Logan's sick day

Well, Logan was sick again! This time it was a reaction to his flu shot! (he has to get the shot since he has asthma, Ellie got the mist) It really pisses me off that I went to get Logan and Ellie vaccinated and it wound up making him miss school, which was the whole point of getting vaccinated, right?

About 24 hours after his shot he came down with a fever. It wasn't just like 99 and he was fine either. He was curled up on the couch with a blanket and a 101.5, feeling like crap. It really sucks if you ask me. Hopefully, this will prevent him from getting the "regular" flu again this year at least.

Anyway, yesterday was our big Fall Fest at the preschool and I didn't want to miss it, so Stuart stayed home with him. When I got home this is what I found.

Obviously he watched a lot of sponge bob yesterday! Thank goodness he's doing better today. He was really worried that he would miss our elementary school's carnival today and trick-or-treating tonight! I'm going to have to seriously reconsider giving him the shot next year. Or at least time it better, so he's not sick for any events or to miss school.

Cute Halloween pics!

We bought some spider web and spiders. They were originally going to go outside in the trees, but when I got the spiders home I realized that they weren't made for outdoors. They are feathered and have glittery legs! So while the kid's were at school Tuesday, I decorated a little bit!

Of course I had to make 1 a boy and 1 a girl. Notice the little bow? Cute, huh?


Mom came by in the afternoon yesterday and had bought Ellie an Ariel costume. She's wanted one for about 2 years. I know, I'm a mean mom. It's really cute on her though!! Look how it hugs her little tush! Love it! So I guess this will be her Halloween costume. It's OK, we didn't have anything elaborate planned.



I can't believe Halloween is tomorrow!! Aaahhh! That means Thanksgiving is right around the corner!!!!!!!!! That's scarier than anything I'll see on Halloween!

Logan's book report

Logan had to do a book report this week which included a special project. He had to choose between making a crossword puzzle, drawing a new book cover for his book (which I thought he should do, duh?) and making puppets and putting on a puppet show about his book. He chose the last one, puppets! So we made some puppets.

First he tried to just draw them on the socks. It didn't turn out so well. I didn't want to waste more socks, so we just turned them inside out! You can kind of see the marker thru the sock in some places. Ooops. We got out my fabric and made clothes and bought yarn for hair. We tried to make them look as much like the picture as possible. We even made Junie a crown!

Of course we waited until the night before to do it. But they turned out really cute! In fact his teacher liked them so much, she had him take them to the library and put them on display! This class project was actually fun! I do need to start trying to teach him not to procrastinate though. I wonder where he gets that from?

Changing my blog

I just can't help myself sometimes! I have to do it!! I know that pic on top isn't going to be able to stay for long, but I did it anyway! I tried to use Picnik, but my picture wouldn't upload. Fortunately I figured out how to use power point to put text on my pics! It's pretty easy now that I know what I'm doing!

Logan's latest obsession

Every once in a while Logan gets on a tangent that he gets a little obsessive about. Lately it's been super heroes. Drawing them, dressing up like them, and creating new ones to tell stories about. Here is one of the last one's he did, Hon Joe. He laid in bed one night and proceeded to tell me a story about the adventures of Hon Joe which lasted a good 5 minutes. And he does it effortlessly. There are no pauses where he's trying to think of what he's going to say next. If someone asked me to just make up a story on the spot, it would be much harder for me. I don't seem to do well thinking on the spot like that. I think he should start writing down some of his story ideas. Bandit Boy is another one of his characters. That's who he was dressed up as in those pictures with the cape. The one above is "poster size". He taped a bunch of paper together to make it. It's hanging on the wall in his room!

He also got on a kick drawing all the characters from Star Wars. He did all these from memory. I think they're great. (not all the names are spelled right) They're weird names though!

I'm proud of my little creative boy!!

Pumpkin carving

We (meaning the kids) decided to carve our pumpkins today. We bought the pumpkins on Sunday from the church's pumpkin patch. We went on the back porch, in the beautiful weather, and got down to business.
Ellie seems to think that when I say, "say cheese", that means to strike some kind of exciting pose. Just in case you were wondering. :-)

Ellie chose her design (a cat face) from a book of designs we had last year. It was kind of hard since her pumpkin was small and thin. But it turned out OK.

Logan did his own design and I carved it for him. His pumpkin was big and like 3 inches thick! But it turned out pretty well.

After they were finished they both decided to "Autograph" them! Pretty funny!

Fall Fest Face Paint

OK, so I forgot my camera on Sunday when we went to the Fall Fest and Pumpkin Patch at the methodist church in P'ville. Boo! So, I only got some pics when we got home. Luckily the face paint stayed nicely! Ellie is a blue cat (in case you couldn't tell) and Logan has a snake mask.

This is what happens when I tell him to look scary! Scary indeed, but not exactly what I had in mind. :-)

Our day at the sandbox

On Saturday while Erica and Ray were at the game, Stuart and I went over to their house with the kids. My Dad was there taking care of Grace and Carter, so we went to help entertain them. While we were there we decided to visit the giant sandbox over near their house. It's a county park, I think. It's really cool and big. They had a great time for over an hour, which is wonderful to me. I realize Ellie's skirt is a little short, it was Grace's!

It was just a lovely day and we had a great time!

After we left we went to Sonic for 1/2 price slushes! And then home to Little Caesars Pizza! What kid could ask for more? What an awesome Aunt I am!! Ha!

School picture day

Yesterday was picture day at school. We picked out Ellie's clothes the night before. She is really the one who chose what she should wear. But, I think she picked a cute outfit. We curled her hair that morning and put in a flower. She looks adorable, don't you think?

Unfortunately, Logan wouldn't let me take his picture. He was horsing around with Stuart on our bed Monday night and fell off onto the carpet nose first. He got the worst rug-burn imaginable on his nose and right under it! It scabbed up and everything. It looks like he has a mustache. So he refused to let me take his picture for the blog. He did however have to get his picture taken at school. :-( We should be able to do re-takes though! :-)

Making a change

Well, after a couple of years of thinking and talking about it, I'm finally doing it. I'm going to get my teaching certificate. I was just accepted into a program called ACT-Houston. It's an Alternative Certification for Teachers program (get the ACT part!). I hadn't heard of it before since there are lots of alternative teaching programs. My friend had gone through them and when I asked how she heard about them, she said the superintendent of PISD recommended them. So, I checked it out.

I'll be starting classes 3 nights a week in January. It's pretty intensive, but only lasts about 2 months. I also have to do 30 hours of classroom observation and I have to take and pass the TExES (Texas Examinations of Educator Standards) test. Then, and this is really the hard part- I have to find a job! A teaching job to be a real, live teacher!

Apparently, the teaching market is tough right now with the crappy economy. There are lots of teachers who had planned on retiring, but didn't. So, I'll have to hope and pray to actually find a job that's hopefully close and what I want to do. I had hoped to start substitute teaching in order to get my feet wet and get to know some teachers and administrators. That too is proving hard to do. I guess when a lot of people got laid off, they decided to start subbing, so they're not really looking for subs right now. My plan is to start volunteering up at the kid's school and to talk with the principal about my 30 hours of observation and hopefully get to know some people that way. PISD is opening a new elementary right down the road from me this fall. That means some new jobs! I'm not getting my hopes up, but that would be awesome!

Anyway, I'm excited. I'm scared. It's one thing to think big and talk big. It's another to actually do it. This is what I'm meant to do though. I know it. Knowing that brings me comfort. I know I can do it too. Not that it won't take work, but I know I can do it. Remind me of this if/when I start freaking out!

Our first fire

Today turned out to be colder than they said. But it's OK with me. After a summer of record heat I for one am ready for a little cool! It's nice to get out some different clothes for a change too! The kids were feeling a bit better so we decided to go to the dollar movies and see Aliens in the Attic. It was really cute and worth the $6 we spent to see it.

When we got home the kids begged to "roast a fire". I'm not sure why they say that. Maybe since we roast marshmallows? But I decided it would be nice. So here's to our first fire of the season! May there be many more for us to huddle next to this winter!

Apparrently Logan decided to "roast his feet"! Note to self, don't let him do that again since about 30 seconds after I took the picture he knocked the screen over on himself!

ACL

I'm finally getting around to posting some ACL pics! This last week has been hard with all the illness in my house. Tuesday I wasn't feeling too well. Just tired, run down and coughing. Yesterday Stu was running about a 100 deg. temp and not feeling good. I just wish we could get rid of this stuff! Anyway back to ACL.

It was definitely a cool experience (very Austin). I wish it hadn't rained (obviously). But it could have been waaaay worse. Thank goodness for Sammy's rain boot suggestion and Erica going by Academy for me and picking them up! I wouldn't have been able to stand the dirty, grassy, muddy feet like so many people there had! It didn't really rain at all while Dave was singing and that was awesome. I think it would be fun to go all 3 days and go around listening to music and people watching. I really like to look at all the freaks! (Think what you will about that!)

Aren't my boots cool?
We had a good time. When we drove down it was raining pretty hard. We lucked out and got to park at Sammy's friend's house near Zilker park. Then 2 moms in a mini-van offered us a ride down to the park and were accepting tips! It was great. We needed to eat and went into Chuy's for a bite. Yumm!
After Chuy's we walked in to the festival and walked around, saw our friends (amazingly) and stood in the port-a-potty line for about 20 minutes. Then we decided to stake out our Dave-watching position. We started out pretty close. I could actually see the band on the stage without looking at the monitor. Not bad for a 5'5" gal. We wound up moving about 5 times during the show to get away from too many people, get a different perspective and just to see what was going on around us.
This guy was one of the "mud people". They were covered in mud dancing around like lunatics! One even ran up to Erica and I and wanted to dance I guess. We were both wearing white shirts (like idiots) and of course didn't want to have anything to do with them. I was convinced one of them must be Matthew McConaughey! It seemed like something he would do, you know?

Anyway, I definitely would like to go back again! Who wants to join me?

Too much time on their hands!

Here's just one of the things that can happen when kids are too sick for school but not sick enough to stay in bed!

He's supposed to be a lion (couldn't you tell?). I'm not sure if it's a lion rodeo or what? Logan had the red bandana like maybe he was bull fighting. This is the kind of thing where you say, "how creative!" and leave it at that!

Never say never!

OK, I could have predicted this. I start bragging about how Ellie's never really been sick, yadda, yadda, yadda and what do you know? She wakes up Friday night at 2:30 with a 101.5 fever. Figures. Anyway, she seems to have the exact same thing as Logan had. Which means she should be getting better by tomorrow and hopefully will go to school Tuesday.

Luckily Stuart's able to work from home tomorrow so I don't have to call in sick again. I need to get away from this "sick house". You know there is such a thing as being with your kids (or anyone else for that matter) too much! At first I was enjoying being home with Logan just puttering around and taking care of him. He's much easier to take care of sick than well! But fast forward 4 days and I'm tired of it!

Poor Ellie. We've been trying not to give too much medicine. You know, let the fever do it's work and all that. But it gets to a point and you're just like, Awww. She needs help. You know your kid doesn't feel good when they get some blankets out and lay down on the tile floor under the table!

Hopefully she'll be better soon and everything will get back to normal around here. Whatever "normal" means anyway!