This has been an interesting week to say the least.
Sunday morning started with me taking Rachel to the on-call pedi to tell me what I already knew - another ear infection. She also said we need to be seriously talking about tubes so we'll see what the future holds there.
(Marc &
Heather had us over Friday night for dinner and our post-dinner activity was riding 4-wheelers. How many places - besides Texas - can you ride 4-wheelers, shirtless, in a super nice neighborhood on a random Friday night?!?)
Sunday evening we had our senior recognition and I got sad thinking about saying goodbye to two of the best and most beautiful young ladies (and babysitters!) in the entire world.
Monday morning started off with me getting the kids and I packed up to go and visit
Amy and her fam in East Texas. Apparently I was gunning for the worst mother of the year award because I fixed Ethan's cereal with the wrong milk. He took one bite, started drooling and screaming, proceeded to throw up and curl up in a ball for the next hour with stomach cramps. I am so thankful that he knew after only one bite because I don't even want to think about how horrible it could have been. There aren't many things worse than hearing your five-year old say, "Mom - how about I just get my own milk from now on in case you're distracted again." I still get teary-eyed just thinking about it. On a brighter note, this is a pic of E eating his first brownie. I found a mix that is milk free and just substituted the egg with unsweetened applesauce. There were very sticky but very good.
We did end up going to Amy's and had a great time just relaxing, laughing, and trying to find the cows that apparently like Interstate-20 more than they liked their own green pasture. That really happened. We came back home on Tuesday and a 2.5 hour trip turned into a 4 hour trip because of horrible construction traffic. I want to give an award to whoever invented portable DVD players and Fun Dip. Seriously.
Wednesday morning seemed promising. I got up a little early and got everyone ready so I could go to Ladies Bible class at church. Rachel was sitting in the laundry room putting on her shoes and eating a Ritz (or Rich as she says) cracker - the girl can multitask with the best of them - when she hit her head and started crying. When she realized how bad it hurt she took a big breath to let out her hurt cry and the cracker went right into her throat. Praise God that I was right there because she couldn't breathe - at all. She was trying so hard and just couldn't do it. And God took it from there. I grabbed her and turned her around and started doing the heimlich. After three tries the cracker finally came out and we just sat on the floor for a very long time holding each other. I really felt completely confident in what I was doing, however, my mind (or maybe my heart) had already gone to a very bad place that involved CPR and an ambulance. After I came back to reality that sweet baby said, "Mommy - why do you keep thanking God so many times?" And it's really strange because it's like she doesn't even remember it. Clay asked her about it and she just said she choked on a cracker and then I gave her some water. Needless to say God has been working overtime at our house this week. And just to keep things in perspective: We obviously left late for Bible study, and on our way came up on a horrible car accident. Who knows if that would have been us, but I think we sometimes get so caught up in how bad things are that we forget to thank God for protecting us from how bad things could be. So, today is Thursday and the kids are and I are gearing up for a fun and hopefully very uneventful weekend.
And my PSA for the week - if you haven't been through CPR training (it includes the heimlich manuever) or if it's been a while - DO IT.
In the past two years we've been on a lot of camping trips and this has quickly become our favorite family activity. However, some time around Christmas I realized that we had never been camping on our own...just the 4 of us. So, I asked around and got a great suggestion from one of my dad's co-workers to try out Purtis Creek State Park and it did not disappoint. We left out on a Thursday afternoon, got a wonderful site on the corner, got the camper set up and proceeded to just enjoy being together...just the 4 of us. We took a long bike ride, had a great hot dog dinner Thursday night, made some delicious smores, and stayed up REALLY late watching Princess and the Frog all cuddled up in one bed. Friday morning the boys went on a bike ride while Rachel was content watching a movie in the camper - you can do that when no one is expecting you or waiting on you! Then we went on a hike that turned out to take much longer than we had anticipated. Clay got dad of the year award for carrying Rachel on his shoulders for about 45 minutes while hiking. We ate lunch, played card games and memory, rode our bikes some more (thank you, Marc & Heather, SO MUCH for letting us borrow your truck so we could all take our bikes!), had a great taco dinner, ate smores again, and settled in for a wonderful rainy night. When we woke up Saturday morning it was about 30 degrees colder than it had been the day before and it was raining hard. It really was a great memory for us because the kids sat in the truck and watched a movie while Clay and I did our quickest packing and loading job ever. I think we should give ourselves some kind of award for the way that all came together. For some reason I was a little nervous about heading out on our own, but now I can't wait to do it again. 
The kids and I spent the first couple of days of spring break in Tyler to visit my Meme - or curly-haired Meme as the kids call her. I LOVE going to visit her for lots of reasons (and top of the list is just because I love her), but for some reason everything just tastes better there. Seriously. She can set out all of the fixings to make turkey sandwiches and they taste 10 times better than if I set out those same things at my house. I really don't know how she does that. She makes lima beans taste like candy. Ethan ate 2 entire sweet potatoes for dinner Monday night because he said he couldn't stop eating them they were so good...just baked sweet potatoes. The same baked sweet potatoes I make at home and he'll eat about half of one. Obviously we ate very well while we were there. And part of the fun was that my mom made the trip with us which is always nice. We hung around the house, took the kids to a park to play for a while (the same park that I went to on a date once in high school so that was a walk down memory lane), went shopping at a children's boutique, talked and laughed a lot, and played lots of games. 
Thanks to my wonderful, amazing, and incredible husband, I spent the weekend at a scrapbook retreat in McKinney and had a fabulous time. Cara and I booked it several weeks ago and had been counting down the days (okay, truthfully the hours) until we could leave. A couple of weeks ago we found out that some of our Aggie friends were going as well! Cara & I were roommates all through college, and our freshman year we met Shelly & Camille who were also roommates on the 3rd floor of our dorm. And then Theresa was there also - Shelly's roommate sophomore year. And the best part is that Shelly & Theresa both live about 10 minutes from us...God is so good. We stayed up late, got up early, ate hot food that we didn't have to prepare which was one of the highlights, watched movies, listened to good music, did a LOT of scrapbooking, did even more laughing, and got rejuvenated to come back to the real world. I worked on Rachel's baby book and got a lot done. Here's a sampling:
