Aunt Jenn is back!

We picked Aunt Jenn up from the airport Monday evening after her 2 year stay with the Peace Corps in Africa.  I'm not sure she was ready for the loud, rowdy 2 and 3 year old she'll be staying with, but too late now!!  Haha.  She's been a big help already and I appreciate it!

Today we have Logan's school Halloween party.  It's at 10am until after lunch.  10am?  Really?  I usually don't drop him off until 9:30am.  I volunteered to help out, so I'll be there from 10am until at least noon.  I'm debating on bringing him home for a nap afterwards or going back to pick him up at 1:30pm.  We have the nursing home parade this afternoon and it's right in the middle of nap time.  I don't have a problem waking Izzy up for it, but Logan can go either way.  A complete sleepy disaster or a happy little one.  We went last year and it was fun, but a LOT of work running after a 1.5 and 2.5 year old.  I had to tell them to 'put down the oxygen tube' a couple of times.  Anyway, we'll see how Logan is today.

Speaking of Logan, I received his full OT report and had a conference with the therapist yesterday.  The report was very detailed and thorough.  She recommended therapy 2 times a week for 9-12 months.  There is some question about if our new insurance will make us meet the out of pocket maximum (like 3k or something) before they even start paying the 80%?  I can't imagine that's correct, but we must check first.  In any case I think our schedule and budget will only allow 1x/week.  If I thought he really needed it twice a week we would obviously do it, but the therapist said he had a mild delay.  She expects it to be fully  corrected in 9-12 months, so that was great news to hear!  She also gave us tons of ideas and exercises to do at home.

I showed Isabel the Toys R Us flyer (it was about 20-25 pages or so) and gave her a pen and told her to circle things that she really wanted.  I didn't know that this was going to be such serious business and that she would spend about 45 minutes pouring over it carefully making her choices.  She also went back and circled things she thought Logan would want.  When she came to the Spiderman DVD she asked me "is this something I should circle?"  So funny.  I can't wait to see how long it takes her to pour over the BIG Toys R Us Christmas book!  I should save that for when I'm desperate for an hour or two to get something done!  She's been feeling pretty good.  She has what seemed to be the start of a cold (running nose mainly) last week along with Logan.  I started her back on maintenance Singular and Flovent.  She still has a little runny nose, so I'm going to stick with it for a few more days to make sure we don't run into breathing problems.  She's been getting little tiny random hives occasionally like she used to get before we knew about her peanut allergy.  I used to eat peanut butter toast in the morning (but not the kids) and she would get random hives sometimes.  I'm trying to figure out what could be causing it, but I'm stumped.  Sometimes she'll wake up with one or two tiny hives.  I haven't changed detergents or anything, so I'm stumped.

Halloween playgroup party #1

We had a little playgroup party this morning at Isabel's friend Cooper's house. Cooper's mom often hosts playgroups and really goes all out. Today she provided us with candy corn jello, jello 'eyes', bats made out of cheese balls and chips, and 'guts' made out of spaghetti and mini hot dogs. Oh and Starbucks coffee and homemade pumpkin muffins! All nut free! She is super mom.

Isabel played with her BFF the entire time. Those 2 are inseperable. The boys were bothering them and telling them they couldn't play in the dirt with them and they said 'oh yeah?!, FINE we're going to go put out fires!' It was so funny. Then this boy started chasing izzy around with a garden stake and she was genuinely scared and started screaming and crying. After I calmed her down and told her to go play somewhere else her friend goes (to the boy) 'you can't do that to her, come on Izzy let's go get him!' They totally have each others backs even at this young age.

Logan played with the kitchen set for about 5 seconds until he saw the big train table. It was like the heavens opened up and a big light pointed him over to it. He didn't leave the table for 2 hours. I tried asking him if he needed to go potty and he kept telling me no. When it was time to leave I took him in the bathroom and saw his big giant accident. I knew it would need a bath and shower nozzle, so I just put him in the car for the 3 mile rode. He was pretty pissed at me, but I wasn't about to open that explosion in someone else's house.

We came home, had lunch and baked a welcome back cake for aunt Jenn. Logan grabbed the dough hook and goes 'ahoy mateys!' He was pretending to be caption hook and tried to hook izzy's pants off. She was half amused half very ticked off. Now they are taking short naps and we'll be off to the airport!

Obsessed would be putting it mildly.

Helping to bake Aunt Jenn's cake.

Arrrg!  Hooking sister with the pastry hook.

Runaway Lion!

The proposal

After school yesterday as the kids were assaulting this poor tree outside of the building (like they do every tue/thur) Isabel's friend came up to her and goes "hey Isabel!  You wanna get married?"  Cutest.thing.ever.  Isabel has really gotten attached to her buddies this year.  She has about 5 friends in her class from last year that she's close to and then a new girl.  This new girl and her are BFFF.  Almost every day her teachers will comment that they were insuperable.  When they say bye to each other it's done with such drama and lots of hugging.  I can't tell you how happy this makes me!  After losing Faye to a different school I wasn't sure izzy would ever be the same!  She still asks about Faye almost daily, but now I can distract her with her new friend.  I think I might have to move her to M/W/F next year just to stay with her friends who want to move to 3 days a week.

I got to school a little early yesterday and witnessed the cutest thing.  Isabel's class was outside on the playground just about to go inside and Logan's class came barreling out.  Logan flew by Isabel and then stopped.  Her slowly walked back over to where izzy was playing with her friend.  She stopped and waved and then got out of the sandbox and gave him the biggest hugs.  So cute!  She was totally looking out for her little brother.  She had to go inside and made sure she gave him another wave and told him she would see him soon.

Today we hit up the mall to kill some time after swim lessons.  I didn't want to chase them around the park today.  Chasing them in the mall was not fun though.  I'm really getting sick of the upper 80s in October.  Please get colder!!!

The last pictures are what izzy picked out to wear today.

Halloween Pictures and a Dance Injury

We had a lazy Wednesday morning with me cleaning and the kids playing train and watching Sprouts TV.  I would like to say there was more train playing than TV watching, but that would be a lie.  Isabel had dance class after our cleaning and Logan and I dropped her off and headed to Starbucks and the park.  At Starbucks Logan kept waving to the SBUX logo lady and saying "Hi Mama!"  Everyone thought he was waving at him mom outside the store but I knew better.  Pretty funny.  I tried to correct him but he wouldn't have it.  That was a picture of me and that was that.  We wandered back over to the dance studio after some fun park time and waited for the last 10 minutes of class to finish up.  I heard the wail of Isabel.  :-(  I looked in the window and saw her being cradled by her teacher.  I popped my head in the door but it was clear that her teachers wanted to handle it themselves.  Fine by me.  After a little bit they brought her out and I saw the damage.  I guess her pinky finger got smashed by a tap shoe.  Her teacher was like 'we JUST finished telling them how tap shoes can hurt our friends if we're not careful.'  Her skin was broken and it was actually pretty swollen.  We put an ice pack on it and got it washed an put a bandaid on it.  She's fine.

After dance we ate a quick picnic lunch outside of the studio and headed over to JCP to get pictures done in Halloween costumes.  The pictures are ok.  Nothing great.  There were a few pictures where I was like 'take the stupid picture already!'  It was so frustrating.  They definitely missed some pretty cute pictures.  Logan lasted for a good 10 minutes before wanting his hat off.  Bribery with jelly beans is always good.  :-)  Isabel was a rock star and just wanted to model and pose all day long. They have a lot of upcoming 'functions' with the costumes, so I can't wait to get some more pictures.  The costumes are adorable!  Great job Gramma!

Oh yeah, when Logan found his tail on the Halloween costumes he kept chasing it like a dog.  It was freaking hilarious!  Wish I had that on video.  He was like 'what the heck is chasing meeee?'

Anyone else excited about the American Horror Story premier tonight?!

Hi Starbucks lady Mommy!

OT, 35k Hospital stay

We had Logan's OT evaluation today. It went really well and he and Isabel both did great. Isabel was a big help demonstrating skills the therapist wanted Logan to try. At the very end while I was trying to get bathroom runs done and my calendar checked we has screaming and crying, but that was it! And most of the screaming/crying was from Izzy wanting another lollipop.

The therapist will email me a copy of the evaluation early next week and then we'll have a phone conference to go over it. Basically she said the same thing as the developmental pediatrician and we'll most likely do 1/week therapy. She said we might want to do more initially, but the time and cost seems like it's just too much right now. At least the place is pretty close to our house.

We came home and finally painted our chalkboards and had lunch. The kitchen is bare, so I had fun scraping things together. Must get to the store tomorrow!

Remember that hospital stay a few weeks back? Yeah, it was billed for $35,000. Insurance paid $30,000 and we had a copay. If this unfortunate event happens after 11/1/12 we will be responsible for 20% of that up to our out-of-pocket maximum. Yikes.

Chuck E. Cheese's and Pumpkin Patch #2

Putting The Very Hungry Caterpillar puzzle together.

Cute Logan

Halloween goodies!

Testing out the tent in the playroom.

This weekend we had Grammy and Papaw in town for some fun. They arrived Friday night after the kids and I were asleep. I was still feeling a little run down from the sickies. Saturday morning after I hit up the gym and finished the lawn we went over to Chuck E. Cheese's. The last time I was in one I was probably 12. I remembered it as a HUGE place with animatronics all over the place. I thought it had the potential to be a complete disaster for Logan, but Isabel has been asking to go ever since she saw a commercial on TV. I looked up the nut allergy info online and they stated that they don't have or use peanuts and/or nuts in any of their products! The only (non)issue is that some of the deserts are made in a facility that also processes peanuts/nuts. Woohoo! We were off! The place looked a little sketchy/dirty from the outside, but once we were inside I was so pleasantly surprised! It was really clean, not that big, not really crowded, and the only animatronics were in the back. The pizza was pretty good too! It was actually the perfect size for the kids. They had little rides for them and a climbing thing that Isabel went on. Chuck E. Cheese himself came out and Logan waved at him and was pretty happy and excited about it! This teeny tiny little victory makes me think he may do ok at Disneyworld. He kept running to the pack to check out the animatronic band!  We played for a little under 2 hours and then went to redeem our tickets. We had 106 tickets. Plenty for the kids to each get a couple of the smallest little 'prizes.' The manager came over and said 'this little girl needs a crown' and they gave her a little crown and ring. So nice. Especially since the crown alone was 100 tickets! The employees actually looked like they cared about kids and were happy to be at work. I was really impressed. We will definitely be going back sometime. A good place to go when you have backup!

The rest of Saturday was dedicated to football watching. All of my teams won!!! That never happens! My Aggies made me bite off all of my little fingernails and stay up WAY past my bedtime, but they pulled out the W. I would have been a little pissed if they had lost and I stayed up until 1am watching.

Today we went to the little church pumpkin patch we went to last year to get a big pumpkin to carve and then headed to Chipotle for lunch. Brian and I ran a couple of kid-free errands and then it was time for naps and Grammy and Papaw to leave.

Tomorrow Logan has his 2 hour OT evaluation at 8am. Crossing my fingers it goes well. Oh, our insurance is changing on November 1st. Awesome. We're moving to an 80/20 plan. SUCKS!!!! That means we have to pay 20% of hospital stays and OT, among other things. Please please please stay healthy Izzy and out of the ICU. I can't imagine having to pay 20% of that bill.

Glad that's the pointer finger.

Woohoo...Chuck E. Cheese's

There is so much awesome in this picture that I can't describe it!

Pumpkin patch!

Swears he sees a spider.  I don't see it.

Isabel is excited for leftover taco soup and leftover pizza!

I convinced him that he didn't need to take off his shirt because there was a spider on it.  Barely.

Giant pumpkin.

Ugggghhhhh

Sick with a tummy bug. Me, not the kids. That BMW 5 series monthly payment (I kid I kid... sort of) we pay for preschool was so worth it today. I was so happy to hand them off this morning.

I feel like I'm being super indulgent by catching up with my DVR while Brian wrangles the kids. Thanks Brian!

So when I got izzy up from her nap today she was upset because she couldn't find her 'special marshmallow' she took to bed with her. Here is what happened in pictures. I kept telling her to go look in the mirror. She finally realized why.

Does she not look JUST like I did when I was little in the close up picture!!