Something New

97/365

I am so Thankful for antibiotics.  Within 24 hours of being put on antibiotics for strep, I'm feeling better.  Not 100% yet, but better.  In fact, I woke up this morning feeling gross, not like sick gross, but so sweaty and disgusting that I needed a bath, and I took one.  I had enough energy to bathe, that is miraculous considering how crappy I felt yesterday.  Today, Eric worked from home so I could recover.  It was actually like a day almost off for me.  I napped when I needed to...which was shortly after the bath in the morning, because dang, bathing can be exhausting.  He'd take the baby when Jake got too heavy for me, or too wiggly for me to wrangle, which was most of the time.  My husband is a superchamp! I have a rather wicked headache, so yelling at Chris over homework tonight was awful, literally painful.  And I still get a little swirly doing the stairs or bending over to pick something up too fast (just like old times).  I keep drinking gatorade and water, and tea, because the taste of my own spit and the goo in the back of my throat is disgusting.  I don't think I've had this much to drink since I was pregnant with Jacob! I can't say I have my strength back, but I can say I'm having clear thoughts, like messes that are bothering me.  Ever notice when you're sick, you don't care or notice that sort of thing disappearing, until you get it back?
Anyway, it's starting to come back.  Slowly.
Meanwhile, I'm not exactly back on the photography bandwagon full blast yet, but Jacob is cute, so he's easy to photograph, and he tried a new food today, yogurt melts.

 He was initially apprehensive, but he decided he liked them.  Excellent - a new solid food he likes!

Strep

96/365

So, I feel terrible.  Eric took me to the CVS Minute Clinic to see the nurse practitioner and get drugs.  And yep, I tested positive for strep. I had a fever of 99.8.  So, I'm on antibiotics now, and having hot and cold flashes.  The boys bring me gatorade, Sam is my pro gatorade getter.  But he has been since I went on bedrest, but now Jacob has decided that empty, or mostly empty gatorade bottles are his favorite toys.  

The End of the Beginning

95/365

We started off our Saturday morning, watching more cartoons.  I ran to 'Mixdonald's' (what the girls call McD's) for breakfast and we had a floor picnic.  It was a lot cheaper to do it that way than hit the breakfast at the hotel restaurant.  I thought it was crappy that for as much money as we were paying that there was no Continental breakfast.  So we got McD's, and had a floor picnic with all the kids.  Those poor cleaning ladies, it was biscuits gone wrong by the time we left.  Even Jake was snagging a few bites.  

After breaky, we went down the Bay, we were the only ones in there, Awesome!  

The QC tech was still testing the water, woohoo, that did my heart good to know they're watching it.  

We finally felt like we could trust the big kids to go around the place, without disobeying, and they did well. 

We all did our time in the hot tub.  We limited the kids to 5 minutes; they wished it could have been longer, but there was a sign, no infants or toddlers in the tub, so we just barely let them get in.  And oh my, was that a treat!  It was a treat for the Mamas too.  My lower back felt so good parked right in front of a jet.  Ahh..

Jake hung out with Daddy, we learned he is not a fan of getting splashed, or sprinkled.  I doesn't mind soaking, but he would get mighty snippy if splashing water (from bigger kids) got on him.

There goes Christopher, dashing for the treasure chest flow.  

Time to go.  Jake was done.  He swam hard, and we were tired.  Time to hit the road.  

Coincidently, checkout was 12, so we got all dressed and hit the road.  I had seen a sign on the way up for a restaurant, featured on Diners, Drive Ins and Dives, that I've wanted to try.  All I know is that they made their own root beer.  We looked it up and had rather a serious adventure trying to find it in West Lafayette.  

But we found it!  

We told the staff we were a party of 8 and they said the wait would be 20 minutes.  We were there for at least a half an hour.  The girls lost their minds and decided to cut out early.  I think Lisa's beginning of Spring Break went off gangbusters, and we're definitely ending on a high note. It was a very good time, I could totally do it again!  Maybe not spend the $ for the hotel, but just go up for a watery day trip.   

I forgot to pack socks for Jake, so he's sporting my fingerless gloves instead of socks, because it was rather chilly outside.  Sunny, but chilly.  The little kids were hanging out in the car watching Frozen the whole time, rather brilliant actually.  We asked if they had high chairs, and they don't, so we cut our group to 4, and we got in immediately thereafter.

Once we finally got seated at the Triple XXX family restaurant.  No, it's not all about porn.  Triple XXX is the brand of rootbeer they serve.  After all we put up with to get in here, it better had be really good!

It was good! 

This was my cheeseburger, featured on the show, it had peanut butter on the bottom as a condiment, with lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickles.  It was Scrumptious!  I was happily surprised that peanut butter on a cheeseburger is really good! 

Eric liked the root beer so much he got himself a root beer float.  

He was the only one of us to make it to dessert, no Silly Sam Sundae for Sam today.  

Then we hit the road and came home.  Jake slept on the way, and the boys finished Frozen.  I came home and Crashed.  I was so tired.  Eric let me take a nap while he played with a rather feisty Jacob.  

You know how most of the time, when you take a much needed nap, you feel better.  

Not on this day.  I woke up with a sore throat, the chills, and achy all over.  

Yup, I'm pretty sure Eric has given me his strep. 

The Beginning of the End

94/365

We didn't have the money to do an Extreme Spring Break, like go to Florida or something.  We had a couple hundred dollars budgeted to Play.   So, my sister and I were scheming.   We wanted to run away to a water park, over our Spring Breaks.  But as it turned out, our spring breaks only overlapped for one weekend.  So we decided to run away for 1 night, to a fairly local waterpark.  I'd seen the Buccaneer Bay/Best Western from the highway traveling I-65 before, so we decided to give it a try.  I didn't tell the kids about it until morning of, and even then, I just said we were meeting Aunt Lisa at a hotel.  Sam had received a swimsuit for his birthday, so I picked up a couple more, and bam, we were ready for 1 night of a runaway. 

Since Annie's break started this Friday, and Chris's ends Sunday, this weekend was the Perfect time to run away.  It's the beginning of the end for both of us, as we come out of our Spring Break, and Lisa is just starting.  I was worried Eric's strep would interfere, but he was healthy enough to help us pack up.  Slowly.  It took us all day.  We left about half past 2 and met Lisa at the 267 intersection of 65, and she followed us up.  The boys were so excited, I had taken half the day Wednesday to load Frozen onto the ipad.  This made their day!  

This is us driving, and Lisa behind us.  It was a rather windy day, so I just real quick snapped it from the rearview.  Not too shabby with the point and shoot.  Jake stayed awake the whole way up, he didn't get fussy until the last 15 minutes though.  It helps having all these brothers in the car. ;) 

The boys sure looked adorable in their swimsuits.  The color of the day is Green.  

I know, not surprising.  Since we'd skipped naps to drive, we just decided to go right in to the waterpark area and swim before having dinner. 

All the cute cousins! 

It was basically one big room, so if we were in the corner we could see almost all 5 kids at the same.  As long as an adult was holding Jake, it was good to just chill. I even got some time in the hot tub all by myself.  And stretched out to soak a bit.  It was so nice.   

Jacob insisted on being held the whole time, and that was just fine. 

It was his first pool swim, and apparently, that's exhausting for a sweet baby.  He only lasted about an hour before he started making this face, it was clear he was Done.  We waited until the others started indicating they were hungry (Sam) before clearing out to get cleaned up for dinner.  

There was a treasure chest that slowly filled with water, and then an alarm would sound, and anyone underneath it would get drenched and dumped on.  Initially, my boys were scared of it.  By the end of the evening, Chris would run for the platform, and though he never made it by the first dump, but he laughed hysterically as the trickling remnants soaked him.  I was worried about his eyes, he kept them open so much of the time.  But nah, he said he was fine.  

After our round of swimming, we came back to our rooms, and got dressed.  We went downstairs to the hotel restaurant, Our Time, and I was happily surprised they put us at a fairly isolated table, it helped tone down the crazy immensely.  And the food - oh the food!  To start, we sampled the soups, lobster bisque, and french onion.  Lisa needed Oysters Rockefeller.  I had crab and asparagus topped halibut, and Eric got scallops, Lisa got a filet (or maybe it was Prime Rib, I forget, we just kept calling it cow meat, for her kids) and sampled each others. It was so swanky, and totally worth it!   I didn't think I had any room for dessert, but then I saw creme brulee on the tray, and I just had to say Yes! Jake fell asleep on my lap after I nursed him about halfway through the meal, oh yes, he was done.  And afterwards, so was I.  I waddled back to our room.  

We were too stuffed to attempt sausaging ourselves back into wet suits to go back down and swim again.  

So we turned on the tv, and the kids sweetly watched the last hour of Ice Age.  Quite nice actually, since we were all stuffed and exhausted.  

When it came time for bed, we merged our evening routines, which was neat, we did a special story with Aunt Lisa, The Kissing Hand.  There was a lot of smooching going on before prayers, it was awesome.  We had the lofty goal of putting the kids down and staying up to talk and snack, but I was too full, and the kids were exhausted to let us sneak out of bed.  So we all crashed at 9:30.  Nice.  

Home Again

93/365

Well, we're still home.  Eric's still feeling puny.  But he did feel decent enough to kind of entertain the boys tonight.  I got to take Chris to piano lessons all by myself.  It has been 2 weeks since I went anywhere alone, or at least without Jake.  This was refreshing to not have Jake, and just talk to Chris.  Sam and Jake were still napping when we left.  Apparently, Sam came up to Eric and told him he was playing on the floor and he "rested just a little bit", and he fell asleep, and now he needed to change his pants, because he "sweated".   Um, babe, that's not sweat, that's pee.  

But that's ok.  At least Eric is feeling better.  Good enough to kind of hang out and keep an eye on the yahoos.  We didn't go to Chicago today, or play at the Aquarium, or see my friend's play today.  We hung out at home, and the only time we left was to take Chris to piano.  We'd cancelled the lesson, but rescheduled after finding that we were still going to be home. 

Today's picture is Eric chilling on the floor this evening while Jacob plays with the puke bucket.  He figured out that he can yell into it, and make a great echo sound.  And Sam was just laughing hysterically.  Lots of family time today.  And all the big boys want to do is watch Batman- Brave and Bold and play Mariokart.  

So, picture it, I'm on my way home, on this rainy day, and Chris and I turn into our neighborhood. At the T is a car pulled over, with a lady looking like she's about to drive and drag a dog out her window, and another car pulling away.  She waves for help.  I pull over, and ask.  She apparently found this dog, a German
Shepherd mudball while she was on her way to work.  The dog in question has a collar, but no tags (Oh that reminds me, remind me to get a nametag/phone number for Princess!) and a huge chain dragging along behind her.   It was also slathered in mud.  Just to hold her still got me covered.  Well, this lady was late for work and wanted to take the dog to Westwood, the vet around the corner, but I didn't think they were open past 6, and it was about 6:15.  So I agreed to take her.  It took us a few minutes to get the car open, the trunk cleared out, we moved the stroller into the car, so thankful we recently folded down the middle seat and put Sam in the way back.  We wouldn't have had room if I'd had all three yahoos.   I flagged down a few vehicles, and someone thought she might live down the street.  One teenage girl walked her male chihuahua by, and we chatted.  But no luck, so she walked on, but she was back moments later, and instead of going back to her house, she crossed walked down the middle of the street, her little rat dog setting off the Shepherd, who went flying at him.  I screamed, yelled at the Shepherd, who backed off just long enough for the girl to pick up her dog and get out of reach.  That chain was long.   I'm thankful that Shepherd Dog was obedient, and responded to my yell.  Because that could've gotten real ugly.  As it was the young girl was pretty shaken up.  So told her to go home, and come back around after we'd left.  I packed up Shepherd Dog in the trunk, talked Chris down and off we drove.  He was freaking out about having this "dangerous dog" right behind him.  Puh -Leez.  I started telling Gretchen stories, about the dog we had growing up, who would tolerate me trying to ride her, by simply sitting down so that I'd slide down her back.  He loved hearing how she gave my cat a hug with her giant mouth.  I know that German Shepherds can have a bad repuation, but personally I've never met a bad one.  My Dad's Shepherd Dog gets a little skitchy around the kids, but who wouldn't with all that ruckus that follows us around.  This dog was a sweet thing, too probably had that chain buried in the backyard, and it just gave way with all this rain and mud.  So I went to neighbor #1, following some man's lead, and waved at her through her kitchen window.  Luckily, I've seen this gal, before, so she recognized me.  I asked if she had a shepherd, she said 2 people on her street did.  So I commenced driving to the first house, only at the second one she'd suggested, two people were walking up to the door, one walking a dog, the other a boy.  I honked, hopped out, and asked if they had a shepherd.  The older one pointed to the boy and said, He does.  I had him come over and take a look at the guest in my trunk, and he looked at her, and said, "Samantha!"
Oh good, we found her home.  I used baby wipes to wipe down myself and the car, and told Chris we'd done a good deed, that Jesus wants us to help our neighbors.  He'd been perplexed why I was doing this.  But the only thing I was in a rush for was dinner.  I'm so glad I stopped.  It felt good to be an anonymous good neighbor.  Princess has snuck away a couple times, and I'm so Thankful that she comes back, or gets brought back (by the same gal 3 doors down who has an outdoor dog Prinny loves).  I felt that we were returning the favor. I'm so happy that we found that sweet dog's home.  I love a sweet German Shepherd, makes me miss my old Gretchen so bad.  I probably would have taken this one home with me if I hadn't found her home, and put an APB out on facebook or something.  I think Eric would have objected.  Big time.  Good thing we didn't have to go there.

Po Hubbins

92/365

Eric is sick.  He came home from work yesterday, said he didn't feel well, so he went to bed...at 6:30.  He 'slept' until 8 this morning.  I must say I wish I'd been able to lay in bed for 13 hours, but 2/3 of my children had rough nights.  Then Eric got up this morning and said he felt worse.  He did not make it to work today.  We had these lofty plans of running away to Chicago for a couple nights, and going to the aquarium and seeing a friend in a play there, but I had to bail.  There was no way I was going to take 3 yahoos to downtown Chicago alone.  As it was, I've barely been able to cover around here with him down.  We made an appointment for him at the doctor, and turns out it is Strep.
Poor guy. We all got it last year, or was it the year before...well, whenever it was, it was Nasty.

He kept trying to come out and be part of the family, but it was useless, he had less than no energy.  He spent most of the day in bed.  And that left me to do everything else.  The biggest toughest thing for me was getting dog food.  I'd gone to the feed barn yesterday, but Prinny was out, and that 50 pound bag needed to be in the house.  It fell upon me to move it.  And I did.  I haven't moved a bag that big in years, my back can't take it.  But I did it, in stages, and focused on going slow, using my legs, and I did it. I said aloud later, I'm a Badass!  I moved the dog food and got it all put away in the bin, that is a successful day! I'm a Badass!  Ooops, I said it in front of Chris.  I had to make him promise not to say that until he was an adult.  Only adults can be badasses, I told him.  

My back hurts, but not so much I can't move....at least, not yet. But it could be that I did dishes, or laundry, not just dog food.  That's the crappy thing about back pain, it isn't always the stuff like moving bodies or dog food, it can be as simple as closing a door.  I've set myself off just closing the fridge funny, or buckling a child in.  And the fact that I made it through this day sore, but not miserable is Huge.  Just pray I can still move tomorrow...Eric too.  At least he's on good drugs now.  

Fools for treats!

91/365

Happy Spring!  It's April!  

And we're Still on Spring Break. 

This whole 2 week thing is so weird, but I'm finding myself really beginning to enjoy it.  

Today, we decided to be wild and crazy and drive ourselves out on a day trip. 

We were supposed to meet some friends in Columbus, but they bailed, but that's ok, we went anyway. 

I loaded up the boys in the car, with snacks and sweetboys, and we hit the road.  

We've rearranged the car, now the big boys are in the way back, Sam in his sweet new birthday carseat, and we upgraded Jacob out of the bucket seat and into the convertible 5 point carseat that Sam had been using the last few years.   It's harder for me to see Jacob, and when he falls asleep his head disappears, I have some tweaking to do, but where Sam used to sit is now an open space, which turns out to be great for spontaneous nursing in the car, or storage.  And the boys are thrilled to be sitting together and all able to see each other.   

Anyway, we drove down to Columbus, and just as we neared Edinburgh, the boys started talking about how bad they had to pee.  I told them to go before we left the house, but such is the story of youngsters.  So I made them a deal, I'd stop to pee in Edinburgh, if they let me shop at one store just to see if I could find matching shirts for all three of them for Easter.  Turns out the Gapkids is right by the bathroom, so we popped in there.  Initially, I didn't see anything that called to me, and Chris said he wanted short sleeve, and Sam said he wanted  long sleeve. But just about the time I was ready to turn and leave, Chris picked up a long sleeve light blue and pastel pin stripe that he said he loved, and Sam liked it, and they had it to fit all 3 boys - Sold!  I wouldn't have picked it, but I love that they picked out their own Easter shirts this year.  Kind of adorable.  Anyway, then we piled in the car, grabbed some cheeseburgers, and kept driving.  

This was our view as we crossed the bridge into downtown Columbus.  

Nice, eh?!

When we parked the car downtown, through a glass building, we could see parts of the Indoor Playground at the Commons, right across the street from the ice cream shoppe that was my main destination.  The boys wanted to play first, so we walked over.  Chris was particularly thrilled when he saw the bike parking made out the letter C.  A quick pic and off we were to play inside. 

This is the Lucky Climber. 

Only a chosen few are crazy enough to try.  

Not me.  And thankfully, Not Sam.  He has come to grips, that he's afraid of heights.  And that thing was like 2-3 stories high.  No way man, no way. Frankly I'm glad Sam didn't want to, he probably would've gotten stuck (like at the Children's Museum) and here was one place, there was no way I could have gone to rescue him. The only height Sam is ok with right now is Christopher's bunkbed, and probably because Sam is sleeping on the inside, right next to the wall, and he's had a few years to warm up to the idea.  Not this.  He had no desire to climb it, but there were plenty of other things to climb.  The first time Chris climbed about 2/3 up before getting nervous and coming back down.  Still, he did better than I.  There would have been No Way.  

I was content with Sam, and Jake, closer to the ground. 

See, Jacob and I were happy chilling on the side.  

Jacob loves to people watch. 

We met a very nice Mom and chatted, she is from my old near Broadripple stomping grounds.  As we chatted, suddenly I heard my name being called.  Although truthfully, it's hard not to turn my head anytime I hear Mommy being called.  But this time, I knew it was for me.  And when I turned my head...

Christopher made it to the top.  

Hooray!  

OK, get down before I puke. There should have been some sort of bell or something like at gymnastics for the ones that are brave (crazy) enough to make it all the way to the top.  I cheered for him...apparently, I was a bit loud, I got some odd looks.  I don't care, I was really impressed that Chris made it all the way to the top.  He is my 'lucky climber'!

On our way out of the commons, the big boys chose to make a wish at this crazy fountain. 

Turns out it's a sculpture called Chaos I.  I can see it. 

Anyway, then the boys went across the street, to ye olde soda shoppe, Zahakaros. 

They have a nifty organ that plays on the hour, and a neat player piano thing that someone got going while we were there.  The boys were hypnotized watching the various parts make music.  Atta boys!

Cheers!

Chris ordered a 'Black Cow' aka a root beer float.  I got a scrumptious raspberry chip hot fudge sundae, and Sam chose a Green River soda.  

Honestly, that was enough for us.  I think by the time we played and snacked, we were good to go. 

We posed for one last cheesy photo and hit the road.