Molly and the frogs

 We had gotten the kids each two African Dwarf frogs for Christmas.  Because they aren't sold during the colder months, I had to buy them just before Thanksgiving...and keep them hidden.  It almost worked.  But then Katie went looking for toilet paper and she found them in the closet.  So we surprised Will, at least, with them on Tuesday night.

We had Will clsoe his eyes....then set the frog case in front of him....he opened his eyes and screamed as he ran away from the table.....

He came back pretty quickly, and then thought they were kinda cool.  I was more worried about Molly and what she would do to the frogs.  The first night I left them out on our dresser, she knocked one case over - spilling the frogs, water and rocks all over the floor.  Luckily I scooped the frogs back into some water before they could hop to freedom, and it hasn't seemed to bother them.  BUT I don't want to have to go through that again!

So I invested in some heavy duty Velcro and stuck both cases onto the bookshelves in the kid's rooms.  They aren't going anywhere. :)  And so far Molly has left them alone.  But that first night she would not leave their side...first Will's room, then Katie's room, then back to Will's.  I think she thought they were HER frogs. 

Smile for the camera, Molly......what a ham!

She really wanted to play with those wiggly things.

I'm a glutton for punishment

Can I tell you how I spent last Saturday??  The LAST Saturday before Christmas weekend?  I decided the kids and I should go to the Mall of America.

So we left for the mall about 11.  I wanted to pick up a couple gifts at the Apple store, and I had promised the kids we'd go see Santa.  The local malls have instituted a new "no personal camera" policy which means starting this year, you can't take your own picture....you have to buy theirs.  And the cheapest photo package runs $22.  No thanks. 

Rumor had it that the Mall of America was still letting people use their own cameras, and since Katie is in school during the week and I have "Pebbles" til 5:30 every night - that leaves the weekends.  Traffic was NOT bad at all - I got into the parking garage and drove around for 20 minutes on the same level looking for a spot.  I had TWO stolen right from under me.  Remember that scene in Fried Green Tomatoes where Kathy Bates is sitting in her car with her blinker on, waiting for a car to pull out - they wave to her acknowledging that she is going to take their spot after they leave and WHOOSH....in swoops a fast little sports car.  Yeah.  That same exact scenario happened TWICE!  Luckily I didn't go "Towanda" on their ass.

So then we drove around an outside lot looking, but after 10 minutes I felt it was hopeless even getting inside the door.  So - we decided to go to Ridgedale Mall instead.  It has an Apple store, and a Santa - I just wouldn't be able to take pictures.  Ok.

So we get to the mall (much easier parking) and head straight for Santa.  A lady at the entrance says that the line is closed.  Santa takes a break from 1-2.  It is now 12:25, but we can start lining up at 1:00 to see him at 2.  I decide to get to the Apple store, pick up our things and see where that puts us.  It didn't take too long in the Apple store - 20 minutes and we were done.  I decided I didn't want to wait over an hour for Santa - so we'd head out to pick up my niece at the U of MN (who was babysitting that night for us) and think about the Eden Prairie Mall. 

So I pick up Sarah....and head to our THIRD mall of the day.  We get to Santa and of course he's on break from 1-2, but it's about 1:45 now and there's only 5 people in line.  We decide to wait, which was the BEST decision because the line quickly grew to 30+.  It still took another 15 minutes once Santa got there...but we accomplished the mission of visiting Santa without losing too much holiday spirit. 

Next year, though - we'll plan a bit better.

Friday Funny

....but first - we booked our tickets to Florida!  I had been holding off because I was waiting for the rehearsal schedule for the play that Katie and I are in.  Rehearsals start in January on Wednesdays and Sundays....but because they only work on 1-3 scenes, it may be scenes that we aren't in.  So I was waiting to make sure that the dates didn't conflict. 

I hadn't gotten the schedule yet, but this morning John and I just decided that we better book it, or we won't end up going.  So I compromised and scheduled it so that we fly out on a Monday, back on a Saturday.  That way, Katie won't miss any big Sunday practices....only a Wednesday night, maybe. 

I swear....90 minutes after I book the tickets, I get the rehearsal schedule e-mailed to me.  And of course, the one Wednesday night we're gone is the one Wednesday night I have practice - not Katie.  Although, my part is small and we're practicing that scene 2 other dates as well....so I think I'll be ok, I just feel shitty about missing it.  But I'll just have to let that go - and maybe the sunshine in Florida will bake away my guilt. :)

Also - John mentioned the other day that we should stay a couple days in a nicer resort - as opposed to all 5 nights in the cheap hotel.  "Then you can get a massage."

I thought about it a second, and how nice that would be....and then realized that I would rather be able to sneak out for an hour and run along the beach.  Isn't that just sick?

And the "funny" for you comes from Katie's part in "Annie".  How do I explain to a 7 year old how to act "drunkenly"? :)  This should be funny.....

Results are in....

Got a call from Katie's new pediatrician this morning.  He had read the results of Katie's blood test and everything looked good.  There were no alarming results.  Her ASO is still elevated, but it's 885....down from 2200, so that was fine.

Her knees are still swollen.  At this point, it's an issue for a rheumatologist....if we decided to take it there, and we're not sure we want to do that.  So, for now, we are just sitting tight.  We'll keep our eye on them and as she grows over the next few months we'll see.

Friday Funny

The tree is up!

Yesterday we took Katie to have a final blood draw and meet a new pediatrician who, hopefully, we'll be a lot happier with.  We discussed her case with him, and he gave the "ok" to have the blood tests that the specialist recommended.  He seemed to know of the specialists that we'd seen, and mentioned that Dr. Baker - the pediatric cardiac specialist who had read Katie's heart echo was rated as one of the best in the country.  We're very fortunate to have such specialists within driving distance, but it's a shame that it ended up being a waste of time. 

Back in September we discovered that Katie's diagnosis of an "infection" in her knee was wrong.  Incorrect information was passed from the clinic to Children's Hospital and the specialist at Children's misdiagnosed her based on false symptoms.  Long story short - we should have never done 6 months of penicillin, and should have never done the heart echo.  Many, many hundreds of dollars later, here we are. 

So we wanted to do one final blood draw to make sure that the infection rates that WERE showing up in March are no longer at the levels they were.  She DID have a past strep infection, but seems to have nothing to do with her knees.  Come to find out, there may not be ANY problem with her knee swelling. 

So Katie had to have blood drawn....not fun.  She was ok with getting if over with, but we were requesting a lot of tests, so they needed a lot of blood.  They couldn't get it all from one arm...so they had to stick the other one too. Lots of screams and tears later - they still didn't have enough, and wanted us to come back in a few days to fill the last tube.  Ummm, nope.  No thanks.  Whatever the test was for that last tube, we said forget it.  If the results for the other stuff comes back weird, we'll deal with it then....but if everything comes back normal for the tests you CAN do - then we'll assume everything else is fine too.   It was NOT worth seeing Katie in pain.  And she does have bruising on both arms from it - it wasn't just put the needle in, get the blood out...they kept having to move the needle around to (I assume) avoid immediate clots.  So now we wait til next week for those results.

In the meantime, we wanted to cheer Katie up.  The nurse felt so bad that she gave Katie 5 sticks of gum. :)  I told her about a new Christmas dress I had just found for her, but the clincher was that John said we'd go pick out our Christmas tree right away.  We found a great tree at the Lion's Club tree lot...they loaded up the kids with candy canes, coloring books, and even took our picture with the tree and e-mailed it to us.  Which, turned out to be a sweet little picture that ended up making it onto our Christmas card. :)  (And that says a heck of a lot because John and I haven't ever put our own picture on the card!)

Katie and Will loved decorating the tree....as you can see....

 It's always pretty exciting to go through the ornaments, open them up like they are secret treasures.  We're getting quite a collection now and it's fun to remember where/when we got each of them.  Some were made just last year....some were bought when we got married or had kids...and some have been passed down from older generations.

Molly approves....

Saturday Silly

Instead of a Friday Funny...would you take a Saturday Silly?

This actually happened last night....

We were playing Pictionary on our big dry erase easel.  Everyone was coming up with great ideas and the kids were having a blast.  Will has just been a riot lately with the things that are coming out of his mouth, and what he was drawing.  He'd draw a straight line down, with a circle at the bottom and a scribble in it.....and that was, of course, a man with a hurt leg. 

It was Katie's turn and she seemed to be drawing a boat/bath tub...with water around it and a person standing on the water. 

John shouts out "Jesus!"  I start laughing because it came out of nowhere - it wasn't the answer - and at first I thought he was actually swearing instead of guessing.

So then John, Katie and I all laugh together and Will has a glare on his face.  All of a sudden he stands up and shouts "DON'T LAUGH AT JESUS!  IT'S NOT FUNNY!"

So of course that makes up laugh even harder.....

Will runs over to our little wooden nativity scene that's actually more of a Christmas playhouse set than a decoration, grabs the little Jesus, runs back and continues to shout angrily..."STOP LAUGHING AT JESUS!  HE'S JUST A TINY LITTLE BABY!"

Yeah, we lost it after that. 

The results are in!!

Last night just as I was getting into bed, I checked my e-mail one more time for the day....and there it was....the cast list for Annie.

They said that since they had so many wonderful kids try out, they doubled up the orphans with speaking parts. So since there are 4 performances, each cast of orphans will do 2 of them where they speak, but they will ALL be in ALL of the shows.  Make sense? 

So first I scrolled down to see my name....Mrs. Greer.  I'm a house servant for Daddy Warbucks.  Perfect, I think I can handle that.  Maybe I can channel enough real life experience to pull THAT one off. :)
I think the line in the song is "Your bath is drawn by Mrs. Greer...." and then I pop on over and say "Soap.......no. Bubbles!" 

Then I scrolled to find Katie's name....and there it was assigned to "Molly"......the exact part she was hoping for!!  I really wanted to go wake her up and tell her, but I waited until this morning and she was pretty excited.  I think she'll be more excited when I tell her she's got 23 lines and singing parts in 4 songs......
She is in the "Sunshine" cast - so Friday night and Saturday afternoon she will be "Molly"...Saturday night and Sunday afternoon she will be "orphan girl".

 We start rehearsals the second week of January for performances the first weekend of March.