1st Day of School

Today was Ciarrah's 1st Day of pre-kindergarten, AGAIN :( Next year she gets to go to Kindergarten :) She did a really great job at drop-off, at least she didn't cry. I think it really helped her that Daddy was here this time. We all took her together and she loved it. All of the families on the culdasac went to take the kids to school. It was a pretty great morning for us. Michael didn't have to be at work til 10am so it was nice that he could stay home with us for a while.

Ciarrah's 1st Day of School

All the neighborhood kids
Jr, Carrie, Ciarrah, Jennifer, Maddie and Dalyn

Cooper is so much quieter when his sister is not here. WOW. I mean seriously there is no screaming or yelling or crying going on. It is quite peaceful and I LOVE it. I've come to the conclusion that she likes to hear her brother cry :(

Well its nap time here and I am so taking a nap today. Hope y'all have a great week :)

What I've Realized

I've realized that we are pretty lucky. Everyone around us is having problems.

A neighbors husband attempted suicide Friday. We had not seen signs of this at all. I mean yes they drink and argue. But I would have never expected him to attempt to do that. I woke up Friday to a neighbor telling me that we are going to have to take turns watching their kids. I was like why and then she told me what happened. Michael told me that he had seen the cops and ambulance out side when he was getting ready for work.

Another really good friend, her and her husband are separated. They fought and argued but never would have guessed it would come to that. They have separated for over a month, today was the first I had heard of it. She told me that she was ashamed of it. I haven't seen her since Memorial weekend. We have both been so busy, we kept in contact on facebook, but she told me that no one but a handful of people know. I wish I would have been in contact with her a little more, I feel like I failed her as a friend. I know that's not true, but she helped me through the deployment. She helped me get through a lot and I have helped her as well. I just wish I could do more for her, I know talking about it was very hard for her to do. She is not an open/ask for help kind of person, so for her to tell me was a hard thing for her to do.

It breaks my heart to see all of the pain these people are going through. I can't imagine what they are feeling. What did it for these couples are deployments. They are hard. Deployments can make a couple stronger or break them a part. For us thankfully it brought us closer together.

Last Night

For the last couple days Cooper hasn't been feeling well. He has been running a low fever and had a running nose. I chalked all of this up to teething, he is working on 4 more teeth. So we just gave him tylenol and motrin every 4 hours and went on as usually.

Last night we went to a good friends house. The husbands were going fishing and us wives and kids were going to just hang out. Before we left I gave Cooper medicine, he felt fine, his fever was gone and everything. So after a while Cooper gets sleepy, so I put up his bed and get him ready for bed. We let him lie down for about 30 minutes just whining and talking and then finally he starts screaming so we go get him and he is burning up. I left my theromotor at hime, so my friend goes and buys one, while shes gone I give the kids a bath. Hoping that would help his fever go down. When she gets back his fever is 101.7. So I called Michael and we decided to just take him to the er.

When we got to the er, the receptionist told us that a lot of people had been waiting for over 4 hours to go back and see a doctor. We then went to get triaged, they took his temperature and it was 103.7. It had gone up quite a bit since we left the house, even before we left we gave him some tylenol. So we were told to wait in the waiting area til our turn. As we are standing there he seems to keep getting hotter and hotter. So about an hour and a half later, I ask them if they can retake him temperature. They retake it and its 105.4, I about had a heart attack, he's never had a fever that high, neither one of my kids. The man tells me he's going to update our chart and to have a seat. Ciarrah had to to the bathroom, so I take her when we were coming, the man is ready to take us back.

When we get back its about midnight and poor Cooper can barely keep his eyes open. We get seen by a bunch of different people. They do x-rays. I learned that you can do motrin wait 45 mins and do tylenol and wait 4 hours from when you gave the motrin. I was always told you had to wait 4 hours in between the motrin and tylenol. The nurse told me they don't like to do it unless they have a pretty high fever. After a while the doc comes in and says he has an ear infection and an upper respiratory infection. We are giving antibiotics and sent home.

We then had to drive about 20 minutes to pick up Ciarrah then about another 30 minutes home. We got home around 4am and well Cooper and I were up at 730 :( He woke up with a fever, but we are just trying to manage it til we go to see his normal doctor Monday :)

Just wanted to share our wonderful night in the ER.

Happy Weekend Everyone

Marriage Retreat

This past week we went on a marriage retreat. It was alot of fun. We had to be there at 0830 on Thursday morning and we were finished on 1630 on Friday. Since we were staying over night we had to leave Collin at a kennel. This made us nervous. We found a great small family ran kennel. They did great with him. And we only paid 15 dollars.

After we dropped the dog off we had to go to Lampasas, Texas which is about a 45 minute drive. Once we arrived there we dropped the kids off at the Nursery at the church. Then we went out to a ranch. They had a lot of horses and a big that ran with the horses named Miss Piggy. I was not informed that we would be working with horses til we got there, as I was in flip-flops, so not a good choice in footwear :(

The marriage retreat was a blast. Who knew that you could do couples therapy with horses. I sure didn't, but they taught as alot, especially with Michael getting ready for deployment. We met some great new friends there as well.

After we were done for the day we went and picked up our kids and headed to the hotel. We got some great rooms, and unfortunately the pool was not working, what a bummer. After we got settled into the hotel, we dropped the kids back off for dinner. They gave a list of local restaurants to choose from to eat dinner at. we choose the Italian one, we ate at one in Fredricksburg, VA, so we thought it would be just as good, NOT. This one was not the best, but the desert was really great. Then we went to the local park and walked around and just hung out. It was nice to just spend time with each other instead of having the kids screaming every minute of the day.

The next day of the retreat we got to play with more horses. I don't really know my way around a horse, so this was an interesting experience. We learned how to get a horse to move without touching it and lots of basic stuff about a horse. We a had a great time at this marriage retreat. We will definitely be going to ones in the future.