This to shall pass......

This is going to be the new motto of our house. Because if it's not one thing it's another. I can't begin to tell you how many times we have said what else can go wrong. In fact, now we never ask those questions.


Tonight, Diamond, who had be recuperating nicely from being spay, ruptured her sutures and we needed to race her to the emergency vet. I guess when Diamond ran up the stairs, her sutures opened up and she started bleeding. I called the AntiCruelty Society and the person I talked to on the phone probably thought I was a lunatic. The clinic closed at 5:00 and this was a little after 5:00 and she was trying to take my information so someone could call me in the morning. I kept asking where the doctor was on call and that our dog could not wait until the morning. The lady kept telling me that someone would call in the morning. I started yelling and tell her they better find someone. Finally, Rick found a number in the phonebook and I called the emergency vet. We got into the car and sped off to the vet.


When we got to the vet, they took us back into the exam room and Diamond was still very excited. However, because she was so excited, she started bleeding again. Soon the tech vet came in and took a look and said she would get the doctor right away. The doctor came and took a look and said her was going to take her into the back to take a look because she would not calm down. So, we went out to the waiting area to wait. Soon the doctor came out and said that her internal sutures were still intact, but the outside wound was completely opened. They were going to clean it out and then staple it back closed. He asked if we wanted her to have an injection of a medication to basically knock her out so that she would be calm the rest of the night and we agreed. Pretty soon, they brought Diamond out to us and she was a pitiful. They put an E collar on her. Rick and I always thought those collars were pretty small, boy were we wrong. It's huge. As we were walking out of the vet, they probably thought we were terrible people because between the E collar and the medicine, Diamond could not hold up her head and it sounded like a bull dozer going across the parking lot where the E collar was dragging on the ground. See our poor baby below.



On another note, AJ, as always, finds a way to keep us on our toes. Yesterday, I worked in the morning time and Rick was home with the kids. The kids always have a good playing down in the play area and watching movies. However, when Rick and I went down to see what they were doing, they were watching Speed Racer. Now, we don't have the Speed Racer movie and we at first were were confused as to how it was on TV. So we asked and AJ turned and said, "I ordered in on the TV". Yes, people. our 7 year old son is ordering movies on demand. We could not believe it! Needless to say, we now have put the parental controls on all of the TVs. It's always something!


Hopefully, since all of the drama happened over the weekend, we will have a drama free week! I guess we will see! Hope everyone has a great week!

Somethings are hard to explain....

On Tuesday, we took Diamond to the Anti Cruelty Society of Chicago to have her spayed. It seemed to be a very dramatic experience for her. All the way to the Anti Cruelty Society (which is in Downtown Chicago -- 35 miles away), Diamond barked the whole way there. I am not sure if she was excited to be riding in the car or if maybe, she knew something was going on. Needless to say, by the time I made it there, I was going crazy. She was actually very good in the clinic, a bit excited, not that I could blame her! As the vet was getting ready to take Diamond, she gave me this look like "what's going on and I don't want to go with this bad man"! I felt bad, but knew this was something that needed to be done. We don't want any little "ones" running around the house!

I was able to pick her up later that afternoon. When I got to the clinic the vet technicians went over all of the instructions and then brought her out to me. As soon as I saw her, I almost cried. She looked so pitiful. She was all glassy eyed and definitely was not her normal "happy go lucky" self. The ride home was the exact opposite of the ride there, I had to keep looking back to make sure she was okay! When we got home, Rick came and helped carry her into the house and had a nice bed ready for her. Now here comes the interesting part....how to answer the 101 questions from AJ and Ashleigh. Of course, they wanted to know what happened and why and how....you know all of those good questions you sometimes don't know how to answer. So we explained the best we could about the hows and the whys, but somethings are just too hard to explain.

Poor Baby!

AJ has been doing pretty well in school! Although, he seems to have a lot more homework in 2nd grade! Last night, he worked on homework for about 1 1/2 hours! Craziness! AJ seems to be enjoying school and has made some new friends. Hopefully, he will continue to do well!

Ashleigh is learning how to write her letters and recognize them on paper. She is doing very well with it and seems very eager to learn. Although, her teachers do say she tends to be a little bossy! (Not Ashleigh! :))

Hopefully, we will have another relaxing weekend! We will probably try to do something outside. since we know that there are only a few more nice weekends left before the dreaded winter comes!

Hope everyone has a nice, relaxing weekend also!

Not Much Going on This Weekend....

We did not end up doing to much this weekend, which was kind of nice for a change. Yesterday, we went out to breakfast for the first time in a long time. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot, both AJ and Ashleigh said "we've been here before -- we came with MeeMaw and PopPop!" (and that was last summer!) It's always amazing to Rick and I how the kids end up remembering things like that, but can't remember to pick up their rooms or put away their toys. Breakfast was delicious! (Just like last time, Mom and Dad!) Way too much food, but it did not stop us from stuffing ourselves. After breakfast, we went grocery shopping which is also fun! We always end up spending more money on things we did not really need, but bought anyway. I always hate coming home to put away the groceries!

Today, we laid around the house most of the morning because it was really foggy and very misty! It finally cleared up late morning and we ran out to blockbuster to get a few movies and ran to one of the local grocery stores!

Late this afternoon, we took the kids to one of the many Forest Preserves in the area. The kids love to go to the park and also to the lake to feed the fish. They had a great time and ran off some energy as well!

Here are a few pictures from today at the park!

Hope everyone had a nice relaxing weekend!

Not enough hours in the day.....

Have you ever felt like there was just not enough hours in the day to get things done? Boy do we feel that way after this week! Between homework, school, work and everything else, I am amazed we survived the week.

Today when I picked AJ up from school, the afterschool program director talked to me for a little while because AJ has not been doing his homework or does not want to complete his homework while he is there. AJ's teacher also had to come to the afterschool program and talk to him about his homework because he has been hiding his homework in his desk at school instead of bringing the papers home to work on. The last couple of days, I have asked AJ if he had homework and he would tell me he finished it in class. So yesterday in his assignment notebook, I wrote his teacher a note to see if this was really the case. And of course that was when we found all of the papers in his desk. So needless to say, it took us 2 1/2 hours to complete all of his assignments tonight. We had a long talk with AJ about his school work and responsibility about getting his homework done. Hopefully this will help, but I am not going to hold my breath!

Ashleigh is doing well in school! She is learning how to write her name, however, she can't seem to get all of the letters! She writes her name like this: A S H G H. I guess that's a start! She is also starting to recognize letters in books and on paper which is really neat! I think she is going to have an easier time in school than AJ! Hopefully, she will enjoy school!

Now on to making lunches, ironing uniforms and getting ready for tomorrow! Have a good night! Thank god tomorrow is FRIDAY!

Some recent pictures

Quiet week so far.....

So far, this week is nothing like last week. Hopefully, it will stay that way. I guess we will see. Although I was not so sure after my commute to work yesterday. It took me 2 hours to get to work yesterday morning!!!! After all of the rain over the weekend, some of the rivers had flooded causing some of the major roads in Chicago to be closed. I told the girls at work I was not really sure how I ended up at work because all of the roads I normally would take were closed, so for me it was detour after detour. However, my commute home was much better! Thank goodness!

We have gotten used to doing homework with AJ everynight, but now Ashleigh comes home from school today and now she has homework too! Since when do preschoolers have homework!!! The homework is to bring something that starts with an "A" to school tomorrow for show and tell and also to wear a red shirt tomorrow! It's easy to do, but the hard part is remembering in the morning time. We have very little time in the morning because we don't want the kids to get up to early, but still need time for breakfast and getting dressed. And believe me, AJ and Ashleigh can take forever to get ready in the morning!!! Seems like we never have enough time.

Speaking of school things. I will be sending out an email for everyone in the next few days for a fundraiser for AJ's school. He is selling pizza, appetizers, cookies and other holiday stuff. You can order online and AJ will still get credit for his school. We need all the help we can get! Throughout the year, he will have a couple of fundraisers and we have to sell at least $250 worth of stuff or otherwise we have to make up the difference. It has to do with the booster fees for catholic schools. We appreciate all the help we can get!!!! Let me know if you have any questions!

Hope everyone has a nice quiet week!

Interesting week.....

I know I said I would be good about posting, however, this week was kind of crazy and I still had not finished the setup of our blog. I think I have now finally finished changing the setup of our blog. So many choices.....

So on the crazy week. Started off on Monday when I got ready to leave work, I had a flat tire on the van. I had to call someone to change the tire because I have no idea how to do that. When the guy put the "donut tire" on the van, he said it was not advised that I drive home on the tire, since it was such I long distance. Ok, so now I am stuck in Chicago and need to find a tire place to see if they can patch the tire. Unfortunately, the tire was not repairable and I am now stuck waiting on the new tire to come from the warehouse as I am watching the time tick by on the clock. Normally, this would not be a problem except that Rick was stuck in Milwaukee doing some security work and there was no one to get the kids. I was stressing OUT!!!! Once, the van was finally done, I was praying that I would not hit any traffic on the way home. Rick and I got back to our town about the same time and we were able to get both kids with time to spare. I don't think it could have worked out any better.

Once we got home, we were trying to get dinner started and Ashleigh comes downstairs complaining about a bug bite. Rick and I both took one look at her arm and could not believe what we saw. Her arm was twice the size it should be been and there was definitely a huge mosquito bite on her arm. We put a little bit of heat on her arm and it seemed to help. I ended up calling her pediatrician the next day just to see what to do. They told me to put hydrocortizone cream on it. How crazy is that.

Next, when AJ went to get his homework out of his backpack, we got the next big surprise. Apparently last week, AJ got some tomatoes from the garden at school, however, he never took them out of his backpack. Do you know what rotten tomatoes smell like? The smell was terrible and it was all over everything in his backpack. Needless to say, we ended up putting the backpack in the washing machine and that seemed to do the trick. What a crazy night!!!!

The next few days were to a little crazy with getting the kids and the normal evening things we go through every night. However, Thursday night was something else. On Thursday, Rick had guard duty and I worked all day, so Diamond was in the cage all day. When I got home, as I pulled the van in the garage, I told the kids, I was going to run inside and let Diamond go potty. The kids and I got out of the van and I ran in the house. I was out back with Diamond when Ashleigh came running out of the house, shaking and screaming for me to help AJ that his hand was stuck and I needed to help him. I knew just by the way she was acting that something was really wrong. I ran back into the house and could hear AJ screaming from the back door. Apparently, he had gone back out to the van to get something and had shut the door on his hand. When the van door shut, it was locked. I had to run back into the house to get the keys. Once, I got his hand out, I took one look and knew we needed to go the ER. We spent 2 hours and 45 minutes at the ER and the doctor said she thought the hand was broken in one possible two spots, but was not sure. They put his hand in a splint cast and wanted us to follow up with his pediatrician the next day. When we went to the doctors the next day, they looked over the xrays and decided that it was just severely bruised! Thank god! He is doing much better now!

What a crazy week! I just hope this coming week will be better and less eventful!!!

First Post

We figured since everyone is into this blog thing, we should probably create one as well. This way it's a little easier to keep everyone updated on what's going on with us in Illinois. Rick says that I should get a hobby or start a blog and I figured the blog thing was probably easier to do than to start a hobby or something. Although I am sure in the winter time, I will wish I had started a new hobby. But I guess we will see.



The kids have been busy with the start of school and all that it involvesl. Somehow, I think we forgot how hectic the weekdays are while AJ is in scool. Seems like there is never enough time in the evening to get eat dinner, do homework, baths and then get to bed at a decent time. Since, AJ's bus comes at 6:15 in the morning (yes, that's what I said), we have to make sure he gets to bed early because he has to get up so early. So the evening times are really a time crunch in trying to get everything accomplished and still make an early bed time. At least this school year, Rick gets home by 6:30 instead of 11:00 like last year; so I will have a little bit of help with the kids which will be nice. AJ seems to really enojy 2nd grade class. Most of the kids were in his class last year, along with a few new kids. We have Open House on Wednesday. So it will be nice to meet his teacher face to face.



Ashleigh just recently moved to the "big kids" class at school. She is now in the 4 - 5 years and is truly in her element. The teachers say she is doing really well and enjoying learning new things. I am sure that is the way she will always be about school. She is really getting into writing her name and recognizing different letters as she is looking at things. It's really amazing to see how much AJ and Ashleigh have both grown over the last year or so. We look at them now and ask where the time went! Seems like just yesterday, they were so little.



Well, hopefully, I will be able to keep up with updating the blog. I will try my hardest. I know how I am about reading other blogs and get a little disappointed when it hasn't been updated in awhile.