Are You Ready For Some…Bowling?

This has been a busy week… Aren’t they all.  But this one is different because Drew left for Israel on Tuesday with a group of pastors from our conference.  It was a once in a lifetime, FREE, trip to Israel for him.  The kids and I are holding down the fort at home. 

I feel like I didn’t seem him much before he left.  Monday I worked most of the day and then I had a meeting for my family advisory council that I’m on for our local children’s hospital.  I had to be at work early Tuesday morning and then he left at 12:30pm.  Thankfully Mimo arrived in town just in time to pick the kids up from school and then spent the week with us.  She has been a lifesaver and a huge help.

Wednesday was pajama day at school – by far the easiest day of the year to get the kids dressed!  Love it!  They got to wear pj’s, bring their favorite stuffed animal (Spot for Will and Mr. Quakers for Lindy), and then they got pancakes for snack!  Can you guess that it’s P week at preschool? 

Thursday Mimo picked the kids up from school and took them for lunch at Chick fil A.  They got to eat and play in the play space and then she rode over to my office.  I grabbed Lindy and we headed to an ophthalmology appointment.  At first things were moving so fast.  We had hardly sat down when they called our number to check in.  We had hardly sat down when they called us back to the pediatric waiting area.  We walked in the pediatric office to the doctor standing there and waiting for us.  Lindy grabbed his finger and said, “Come on Dr. Weaver” and started walking into his office.  He said, “Are you joining the ranks of women who tell me what to do every day?”  He put an eye patch on her glasses over her left eye (her best eye) and asked her to read some letters on a screen at the the end of the little hallway (At least 10 feet away).  She couldn’t see them.  He put the patch on her right eye (her bad eye) and she read the letters no problem.  Go girl!  He hadn’t dilated her eyes for awhile so he did that.  Then things slowed way down.  He had 4 other patients come in during the time her eyes were dilating.  Then we had to just wait on them.  And wait.  And wait.  He finally got back to Lindy and he checked her glasses prescription.  He actually measured it just slightly better than last time.  I somehow doubt her eyes are getting better – I just think it has to do with working with a squirmy 5 year old.  He said we don’t need to get new glasses since it is pretty close.  After her appointment we stopped by the eye shop and got her glasses cleaned.  As in they took out the lenses out and cleaned all the food out.  They are so pretty now!  We finally got home and we were only there about 30 minutes before we headed back out the door to dinner with some church friends.  We had a yummy dinner at Little Italy and then we all headed to choir practice at church.

Friday Mimo brought the kids home after school and we met Ed and Jamie for dinner that evening. 

Saturday morning I got out to run a few errands and then Mimo headed home to see her pups.  And to get a break.  Lindy has said Mimo approximately 32, 679 times since she got here.  That girl is non-stop.  Lynn has been working hard in the mornings at an old house of Ed’s and then watching the kids in the afternoon.  No wonder she was tired!  The good news is she is coming back!!!  We are all happy she is coming back! 

The rest of Saturday consisted of the kids and I just hanging out around the house.  We played the Wii, watched TV, I cleaned some, and then I let the kids go swimming take a bath in my bathtub.  I think they had a fun day. 

Today was another fun day.  We headed to church this morning – kind of strange to not have Drew preaching!  We left church and drove straight to Greensboro to meet up with the local Deaf/Blind group.  This was the first time we have gotten to do something with the group.  The kids got to bowl for two hours and eat pizza so that is a good afternoon.  We only knew one other family there but I did get to talk to another family I’ve been wanting to talk to that has a daughter similar to Lindy.  Her daughter is in 6th grade so they have been through our local school system so they know the ropes.  I plan to chat with them some more – when I’m not having to help two kids bowl.  They had the ramp out and Will was able to do it mostly by himself except he wanted me to help him aim the  ramp.  Lindy needed a little help carrying her ball to the ramp but did everything else by herself otherwise.  They did have a lot of fun.

We have had an interesting end of the week.  And by interesting I mean bad.  The kids had some practice drills this week at school.  They had a severe weather drill on Wednesday.  They seemed fine with that though.  But Thursday they had a fire drill.  And Will hasn’t been fine since then.  He told Lynn about it Thursday afternoon and then he started crying at bedtime.  He was scared that our smoke detectors would go off and our house would catch on fire.   He finally fell asleep after I was in there a couple times.  He woke up a little early Friday morning and I told him it wasn’t time to get up yet and he was crying when I went back in 15 minutes later.  I tried comforting and consoling him but it just got worse.  I finally had to just say, “Enough.”   Friday night he did the same thing at bedtime and then he was up crying about it at 4am Saturday morning.  For 45 minutes.   We had a long talk yesterday about the chances of it actually happening being very, very small.  He seemed to feel a little better and he did go to bed fine last night.  But he was up at 6am this morning asking what the chances of smoke happening in our house was.  Mama is tired.  We talked more today about it and he did go to bed fine tonight as well.  We will see what time he wakes up in the morning.  There have been just a couple other times where he has been scared at night, like about a monster.  I told him monsters are just people dressed up in costumes and he was okay with that.  But this is different.  He is seriously scared.  I think it’s 50% being scared of the noise (he does not like loud noises) and 50% being scared our house will catch on fire.  I’ve told him 100,001 times that our house will not catch on fire.  Lets hope it never catches on fire. 

This got long, sorry!  Here are some pictures from the week.  Somehow I didn’t get any with Mimo.  I’ll catch her this week.

I was doing an exercise walking video and was carrying extra weights this morning!Pirate day at school.  Actually it was pirate or princess day.  Lindy hates princesses and loves pirates.  She was the only girl pirate!  She has loved pirates for 2 years now!  Playing the Wii on Saturday – dressed like a pirate!They kids got a Valentine box in the mail this week.  They got homemade Valentine’s blankets.  Hayley made them for the kids!  They love them!Having fun in the bath last night.Will LOVED bowling today!She found the little fan!Taking a little break this afternoon.Our Super Bowl party!Will had his eye closed in every picture! 

Boring Week

This has been a boring week around here.  The kids didn’t have school on Tuesday because of a teacher workday.  Since they got Friday off for a snow day, that made for a five day weekend.  A somewhat long five day weekend.  The kids are in super fighting mode these days.  When we were out they were fairly good but when they were home – they were fighting. 

I worked from home Tuesday and then I headed out of town early Wednesday morning for a two day work retreat.  I rode with my co-worker Velvet and we got to Raleigh around 9am Wednesday morning.  We had a full day of meetings and then dinner that night and another full day of meetings on Thursday.  We finished at 3pm on Thursday and I got home around 5:15pm Thursday evening. I ate quickly and then headed out to choir practice with the kids. 

While I was gone Drew did something new for the first time ever.  He had to do Lindy’s hair!  I put her hair up every weekday so that it doesn’t hang in her eyes at school.  She has enough going against her at school that she doesn’t need that problem.  So he had to put her hair up.  He put it in pig tails on Wednesday and a pony tail on Thursday.  He didn’t take pictures unfortunately.  Sure would have loved to have seen it! 

Friday we had another forecast for winter weather.  It was supposed to start around 12pm so the preschool asked all parents to pick up their kids by 11am.  We left for school on Friday morning and 5 minutes from our house it started sleeting.  It sleeted the entire way to school.  By the time I came out from dropping them off the parking lot was covered.  I headed on to work and thankfully a few minutes later it stopped.  I worked until 12pm and came home.  A few minutes after I was home it started raining.  The rest of the afternoon we had a mixture of snow, sleet, and freezing rain.  Drew ran to the grocery store around 2pm and he had trouble getting the car back up the driveway when he got home.  It took him about 7 tries to get it in the garage.  He got a little farther each time and finally got it in, thankfully without hitting his car on the way!  We stayed warm and safe inside the rest of the day and night. 

Saturday morning our rode and driveway had a sheet of ice on it until early afternoon.  It finally warmed up and started melting.  We ended up meeting Ed, Jamie, and Molly at a restaurant for dinner. 

Today we had church and the kids and I ran to Walmart.  It was a bad trip that ended in lots of fighting.  Uggg.

The only other events of the week are that both the kids got a cold.  Will’s nose started running like a faucet on Tuesday morning.  It ran with a vengeance all day.  Thankfully it slacked up the rest of the week.  His voice sounded funny the rest of the week but otherwise he’s been okay.  Lindy started sounding a little junky Thursday evening.  Friday evening she was stuffy and coughing a little bit.  She ended up in our bed and Drew and I split the night with her.  She has acted completely fine and has had no fever.  Thankfully she slept well last night.  At the first sign of a cold I start her on albuterol.  Hopefully that is helping.

The other new development this week has been the advent of Will lying.  3 times now he has lied to us.  Every single one of them has been in relation to something he did to Lindy.  She comes crying and says “Will pushed me.”  Then we have asked Will and he has told us “No, I didn’t.”  It’s quite easy to catch him in these little lies because you can kind of see him thinking about his answer.  One time we had them reenact the entire situation and we made Will show us what he did.  He said he put his arms on her chest and did this, as he was demonstrating that he pushed her.  Ugggg.  We have had some serious discussions. I know it’s something new he is trying out but I’ve let him know that we tell the truth.  We’ll see if he continues on.

But he is still a good boy.  He asked us one night “How do you say above in English?”  I thought it was so funny!

Lindy has taken to singing.  She makes up songs about everything lately!  She is a hoot that always keeps us entertained.  She LOVES to help us.  In fact she cried tonight when I wouldn’t let her help me make pancakes.  She wants to help with everything we do.  She also wants grown up things lately.  Grown up fork and knife. 

I took hardly any pictures this week. 

Saturday Drew and I dusted the house and she insisted on helping.  She followed us around until we gave her her own rag and let her dust behind us!Silly nut.Before church today.  I LOVE a sweater dress.  On little girls, not on me!Something was funny!

Snow and My Birthday

I forgot to write a blog post this week.  Just plain forgot.  I guess that happens when you get old.  Speaking of old, I celebrated my birthday last week. 

I have no clue what we did last week.  Thankfully I have my trusty calendar to remind me of our goings-on. 

Tuesday the kids had gymnastics and Wednesday Lindy had hearing therapy.  She did well.  She was able to retell us a story with very little prompting.  We have also been working on reading books over background noise.  This week her teacher read her a book while standing a few feet back with a cd playing in the next room.  She is having to learn to block out the background noise.

Thursday I had an eye doctor appointment and that evening it started snowing!  The kids were so excited to see their first snow of the winter.  Will kept talking about how beautiful it was and he said, “It’s a wonderful night of snow!”

We woke up  Friday morning, on my birthday(!!), to about 3 inches of snow.  What a birthday present.  Actually it was more of a present for the kids.  They were the ones so excited about it.  We headed out pretty early and played for awhile.  The driveway was just slick enough to sled down.  Drew took them down the street on the sled a few times too.  They had a blast.  Lindy ate as much snow as she could and enjoyed every bite.  We built a pitiful little snowman with a banana nose and raisin eyes and mouth.  The kids thankfully got tired and we headed inside.  Good thing we went out early because once the sun came out and it started warming up, the snow started melting.  Most of it was gone by the end of the afternoon. 

Saturday we headed out in the afternoon to look for a new couch.  The kids were so excited at the first store but were not nearly as excited at the second store.  The first store we walked in and Will said, “Hi, we are 5 and we need a new couch because ours has rips.”  It was like we didn’t need to speak with the salesman, Will had it covered!  Saturday evening the lovely Ms. Martha, from our church, came and watched the kids so Drew and I could go out and celebrate my birthday with our friends Katie and Kris.  We ate at a restaurant in downtown that none of us had eaten at.  We had a very fun evening hanging out.

Sunday was a regular church day and Monday was a holiday for everyone.  We headed out mid morning for some more couch shopping.  We headed to Lexington to a furniture store and had some good Lexington bbq.  We headed up to Greensboro to look in a few stores and then went back to the first store in Winston we went to and bought a couch!  It had to be ordered so now we have to wait for it to come. 

Monday afternoon right as we were pulling in the driveway, Grandbob pulled in behind us.  He had been in town helping Ed.  We had dinner plans with Mike and Janice at the ‘ice cream shop’ and Grandbob joined us for dinner.  We had an enjoyable dinner with them, although Lindy was wild and Will watched TV the whole time. 

I’ll end there and leave this week’s activity for my usual weekend post.  Hopefully I won’t forget it!

The shirt Will wore to school last Thursday.Watching the snow!So excited for snow!It got so light and weird looking Thursday night.Lindy cleaning the beaters while Drew made my cake.Fun in the snow!Opening my birthday presents!My cake!Heading to church Sunday.Our fashionista and her fashionista dog.This is the couch Will liked.  Checking out the setteeSitting on the couch we bought – although it will be brown.