I Won!!!......sorta

Remember the Little House in the Suburbs giveaway I blogged about last week? The winners were posted today. The randomizer did not choose me. Phooey. But I was able to put in SIX entries (thanks, Melissa and Angie, for signing up to get their e-mail notifications). Another entrant put in 6 tries, too, so the two of us got Ivory and TL's pity vote and we'll get our choice of a little goody, too! I'm so excited!!

Meem-Up!

If you speak Alex's language, you'll understand "meem-up" to mean "clean-up." And that is exactly what he is doing in this video clip. If you see the broom in the background, he was helping to "meem-up" with that, too. But I think it was too "heby" for him to hold.

My favorite website!!

Most of you have gotten e-mails or IMs from me at one point or another with a link and me saying "Hey! Check this out!!" - The Little House in the Suburbs is the website I get almost all of those links from. It is where I found the recipe for the lip balm I made last month (still loving the balm, by the way).
They are now having a giveaway.
Well what are you waiting for?? Go check them out!
I would love to be like Ivory and TL (Tomato Lady, for those who are curious). Between the two of them I think they can make, bake or do just about anything. And if they can't, they'll figure it out - by winging it or doing tons of research. And they aren't afraid of flops. Oh if we all could embrace our failures!!
So there are three drawings in this one giveaway. A childrens's book (just published, written by Ivory, which will be signed), a "kitchen-y" package and a "spa-ish" package.
Are you still here reading my blog? I'm not the one giving away handmade goodies! Why aren't you over there checking their blog out??
BTW, have I told you how much I love their website and check it out on a every-other-day basis?? (It would be an everyday basis, but sometimes other things draw my attention. Like my children. Go figure)

Lost and Found

Children have a way of losing things. It is usually up to the child to find it again, although getting the child to lead you to the lost spot is sometimes troublesome. At the beginning of the summer, we were visiting my parents and the VCR/DVD remote disappeared. We searched high and low. We dug our hands into the nooks and crannies of the various couches and recliners in the living room, moved furniture around, even looked in strange and random places in other rooms of the house. Our visit ended, still unable to find the remote.
During the next trip, my mom pointed out that they couldn't pause the DVD we were watching, nor could we access the menu because the remote was still missing.
Flash forward to this weekend. We went up for another visit. Friday evening Mom mentioned that they bought a new remote to finally replace the one that was never found. THIRTY DOLLARS!! Ouch! Saturday morning the boys were playing around in the living room and Alex got his hands on a remote. I went up to him and said something like "Oh, no, sir, let's not lose this one, too!" I saw that he was trying to put that remote into the VHS slot. Jokingly, I said, "Is that where the other one went?" and I put my hand inside, expecting to feel a tape. No tape... I felt - you guessed it - the lost remote!! Now why didn't we think of that before?? It took Alex trying to do it again for me to even think about looking inside the VCR.
So now they have two remotes. One for safe keeping in case a grandchild loses the other.

Thursday night Bunco!!

I am lucky enough to have been invited to join a once a month Bunco game. The ladies enjoy a night out - we have food, friends, games, prizes, the whole lot! I really enjoy this - and I still would love it even if I hadn't won "last Bunco called" the two times I've played!! It is a great way to get to know more people (and for an extrovert like me, you can never know enough people!). I took my camera tonight but forgot to take pics. I only got one, at the end of the evening. Lisa was showing us the crocheted a ear-flap-cap she recently made for her daughter, and decided to model it on me!

In other news, here is our latest craft project from the boys:

We got the idea from a Barney video. Trace their hands, then cut them out to make them into a spider. It felt a bit wrong cutting their thumbs off, though, to make it a true 8-legged spider. These are now proudly being displayed on our front window.

Speaking of front windows.... the siding guys left us with a little "gift." They cracked our big picture window!! They still have not spoken to us about it (maybe they thought we wouldn't notice the crack??) Overall we were not thrilled with the contractors that the big name company hired to do the work - the siding looks great, but as everyone knows, it's the little things that add up. Oh well. We shall keep moving forward. We should get our guttering put in next week (although the rains came this week!), and we should soon have our new window installed, too. I can't wait to share our "after" photo of the house with you all! Alex has gotten used to the guys coming to our house, and now looks out the window and says "guys? guys?" Ajay enjoyed coming home from pre-k and telling the guys about what he did at school that day. (And the guys were nice enough to smile and nod and even ask a few questions)

Doctors, Windows and Siding

Doctors, windows and siding...pretty much sums up our week

The storm back in July made quite a few hail holes in our siding, so insurance is paying for new. The guys were supposed to come on Monday but didn't show until Wednesday. They stripped the house down, went to lunch, then came back and said they were leaving, as radar indicated rain coming within the half hour. It did rain, technically, but I would've called it more of a sprinkle. On Thursday it rained cats and dogs all throughout the day. Now today, Friday, they are banging away out there. I'm very excited to see our new look!

Here are a couple of "before" shots - back in August before we got our new roof.

A few "in between" shots:

They took the storm windows down on Wednesday so I walked around the outside of the house washing the parts of the windows that I hadn't been able to wash before. (Of course the rain on Thursday probably made it all pointless!) It was nice, though, to see the outside so clearly without the extra glass and screens. Hopefully they won't hang the storm windows back up with condensation trapped inside.

Now on to the doctor part of our week.

Alex started getting a fever on Sunday. It eventually got up to 103.3 that night and throughout Monday, despite alternating Tylenol and Motrin, never went below 100. By Tuesday he wasn't eating anything, was wandering the house aimlessly, crying over anything, and not knowing what he wanted. It was so hard on both of us! Tuesday morning I got him in to see our pediatrician. The doc thought it was probably something viral but did a swab to test for strep anyway. He was quite surprised when, 15 minutes later, the test came back positive. He kept asking how everyone else was feeling, if there was someone else we knew who had it - we all felt fine, and I could think of no one else who had strep. Quite puzzling. I wondered if Ajay had brought it home from preschool even though he hadn't been sick? The doctor said we could either go the typical antibiotic route, which is 10 days of medicine, and he would start feeling better in a couple days, or we could give him a shot and he would start feeling better that evening. I went with the shot. Alex still wasn't eating that evening but was moving around more and crying a bit less. By Wednesday morning he had improved a bit more. It still took him until dinnertime to decide he was okay enough to eat. But once Alex started improving, Ajay started going downhill! Tuesday we realized Ajay felt a bit warm, so I took his temperature and it was 99.8. The school rules say that if the childs temp is 99.6 or above at bedtime, he/she cannot go to school the next day. I kept him home from school on Wed and took him in to have a strep test done. We assumed it would come back positive since he was displaying the exact same symptoms (and moodiness) as Alex, yet it came back negative! Today is Friday and he still isn't eating. Luckily, however, he can drink Pediasure, so he's at least getting some nutrients and calories. I think the straw helps bypass the sores on his tongue, and he doesn't have to chew. He's talking by barely moving his mouth because it just hurts too much. I'm very grateful that Biju has been home all this week and that we've been able to take turns with the kids in the middle of the night!

And now this morning, Biju has gone to see his doctor. He was playing racquetball last night and did something quite painful to his knee. We're hoping it will just need a minor fix!

Alex at snack time - munching on a graham cracker, but ignoring the bananas. He still occassionally points to his mouth and says "pokey!" so I think that although he's better, he's still got some sores in there :(

Ajay camped out on the couch, feeling quite ill and grumpy about the whole thing!

Alex was feeling a bit better, so I slipped the bumble bee outfit on him.