Weekend Recap and Other Awesomeness

Ugh, I am SO unmotivated today! Mainly because I can't take a decent breath. I don't know if I've pulled a muscle from all my coughing spells over the past 10 days, or if I have pleurisy (which I get all the dang time, so you'd think I'd know), or bronchitis, but my right lung/chest HURTS when I breathe. I'm still coughing, though not as frequently as I was last week. I can now breathe through my nose, though I still have to blow it quite a bit. I guess not being able to breathe deeply makes you tired, cause I have no energy today.

Yesterday afternoon, I ran around in the yard with C, kicking balls. It was fun, but man did it wear me out! Am I goin to the doctor?  Nah, probably not. If I thought I had a sinus infection I'd be there to get some drugs, but I don't think they can do anything for this right now. So unless I get a whole lot worse, I'll just complain about it. :P (Just kidding, complaining will cease now!)

We had a great weekend. Saturday morning, me and C headed to town to find some tap shoes. On Friday during my lunch break, I went to the consignment store and bought her some tap shoes, but they ended up being too small. I also got a few leotards and skirts, which thankfully fit just fine - yay for consignment! I found some ballet slippers at Target, and they were too small as well.

Of course, Once Upon A Child (consignment) didn't have any tap shoes in C's size, but luckily I got a full refund. Next, we hit up Michael's, where I scored some ribbon on clearance for $1. I made a beautiful hair bow for her, and forgot to take a picture (haha). I'll try to get on that (and a bow tutorial) soon! We exchanged the ballet slippers at Target for a larger brand, then went on a search for tap shoes.

Luckily, we hit pay dirt at Payless. C is totally in love with her shoes and wants to wear them all the time. And I have to say, she's pretty much a natural at tapping. ( :

Hopefully that video will play! If not, here's a still:

She tapped all over the house for me, and after her long nap (in her CRIB!!), we went to my mama's house, where she tapped for her, my cousin, and my grandma. I love that kid. ( :

Yesterday, she was alternating between the tap shoes and the ballet slippers to dance for her daddy - so cute.

After church yesterday, we headed to my aunt's for a birthday lunch for my cousin. We had a good time, and got to eat some of my aunt's delicious chocolate pound cake with cream cheese icing! Yum. Of course, we stayed over there through nap time, and when we got home, C wasn't about taking a nap. So her and I played outside while DH worked on the chicken and rabbit pens.

C and I had so much fun playing outside. We played with the balls, she rode her tricycle, we swung on the swingset, and she had a blast on the slide. I cherish times like that. Then one of DH's friends stopped by to show us what he bought at the livestock sale that morning, and somehow we ended up with 6 guinea keets! When they get big enough, we'll turn them loose so they can eat bugs around the farm. Our farm will never be quiet again! If you're not familiar with guineas, they are LOUD - like, obnoxiously loud.

Anyway, after we got over our new bird excitement (note my sarcasm), C and I hopped on Sunshine bareback. Then C kicked me off so she could ride by herself, haha. I didn't feel up to giving her a "lesson," so I just walked around with her. She didn't care! I'm so glad she loves horses already. ( :

Speaking of birds, our baby ducks are still going strong! Well, 8 of them are. We lost 1, but that was expected cause he was very weak. I'm happy. Mama duck is doing a great job at protecting them. They hang out in the pond a lot, but have also been hanging out around the chicken pens - which is pretty farm from the pond, so they must be strong babies.

All in all, it was an excellent weekend. The only thing that would have made it better if is I had felt better. But I can't complain, since it was a drastic improvement from the previous weekend, when I couldn't do anything but hack and blow my nose.

At church yesterday, my pastor preached on Psalm 121. This is my favorite Psalm, and probably my favorite Bible verses. I'd never heard a sermon on it, and I was impressed.

This Psalm has gotten me through some tough times in my life. It reminds me that God is always there for me. My pastor's message was about much more than that fact, though.

It inspired me to be better about my Bible reading and studies. Well, I should say it inspired me to DO it again. Sadly, I've really gotten off track with that. At the beginning of this year, I was reading the Bible daily with my Bible In One Year app, plus I was doing other random studies through books I found. I also read several books about building a closer relationship to God. I'm not sure what happened, but I stopped doing all that gradually. Its just easier to read "fun" things, like trashy romance novels, I guess. But you know what? Lately, I've been feeling not quite myself, almost depressed at times. I was just thinking on Friday how I needed to get back into the Word, cause when I was deep within it, I didn't feel this way. And then I heard this sermon yesterday - coincidence? I think not. My God is just awesome like that. ( :

So, I'm jumping back in. I'm gonna pick up where I left off with my "The Excellent Wife Day by Day" devotional, the BIOY app, and a couple of other books I recently purchased. Fill myself with spiritual goodness, reconnect with my Maker, have peace again. Who's with me? ( :

Restasis Update

At the beginning of August, I blogged about Restasis, as I had just started using it for my severe dry eye issues. For a while, I really didn't like the drug at all - it made my eyes burn and sting, and I couldn't wear my contacts. I decided to use it for several weeks, though, just to give my eyes time to get used to it.

Well, I'm glad I did that! Its been almost 4 weeks now and I have to say I have seen a big improvement in my eyes. I don't have to use artificial tears nearly as often (yay!!), and I can normally wear my contacts from 7:30am - 9pm or later with no problems. That is huge for me. (I was having to either not wear my contacts at all some days, or take them out as soon as I got home from work.)

I read a ton of discussion boards for Restasis, and it seems that you either love the drug or you hate it. It doesn't work for a lot of people, and I was highly skeptical of it working for me. I did pick up a few tips on the boards, though. For instance, the drug comes in individual tubes, and the instructions say to use one tube twice a day. But, you are only supposed to use one drop in each eye. There are approximately 6 drops in each tube. If you recap the tube and keep it in a dark, dry place, you can reuse the same tube until its empty (which is about 3-4 uses). That was so helpful! This is an expensive drug (almost $400/month out of pocket, though I only pay $50/month with my insurance), so I like to not waste any of it.

Another tip I picked up was to not use it every single day. I found that the drug was bothering my eyes if I used it every single day, twice a day. I don't have a real schedule for using it; if I think about it, I use the drops. It generally comes out to me using it every other day or so. Obviously, that's enough for me, since my eyes are much less dry now. Some days it still bothers my eyes (I get the burning/stinging temporarily), but not always. I have noticed another strange thing, too: lately, my eyes are fine until I take my contacts out. Then, some nights, I feel like there's something in my right eye. It'll stay like that until the next morning when I put my contacts in again. Weird, huh?

For the past 10 days or so, I've been taking a lot of antihistamines since my allergies have been giving me a fit. I take Claritin and Nasonex in the morning, and Zyrtec and Nasonex (again) at night. Normally, antihistamines really dry me out, especially my eyes, but surprisingly, the Restasis seems to be counteracting that tendency. That's good news!

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with Restasis now. Since I'm making each tube last a couple of days or more, it will be a while before I have to think about a refill. At that point, I'll have to talk to my eye doctor and see what he recommends. From what I understand, Restasis is supposed to help you make more of your own tears. So maybe if I take it for a while, I'll make my own tears and won't need anything else. We'll see. For now, I'm just gonna enjoy comfortably wearing my contacts daily again! (Even if I am hacking up a lung and blowing my nose every 5 minutes...lol.)

One Thing After Another

My poor baby girl just can't catch a break lately. First she had the UTI, then she got the stomach bug, and now it appears she's got vaginitis (AGAIN - I hate antibiotics for that reason!!) and some sort of really strange rash. :( She's a tough cookie, though - none of this is slowin her down much!

The stomach bug lasted almost a week. It didn't stop all at once, it was very gradual. And thankfully no one else got it from her, which makes me think maybe it was, in fact, related to the antibiotics and not actually a virus (though she did have a fever for a few days, so who knows). At any rate, I'm super glad that its over. There is nothin worse than seeing your child in pain and not being able to help. And her little tummy was causing her a lot of pain!!

Every time C is on antibiotics, she develops vaginitis (basically, a yeast infection; not sure why her dr calls it something different). I mean every. Time. Its so frustrating. I know we can try to prevent it by getting her to take probiotics and eat yogurt. But, seriously, have you ever tried to get a toddler to consume something she didn't want?! Its near bout impossible. This time, I bought gummy bear probiotics, and I just knew she'd love them cause they're basically candy. Nope. She wouldn't touch them for days. Until we saw a commercial on TV and the littler girl ate some. Even after that I've managed to get C to eat maybe 2 of them. They taste pretty good to me, so I assume she just doesn't like the gummy texture. *sigh*

As for yogurt...she used to love the stuff. She'd ask for it. But maybe she ate too much of it and got sick of it, cause now she rarely will eat it. My MIL can't get her to eat it at all anymore, and I can only occasionally. I got her to eat one container of yogurt when she was on antibiotics this last time. After that she wouldn't touch it. So I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that she'd get a yeast infection at some point, and I've been watching for it.

Its probably been building up for the past several days, and we just weren't able to see any outward signs (i.e, redness) yet. Well, I saw the tell-tale redness last night. Thankfully, the last time we dealt with this the dr provided us with a ton of Nystatin cream, so I won't have to take her back to get a new prescription. She's already had 2 doses of the stuff, so she should be improving pretty quickly. But the stupid yeast infection makes her have accidents, just like with a UTI. Its so frustrating. I think its because the infection makes it burn when she pees, so she holds it until she just can't hold it anymore, then has an accident. Cause she's not just been having small accidents (like she did with the UTI - that was a tiny amount of urine every 20 minutes or so) - this is like a lake every few hours! Big mess to clean up. My MIL told me last week that C was still wetting her pants quite a bit, and I told her she's probably messed up from bein sick, just to give her time. But now I'm thinkin its the vaginitis that was brewing. *sigh*

The good news is that the Nystatin usually works really fast, and then she'll stop having accidents. I know the pattern. Luckily, she doesn't have to be on antibiotics very often since she's a pretty healthy child (other than recurrent UITs, and we are seeing a specialist next month about that). She's had 2 ear infections that we treated with antibiotics. The only other thing she's taken them for was UTIs. I think that's pretty good for 2.5 years. Anyway, the faster she gets, the better cause we're all sick of dealing with accidents! Yesterday she peed on my bed and my couch. And I don't mean a little bit. It looked like someone had spilled a gallon of liquid both times. Oh, and she did the same thing in the carseat over the weekend. *sigh!* You can't get mad at her though; she can't help it. We're just workin through this until she gets back to normal.

Now for her rash...this one has us all completely stumped. I noticed it Friday night. She was super ill Friday evening (that means she was in a bad mood, for all you non-Southern folks!) and we couldn't figure out why. She ate a lot at supper - I had cooked fried pork chops, fresh green beans, and fresh potatoes, and she ate everything, which surprised us. After supper, the 3 of us went outside to feed the animals. When we got back in, I noticed what looked like a bug bite on her shoulder. I had forgotten to put bug spray on her and it was at the edge of dark, so I assumed it was a mosquito. Well, in the bath tub later, I could see the spot better and it didn't look like a mosquito bite. It almost looked like fire ants had got on her. She had 6-8 little whelps and the whole area was very red. Wasn't bothering her though.

Then I noticed she had another really red area on the back of her neck. By the time we got out of the tub, I was noticing red places (and some with whelps) on several different areas on her body. None of the areas were bothering her, so I wasn't too worried. Until I was literally watching them pop up! It was crazy. When they got on her face (around her eye), I got concerned. So I gave her Benadryl. She hadn't had anything to eat that was new to her, and hadn't been exposed to anything new at all recently.

Saturday morning, she looked better, but as the morning wore on, I was seeing more red places pop up. And then it got really weird. She'd get a red area and a whelp that looked like a bug bite, and 30 minutes later it was gone. You could literally watch it pop up then disappear. Crazy. It still wasn't bothering her, so I just let her go about her day as usual. The 2 of us went to my MIL's pool that afternoon, and I'm sure the chlorine didn't help her at all. When we got back home, it looked like she had eczema on her thighs and butt. I rubbed her down with lotion and got her to sleep, but she slept fitfully. That night I gave her more Benadryl. DH kept saying take her to the dr, but I knew they'd tell me to do what I was since it wasn't bothering her at all.

Yesterday the places were a little itchy to her, but not enough that it interfered with her day or anything. For church I put her in a super soft dress with no inside seams, and during church we were watching her get redder and redder, and little whelps popping up everywhere. And then disappearing. After church I let her be naked at home, because it did seem that any type of fabric was irritating her skin. That did help some, but she was still getting red places.

I gave her more Benadryl last night and this morning at first she looked much better. By the time I dropped her off at my MIL's, though, I saw several red places - on her feet and around her right eye. :( I've looked online and all I can find is reactions to changes in diet or things like fabric softener. Well, I've been using All Free & Clear for years now, and I don't use fabric softener cause I'm allergic to it (and it ruins cloth diapers). Absolutely nothing has changed lately. The only thing I can think of is maybe she's developed a sudden food allergy. But to what?? Over the weekend she ate a ton of bread and crackers, but that's normal for her. My girl loves her carbs, haha. I don't even want to call the pediatrician because they're gonna want to see her, and we are NOT doing that again right now. I hate exposing her to all those germs in that place, and I know her immune system is weak right now, since she's been dealing with so much. No, thank you. So I'm not sure what to do. I'm gonna keep researching and keep praying that it doesn't get worse. Maybe its a delayed reaction to the antibiotic she was on? Her last dose was Friday night. But she's had that drug before, several times. I'm at a loss!!

Sorry, I know this post was terribly boring for people other than myself. But I wanted to document it for later. I really hope I haven't passed on my freak gene to my daughter. We all know that Nikki has unexplained health issues that come and go. :(

I'm Alive!

Whew! The last few weeks have been insane. I say that a lot, don't it? But its always true. Of course, looking back, all those other times I said that were nothing compared to the past 2 weeks for me. Most of my business has been work-related, and thankfully I've been able to come home in the evenings and basically just relax. Which I have desperately needed, let me tell you!

In short, my company has been experiencing a lot of major changes lately. My office has broken away from our parent company and with that has come a ton of work for me. I love being busy at work, so its been okay, but there have been a few times that I've wanted to pull my hair out! On top of all the changes and new stuff to deal with, I had to train 2 employees for our parent company. Of course, everything was happening all at the same time, so it was pretty stressful. Which is why I haven't even thought about my blog. I do plan to go back and finish blogging about our OBX trip, cause I definitely want to remember that! And we've taken more trips since then, so more memories to log. ( :

Here's a brief rundown of what's been going on since I last posted (3 weeks ago!):

I think I blogged about my eye issues recently. If not, basically I've been suffering from extreme dry eye for several months now. A prescription for Restasis is pending, has been pending for weeks now (my insurance doesn't like to cover expensive drugs like Restasis, bleh). Anyway, I had another appointment the week after our OBX trip. My eye dr put plugs in my tear ducts, and it has made a huge difference. For a few days, I didn't see much improvement and I was pretty disappointed. But finally, I can wear my contacts almost normally. I still can't wear them every day, and I still normally take them out early in the evening, but its such an improvement. If my RX for Restasis ever gets approved, I'm sure I'll be able to wear contacts like any normal person.

The weekend after our OBX trip I didn't do a thing. At least not that I remember. I remember on Sunday we were supposed to take C to a birthday party, but neither of us felt like going so we just lazed around the house. It was lovely. Thankfully, we hadn't even mentioned the party to C, so she didn't know what she was missing! Terrible parents, huh? ( ;

July 1 was supposed to be a quiet day for me at work, but I got a call early that said 2 people were on the way for me to train, and they were 15 minutes away! Yikes. (For the record, it wasn't my boss that called me. He found out after I did that these girls were coming.) Unfortunately, I didn't teach them much since they were unexpected. Plus, the 3 of us went to lunch and then they had to leave around 2. Oh well. The next 2 days, I had one girl here. Thankfully, she was really smart and nice, and having her here wasn't much of a burden. I had a ton of work-related problems to deal with, though. The first and second weeks of July were horrible in terms of work problems. I spent hours every day on the phone with support people. Fun, fun. I think I've got almost everything sorted out now. Whew.

On July 3, my best friend had some important surgery. So on top of dealing with all the work-related mess, I was worried about her all day until I heard she was okay. Well, sort of. She had some major reactions to the surgery and the drugs. It was pretty scary for a while there. But she pulled through and is now almost back to normal. ( :

Also on that day, my boss told me not to worry about coming in on Friday (we were already closed for the 4th). I think he felt sorry for me since I was so stressed out and working so hard. So I had a 4 day weekend!!

The 4th was spent in a frenzy. We had a ton to do to prepare for our annual July 4th cookout. I made sure to enjoy the day, though. After I got some initial cleaning done that morning, me, C, and my mama played in the pool for a while. Then, while I got C to sleep (on her crib mattress on the floor again), Mama cleaned my bathrooms for me. DH was a huge help around the house that day, too. Between the 3 of us, we got that nice nice and clean. So that the family could demolish it that night, haha.

Our yard has been pretty soaked lately. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights here. That's not really an exaggeration. I've never seen so much rain at once. Literally, every day for a long time now it has rained. Our garden has drowned. Our animals are swimming. Its been bad, though not nearly as bad as some people have had it. Anyway, because the yard was so soaked, we set up all the tables in the driveway. Of course, people still managed to get dirty and track all that into my house. I was amazed at how much dirt we swept up that night. But everyone had a great time. We had over 30 people show up for the cookout this year. And it was nice cause we didn't have to rush off for fireworks at 9. (This year, our town held fireworks on July 6th for some reason.) Which also meant we had guests in the house until like 10pm. But C got to play with her cousin (who is 3), and they had a blast together. I love having both our families together like that.

The next day was Friday, and DH decided to head down to the river for the day. His aunt and uncle have a place near the Pamlico River, and they have a boat. Its where we went back in January, when I got the pictures of the eagles. Its about a 2 hour drive from home, so not bad at all. When we got there, we rode the boat to Washington, where we got out and walked around town for a while. That was nice, even though it was about a thousand degrees. C absolutely loved riding the boat, as long as her uncle didn't drive too fast! When we rode back to the dock, we let C play in the water for a while. The Pamlico River is really brown and muddy from all the rain eastern NC has had lately, so it was pretty gross, but that didn't stop C from having fun! We didn't have her bathing suit with us (we knew on the boat we wouldn't be stopping to swim or anything), so we just let her play in the water in her clothes. She loved that. We stayed until after supper and got home that night around 10pm.

Which is when we discovered that our air conditioning was broken. It was 85 degrees in our house. WAY too hot!! My brother works on heat and air units for a living, so luckily he was able to come over that night and work on it some. I don't know anything about A/C units, but he couldn't do much Friday night. So we turned up all the fans and slept almost naked. Saturday morning my brother came back and worked some more. He got it working, sort of, but said it would take a long time to cool the house. Well, most of our windows don't open (hello, old house) so we weren't able to get a good breeze going through there. It was miserable. I stayed long enough to get the floors vacuumed and mopped, and did a few loads of laundry, then C and I left for Mama's. We played in Mama's little pool for a while, then took a nap in the wonderful A/C.

DH wanted to head back to the river that night, and since our house was still 85 degrees, he didn't get an argument from me! We packed up and made it there before it was too late. We spent the day Sunday on the boat fishing. Now, I don't have any patience at all for fishing. But this was actually kinda fun to watch. I didn't participate cause I had to hold C and make sure she didn't fall off the boat. But DH and his uncle were net fishing, which I'd never seen before. They had this super long net and would set it up, then his uncle would drive the boat in circles and we'd be really loud. The idea was to scare the fish into the net. It worked pretty well. We caught a good mess of fish this way, mostly spots. Even C wasn't bored with everything.

I, unfortunately, discovered that day that I now have a true allergy to the sun. I applied SPF 50 sunscreen every hour or so all day, and didn't get a sunburn, but after a couple of hours I broke out into a rash on my legs. It was wonderful. I ended up having to cover my legs with a towel. And lucky me kept having a reaction for days after the sun exposure. Like, I'm still a little itchy, and its been over a week. Ugh. Every night last week I had to take Benadryl just to sleep, and some days I had to take it at work, too. Which I hate doing!!

Anyway, we had a fun time at the river. Once again, after we got off the boat, we let C play on the little beach. This time in her bathing suit. ( :  She had a ball. I think we made it home that evening by around 6. Our house was still pretty hot, but we could tell it was getting cooler.

By Monday morning the house was blessedly cool, but DH had decided that we'll be getting a new unit. My brother patched ours up so it'll work for a while, but sometime in the very near future we'll be shelling out a couple grand for this thing. Gotta stay cool, though!

Actually, yesterday afternoon I noticed the house was getting hot again, and DH had to go tinker with out unit again. Hopefully it'll still be cool when I get home from work today.

Now for the sickness. My poor baby has been suffering through another UTI lately. :( She started having a lot of accidents, and after a couple of days I started to wonder if it was her kidneys again. Last Tuesday night, she peed 5 or 6 times in 40 minutes, so I knew something was up. I tried to get her doctor to just test her urine without having to see her, but they insisted. So Wednesday after work, I took her in. Her urine looked clean under the microscope, and I was confused. Of course, I didn't want her to have a UTI, but I knew somethin was wrong. They cultured it "just in case." Well, early Thursday morning I got the call that she did indeed have an infection. It took until after lunch for her antibiotic to be ready, but we did manage to get 2 doses in her that day.

Almost immediately, the antibiotic made her have looser stools (sorry, TMI probably). But that's normal, so I didn't think much of it. Saturday morning, she had a few bouts of explosive diarrhea. Poor baby. She still acted okay, though, and she wasn't peeing as much. So I felt comfortable leaving her with my parents while I went to see my friend that had had the surgery. C ended up staying with them for longer than I intended cause she took a super long nap. Again, that's normal when she's fighting an infection, so I didn't think much of it. She was really whiny and clingy after her nap, but after a while she acted better. Her and I drove to town to pick up a pizza for supper, and she ate 2 pieces, plus some bread bites. Then after her bath that night, she told me she was freezing and started crying. Then I realized she had a fever. :(

She actually slept pretty well that night, considering. But yesterday morning, she woke up with a bad stomachache and immediately went to the potty, where she had diarrhea. That continued all morning. She was pitiful, and it broke my heart. I was thinking the antibiotic was affecting her, so I called the doctor, who insisted on seeing her again. So the 3 of us headed to town, where we learned that she most likely has a stomach virus. On top of her UTI! Poor baby. :( Probably picked it up the other day when I brought her to that germ-ridden place, and her defenses were already weakened. Ugh. Sot he doctor didn't do a thing for her.

After the appointment, she was feeling better, so we picked up some groceries and ate at Outback. She barely ate though, and was really tired. Once we got home, she napped for a little while, but woke up with a tummyache again. After a while she was feeling better again, and seemed like herself. We actually had fun yesterday afternoon. She had a few more bouts of pain/diarrhea last night, but then slept in her crib until 4:45am. Unfortunately, it all started up again this morning. Fever and all. I hate seein my baby sick! By the time I left for work she was feeling better, thankfully. Hopefully she'll be over this soon. And hopefully we won't get it. I've already been feeling nauseous for the past several days...ugh.

So that's my busy busy life for the past 3 weeks!! Whew!

VBS Days 3-4

Didn't get a chance to blog yesterday. This week has been insane!! And normally Fridays are my chill days at work, but not today. But its cool. Crazy makes the day go by faster. ( :

First up, I got my ring back from the jeweler's yesterday! DH picked it up for me. I had dropped it off last Saturday to be sized down. Now I can wear my set on the correct finger!!

It feels so weird to have rings on that finger again. Its been over 2 years!! And actually, its still too big. I only had my engagement band sized, thinking it could hold down the wedding band. That way, if I go through another pregnancy and my fingers swell, I will be able to wear at least one of my rings. I had the engagement ring sized down to a 6. (I used to be a 7, woah!) And its still kinda floppy on my finger, and it doesn't take much effort at all to get it off. I'm gonna try it for a while before I decide if I need to get it sized down some more. I'm waitin for my fingers to swell like they normally do in the heat, but for some reason this week they haven't. Go figure - when I want my fingers to swell, they don't!

And that picture made me realize how weird-lookin my fingers are. What is up with those 2 that kind of twist in??! haha


So, VBS. Night 3 was uneventful. I didn't get any pictures because C was running around the church during music time instead of standing up front with the other kids. For some reason, she decided it was a really grand idea to take all the hymn books out of the shelves and place them onto the pews. I had to go behind her and put them all back up. Fun times.

I've still been unsatisfied with the lack of Jesus-teachin goin on durin VBS, but I keep remindin myself that we are in the nursery class, so teaching them anything is a challenge. A friend told me that the kids were probably picking up things during craft times, but our class is not doing anything related to Jesus or the Bible. Every night, we decorate a different object with stickers. We've done a hat, a bag, and a bucket. I guess I was just expecting at least crosses or fish symbols or "J is for Jesus" or something. But oh well. C is havin a blast, and I like that she's around other kids and in a church setting. So its all good. Next year she'll be in the preschool class, I hope, so maybe she'll learn somethin.

VBS Night 4 was pretty interesting. We had some storms roll through last night, and we lost power very early during bible school. VBS starts at 6:30, and sometime around then the lights went out and came back on a few times. We were eating in the fellowship hall at that point. Around 6:45, the power to the fellowship hall went out and didn't come back on. They checked the church and the front half of it had power but the back (where the classrooms are) was out. Us adults voted to just stay, since a lot of kids had been dropped off and their parents were already gone.

So we finished supper in the half dark, then headed to the church. The storm hadn't even hit at that point. It was really windy and was raining a little, but nothing major. We started our songs and not long into the first one, the power went out. We sang it a capela - luckily we've sang that song enough this week that we all know it by heart! Then we proceeded to go through our normal routine. The youngest kids (including our class) were dismissed to crafts, and that was interesting. The fellowship was getting pretty dark by then. Me and another mama in our class had flashlight apps on our iPhones, so we held those up so our kids could see their stickers.

Next, we went to our regular classroom. It wasn't too dark since there's a window in there and the room is pretty small. We tried to tell the kids a bible story, but they were more interested in playing, as usual. At that point, my phone died since I'd been using the flashlight so much. It normally doesn't bother me not to have a phone on me, but I felt extremely weird not havin one when the power was out and the weather was bad. Anyway, last we went to another classroom that had extra windows to sing a few more songs. We played them on a laptop but the volume wasn't able to be as loud as the little kids liked, so they weren't into it. Oh well.

Me and C came home to a dark house. DH had called me earlier to say the power was out. Even though the storm never really got bad around our house (thank God!), a transformer went out up the road and knocked us all out. DH's brother works for the power company, and he was texting back and forth all night letting us know it would be longer than they thought. DH got out all our oil lamps so we weren't in the dark at all. C wasn't too sure about it, though! She kept askin us to turn the TV on so we could see, haha.

Luckily, I have a car charger for my phone, so I plugged that in so I could look at the radar. All day yesterday we had been told to watch out, that the storms were severe and could spawn tornadoes. We kept waitin for it to get bad, but it never did. At 10pm one more storm rolled through, but it wasn't close to us. It just sounded that way since we didn't have power!

It was uncomfortable not havin A/C last night, but not unbearable. We set up a battery-powered fan to blow on me and C as I rocked her to sleep. Instead of watching TV like I normally do while I rock her, I read a book by candlelight (well, oil lamp light, but that doesn't sound as good!). I kinda liked that. When I got into our hot bed (we closed all the windows just in case it rained some more, so it got stuffy fast), I read some more by the light. That soft light hurt my eyes a lot less than regular lamps do, that's for sure!

At 2:15am I awoke to some strange noises in the house - the power had come back on so everything was humming again, plus the TV had came on. I was so grateful for those guys who worked half the night to get power to us again!!

So far, its been a pretty eventful week overall at VBS. No power last night, DH got struck by lightening earlier this week...jeez. Makes me wonder what will happen tonight??! Will tonight be calm and anti-climactic, or will we end VBS with a bang? I vote for calm and low key. ( :


In other news, I went to my eye doctor yesterday. It was my yearly appointment, but I told him I've been having some major eye issues lately. They hurt all the time and I can't wear contacts anymore. Which makes me extremely sad/angry. I think I've already blogged about this. Anyway, he told me I have severely dry eyes. Huh. They feel dry with my contacts on, but they don't feel dry with my glasses, though they always hurt no matter what. And wearing contacts makes them really red, too. He gave me a different brand of contacts to try and gave me some eye drops to use every hour liberally. Well, at first I loved the contacts, but after an hour they were feelin dry, so I put some drops in my eyes. And then my vision was blurry for 5-10 minutes after. Wonderful. It cleared up, so I figured I just had to get used to all the new stuff. Next hour, same thing, but worse. It finally got the point I couldn't take it anymore and just threw the contact out and put my glasses back on. I told the dr and stopped by after work to get a different brand of contacts to try. But my eyes hurt this morning so I haven't put them in yet. Gonna try them tomorrow. I hope they feel better to me! He said I'll probably end up on a prescription eye drop. Yay. I just hope I can get to where I can wear contacts again!!

One more thing: I've been researching natural remedies for allergies, since C's have been so bad this week. She takes Children's Claritin every day, and Nasonex nose spray. This week, I added Children's Zyrtec at night, and after a few days that really helped. Now she's much better. But I hate her havin to be on so many medications. I'm gonna try to get us some local honey (for us both to eat, since my allergies get worse every year now), and then I read up on essential oils. Apparently a combination of lavender, lemon, and peppermint is great for allergies. I got all three yesterday but didn't get a chance to try them out with all the drama last night. I'm hoping tonight to try them on myself first, just to make sure nothing crazy happens, then on C tomorrow. Either way, I'll blog about it after I try it! If nothing else, I'm gonna get a diffuser and use some of these in the house - that lemon oil smells so good to me!! ( :

All the EOs said to use a carrier oil when applying directly to skin, so I got this Almond oil to mix in. We'll see how it works out!

Great Weekend vs. Allergies

This weekend would have been truly awesome if I hadn't developed this sudden allergy to pollen. I spent the entire weekend sneezing, sniffling, coughing, and being stuffed up. Ugh. My regular allergy medicine is not helping at all, so I may have to up my game today. Or just pray the pollen goes away ASAP. For some reason, being outside in the pollen makes me feel great; when I'm outside, I can breathe just fine. Its a cruel joke, I tell you.

I've never had allergies quite like this, so I have no clue how to deal. My allergies consist of itching all over my body until I go mad from it. Or GI issues. Not the typical sneezing, runny nose stuff. Yuck.

Despite my defunct nose, this weekend was awesome. Friday after work, C had a play date (and luckily me and the other mama are good friends, too, haha), that turned into supper at a pizza restaurant. C was extremely well behaved at the restaurant, and I was so proud of her. She had a blast, too.

Saturday, I only did minimal cleaning around the house and spent the majority of the day just playing with C. After lunch, we went to the playground at my mama's church. We met up with a couple others there, and everyone had a great time. It was hot though! I slathered me and C in sunscreen, but I guess I was a little careless with mine; I got burned in a few places. I'm waiting on the allergic reaction to that to start...(yes, I have a weird sun allergy. I'm extremely sensitive to the sun, and if I get burned, I have a reaction that usually ends up with me at the doctor begging for prednisone. Its great. The itching has already started, but I'm trying my best to ignore it...)

After C's nap, we headed back outside to weed the flower gardens. I've been slowly working on the weeds over the past few weeks - there were a ton of them. One of my beds is eat up with fire ants, so I'm waiting for that holocaust to be over before I can get started in there. The plan was to plant some flowers Saturday evening, but DH decided to take us strawberry picking!

DH showed her once and she got the hang of it right away. Surprisingly, C didn't eat a single strawberry while we were in the field. That night, however, she had three bowls of them chopped...haha. We had strawberries for a snack yesterday, and we had them again on homemade waffles last night. And I brought some for lunch today. ( :

Yesterday was another relaxing day. I decided to start playing with the Manual mode on my DLSR camera. I've had that thing almost a whole year now and I always shoot in Auto mode, or one of the other preset modes. I figured it was high time I learned how to shoot in Manual. It is not easy!! I took a bajillion pictures that were completely white or completely black. I need a lot more practice, that's for sure. I did end up with a few gems, though...

 

 Oh, how I love frilly dresses for my girl! She actually wore dresses all weekend. I figure I'll keep her in dresses until she decides they're too girlie. ( :

I had a couple other successes this weekend. Cooking successes, actually! One, I finally made a batch of cookies that turned out absolutely perfect. This was huge for me. I've tried to make cookies so many times over the years, and they always turn out extremely flat and run together. Saturday I made some double chocolate chunk cookies and they were delicious AND looked perfect! I don't have the recipe with me right now, so I'll have to post on that later. If you like chocolate, though, these are the cookies for you. I may have ate the majority of the batch already...Hey, DH doesn't really dig chocolate like I do, I can't let them go to waste!!

My other kitchen success was cooking spinach. I love spinach, but I have never cooked it. DH doesn't care for it, so I've never tried. After we picked strawberries Saturday, the farm owner let us pick out some other things, including some fresh spinach. The farmer's wife told me how to cook it, and I couldn't believe it was so simple.

I didn't get a pic, but everyone knows that spinach looks like, right? ( :  After a good washing, I just combined the spinach with some olive oil, salt, and garlic powder (fresh garlic would probably be better), and placed it in a covered frying pan for just a couple of minutes, until the leaves were wilted. And it. was. DELICIOUS! C didn't like it, but she doesn't really go for greens, and DH wouldn't try it, but I couldn't get enough. I can't wait to cook the rest of the spinach later this week. Anyone have another really good (easy) way to cook spinach??

Hope everyone's weekend was as great as mine! Now on to another busy week....starting with the farrier coming tonight to trim the horses' feet. ( :