Snowy, Icy, Wintry

I posted the pics on Facebook, but I've still got to blog about it. Apparently, we had been forecasted to get a big, winter event here in Tennessee several days before it actually happened. I didn't know anything about it, until like the day before! Tennessee is strange, and almost always the weather skips right around our little area, going both below and over us, but usually doesn't hit us. So whenever they call for some big, dramatic event, it never happens or only slightly happens. We also rarely get snow and if we do it is like 1/2 an inch. So a few weeks ago they called for some big winter storm, canceled school for 2 days and pretty much nothing happened. I expected the same this time. Thursday night they decided to close school for Friday. We woke up Friday to nothing, of course. About noon though, it actually started snowing. It was real snow, not little flurries. About 2:00 we had like 2 inches! It kept snowing all night and we woke up Saturday morning to this.





We had probably 4 inches of snow, covered in a sheet of ice.

Literally, when you picked up the snow, you picked up a sheet of ice. It was no good to play in. When you walked, you didn't even sink it was so hard! The kids liked going out in it though, although Sam couldn't do much because of his broken ankle. We wrapped it up in 3 Target grocery bags and a big trash bag, but it was hard for him to walk. Here they are having a little winter fun.





We really wanted to take them sledding at the school with everyone else, but figured it wouldn't be a good idea with a broken ankle. So hopefully we will have another good sledding snow next year.

We ventured out that afternoon, with hardly any body else out on the road. Tennesseans panic and can't really drive in snowy conditions. We made it just fine. We went to Target, Walmart, AJ and Avery went to see Tooth Fairy, and we went to dinner at O'Charleys.

Today, they canceled church pretty much everywhere. We stayed home and made a snowman.






It was Avery's very first snowman!! Sam has made one once before when he was 2, but this has been the only good snow in 7 years.


The kids are out of school tomorrow, maybe a couple more days. I have my final exam in one of my classes on Tuesday, so tomorrow will be spent studying. Yippee.

Here are a few more fun pics.

Smile.ly—Be Heard. Be Happy.- Free Book

Smile.ly—Be Heard. Be Happy.

I received the book "Cherries in Winter" by Suzan Colon from Random House to read and try out. It was a great book, full of true life stories of Suzan's grandmother during the Great Depression. It was a great, short read. I love trying out things for free. Check out Smile.ly to join in on great, free offers!

This Week at CVS

I've slacked off on my CVS posts lately. Who knows if you even want to hear about all the money I save, but I like it, so I am blogging it today. :)-



I spent $6.62 out of pocket, which includes are outrageous 10% sales tax.

I got 3 Stacy's chips
3 True North Nuts
2 Gatorades
1 Prilosec
1 Almay Mascara that came with a free eye liner. Yea!
1 8 pack paper towels
1 Crest Toothpaste
1 Huge Listerine Total Care which came with a Reach Dental Flosser Freebie with extra flosser heads. Yea!

I would have spent $6 just on the Listerine, so I did fabulous. I messed up a little bit and have to go back and spend $2, (but I will spend less because I will use coupons) and then I will get 10 CVS Bucks plus the 2 I already have.

I also tried out Publix today. I keep hearing that I can save so much if I go each week to Publix and get their on sale stuff. I haven't been convinced that I will save more doing that, then my once a month shopping trip, but I thought I would give it a try. I spend under $300 a month shopping once a month at SuperTarget, so that will be hard to beat. Based on my shopping trip today, I don't see that, but I imagine there is a learning curve, just like there was at CVS. We will see.

Broken

As I suspected...broken ankle.

Yesterday I made poor Sam hobble around on a broken ankle because the radiologist didn't see the obvious wrongly positioned ankle bone. Grrr.

I told him he was going to school today no matter what. This morning came and he did not go to school. Why? Because he cried and cried and said his ankle hurt even worse. Well, yeah, walking on a broken ankle is no good. Too bad we didn't know it was broken. Wait, we should have since we had x-rays 2 days before. Grrr.

We sort of thought he was being dramatic so I took Avery to school and then came home to convince Sam to go to school. He said he would rather go to the doctor and have them do x-rays again. I told him that his class was going on a field trip to Chuck E Cheese and he was going to miss it. He cried. No, they weren't going on a field trip, I had to make sure he wasn't exaggerating. Yes, I am mean. I honestly didn't know though, and that's all I could think of to say that would convince me. I didn't want to go back and pay more money for x-rays to have them tell me it was nothing. It's January, we have to meet all of our deductibles again. That is a lot of money. So, I was a little mean, but I was convinced. He forgave me.

Called the doctor back. She wasn't in yet, so they just made an appointment for us to see her in the afternoon. She looked at it, touched around and said something is definitely wrong, but someone who knows more than me needs to look at it. She called in a favor to a local ortho doc and got us in an hour later. We stopped and picked up the x-rays we had done earlier in the week to take with us.

The doctor came in, looked at his ankle. Pushed on it. OWWW! He then looked at the x-rays and immediately called me over to show me. The radiologist didn't see a crack so he said no break. What he missed was that Sam's ankle bone was scooted over quite a bit. It wasn't even close to lined up with his leg bone. Ow. It's on his growth plate, but the doctor said he should be just fine and no surgery s needed. He has a read cast for 4 weeks. He thinks that's pretty cool, although it is heavy, and at the moment it still hurts to walk.

Poor kiddo. That's a lot of days to have a broken anything. Too bad we couldn't get it taken care of when the x-rays were first done.

Weak Ankles

So, my lower extremities (i.e. Ankles, feet, toes, etc) are not my friend. I am forever having some sort of problem with them, like broken toes, hurt ankles, etc. I have to be careful when I buy shoes. For example, I can't buy any of those cute, strappy sandal things with higher heels because inevitably my ankles will collapse for no good reason and I will fall on my face, of course hurting my ankle in the process. I can't even tell you how many bruise or broken toes I have had. Walls just seem to jump out in front of me(pretty frequently, I might add)and make my foot run into it, which really hurts my tiny little toes. Oh, I suppose it is not only the parts of me below my knees that get hurt, but from my waist down. AJ is convinced I will need a hip replacement when I am 40. LOL! Having kids really got my body all out of whack. My hips pop pout of place at the drop of a hat. I had to have physical therapy for months after having Avery, etc. My lower body does not get along with my upper quadrants.

Apparently my oldest child has this same issue. Whenever he goes outside or to a bounce house place I know that he will come back with a hurt something. He has hurt his ankles or feet numerous times in his short life. Most recently, his knees have been the problem. He has hurt his knee 3 times, I believe, in this past year. In fact, the last time was just a few weeks ago. He went outside to play football with the neighbor. Before he went out, I told him to put on his jeans with the hole in the knee because I KNEW he was going to fall down, and I did not want another pair of pants ruined. Of course he did not listen and went out in one of his good pairs. Argh. Within 15 minutes he was back in. He stepped in a hole and his knee bent backwards, which resulted in a week of hobbling and whiny-ness.

The favorite game in this house is Hide-n-seek. We play almost every night. Sunday night we were playing our toned down version, without running to a base, just plain old hiding and someone seeking. Nice, quiet game. :) We ended the game because it was bedtime. I was helping Avery find AJ's hiding spot, and Sam went downstairs. All of a sudden we heard this thump and a cry. Then this whimpering. Apparently, Sam had missed a stair and slipped, landing sideways on his foot. Then, that wasn't enough, and he went the rest of the way to the floor, again, landing sideways. He heard a loud pop and instant pain. He was crying, whimpering, and he sounded very strange, like a tiny newborn baby. Not like his normal "I am hurt" cry. We got down stairs and he couldn't move it at all. His teeth were also chattering. Um, not a good sign. Since he does this often, we just decided to wait it out and see what happened in the morning. I was a bit worried because he was acting way different than normal when he hurts his foot.

The next morning, he got up and crawled down the stairs. Bad sign, again. I tried to have him put his weight on it and limp. He couldn't He really tried, but it was really killing him. He stayed home from school. We kept it elevated and iced it all day. No better that night. Today, same thing. He can't put any weight on it at all. In his typical ankle episodes, after the first few hours he is able to at least hobble around a little bit. I could not decide whether to take him to the doctor. everyone kept telling me that I should. I knew that as soon as I did, it would not be broken and there would be nothing they could do. I called the doctor and after talking to them 3 different time, they decided they wanted to do x-rays. We drove all the way to Cool Springs for 8 x-rays. We weren't positive if it was his ankle or foot and since both are swollen, they wanted to check both. They couldn't see a break on the x-rays. The doctor said that a lot of times with these kind of injuries, you can't see the break until it starts healing, so she said if he is not doing better by Friday then come back and we will go from there. Ugh. He can't stand missing all of this school, and I have things to do. :)

Weak ankles=Stupid.

Winter Break

Oh, how we love the winter break. Of course our schedules are all out of whack, but it's so nice, relaxing, and fun to have this break. We really haven't done anything exciting, but it has been a good time anyway.

We got the New Super Mario Brothers game and so we all played that a TON the first part of the break. It is a great family game. We love it! We beat the game, but now are trying to get everything we missed the first time around. The boys got some other games for Christmas so there has been a lot of Wii action. It is calming down now though.

We have gone to the Y several times and have been swimming in the indoor pool. The boys LOVE it. I don't like it so much, I freeze, but they could stay in there all day. Avery was worried he forgot how to swim, but nope, he is better than ever. Our first trip this winter he passed the swim test! He had to jump in the lap pool, come up, and swim a front stroke the entire way across. He did it perfectly and was so proud of himself. The first thing he said when he got back in was, "That was easy!" He got to go down the water slides, and he got to wear a bracelet, when other kids way older than him, still had to wear a life vest. The 2 lifeguards said that he was the youngest, and definitely the smallest they had had pass the test. Yea Avery!

Avery is also reading like a maniac. He reads to me every night and is getting much better and faster. He sounded out the words "armadillo" and "stubborn" in a split second. He is so excited about that as well. I brought home like 30 books from the library, 10 of which were books he could read, and he told me that wasn't enough. LOL!

We also went to see a couple of movies, Alvin and the Chipmunks and Avatar. We LOVED Alvin. It was super cute and I liked it better than the first one. Avatar disappointed me with all of the language! Yikes! I had asked around before we went to see if the boys could go. Everyone told me it wasn't too bad and they would be fine going. Um, no. Way, way too much language. The story was really good and I liked the movie, but I don't understand why they don't leave the language out, at least most of it. It doesn't take away from teh movie at all to not include those words. Ugh. The first thing Sam said when we got out was "That movie was violent and it had TONS of bad words!" I felt terrible. He is just like his mommy and very sensitive to that language. It actually physically hurts us to hear it. Darn those movie makers! We love going to the movies, it is sad that we have to sensor all the movies so much, especially when they are movies they KNOW kids are going to want to see. :(

I guess that's about it. We went to a few Christmas parties, which were fun. We had a good Christmas, and we have had a relaxing 2 weeks. The boys start school again tomorrow. No more sleeping in. Yuck! It's weird that it starts on a Tuesday. I guess I didn't make that clear enough to Sam because this morning at 7:00 he came running in telling me to hurry and get up because I needed to take them to school. Then Avery starts screaming across the house that I didn't get his clothes out. Not a fun thing to wake up to on your last day of being able to sleep in! We all got back in bed, and thankfully I went back to sleep. I have had to worst time sleeping the last week or so. No matter how tired I am, it takes me until like 2am to go to sleep and then I wake up off and on throughout the rest of the night. That better remedy itself quickly or I will never survive waking up for school again.

Welcome to the New Year! I hope you all reflect on 2009 and remember the good times, the things you learned, and the struggles you had to go through to be at this place in your life. I hope 2010 is full of happiness and family!