Grandma & Grandpa Visit and Making a Pizza...

Tonight I came home from work and Grandma Cindy and Grandpa Gordon were here. They were visiting tonight before flying out to Washington DC tomorrow morning for Aunt Audra's ceremony naming her school a blue ribbon school. The kids and G & G got the opportunity to do some finger painting and artwork at the kitchen table. I think they all had a good time.

Earlier today, Colette got the kids to help make a pizza for supper. They put the flour down on the table, then put the dough on the table and rolled it out. Then they put the ham and cheese on the pizza and got it ready to cook.

It really might not seem like anything special, but what is special is how good a job Colette does getting both kids involved. I think my children are so lucky to have a mother who doesn't just sit them in front of the TV. She gets them to buy into the work or activity at hand and gets them to participate. I think it's a really special gift Colette gives to our children every day and I am thankful that she does it.

The video is really funny because the kids had fun sprinkling the flour on the table, and if you watch closely you can see the flour on Brayton's face. He must have had an itch he needed to scratch.

Brayton's Broken Wrist & ER Visits

Well, If you haven't hear the news, we've had quite a few visits to the Dr. lately. Starting last week, Brayton fell off the playground equiptment at the local park. He was quite whiney for a bit and after Colette consulted with another lady in their playgroup she decided to take B to the Dr. Good thing she did, he had a compression fracture of his distal radius (I don't really know what that means). The Dr. didn't want to put a cast on a 2 year old, so they gave him a splint to put on his wrist. Brayton thought this was pretty cool because the neighbor girl who is 10 has one too. Check out the Xrays and picture of his little splint. Click on the top Xray to see a larger version and the fracture.

Then friday night we headed up to Mallard for the weekend. By the time we got to Humbolt Brayton was breathing pretty heavily. We feared his allergies wouldn't take too well to the harvest season and all the corn dust. We had some prescription albuterol syrup just for this. We gave him a dose in Humboldt before we ate supper there. By the time we ate supper and drove to Pocahontas, his breathing had continued to deteriorate. We took him to the emergency room there and they gave him a nebulizer treatment. It helped and got us through the night.

The next day Colette went to baby Ella's shower and I took Brayton and Lauren out to the farm. Grandpa Wayne was out there and we picked a bunch of raspberries and a couple of watermellons. He made it through Saturday okay with his breathing, but we were dosing him every 4 hours with his medicine.

Sunday morning we woke up and B could barely breathe. I took him back to Pocahontas for another nebulizer treatment. Withing four hours, we were heading back to the ER for a second treatment. Colette and I decided that was enough. We packed everything up and left Mallard. By the time we were back to Des Moines, he was having a difficult time breathing again. Colette gave him another dose of the medicine and actually took him to the ER at Methodist. When she got there she found out it was a 4 hour wait and after sitting for a little bit his breathing started to get better. We got a nebulizer machine from Hy Vee and gave him another treatment at home. We tried to keep him calmed down and it seemed to help. That night right before bed we gave him his final nebulizer treatment and he slept through the evening well.

Today we took him to the allergist and she prescribed some pulmacourt which is a steroid and anti-inflamitory medicine. She said it should work well for him as it's pretty strong stuff. At this point I am just happy to have a little boy who doesn't have to struggle to breathe. That was very scary for me and I don't want to ever go through that again.

Lauren's Pretty New Dress...

Lauren Claire is turning into quite the little lady. Back in August, we put a nice cute polka dot dress on her that we got as a gift and she just loved it. She would stand up stick her chest out and prance around. She really loved that dress.


Just earlier this week, Colette bought her the nice white frilly dress she has on in the video. Unfortunately I'm usually tardy with getting out the camera, but again when we put her in this new dress she stuck her little chest out and was so proud of how pretty her new dress was. Her little face just lights up.


We had some old Mardi Gras beads sitting around the house, Lauren loves to put these beads around her neck. She'll walk around all day with the beads on. She is starting to like her chap stick too. If we could get her to sit still, I'd tell Colette to paint her little fingernails. I bet she'd love that.