Time for what I'll have to call my weekly update, or perhaps bi-monthly? A few things have happened since last time I typed away...
The most important thing is my oldest turned six years old on Feb. 9th. We had a quiet party on the night of her birthday (Mom and Dad were working the entire weekend).
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| Celebrating at home, Feb 9th. Little brother had already started trashing the cake. |
This past Saturday we had a bigger party for her at the Three Bears Waterpark at the Holiday Inn here in town. Even cousins and Nora and Jacob came all the way from Bismarck, ND, to be at the party!
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| Little brother checking out the cake. Again. |
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| Ava's cupcake cake |
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| A few of the kids at the party |
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| Opening gifts... |
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| Concentrating on her Lego veterinarian clinic, one of her birthday gifts. This little work of art took over two hours for Dad (with some help from the birthday girl) to piece together! She's determined to be a vet when she grows up. |
In the end, she had a lot of fun and the kids were exhausted from a day of swimming.
Now for my major pain in the a$$ over the past week. On the afternoon of Ava's birthday, I started breaking out in hives. This has been a lifelong problem and no one has ever been able to figure out why I spontaneously break out. Luckily, it is much less frequently now compared to when I was a kid, but when it happens, it is pretty bad.
I ended up in the clinic not once, but twice - once on the 10th and again on the 14th. I was put on a dose of prednisone, but when I started to taper off of it, the hives came right back even worse than before, so back to the Urgent Care I went early Valentine's day morning. Dr. Thompson started me on a new tapering dose of prednisone and some different medications (temporarily) I haven't tried before.
The hives were finally gone for good on the 16th. Trust me, folks, having hives for eight days is not fun. I can't figure out what triggered this outbreak - like I said, this has happened to me my entire life - although we started using new dryer sheets a few days prior to this happening. I doubt that was the source, but we switched to our old dryer sheets
just in case.
This has just been a stupid winter for me. Strep throat. Hives. Come on, that's enough!
On a better note, on Sunday (yesterday) we went over to Ray and Sandy's for a wonderfully delicious Sunday dinner. Ham, chicken, corn, potatoes, carrots... pies... and more! It was a wonderful treat and I got to see all my aunts and a few cousins I don't get to see very often. It was a fun day and I would love to do that more often.
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| My kids and their great aunts Jo, Bev and Sandy - in a rare picture where Neil is almost smiling. All that's missing is my Mom and Tissy and the picture would be perfect. |
That's all for now. For those who don't have Facebook, I will update my Twitter status as often as I can (found on the left column). That way you can keep up to date between these long droughts of blogging.
