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Sunday, January 31, 2010

The Three Amigos




Here are my three little amigos, whooping it up on their horses.
Last week, Lucy puked every day of the week. On our way back home from SC on Monday night, she barfed in the car approximately 20 minutes from home. In Maysville, for crying out loud - two towns away! So we made a quick stop at Dollar General to get towels and cleaning supplies.
Then she puked once a day every day until Saturday she seemed to be back to normal. So she went a full week without throwing up and we figured she was back to normal.
Well, I had George check in on Lucy just before we went to bed and he yelled for me to come in. She threw up everything she'd eaten all day in bed and was basically swimming in about an inch of barf chunks. It was so gross. It was midnight and we had to strip the bed and Clorox it and give a very unhappy Lucy a bath. The funny thing is that Skylar slept through everything, the puking, the cleaning, the water running and baby screaming, and all the lights turned on in the bedroom. Unfortunately, Lucy kept throwing up until she was bringing up green stomach acid. She was really worrying us because she was gagging so much I had this fear that she might have swallowed a small toy or something and choking on it. Sooo..... George woke Sky up and the three of us girls ventured out to the hospital. Skylar was in charge of holding a towel to catch the barf when Lucy got sick on the way to the hospital. Of course, it was the one night we had ice on the roads, so I had to drive about 35 mph the whole way.
We were actually taken into the ER pretty quickly. There were quite a few traffic accident patients in with us. Basically, the doctor thought Lucy had a bad stomach virus. She was pretty dehydrated, so they gave her an IV and Zofran to stop the vomiting. It was sad because they had to strap her arm to a board to keep her from yanking out the IV. She did really well as long as I had her arm covered with a blanket and she couldn't see it. She was pretty ticked off at the nurses after the IV episode and would only glare at them and the doctor, even when they tried to make her smile.
I just held her for several hours while she rehydrated. Eventually, she perked up enough to play the "Mouth, nose, eyes" game and blow me kisses. She was so sweet. After awhile, the doctor gave her ginger ale with Pedialyte to drink and some crackers. She drank a little of the liquid, but mostly just dipped the straw in and out of the cup and drank the drops. She tried a bite or two of cracker. Finally, we were released once the doctor was sure Lucy had had a wet diaper.
Skylar and I were starving and exhausted, so we stopped at the 24-hour McDonalds drive-thru for a drink and a McGriddle sandwich. We finally got home around 5am and put Lucy to bed. She had fallen asleep almost as soon as we strapped her into her carseat. She was happy to get into her own bed and we all slept in until noon, except the boys.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

My little monkey girl

Lucy loves her monkey (actually, now she has two monkeys) and her blankie.
She also loves bananas.
Sometimes she gets her toes involved when she eats.
I think that she must have a monkey gene that she inherited from someone.


Wednesday, January 20, 2010

I just finished the last Percy Jackson book, the Last Olympian. It was so great, I was laughing out loud. Skylar and I are excited that the first book is being made into a movie. In fact, I just saw the trailer for it on TV. I really hope it does the books justice.
To celebrate Bart & Sky's birthdays, we took the family to Myrtle Beach over the weekend. We went Saturday through Monday. The kids were way excited.



We stayed at this really cool hotel called Dunes Village Resort which had two indoor water parks. We went to the water park in our tower all three days. There was another park which we didn't even explore because it was in the other tower and none of us wanted to have to venture outside in our wet bathing suits. We had plenty to keep us busy, though. There were two big water slides, a lazy river, hot tubs, and a kiddie playland which had all sorts of sprinkling, spraying, and water-falling devices. I wasn't enthused about getting into a bathing suit in mid-winter, but I sucked it up (literally) and just had fun. I got Drake to go on the water slides and to go into the hot tub. He called the hot tub the "bubble bath" and liked to stand in front of the jets so his swim trunks ballooned out.



Our suite was oceanfront, so we woke up to a gorgeous (and blindingly bright) view of the sunrise. Sunday dawned with a weird fog that obscured the horizon so you couldn't tell where the gray sea ended and the gray sky began. It was beautiful. It was in the 50's Saturday and Sunday, and on Sunday it ended up raining. We went out on the beach and we could see the line of rain moving down the beach toward us. It was pretty cold out there, so we didn't stay too long. Luckily we made it back to shelter just as the first raindrops started falling.





One thing we really wanted to take the kids to was Medieval Times. We bought tickets before we left. I signed us up for the birthday club, so we ended up getting free tickets for Skylar and Bart. We still spent a ton, but were able to save $60 or so.



I knew Sky and Bart would love Medieval Times, but Drake really enjoyed it, too. I think the show was a little long for him, but he really got into it. He and Bart bought wooden swords and Drake slept with his Sunday night and kept poking Bart with it. Skylar bought a princess headdress. I actually caught a flower that our knight threw. It was kind of cool because we were on the very top row, but he aimed and threw the flower right to me. It was even cooler because I actually caught it. I ended up giving it to Skylar. Lucy did not enjoy the show. She hadn't napped that day, and boy was she cranky. She didn't want to eat or drink really. George and I took turns with her in the lobby, letting her run all her bottled-up energy out.





We to had gone to Broadway at the Beach earlier that morning to do some shopping and dining. We visited this awesome candy shop and ate too many sweets.

Here's a photo summary of our shopping excursion.



Drake tries to figure out why his older siblings are wearing a coconut bra.




Drake finds a stray dog, we spy a cool restaurant with a pirate ship on the front, and I feel a surge of pride for America the Beautiful when I see all these flags flying.



We get a little crazy at the Hard Rock Cafe.
(Drake is pretending to be a saber tooth tiger).


Lucy is hyper.


And Skylar meets the man of her dreams....

Yep. It was a pretty swell vacation.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

My favorite things

My favorite things right now are:

My Amazon Kindle

the Shark steam mop

the Yes to Carrots line (I LOVE the lotion, shampoo, conditioner, and lip balm) at Target
(George smelled my hair yesterday and said for once it smelled pleasantly neutral. Apparently all this time my hair has smelled like chemicals & he never told me. He said he figured it was all the hair products I use. Oh, and George tried the shampoo & conditioner and said how it made his hair soft, that he had never had soft hair before).

Organic milk - who knew milk was that tasty??

El Tequila, the Mexican place near Harris Teeter

Cashmere socks

the new Cardamom-flavored gum. I can't remember the brand - it's over in my purse right now. It's delicious.

And did anyone know we have an Asian Market here in New Bern now? I didn't. I think it must be fairly new. I just saw it the other day on Glenburnie & was so happy. I used to shop at one in Raleigh & the kids love the spinach noodles I would get there, plus they have certain spices (like white peppercorns) for such a great price.

My bed is killing me

I cannot remember the last time I slept well. Seriously. When I wake up in the morning, even if I've had 10 hours of sleep, I feel like I've had only 2 hours, or that a truck backed over me repeatedly. I can't take it anymore. If I can't get a good night's sleep, I'm going to go bananas. I don't even like to go to sleep because I know it's just going to hurt, so I stay up late and write stupid blog entries or zone out in front of the TV. Anything to postpone my tossing, turning night of lower back pain.
So we tested out a Sleep Number bed and a bunch of others. So far, we really like the Sleep Number and the Tempurpedic. Unfortunately, we would have to auction off a kid in order to afford one. But can you put a price on a good night's sleep?
We bought our current bed like a week after we got married. After a few days as newlyweds sharing a twin bed, George and I went right out and bought a king-sized bed. They told us it was a 10-year mattress, and boy were they right. Almost exactly after 10 years, it kicked the bucket and it is now killing my back.
If anyone out there wants to give me a Sleep Number or Tempurpedic bed because I'm a really nice person, I'd really appreciate it.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Lightsaber duel


Lucy and Drake battled it out tonight with lightsabers.


Then Drake brought out the big guns.


Lucy called for reinforcements.


Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Good Soldiers, Good Book

I just finished reading David Finkel's The Good Soldiers. If not for the excessive (but I'd say probably accurate) use of the F-word, I would suggest that it be on the reading list for high schools and colleges. I apparently did not know a thing about the war in Iraq. I'm staggered at what our troops sacrifice for this country. They are absolutely heroes and deserve our 100% support and admiration.

Monday, January 4, 2010



Sunday was Drake's first day in Primary. He's such a big boy now! He's been wanting to go to Primary for weeks now so he can "sit in Bart's lap".
When we got back home, we gifted him his first set of scriptures. Skylar "wrapped" a Book of Mormon by placing it in a Lightning McQueen shoe box. I thought Drake would be pretty nonchalant about the whole thing, but he LOVED his "stippers" as he called them. He took them to dinner, he made me "read" them to him half a dozen times, and he even slept with them last night. Bart gave him his old scripture case and Drake has been carrying it everywhere. He took it to Melissa's today when I went to work. It's too cute.

Monkey Attack

When monkeys attack:

I'm watching the end of "Field of Dreams" which is a bad idea since I'm already a little melancholy tonight. I ALWAYS cry when I watch "Field of Dreams". George makes fun of me and asks me why I'm crying, and I just sob, "Didn't you ever play catch with your Dad?"
I dunno. It's just one of those movies that brings back childhood.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

More Christmas

The children were really sweet with their gift-giving. Bart gave me soft,warm red socks. Skylar made a notebook for me with pictures of me on the cover that she had taken. She wrote the sweetest note inside the cover that made me tear up. She also sewed a purple and green scarf for me with George's help.

George gave me my favorite perfume, Estee Lauder Sensuous, and an Amazon Kindle which is just the coolest thing. George adores it, too. We've already downloaded a ton of books and I'm working my way through the second one, which is called "The Good Soldiers". It's about the war in Iraq and some of the soldiers that really served there. It's an excellent book, although the "F" word is used a lot. George is working his way through the complete works of Jules Verne which he downloaded for 99 cents.


Here Lulu and I hang out and eat raisins.

Dad, Diane, Aunt Rose, & Uncle Randy came over in the early afternoon and we had Christmas with them. Let's just say it was a very Star Wars Christmas for the boys. A little while later, George's family came and we ate a huge dinner before having our third gift-giving. It basically looked like a bomb went off in my house.


Mindy made a delicious Hershey's cake and Aunt Rose made a yummy red velvet cake. I had some of both and they were superb. Lucy really enjoyed the red velvet as you can see.


Even though we'd had a spell of cold weather, Christmas Day dawned balmy and gross. It was in the 60's and it rained. We were going to take the kids out for a walk, but it started raining before we left the front yard. Yuck. By the end of the night, Skylar and Leslie-Grace were playing outside in the rain. Crazy girls.

It was really nice having so much family over for Christmas. Even though it was a lot of work and I was exhausted by the end of the night, Christmas really is about being with your loved ones. I know the children all had a blast, which is the point.

That morning, we were talking with Drake about the real meaning of Christmas. We asked him what Christmas was all about and he said "presents" of course. So we told him we celebrate Christmas because of Jesus. And then we asked him what Jesus did on Christmas Day and he answered "party".

The end of the night found Bart sitting on the bathroom floor reading a book with Master Yoda while he tried not to puke anymore. I guess he'd eaten so much and run around so much with his cousins that he made himself sick.



I had to work the day after Christmas which kind of sucked. I was so tired that I accidentally turned my alarm off when it went off and went back to sleep. I woke up about ten minutes before I needed to leave for work and hauled butt to get there in time. The one good thing about going to work was that I didn't have to stress out about the mess in our house left over from the day before.

On Tuesday we made a trip to Raleigh to see our old friends the Claytons. How we missed the Claytons when we moved! They moved to Texas soon after we moved to New Bern, so we hadn't seen each other in three years. It was so great! It was like old times. We met at Crabtree Valley Mall and the boys hit the Lego store. We just chilled out in a little carpeted area for a long time, catching up. Then we headed over to the Natural History museum to meet another old friend. It was really great for all of us. Skylar had been really scared that when she saw Rachel again, who had been her best friend before we moved, it would be weird between them. At first it was a little awkward, and the girls were quiet, but by the end of the day, she and Rachel and Abby were giggling like old times. It was so good to see all of the children playing together so well.

While we were getting back in the car after the museum, we saw a segway tour.


Being in Raleigh at Christmastime brought back a lot of memories. George and I spent our first married Christmas there. Also, Skylar and I used to go with Jodi and her girls to see the Nutcracker at the BTI Center every year.

We left Raleigh and went to visit Dad and Diane. We had dinner with them and just relaxed and hung out for awhile. The kids were silly of course. We got back pretty late, but it was a great trip.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Catching up from Christmas


Wow, did the month of December fly by! I felt like I pretty much worked every dang day and when I wasn't working, someone was asking me to do something.
We did a lot of fun stuff. Let's see....we went to George's friend's house for poker night and I had no idea what I was doing, but at least we came home with more money than we left with.
The Young Women had dinner out at Arturo's for Christmas which was a good time.
A few days before Christmas we went out to do our annual Christmas light-seeing tour, which the kids love. When we lived in Middlesex and had to drive a long way to see lights, we used to order a pizza and eat it while we went light-seeing. It's a nice tradition.



The Wednesday before Christmas we had Christmas with Mom and Mimi. I'm not even going to go into that, but let's just say they had a really hard time getting to our place that day. When they finally got here, everything was fine, although I had to leave for work in about half an hour, so we didn't get a lot of time to visit.
The kids seemed to really like their gifts. Lucy loved the wagon. She just climbed right in and she sits there so nicely when we go out for walks. She looks like a little lady.

George and I actually got along this year (thank you, Prozac). He gets really weird and mopey on holidays and I get really hyper and anal about every little detail. So you can imagine that we have a bit of head-butting when it comes to Christmas. But this year was nice. We had a lot of fun picking out gifts for everyone and as I said before, I scaled back on my decorating and cooking. George tried to relax and not be a big old stick in the mud. Drake was really excited about Santa this year. Every morning he tried to convince me that it was Christmas morning and time to open presents.

My work had a little party with Santa there a few days before Christmas and I had George bring the kids so we could take them to sit on Santa's lap. The boys RAN to him. Skylar politely waited her turn. Lucy freaked out and wouldn't go near him. She does not like the Big Man in Red AT ALL. Santa gave each kid a little toy from his sack, pretty nice stuff like Matchbox cars and coloring books, but Lucy wouldn't even go see him for a toy. The only way I got her to let me give her back to George so I could return to work was by giving her a cookie.

Christmas Eve was busy but fun. We did our usual Christmas Eve stocking stuffer-shopping run to Dollar Tree. The Nicolaysens came over and we ate a lot of food. I gained probably five pounds over Christmas. The kids were so excited about Santa coming - especially Drake this year. He was all about Santa.

We finally got the children tucked in bed. I doubt they were dreaming of sugarplums, but they went easily enough. George and I did some wrapping and tucked ourselves into bed. Before we knew it, the children were waking us up at 7am sharp. We have a strict rule that no one can get us up before 7am. Skylar had apparently woken up at 2am and then again at 5:30. We allowed her to sleep in her alcove this year. Hopefully she didn't peek.

We always start out by seeing what Santa left. Santa had left each kid a book under the balcony tree upstairs. Bart had written Santa a note and he had written back! Bart was thrilled. We proceeded downstairs and found Santa's big gift for each kid. Bart got a skateboard, Drake got a Lightning McQueen scooter, Skylar got a pink beanbag chair, and Lucy got a wooden food set.



We opened our stockings and the boys ate candy. Lucy found her favorite gift so far - a bunch of little boxes of raisins. She ate probably three or four mini boxes before we were done opening gifts.




Drake got a pirate eyepatch and hat we found at the Dollar Store. He and Bart are totally into pirates. He looks pretty fierce, huh?


Drake is trying out Bart's favorite gift, his clone trooper blaster rifle. In fact, I think it was George's favorite gift, too. Drake is also showing off his underwear since he's a big boy now and only wears a pull-up at bedtime.


Skylar got a lot of clothes this year. She also got monkey socks that made her look like she has Hobbit feet.


Lucy's favorite toy turned out to be the $5.00 tea set from Walmart that Drake helped pick out for her. She loved it! She walked around pretending to drink out of the little teacups and pretending to eat the little teacakes and cookies. It was really adorable.