So yeah, apparently Sam has really fragile bones. I took him to the ortho today because it still wasn't doing any better since Saturday. Broken elbow and possibly a broken forearm!!! Geez! He has a cast from hand to shoulder. It will only be on for 3 weeks, and I think it will be much easier on him than his ankle was. Thank Goodness! It really isn't bothering him in his cast at all, so yea for that!
When we got to the ortho, the guy that did his ankle cast said, "Wasn't he JUST here?!" Um, yeah, a month ago! For real, people are going to think we beat him up!
What in the world is going on with people that can read x-rays. Really?! It's their job!!! Why do we keep having to wait for days to finally have someone figure out it has been broken all that time. Ugh!
This time at least he can deal with it and it is going much better than his ankle did. I guess not having to walk on a broken bone is a lot easier! :)
Too bad he had to do it on the first day of Spring Break though. Poor kiddo! He's sad about not being able to ride his bike, and especially about not being able to do the swim team.
Surely, this will be our last broken bone for a while. When we left the ortho today, I said "How about after the next visit, we don't come back here again!" Sam just laughed! Niiiccceeee. :)
Avery thinking Sam is cool.
Sam thinking he is cool.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Fragile Bones
Posted by sssmile14 at 9:19 PM 0 comments
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Weekend Words
Well, let's just say it has been an interesting weekend.
This weekend was my chorus competition in Chattanooga. It was for our region so, all of the choruses in the southeast United States competed. I am excited to report that we WON 1st place AND we beat our previous score by quite a bit. Plus we beat the 2nd place chorus by even more. Yippee!! I was a bit worried because everyone seemed disconnected and complacent before this contest. Thankfully, our last rehearsal went much better, and we were able to bring it to the stage on Saturday!! 1st place, baby!!! WOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!
After the contest was over we ate dinner then had a little time to go to our room and freshen up for our show of champions later that night. I forgot my phone charger so I had been leaving my phone off as much as possible. I had just turned on my phone when I got a call from AJ. He said he was on the way to the ER with Sam. He had fallen off his bike and landed on his arm. He was screaming, couldn't move his arm, and it hurt from his shoulder to his fingers. Lindsay and I packed up super quick and were on our way home. We got here just as Sam and AJ got home. They did x-rays and it didn't look broken, but they said in a few days if it was still hurting then to go get more x-rays from an ortho. We all know our experience with his last broken bone. When they said it wasn't broken at first, then 5 days later, it was. Ugh! I hope that isn't the case this time. He came home with a splint, his arm all wrapped, and a sling. I had him take a shower this morning, but he was hurting a lot afterwards, and couldn't use his arm, so we put all of his paraphernalia back on. His fingers are really swollen and his arm looks a bit funny, so who knows. Hopefully it is just bruised really bad or something and gets better quick! This is Spring Break for him, so it won't be any fun with a hurt arm the whole time. He just got his last cast off less than a month ago! Boy this kid has fragile bones!
The other thing that happened this weekend, happened today at church. This is the mystery thing I was talking about in my last blog. :) In our church, the church members are responsible for the different positions within their congregation. We don't have a paid ministry, so we all pitch in and do different jobs. I was called to be the 1st counselor in the Primary Presidency. That means I am responsible for all the children in our building who are under age 12!!!! I have never even been a teacher in Primary so this will be interesting. My kids are excited, that's for sure! I have taught a lot of these kids at school, so it won't be a big change in that respect. As a presidency we are responsible for all the children, the teachers, cub scouts, etc. I have never done anything like this before so I am a little worried, but I am sure it will be great. At least good practice for teaching full-time soon. :) Next week will be a bit interesting I am sure!!
Well, that's the news for this weekend. Hopefully, nothing else "exciting" will happen this week. :)
Posted by sssmile14 at 3:53 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
New Stuff
Hi! It's been a while!
Things are good here. Let's see, what have we been up to....
Sam joined the swim team at the Y. He practices every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30-6. Then they have meets once a month. We haven't done a meet yet though, so we will see how that goes! He loves it! It is a lot of work, but he is doing great. This will be his third week and there is already a ton of improvement. He has learned so much and gets better and better each practice. I love watching him. He has such an amazing work ethic. I already knew that, but it is really pronounced in this sport. He is always the first one ready to listen to the coach. He immediately does what she says, and works HARD to do it exactly how she said. The other kids will be playing around, and there he is practicing and doing exactly what he should. It is amazing to watch. He is such a good boy, and I am glad we found something he can do without all that running. His ankle still is not better. Yeah, he can walk on it, but he still has a limp, and it still hurts him, especially when we have to walk longer distances like at Target and stuff. I don't know what to do about it. We also just got his report card last week. He was one of only 5 in his class to get all A's. Go Sam!
Avery started the swim team too! That wasn't our intention, in fact, he was DYING to play soccer! Sam's first practice, Avery went and got in the other pool to play. After like 20 minutes he was bored and came to sit with me, watching Sam. He then asked if he could try. I told him he had to ask the coach, so he did. He went in and kept right up with the other kids! He swam like a 600 that night! The coach said he had a natural stroke and that he did great. She said he was ready to join if he wanted to!!!! He's 5! I couldn't believe it! Anyway, he changed his mind and decided to do swim team. That works for me. Less trying to juggle where they are going. Last week he didn't like it as much. It is hard. I can imagine! That is a long way for him to swim. We are going to cut his practices back to just an hour. I think he will do great though. What else? Hmmm. Oh, he gets to ride Sam's old BIG bike now, so that is exciting. The kids go outside and ride their scooters or their bikes EVERY day! Even the cold days. Plus, doing all that swimming. They are definitely going to be fit little boys! He also is reading a lot harder books, that he calls BIG books. He is the only one in the class able to do those big books, so he LOVES it!
Spring Break is next week, so the boys are happy. I like it too. :)
AJ is getting ready to go on a 3 day backpacking trip with the Boy Scouts. They are crazy. They are hiking like 20 miles in 3 days. YUCK! He can't wait though. Weirdo. ;)
I finished 3 classes this past week for school. Yippee! I am way beyond where I should be right now so I am cruising along. I get to add some more classes for this semester, so that will push up my graduation date even more. My counselor also said that next semester we will move me to a newer version of the Teaching program, so like 6 more classes will be dropped. Yippee! This weekend is also my Regional singing contest. I am not competing in a quartet this year. Sad! I miss quarteting, but at least the chorus gets to compete. I hope we do well!
Some other things are happening soon, but I can't share yet, so I will be blogging again sometime soon.
Overall, we are doing great. We are busy, but in a good way. Everyone is loving what they are doing. I can't believe this school year is almost over. It's crazy how fast it goes.
Posted by sssmile14 at 8:19 AM 2 comments
Monday, February 15, 2010
Awww, I love this picture. :)This was taken at Sam's class Valentine's party on Friday. So let's talk about Sam! My sweet Valentine.
He got his cast off on Thursday!! Yea! He came right home and took a shower! LOL! It is doing better, but is still hurting him, especially when he is on it a lot. By the end of school on Friday is was killing him.
Friday was his class party. The class made the parents chili, rolls, and fruit salad. I helped out and it went great, well, not the rolls, but everything else. :) The rolls were pretty much small, little hockey pucks, but hey some people ate them! We had 5 different crock pots of chili, all different. We originally were going to make 2 batches of fruit salad, but the kids were SOOOO excited to eat it, that at the last minute, we decided to double it and I had to run to the store to get more ingredients. This was less than an hour before the other parents were schedule to be there! We made it though and got it made JUST in time! We wondered how the stuff would really taste since the kids made all of it, but everything was delicious!!! Whew! Almost every bit of the chili was gone, and there was A LOT of chili! We had 3 taste testers come in and grade the chili. My white chicken chili recipe won. Most people had never even seen white chili before so that was surprising. :) The kids were so excited and so proud of themselves. It was cute.
About an hour after we got home from school, Sam said he didn't feel good. he had been fine all day, but it suddenly hit him. We took his temp and it was 100.3! Less than 2 hours later and it was 102.8!!! Crazy! He had a fever off and on for 3 days, sometimes feeling fine, sometimes feeling terrible. Very strange. Today, he is doing better though.
Avery started complaining Saturday night about his stomach, and he had a temp all weekend of 99.3. Different symptoms though!
Then I started getting sick the middle of last week, and felt like a sinus infection was brewing all weekend.
Nice, 3 sick people, with all different things, on the 3 day weekend.
Anyway, it snowed last night, AGAIN, and is still snowing off and on today. This is VERY weird for Tennessee. Last week was the first full week of school we have had since December because it has snowed so much.
In other news, my trial Publix shopping, went well and I saved $50-100 this month only buying the publix deals. I have to go weekly, not my normal once a month, but it might be worth it if I keep saving this much. I had already cut our bill by $100 just by going to CVS and getting all those deals, so now I have cut our grocery bill in half by doing these things, and our grocery bill was already a ton cheaper than most people's bills! Woohoo!
I guess that is about it for now. Oh, I am so loving the Olympics. I used to watch them all the time when I was younger, but haven't really watched since a couple years after we got married. I have watched all of the events so far. Loving it! Good thing I have a tv in the computer room so I can still get stuff done, while I am absorbed in all that Olympics stuff! :)
Posted by sssmile14 at 1:29 PM 1 comments
Sunday, January 31, 2010
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.
Posted by sssmile14 at 6:12 PM 0 comments
Friday, January 29, 2010
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!
Posted by sssmile14 at 11:27 AM 0 comments
Monday, January 25, 2010
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.
Posted by sssmile14 at 3:43 PM 0 comments
Thursday, January 14, 2010
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.
Posted by sssmile14 at 7:50 PM 1 comments
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
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.
Posted by sssmile14 at 3:28 PM 0 comments
Monday, January 4, 2010
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!
Posted by sssmile14 at 1:07 PM 0 comments