. She is just too sweet to feel this bad! She began running fever on Sunday and the horrible congestion set in on Monday (she'd been mildly congested for a couple of weeks). She had a doctors appointment on Monday morning and they determined that her lungs sounded good and her ears looked good. By Wednesday she was still running high fevers (up to 102.9!) so we took her back in. Neal took her to this appointment. They tortured my poor baby. They did a flu swab, took her temperature rectally and inserted a catheter to test for bladder infection. They were not successful in getting any urine and right when the catheter came out she peed and they were unable to catch any of it. So they put a bag on her. We were able to collect urine in the bag and we brought it in this morning. They tested the urine that I brought in the morning and it came back showing signs of infection. So they had to re catheter her :( to get a sterile sample to test. It came back completely clean. She has not run anything over 100.1 in the past 24 hours so we are all hoping that it is just a long lasting virus that we are at the end of. If the fever spikes back over 100.3 we have to immediately get her in for a chest x ray to rule out silent pneumonia.

I'm heading out soon for a fun weekend with my sister's and mom in DC. It's hard to leave my sweet baby while she's sick. It's also hard to leave my sweet husband with all of this going on. I'm praying for a great weekend for us all!

Below is a picture of a bright spot in the past few days, her first bath in the ducky. Reese used to love bathing in this ducky. Despite feeling so crummy Ella really enjoyed this bath.

Settling in

Many people have asked for photos of the house now that we've moved in. I cannot wait to show it to everyone but right now it's in such disarray that I'd be embarrassed to take pictures and show anyone. I am feeling like it is really coming together over the past week though.

I promise to have pictures posted by the week of April 16th. The 14th is Reese's birthday party, at the house, and our goal is to have it reasonably together by that time. I met with my amazing decorator this past week and she has some great ideas of what to do with lots of my existing stuff and is out scouring for some new items. She is going to spend the day working in the house towards the end of next week and I am going to be so eager to come home that day and see what kind of magic she has worked.

We are beginning to feel more and more settled and it's really starting to feel like our home. We have loved the way the layout works for our family. In addition to the rooms we built we had plans to also have a dedicated office but in the end decided to cut back the square footage some, eliminating the office. I think this was a good choice as this size really seems perfect...not huge but so much more space than we previously had. Last night we sat outside and enjoyed the fireplace for the first time. It was really nice (pics of that below).

On a side note Ella has woken up every morning for the past 4 mornings with a complete blow out. Outfit change, sheet, blanket and lovie wash all completely necessary. I try to cherish every moment as I know she is our last but I'm pretty sure that this is something I look forward to having pass. Poor, sweet girl seems so frustrated by it too.

Blowouts

My daughters seem to be the queen's of blowouts. Reese did her fair share of blowing out as an infant but Ella has far surpassed her. It is not uncommon for Ella to have 2-3 blowouts on a bad day. I get excited if she finishes a day at school in a single outfit. Today when I got to her school at lunch to feed her she had been changed twice and ran out of spare clothes so she was wearing what you see in the picture below (daycare spare clothes). Her daddy kindly went home and brought her some warmer clothes.

daddy is home!

I have always appreciated all that my husband does to help around here but I have to say I have an even deeper appreciation for him after he has been in NYC all week for work. Keeping up with 2 under 2 is a lot of work even when there are 2 of us doing it. It is even more difficult in a brand new house with the added element of stairs. This week has worn me out but it has been a good week at the same time. We have the most amazing girls that were so excited to see their Daddy today. Their Mommy was also SO excited to see him.