Green Mountain, Soccer, Sunburns and Panoply

*Warning! - I still have NOT found my charger, so I just bought a new one. Now I have lots (AND LOTS!) of pictures to share!

Barry's work schedule has been so topsy-turvy the past month that it has been hard to plan on much. When we think he will be home, something comes up and he has to go in early or stay late. So, imagine our surprise on Friday, when he actually got off work when he was supposed to, and it was early in the afternoon to boot! I have been wanting for all of us to go to Green Mountain for a while now, but either the weather wouldn't cooperate, or something else would come up. We had nothing on the calendar Friday evening, and the weather was beautiful, so as soon as we all got home from school, we loaded up and headed out. This was the first time that we have been to Green Mountain, but I've seen pictures and heard such great things about it, that I was really excited to go. I was not dissapointed! We got up there around 5:30, and off we set on one of the trails. We saw lots of beautiful flowers, odd looking trees, an awesome covered bridge and even some cute ducks...


Josh has become our "typical teenager" around here, and would rather spend his time shut away in his room by himself than be with his family. He was not happy that we made him go with us, but soon he laughing, and have fun with all of us. I was recently chastised for not posting pictures of my boys like I have my girls. There is a simple answer for that... the boys are BEASTS to get pictures of. They hate it. I have lots of pictures of Josh with his mouth flung open wide, or making a goofy face, or giving someone rabbit ears. I also have lots of Kyle doing the same. Try to put the two of them in a picture together, and any hope of a "decent" picture is pointless. Nevertheless, I tried to get some of them, just to prove that I am not partial to my girls. Here are the results:


And finally... a pretty good one...


We had lots of fun, then, coming up with goofy pictures. Here are a few of our favorites:


"I'm camouflaged... can you see me?"


"Catch me, I'm falling!"


"HELP!"


"I am 'He-Man!"


"I beat-up my daddy!"


"oomf... tripped over my own feet!"


I did manage to get a few wonderful shots, too.


We had such a fun evening! The park closed at 7:00, and we made it back to the van with 4 minutes to spare! This will be a spot we will go back and visit again!

Josh, Megan and Kyle all had soccer games yesterday... and they all won! Some of us came away from the games sunburned, despite the fact that we put on sunscreen. My legs and feet are pretty bad, and somehow I got a really stupid stripe across my neck! Still not sure how that happened. Megan has sunburned stripes across her knees! Barry has red arms and his face got it, too.

Saturday evening we decided to head to downtown Huntsville for Panoply, the annual arts festival. We have been for the past few years and we have really enjoyed it, to we were looking forward to this year. I have to say, we left really disappointed. It was way too crowded, there weren't any new activities for the kids to participate in, none of the performers interested us and everyone seemed to be in a grumpy mood. The final nail in the coffin came when we went to the food vendors to grab some gyros (a mission favorite of Barry's, and the highlight of the Panoply trip), and they were out of lamb! You can't have a gyro any other way, so we just walked away. The one highlight (for the kids, anyway) was the funnel cake! So, we left the festival and walked to another park closeby. It was nice and peaceful there, and Barry pulled out the camera to take some pictures. I will let him share those on his blog, if he chooses. We ended the day grabbing some ice-cream and heading on home. We were all beat from the long day, and no one complained when bedtime rolled around.

So, there is our weekend in a nutshell. Today has been a wonderful day of rest... the perfect way to end the weekend!

Fun Family Night

*Sorry... no pictures will accompany this post. All of my rechargable batteries are dead, and I can't find the charger, so my camera is of no use to me right now... and I refuse to buy disposable batteries!!*

I love my husband, but he has never been one to be able to sit still through much. He can sit through a movie because it is pretty fast paced, but sitting through church about kills him! Even at work he has to get up and walk around a lot. We blame it on ADD, although he has never officially been diagnosed with it. This has caused me to attend a lot of functions by myself... not that I have minded (much). I would rather go and have fun by myself, than have him there being miserable. So, imagine my surprise when he wanted to go see the BJHS production of Footloose with the family last night! I have been going to see the musicals for several years now with one or two kids in tow, but we have never gone as a family. I had bought tickets a few days ago, and I was so excited to go. Barry started having back problems a few nights ago, and he had to come home early from work yesterday because it was really bothering him. I was a bit disappointed with the thought of him not going, but having had back problems myself, I understand the pain. As the kids and I got ready to go, Barry came downstairs and said that he still wanted to go. So, we all loaded up and headed out (except for Josh... he is going on Monday with his class to see it, and so he stayed home and caught up on some chores. We missed him, though!). We had the best time. Several of the youth from our ward are involved both on stage and behind the scenes, and their talent is simply amazing! They did a great job, and it was fun listening to all the great songs. At one point Barry leaned over to me and asked me if we have the Footloose soundtrack. We have the movie, and I think at one time in my life I owned the soundtrack on cassette tape, but don't ask me what happened to it. I may have to see if I can find it on CD, though, because those are some great songs!

Thanks, honey, for stepping out of your comfort zone and going with us last night! Now... if I can just convince him to go to that wedding reception with me tonight. I know, I know, baby steps! ;)

'Nother update

Megan and I headed back to the doctor today for a check-up. She is feeling much better, and her cough isn't as persistant as it was, so we were hopeful that the doctor would give her the "all clear" today. Her peak-flow (breathing test) wasn't as good as we had hoped for, but it was improved, and the doctor pronounced her "healed" today. We will keep the nebulizer for a bit longer, and use as needed, and she still is taking the higher dose of her Advair until the disk is used up. She was given the ok to play soccer, and couldn't wait to get to practice tonight. We will probably have to give her a treatment when she gets home, but she is just thrilled to be outside, doing something. She has been a very good patient, and not given us too much grief as we have made her hang out inside until she was well enough to get out.

Once again... feeling very thankful for modern medicine, and knowledgable doctors!

Update on Megan

She is feeling better today! Yay! She was up pretty late last night coughing, but thankfully it was productive, and not just annoying. We are doing breathing treatments every 4 hours, and they seem to be helping. She gets very jittery right after the treatments, and can't keep her hands and legs from shaking.

I stopped by her school today to pick up some work for her so she wouldn't get too far behind. She decided to dive right in and get started on it today. I got this great shot of her today without her even being aware that I had the camera out. Here she is, during a breathing treatment, with her mp3 player cranked up, doing her homework! She had to stop writing as soon as the treatment was finished because her hands were shaking too badly to write!


Today I am so grateful for modern medicine, and that I followed that prompting to call the doctor earlier this week. I never dreamed that this would be the outcome of the call, but I'm glad that she is feeling better.

My silly girl!

One of the teachers at work brought me a page from the Wednesday edition of the Huntsville Times that featured a picture of Kayti and the other 2 students who won the Optimist Club's essay contest. I brought it home to Kayti, and instead of being excited that she had a write-up in the paper, she says to me, "Yeah, I've already seen it. I HATE my smile. They made us stand there smiling while they took tons of pictures, and naturally they put the worst one in the paper!" I have to agree that her smile does look a bit plastered on her face, but I still think she is beautiful, and I am very proud of her accomplishment!

Here is one of my favorite pictures of her. I'm sure she hates this one too, but I love the fact that I caught her laughing... it's a genuine smile, not a fake plastered one!

Mother of the Year Award...

So, in my last post I mentioned that Megan had been running a fever most of the day on Saturday. She was fever free by that night, and has stayed that way until today. She had, though, a horrible cough. I called the doctor late yesterday to see if she could recommend anything for the cough, as NOTHING we had tried had helped. We even were trying her rescue inhaler, but no luck with that, either. Of course, the doctor wants to see her, and we scheduled an appointment for this afternoon. This morning she wakes up feeling pretty bad, and her fever has come back. Instead of calling the doctor to see if we can get an earlier visit, I decide to go on to work, and just keep our afternoon appointment time. I did come home to check on her during my lunch break, and she was still in bed, feeling pretty awful. So... fast-forward to our doctor's visit. As it turns out, she has double ear infections, and really, really bad bronchitis, bordering on pneumonia. How awful do I feel? Like a total cruddy mother. The bronchitis is triggering her asthma, so we have a home health nurse coming in either tonight, or first thing in the morning to set up a home nebulizer so we can give her breathing treatments every 4 hours for the next few days. She is also out of school until Monday. I just can't believe that it progressed so quickly. She didn't even seem that sick to me, except for the cough.

Hopefully, though, she will be back to her cute, well self soon. I sure miss that bubbly personality with she is sick. :(

Long week - lazy weekend

This has been a long week for everyone around our house. Due to circumstances at work, Barry has had to work nights this week, and also this weekend. By the time next weekend rolls around, he will only have had 3 days off in 3 weeks. Great for overtime pay, but not great for family time. He is off tomorrow (Sunday), which will be spent sleeping, then has to be back at work bright and early Monday morning... and he will be there from 5 AM-5 PM. This will be his schedule all week, then hopefully he will have a few days off. That could just be wishful thinking on my part, though!

Due to all the rain we have had, the kids did not have any soccer this week. Games were not scheduled for today, but even if they had been, I doubt that the fields would have been in any shape to play. Everyone is hoping that next week will be their lucky week, and they can finally get out on the fields and run! I am hoping this too, as I am tired of kids in the house with pent-up energy. They are driving me a bit bonkers!!

I think I will spare you the details of my week at work. Let's just sum it up by saying that I HATE severe weather during school hours. The first drop of rain, and the phones start to ring off the hook.

Last night was my sweet nephew's birthday party. We were headed there, but Josh was feeling really awful, and my momma-instincts started yelling to go home and put him to bed, so I did. This morning he work up feeling fine, but Megan has been running a fever all day. I hate that we missed wishing Noah happy birthday, but I'm glad that we didn't go share our germs with anyone.

Kyle is a member of his school's Destination Imagination team. Never heard of it before? Neither had I until I started working at Liberty, but here is a website with more info: http://www.idodi.org/. Anyway... his regional competition was a few weeks ago, and his team came in second place in their challenge. Today they got to participate in the State Tournament! They had a fun time, but once again they came in second. Only the first place team will be able to advance to Global Competition, and Kyle is hoping that something happens to the first place team, leaving them unable to compete, so LMS can participate! He's not a competitive kid at all, now is he?

After Kyle's competition was over, the kids and I planted an herb-container garden and some flowers. Every year I let the kids pick out some flowers, but this year I decided that I would rather have an herb garden. We still picked out a few flowers for the porch, but we mainly got herbs... rosemary, basil, oregano, thyme, dill, Italian flat leaf parsley and cilantro!! I also got Barry some strawberries. The front porch smells so good, as did the car on the way home with them. Josh complained that the combination of basil and oregano was making him hungry for pizza!

Kayti and I went on a walk this evening to take some pictures of some of the beautiful tulips that were recently planted just down the road from us. The storms on Thursday night damaged some of them, but they were still pretty to look at. We also admired a near-by tree that is in full bloom right now. We took the camera along with us and were able to get a few pictures.


And in the middle of everything else, we were able to watch some of General Conference today. I really enjoyed all the speakers, and I am looking forward to tomorrow!