Happy Easter!

Easter is sort of a new start, so I prayed for God to give me patience and more kindness this morning.  I know I need to work on something myself.  The qualities I'm not always the proudest of.

The kids have enjoyed Easter so far.  Last night was chicken dinner at one grandmas.  It was nice except the moment I was about to go off on someone.  I know this will offend some, but I'm sorry.  Think about it slowly and realize that other people have rights too.  You can smoke.  You can do that to your body and though it's wrong you can subject your own children to it.  But, you CANNOT subject my kids to it.  I have kids with health concerns or were born with issues that could make smoking exposure more harmful.  You do NOT hang around my kids when there are plenty of other places for your body to be a wave a cigarette around them.  I counted to ten more than once, but I will not do it again.  This is NOT one of my qualities I will work on.  I can judge you for smoking around my kids when they are little.

This morning the kids behaved relatively well in church.  Even Jaemin...surprise.  Brian had a little baggie with cereal towards the end and that helped.  Yet it was late enough the sugar didn't kick in until after church.  I decided on the way home we should start our own little tradition and let the kids go to the store and pick out whatever kind of donuts they want and eat that when we got home.  They've never gotten to do that before and really liked it.  Jaemin picked out one with blue icing.  He was a pretty darn happy camper.  Easter bunny brought Jaemin a bowling set and since Jaemin loves bowling this was perfect for him.  The girls got hair bands, hair ties and socks.  Hello Kitty is still super big in our house.  The big boys got fishing lures.  And then there was chocolate!  No one has touched it yet....too many donuts.

Grandma's house....hunting....or in Cole's case directing Jaemin.

Hunting at home.

Hauling it all back upstairs.  Poor Jaemin had to have mom's help for his load.

Easter Donuts and afterward.

And apparently after some really sugary donuts and little sister leaving all of her hair ties and hair bands in the chair, big brother gets bored and pretty.

Here are the last pictures from Great Grandma's house this evening.  More fun....too much food and too many sweets.  Jaemin is WOUND up!!

Kaelin helped Jaemin and mostly he stopped to eat.

They looked up and down.

God and Angels are With Us

My little Jaemin. He's a wild one, but he could have really been seriously hurt today.  He was at mom's and I guess something on their little deck-like thing was broke or loose and it gave way when he leaned on it.  This thing is pretty high...over our heads, so about 7 feet in the air.  He fell all the way down and only had a small burn on his arm.  I cannot believer how incredibly lucky we were to not have him really hurt.  He could have broken something.  I immediately think at least legs, arms or worse yet his neck.  He could have fallen on his head and had a head injury.  My heart skipped a beat when Brian called to tell me.  That's the second big scare, after his seizure last March, and I don't like his scares.   They're tooooo much for me.  Angels and God were with us today protecting my baby from harm.  I don't know how because there's no explanation for how safe he came out of that, but he did and I'm THANKFUL!

With 3 boys in the house, the inevitable has happened

we got a call with a girl on the other end asking for a boy.  We are unlisted and don't even list with the school, for personal reasons, so we figured it would take a while.  But, it turned out it was just a neighbor girl who wanted Cole to meet some of her friends.  They're a year behind him.  Him being, well, him he jumped his rip stik and went down the road.  They said hi, he said hi and went on his merry way.  He says they weren't very pretty, but I have some doubts since I'm sure he's not going to tell us he thinks they're cute.  I guess when he and Chase go down there to see her little brother he talks to big sister occasionally anyways, so they've gotten to know each other a little.

It's good for him to have some girl communication and I guess this is an easy way to ease mom and dad into it.  :0)

Another apron thread fringing loose

Just another moment in motherhood where you can feel your apron strings loosening up.  It's not always voluntarily, but definitely necessary so you can have a well-rounded, responsible child.

We have licensed and insured Cole's car and he got his permit.  It's a little scary putting so much power and responsibility in the hands of a 15 year old, but necessary in rural areas where there's no public transit.  He has to have a car.  If he doesn't have a beater car to drive then they fully insure him on one of ours and that's EXPENSIVE.  He has to be able to work after he turns 16, so this is a necessary part of life.

I'm trying hard not to worry too much about what may come, but still it's a little bit of a scary part of a mom's life.  I hope it gets easier with each one.

The Jury's Still Out

Well, I had my CTs.  My lungs revealed no embolisms.....great!  I had a 5mm nodule in one of my lobs, but they said they are generally benign, so we're letting that go.  I vaguely remember that showing up years ago on an xray, but I could be wrong.  My sinus CT revealed an 8mm fluid filled cyst.  The doctor said that is likely the culprit.  It's not blocking so much as it's filling up (snot) and constantly draining.  My problem is that rarely does anything drain out my nose, but down my throat and into my airways.  He said this nonstop irritation is causing inflammation to my lungs and causing me to cough a lot and not be able to breath.  He said he really only saw one more choice for me.  He said it works for some people like me and if it doesn't I'm done trying because he said there's really nothing more to be done.

So, I agreed to his idea of steroids again.  He said the medrol dose pack is not the same thing as taking a months steroids (lighter).  He says if he puts me on 20mg daily and cuts them by 5mg/week for a month it should cause the inflammation to decrease and then I have to stay on some sort of allergy meds daily to keep it under control.  He thinks if we can get cyst to stop filling and reduce all the swelling I should be able to breath.  I took my first steroid dose last night and had not one problem breathing last night, but my cough is back this evening.  I'll do what he said though, so we can exhaust everything.  He said if this doesn't work the only other choice is live with the feeling of suffocation (I'm not exaggerating) or taking steroids every day from now on; at the smallest dosage he can find to help me.

Hoping this works so I don't have to be on it forever!  There's no diagnosis....just bad genes.  :)

Movie Night!

We were all SO tired after all the work we did yesterday, so we decided it was movie night.  We had free movie channels and had DVRd Pirates of the Carribbean and it was time to watch it.  And since everyone got along well, unlike today, and worked hard we bought actual meals at McDonalds.  The little kids were excited to get Happy Meals with toys!

Jaemin on his way to go outside.

Just got outside, can't wait to play.

 The little kids eating their McDonalds and watching the movie.

When moms get to laugh

I probably don't laugh as often as I should, but when I laugh because of how ironic a situation is it's even better.

I felt probably about the same way my mom did when I used to leave all of my clothes on my bedroom floor, as a teenager; clean or dirty.  Then, when I got my own house I turned into this OCD, crazy clean fool.  Well, today I witnessed it.  I'm always getting onto the kids....sometimes maybe more than I should, about getting into my car or coming in the house filthy or what I deem dirty.

Last night we bought Cole his first car.  Nothing special, just a 9 year old Grand Prix, but it only had 102,000 miles, sounded good and was beyond what I consider gross and dirty.  And I broke my rule of not buying from a smoker, but it was a decent deal; barring the car will run for awhile with no major issues.  Today since I was washing and waxing my car for the year Cole decided to pull his up and clean his; after he got his turkey for the day (it's youth turkey season).  I had to laugh as he was trying to vacuum it out and Chase decided to help and then I heard it.  Cole told Chase not to get in his car with his shoes like that and then made him take his socks off because they were too dirty as well.  Then he took his own off to clean it.  I will not tell him how funny this was for a very long time for fear he'll stop, but it was really funny!  I told Brian and he just busted out laughing.  Our slob kid might actually take care of his car.  Precisely why I was pretty pushy about Cole being totally satisfied with what we ended up buying.

So after about 3 hours of cleaning and Brian and I joining in the effort it's clean.  There was nicotine stains all over every knob and dial in the control panel.  Cigarette butts in the ash tray and ashes everywhere.  No burn holes, oddly enough.  There were soda and/or coffee stains all over the floor and it was just dirty.  A dirty I hope I never have to clean again.  We even employed a toothbrush to clean out the nasty crevices that contained what looked like soda and tobacco remnants.  We scrubbed with soap and water to get all the vinyl parts cleaned.  Then Cole put protectant and shine on the whole thing.  We scrubbed the carpet after spraying it with cleaner and brushed off the ceiling, yes the ceiling.  We vacuumed every inch of it.  It now looks pretty sharp and doesn't smell near as bad anymore.  It will air out over time.

Cole did realize how gross smoking is.  He noted the guys apartment and the yellow, stained walls.  And Cole realized he didn't want to end up like that poor guy.  I'm hoping this experience was really good for him.  Sheltered lives can be good, but sometimes they need to get out of their element to see how others live and realize what they're thankful for and might want in life.  He's pretty excited about his car and I'm glad to see it, because it's not like we can afford another one like this if he doesn't take good care of it.