Fall Has Come & Gone

When the temperature gets below 50 degrees, I usually stay inside because it's too cold for me to get out.  I hate the cold and it makes me miserable.  Period.  There were a couple of days that the girls and I spent inside until it warmed up again.  There were also quite a few tender moments but these are the ones I want to remember so I am blogging about them.

One day I heard the girls snickering, laughing and playing in the kitchen.  When I snuck up on them, they were just playing away and getting along so well.  I hope they continue to be great sisters to each other.  

 In the spirit of "what does the fox say", one of our crafts this season was to assemble and decorate a fox.  They girls did pretty well and the foxes turned out great.

Happy belated Thanksgiving!  Unfortunately, this was the only picture that I took the entire day.  We were just relaxing after dinner and these two looked so sweet together.

Goodbye fall (and leaves) and see ya next year.

Leaves

We have experienced our first fall in our new house.  One of the many things that I love about this house are the 19 mature trees that are beautiful.  When it was spring and summer, I loved to hear the wind rustle the leaves.  Now that fall has come and gone, most of the leaves have fallen.  Our neighbors are out every two weeks or so raking leaves because there are that many.  

In the spirit of teaching our children how to work and serve others, we headed out to rake half of the driveway.  I think we had five or seven bags just from the driveway.  The girls did well and I was so proud of them.  By the way, I finally paid someone on Tuesday to come rake the leaves because the job was/is just too big.  The crazy thing about the leaves...they're back already!  You can't even tell the yard or the driveway was raked!

They are working so hard and taking their assignments very seriously.

Savannah had to spend some time in timeout because she kept destroying the piles that Scarlett and I worked so hard on.  She was exceedingly happy when timeout was over.

  When most of our work was done, I let the girls play in the last pile.  Don't you love to see your children happy?  I sure do :o)

Snow Day At School

On Nov. 15th Scarlett had a snow day at school.  The letters of the week were p and s.  The kiddo's were allowed to wear their "p"ajamas to "p"lay in the "s"now.  The snow was packing peanuts and it was pretty cool.  Younger siblings were also allowed to come play in the snow.  That's why you see Savannah.  I can't believe Savannah will be starting school in the fall.  What?!?!

 I do believe Scarlett's snow angel is my favorite pic.

The little boy in the green shirt is Mason.  Apparently, Scarlett is his favorite everything.  He looks out for her and always wants to sit by her.  I think it's cute.  Jeremiah already wants to know where he lives, lol!

Hats

About a month ago we had some really cold weather and I decided to get the girls some new stocking caps.  Scarlett is into Hello Kitty and Savannah is into Spider-Man.  The other day Scarlett told me that she wanted to attend Hello Kitty College???  Savannah just wanted Spider-Man soup???  I have no idea where her love for Spider-Man came from but I love it!  We headed off to Target and together we found hats that they loved.  They are all ready for winter!

Scarlett was tired and hungry and was ready to eat after a day of shopping.  The last thing she wanted was to take a picture.  Savannah is usually game for anything at anytime.

The girls woke up and the hats were the first thing they grabbed.  Scarlett was in a much better mood so I tried my luck for another picture and I was pleased :o)

Another Hospital Stay

On Nov. 11th Sophia developed a cough.  The next day it was a little better and on Thursday it was bad again.  Plus, she was not moving the air in her lungs well.  I called the doctor and she wrote out a prescription for a steroid.  We tried the steroid and she still wasn't that much better.  She would cough, desat, and we would give her more oxygen.  It took minutes before she was "stable".  On Friday I left to pick Scarlett up from school.  When I got home, her nurse met me at the door and said "Sophia's doing that thing again."  Both of us bolted up the stairs to her room and Sophia was clearly in respiratory distress.  I gave her all of the oxygen we could and I told the nurse to pack up because we're going to the hospital.  Afraid that I would eventually run out of oxygen, I used what we had left to get her to the hospital...after I drop the kids off at a friends house because I knew we would be there for a few hours. 

We arrived at the hospital and it was organized chaos.  I was so glad that several people that knew and love Sophia were floating that day because if I has to repeat her history one more time...   Anyway, the first thing they did was change her trach.

See that brown/green/yellow stuff in her trach?  That's not suppose to be there.  In fact, it is suppose to be clear like the rest of her trach.

Sophia was so mad and nothing I did would calm her down.  To be fair, if I couldn't breathe I would be pretty mad, too.  Anyway, everyone tried to soothe her and nothing was working.  Jeremiah called me and said that he was in the ER and was trying to get to us.  In the meantime, I told Sophia that daddy was coming and he would make her feel all better.  And you know what?  He did!  He got there and she was all smiles and the staff couldn't believe it!  What can I say.  Jeremiah loves his girls and his girls love him.

Is she sticking her tongue out at me or is it the timing of the shot?  Let's go with the latter.  However, I'm beginning to wonder if she associates me with pain.  I'm always there at her worst and I'm the one that always get her help.  And this is how she treats me???  Shameful!

If she could talk, I bet she was saying "I'm in the hospital?!  Again?!" 

After seeing the error of her ways, she asked me for my forgiveness.  Forgiveness was granted :o)

We were in the ER for about two hours and then she was admitted to PICU.  After several labs, tests, and an x-ray, it was determined that she caught a virus and had a bacterial infection at her trach site.  The viral infection is what did her in.  Because her lungs are so sensitive and so compromised, she can't fight things off the way that we can with "normal" lungs.  Over the next couple of days she got better and was suppose to come home on the 18th.  As I'm pulling into the hospital parking garage, the nurse practitioner called me.  Sophia crashed and burned a little bit and wasn't able to come home.  We had to wait another day.  On Nov. 19th, baby girl came home and has been doing okay.