home again

First my apologies to Jen for not making it to her house... Thursday did not work out as planned. I ended up flying to the island much earlier than anticipated and so when I had planned to be visiting you I was on a 10 seater flying to Nanaimo.

So much has happened since I last wrote so I have written the highlights below:
~ Most recent - today was immunization day - BIG BLAH! - Michael reacted fine but he has been miserable tonight. He is crying for anything and over eating. I resorted to some tylenol to ease his pain and it seemed to work. He had three shots today so I figure he can be as angry as he wants; I would likely deal with it worse. So he is 5 months this weekend and already outweighing Wyatt at six months... today Michael weighed 17 lbs and 9.5 oz, he is just short of 26 inches, which means I need to move him out of his carrier soon.

~ Kyle has completely recovered from his flu/cold/infection. He is complaining of kids at school - two kids, they hit me... no names, no i.d's - darn bullies. Anyways the school is supposed to watch more carefully and we have tried to explain to Kyle that he should talk with a teacher if there is a problem.

~ My trip - well I managed to get some shopping in at Woodgrove Mall in Nanaimo and after spending three days there I really started to wonder about moving from Quesnel. What a great place! Not Vancouver but close, offers the small town feel while still growing, not entirely dependent on the forest industry, the ocean...

~ Other work - I was supposed to hop on the Rocky Mountaineer to Whistler but the tickets didn't come through so I drove with my buddy Paula and brother in law. I was surprised that there is so much whining about the drive - everyone who complains about that should drive Terrace to Rupert. I love that drive but it is far more twisted and I would argue far far far more attractive. Trying to live for the moment and do things I would never get to do with kids we ventured up the mountain on a gondula... as Paula would say 'lord love a duck' it was thrilling and stomach dropping - I made it and I'm very glad I did it. On the way down we saw a bear eating grass... looked to be enjoying some sunshine and then we saw some bikers... and more bikers - they were using a path that was near the bear. "I wonder if those guys see the bear." And with that the bear up and charges at one of the bikers. Once I scan my photos I will share what I captured on film.

~ 5 days in the lower mainland and only sushi for lunch once and it was lame sushi... very sad... still craving it...

There are other things to share about the trip but I will cut it short there. I need to do some work tonight and it isn't getting done while I type on my blog. Must be more disciplined... my computer will be back tomorrow... HOORAY and I should be able to load photos then.

better

Our house is basically back to normal. My body is still crying for sleep. I could sleep at the drop of a hat. My husband says that I will be having a normal conversation one minute and then asleep the next. Some of this is also because I haven't recovered from all the lost sleep with Michael. He is not sleeping through the night. He makes an honest effort. He will sleep from 10pm (sometimes as early as 8:30) until 4-6am. The problem is that I don't tend to get into bed until 11 or sometimes 1am and then I'm bagged when the cries start for food.

Oh well right... suck it up... I know, and I will.

No luck with the photos yet. I do have all my files back but I didn't accomplish any file retrival yet. Plans for tomorrow.

I have meetings lined up all morning tomorrow so hopefully by the afternoon I will have retrieved files and posted something new.

Happy thoughts: Lilac season is upon us and I love it. My bedroom window is open and you can smell the bush from across the lane. FABULOUS!

ER - not sure if you guys watch this or not but I'm addicted. I didn't watch for the longest time but I'm back at it now. Tonight's season finale was pretty good. Last week I was crying through damn near the whole show.

Alright I need to write a paper for tomorrow morning and then I'm hitting the hay. Bon soir.

more sick kids

This morning we made our trip to the hospital for assistance because Kyle was up in the 39's again and he's been on tylenol and advil for three full days. We get there and of course his fever has come down a bit and then they let us sit there. We sit there long enough to see my mom come in for work and set up for the day. 1 hour and 20 minutes later we see a nice doctor and he says "you are doing all the right things - just keep doing that and come back on Monday if the fever is still there." So we have to wait another three days. He thought the antibiotic Kyle is on should crack this infection like nothing but it certainly hasn't. He has been pretty good today. Only a couple of issues with pain and temp all day. It is over night that it creeps up on us again.

I, myself, am definitely tired of feeling like this. My throat hurts, my ears hurt, it hurts to swallow, it hurts to do pretty much anything. Although for overall pain, today was actually better than yesterday. I didn't pick my computer up this morning because of the hospital and then just didn't bother leaving the house the rest of the day - well except to venture out to get a slurpee, which in the end wasn't good and didn't help my throat in the least. So why am I not on meds? I'm allergic to a lot of medications and unless I'm REALLY sick - like can't blog sick - I don't really bother with antibiotics. I've been taking advil to keep my temp in check and keep me somewhat with it but other than that I'm suffering through it like Kyle. What a week!

Hopefully next week will be much better.

Tip: Quesnel has a Child Care Resource and Referral office (this is the provincial link). It loans toys of all kinds and learning kits for a $10 membership (annual). If you have access to CCRR office and they do the same program get in on it. It is a great way to test out toys before spending the cash and finding out that as great as it was in the store, at home the box was better. The learning kits are great too. The kits come in all types - transportation, space, music, etc - there are at least 20 kits at the CCRR here. Definitely a well spent $10. Plus they have a friendly staff... what more could you ask for!

computers and sick kids

"It looks like you have a hard drive problem."

"Great. So what does that mean?"

"Well we should have a new hard drive for you in two weeks."

"Two weeks."

"Hope that's ok."

I'm supposed to be getting the files back today so that I load them somewhere else. My actually computer will not be repaired until after I get back from the island. I went to the office last night and grabbed the laptop because I knew that my email must be getting out of hand. Not that bad, only 324. I was expecting there to be near a thousand. So I'm not sure when I will get to load new photos. I have some on the digital now and I might try to load those up on other computer later today.

Kyle is still sick. He is on Advil, Tylenol and Biaxin. Once he is drugged up he is good but if we let the time run out on any of them he is back up in 39's for temperature, which brings on the joys of ranting, crying, raving and hallucination. He did pretty well last night until about 4am and then it just started to snowball. Michael got up and then Kyle and then it was back and forth until 7am. Then we were all up trying to get the day started. I'm sick but I think a lot of it is just being rundown from the sleep deprivation. The worst thing is that I can't seem to sleep when I want to. Last night I just couldn't get my eyes to shut and then when they finally did I woke up and decided that I was too sick to sleep in my bed and went and slept on the couch. So I did manage to get a couple of hours. I'm thankful for those.

I did manage to get some planting done last night. I bought some chrysanthumums (excuse the spelling), babies breath and a dark purple aster. I also planted some herbs. Hooray.

blog note

A note to my dedicated readers.

I've changed the blog so that only registered users can write comments. If you are not a registered user it is a simple process. Please register with blogger, as I greatly enjoy reading all the fun comments.

Thank you.

rainbow

Sarah (Wyatt in the Dell)should immediately know where this photo is in Quesnel. For those that don't, this is a beauty shot looking out over the Quesnel Golf Course. I took this last year. I would like to share more recent photos but some a*$hole sent me a virus. It was a tricky little sucker too! I didn't realize that the weirdos designing viruses could now write them in code inside an email. So I opened what looked to be a nice little email, something I was expecting and bang-o all of my email addresses (3000+) vanish into gigabyte air. Over the course of the next couple of days, running virus scans and the like my computer begins to slow and stop working in other areas... and in a last ditch effort to recover my files I uninstall Outlook - the source of my grief and then I get it... the blue screen of death, as the Microsoft users will know.

It has now been in the shop for four days getting tweeked when they can deal with it and I'm hoping to get it back tomorrow. The important thing is that all the files in my documents were recovered. This includes all of Michael's baby photos, which busy me, didn't copy. I'll be making plenty of back ups now! Such a simple step and something I did at work all the time - but a practice I dropped coming home.

So expect photos of Michael eating "solid" foods shortly. They are something else! He eats like a savage! It is one of the funniest things he has done in his short four months.

Kyle is pretty sick. He woke up last night hacking - went and slept in his room for a while and then he got sick. Well more like he foamed up... odd... so I gave him some cough suppressant and water - which is promptly barfed up. Then we cuddled on the couch, watched the start of Blues Clues and he fell asleep. He was in and out of sleep all day but his temperature started to get out of control in the afternoon - all the way up to 39 - gave him some tylenol and a bath and he started to dip back down. In 90 minutes he had joined the land of the living again. He was playing, having a snack and seemed to have had a complete turn around. Enter 10pm and it returns - temp, sobs, (sobs suck... I can barely take it - he is sooo sad and there is nothing I can do... AAAHHH!) He had another dose of tylenol and slept. He is sleeping now but I don't think it will last. I'm sure it will be a long night. I just hope he is feeling better tomorrow. I guess I should also mention that I've had better days - my throat is sore and it feels like all the saliva in my mouth has been vacuumed out... (like you wanted to know that...) my knee is swollen - likely from the weather changing (it snowed yesterday and tried again today) but I'm coping with all of it. I'm not going to let a little throat problem make everything else worse... which it could easily do.