Catching Up Before Xmas

Since we were all a little down because of Katie's trip to the hospital,

we thought that we would jump start our holiday mood.

As I'm sure is recommended recovery for all pneumonia patients, we 

decided to stop by the tree farm on the way home from the hospital.  

Do not pass GO.  Do not collect 100 dollars.

After poo-pooing about six trees, Katie decided on the "perfect" tree.

Mikey agreed.

Welcome to the family, little tree.

I have a feeling, although not quite confirmed, that Katie enjoys the

free candy cane offered by the tree farm more than the actual

selecting of the tree itself.

Mike was not as impressed.

He traded in his sticky candy cane for a nice juicy

apple.

The next day, Mikey and Huzbend went off to swim lessons while

Katie and I stayed home and decorated the tree.

When we were done decorating, Katie gave it a hug to welcome it to the house.

Next up, gingerbread city.

Katie had been bugging me for at least two months about

making a gingerbread house.  I promised her that we would do just that.

I mean, how hard could it be?  Plus we had A LOT of extra halloween candy to get rid of.

We whipped up a big batch of gingerbread that actually yielded enough 

dough to make two houses and a bunch of ginger people.

I can't use traditional royal icing because it's made with uncooked eggs.

Katie is allergic to them.

So, I searched the internets and with its help

made an icing with confectioners sugar, lemon juice 

and glycerine.

Here was the first attempt at assembly.

Icing was just a bit too runny, but held

together with the help of some support cans.

What a frustrating process.

Not satisfied with attempt number one, I put together another house.

Icing just right.  Not so bad this time.

A few days later it was decorating time.

I tried making the icing again and again it was too runny.

So, I gave up and used some can frosting to get the job done.

The kids must have ate at least a cup of frosting each.

Katie did a good job decorating and ate her fair share of the candy.

Mikey put one piece of candy on one house and then proceeded to eat 

marshmallows the rest of the time.

They were quite silly by the time decorating was over.

Here are the best two of my many attempts at a posed picture.....

In between the gingerbread chaos was the preschool holiday party.

Here are the kids visiting with Santa and Mrs. Claus.

As if they did not have enough sugar in their little systems, they were

able to decorate their own cookies.

Yes.  There is a cookie buried under those sprinkles.

Katie decided to eat her cookie right then and there.

Mikey decided to pack his away in a ziploc and suck

the frosting off the knife instead.

Mikey also decided that he loved Santa Claus.

He hung out with him most of the evening.

If Mikey wasn't eating, he was with Santa.

They even played party games together!

Next up, it was my birthday.

Yay me.  I'm 38 now.

And as such, I deserve delicious and totally NOT nutritious food.

First up, for breakfast, Huzbend cooked up some Stuffed French Toast.

OMG.  Have you ever heard of the term

"Foodgasm"?

The kids enjoyed opening my presents for me.

They were nice and let me help a bit.

The sun was a-shining and so we

did lunch at Panera and hit a local playground.

More yummies to come for dinner.

Eggplant parm, of course.

And then the piece de resistance.....

APPLE CRISP.

OHHHHH BAYBEE!

A few days later we received a package in the mail from Granma.

To our surprise, there was another gingerbread house inside!!!

This one was soft and gooey and really yummy (unlike my rock hard gingerbread).

Katie and Mikey ate all the trees and extra people that populated the box, leaving just enough

for the house.

It was try number three for gingerbread house assembly.

Icing was perfect this time!

I was able to put together the house with no

help from support cans at all.

Whooopeeeee!

And then it was time for decorating.  UGH.

The whole house smelled like frosting and marshmallows.

Katie and Mikey were literally bouncing off the walls.

I swear, if either of them had gotten a paper cut at the time, they would have 

bled marshmallow fluff.

Shazam!

We now had FOUR gingerbread houses.

Two we made, one that Katie decorated at school and one from across the country.

Welcome to Sugar Heights!

And now, a little video distraction.  Enjoy!

Nobody Knows......

Seems as if the "troubles" of the last entry did not want to leave.

Mikey DID get over his early stage pneumonia with a round of antibiotics.  Huzbend DID recover.

But, alas Katie did not fair so well.

Last Tuesday she came down with a horrible hacky cough and began to breath quickly and shallow-y.  And so, on Wednesday, she stayed home from school and off to the Doctors office we went.

Our appt. was at 9:20am.  We did not leave the office until 3:00pm.  Yep.  WITH Mikey.  He was just about going insane.  They could not figure out what was wrong.  Her oxygen levels were bouncing all over into dangerous territory.  Then she developed a 102 fever while in the office.  Finally they decided on an chest xray.  The diagnosis - gunky lung (a.k.a. pneumonia) exacerbating her asthma.  It was off to the Children's Hospital ER once again.

OHHHHHH, this time I was prepared people!  I packed a bag with four days worth of clothes and toiletries, some snacks and some sanity for Katie (Nintendo DS, crayons, coloring books, a stuffed panda and her blankies).  We picked Huzbend up at work and he drove us to the hospital so that he would not be truck-less.

Sure enough, we had to stay overnight as Katie's oxygen levels were not recovering quickly enough after medication.  We ended up in the same wing of the hospital as last time and stayed pretty much the same amount of time.  Went in on Wednesday evening and were released on Saturday afternoon.

The reason for the hospital stay was to monitor Katie's oxygen levels.  When her lungs are restricted her "flow rate" can dip down to 93-95 when awake and then down below 90 when she is asleep.  Not very good when you know that a regular person can be anywhere from 95-100 when healthy.

So, that's two hospital visits in just two months.  Hooray for us.

Huzbend thinks that our medical insurance company is going to drop us siting that we have hit our quota of doctor AND hospital visits for the year.  Our pediatrician agrees and has stated that if he sees us in his office one more time this year - he will kick us out.

Katie is recovering and LOVED all the attention that she got at the hospital.  She now expects that every time she goes to a doctor that they will shower her with stuffed animals and toys.  That's just how she rolls.

As for me, I'm recovering too.  My cold is finally subsiding but my brain is not quite back up to speed.

In a reactionary and emotional move, I called a company to come clean our heating air ducts thinking that it might help Katie (and Mikey) breath easier not having so much gunk in the lines.  I wasn't thinking as the technician/salesman upsold me on some things that I totally didn't need but at the time thought that we did.  The cost of the service bloomed out of control and he began to upsell me again.  By that time it was too late to stop the services I had stupidly agreed too, so I declined anything else that he offered.

It was ridiculous of me and I'm ashamed and depressed that I lost our family this big amount of money.  There's nothing I can do about it.  I agreed to all of it and it was only about an hour after they left that I realized what I had done.  I didn't research the service they provided OR the company.  Stupid.  I'm usually SO skeptical.  A quick search online brought up all sorts of questions about need for air duct cleaning as well as many complaints against this particular company.

Sometimes, I wish there was a do-over button.  Don't you?

All this led to a nice little midnight breakdown where I cursed myself for being such a moron.  It was easy to fall into despair - too much sickness, too little fun family time, not enough sleep, not enough feeling of accomplishment, Mikey showing signs of ANOTHER cold......

But, today is another day.  Time to move on.  Try to take my focus off all the money that I've spent on Christmas, the wad of cash that we just spent on our garage doors, this months mortgage, groceries, upcoming vacations, haircuts.....Okay.  So, it's really hard for me to move on.

As my awesome and beyond forgiving Huzbend said, I really just have to let it go.  No sense obsessing about something that I really can't change.

The problem is, obsessing is what I do.