the Hike!

First let me say that it is another gloomy day in OHIO! A thunderstorm just went through and we should get more rain later. I love thunderstorms, but I really want that 90* day that I talked about in the last post. SO I am pouting over the weather!

Yesterday was it was 83* which would be okay normally to go to the POOL, but with the temps getting down to 63* at night - the water is FREEZING! Really no big deal for my older kids, but I have to get into the water with my younger ones and I do not like freezing water. However, I am usually the one in it trying to persuade Maria and Livy to get in! Because the weather was not warm enough to go to the pool I got creative and we went hiking at Slate Run Metro Park. It was nice and sunny and I really needed some God appreciation time. You know the times where you are just in awe at His beauty! Well, nothing goes as planned. Instead of a peaceful walk through the woods, I ended up with girls clinging to my body! It turns out that Alex, my 14 y.o. has a phobia to spiders. A few years ago we were up at Marblehead trying to find a letterbox (don't know what that is? I will explain in a future post) and she was leading the way. Of course she was leading the way, she always has to be the one to beat out her brother in things. Well, she walked right into a giant spider web in between some trees and the giant spider that made the web ended up in her hair. After she was done freaking out and we managed to get it off her, she was scard for life! She use to be quite the camper and loved being out doors, but in the last few years I have noticed that desire has vanished. I thought it was just her age. After yesterday's walk, I now know that it has nothing to do with her age and being a girl, but that she is petrified of the possibility of walking into another spider web! She clung to me the whole 1 1/2 miles. In the beginning we were joking about it, but after a while I told her to deal with her fears and let go of me. She then had tears forming in her eyes and asked if we were all most our of the woods. I finally told her she could not hold onto me for about 1/4 of the last mile, and she walked directly behind me with a whimper in her breathing! Pathetic! Bill of course thinks it is all nonsense and that she is just being silly, but we will see whenever he gets her out to go for the next hike!

Finally got my cousins handbag done! Went to her house on Saturday for a big party to wish a dear friend goodbye as he is leaving for Iraq this week for 8 months. So I hurried and made a proto type to make sure I would not make a mistake on hers (the one on the bottom). I put a zipper in the proto type and it came out okay! Will be making more bags with zippers in the future! Both bags are made with Amy Butler fabric and it was so nice to work with. I do not make to many things with her fabric, only because so many other people do. But she does produce a high quality fabrics for a decent price! I love the way Michelle's bag turned out! She loved it too!

If you would like a bag like Michelle's let me know! Or customize your own! I will only be sewing them for the next two months then I will be taking off November and Dec. for the holidays!

more fair pictures

Anna winning 5th place in "Egg in Spoon" contest.

Alex competing in flags - Bubba is not a contesting horse, but she had fun trying. It is always fun to try to go as fast as you can, scary but fun. I think she may of won a ribbon in this event because all the really fast horses dropped the flag (slow and steady wins the race!).

She looks so beautiful in her English riding attire and Bubba is just as beautiful! They make a good team! Should we buy him?

A long week at fair!!!!!!! Maria was actually only with us 2 days but it was very tiring sitting around all day waiting for them to show. I looked over and she was asleep! Maybe it was more boring than tiring for her. She actually loves horses and I think she will follow in the girls footsteps and become a rider.

So where do we go from here? Our lease on Bubba is about up. I might be able to renew it and continue on with the girls training on him. He is such a good horse. Everyone at fair loved him and wanted to ride him. I really trust my girls on him. He rarely gets spooked and has bonded a lot with Alex. His big advantage is his jumping... boy can he jump! Since this is Alex's thing, I think sticking with Bubba might be the best thing. The owner has offered for us to buy him for a VERY good price. But with that comes the vet bills, farrier bills, etc.. I do not think we are in a position to do any more than we are doing. We have also been offered a different horse. A friend has one that she is keeping at her barn and would like Alex to have it. She would help us out with the bills as long as we feed it. Sounds like a good deal, but that means leaving our trainer, and no indoor arena to train at. Plus the horse is a little "green" meaning he needs some work to be show quality. Alex is very intrigued to take on this horse and work with it, but I do not know if I trust her to jump him. So we will see where the world of horses take us. All I do know is that God has always provided opportunities within our budget for my girls to ride. I know he will continue to do so in the future... God is good!

Back to Business

We are back from the county fair!

Let's make one thing clear.... I AM NOT A COUNTY GIRL! Never in a million years did I ever expect to be spending a week at the fair from sun up to sun down! I am a "city" girl or at least a suburban girl! Well, I did survive with only a few laughs from my fellow barn moms.

On July 17th we unloaded our "leased" horse into it's new home for the week. One thing was clear we did not have all the supplies needed to show for the week. Luckily we have great people in our 4H group who loaned us everything (wheel barrow, pitch fork, saddle rack, tack box, hooks, black hoof polish, spray paint (yes you paint the horses legs and polish it's hoofs black), riding gloves, etc.). But considering the horse is not really ours we did pretty good. It is amazing the STUFF you need to show a horse. Talk about some money tied up in a "recreational sport"! You can imagine the cost just to own the horse, but add all that other STUFF to it and it is quite the investment. Some of the mom's work one or two jobs just to pay for the horse! SAD. I am lucky to have a daughter who knows our limitations and respects what we can do. She is very appreciative to be given the chance to lease a horse and show it.

So Alex and Anna spent the rest of the week showing in all different classes, from your typical equitation classes to your fun "ride a buck" classes. Alex pretty much did all English classes she could, where Anna stuck to just the simple fun classes. They both came home with lots of ribbons to be proud of. Alex also participated in Musical Freestyle, which is where the rider puts together a routine to music. If you ever want to come watch a horse show this is the one! It is amazing the costumes these kids come up with and it is very entertaining. Alex put her routine to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock'n Roll". It really got the crowd involved and singing! Got to love the oldie but goodie songs! She had a lot of skills packed into her routine including 3 jumps, which Bubba did great at! She competed against 3 others and one girls did the song "Mickey" (remember... "oh Mickey you're so fine, you're so fine, you blow my mind"). Who does not love that song. And her costume was Mickey mouse and her horse was dressed as Minnie! It was so adorable. I did not see her routine, but she did take first place and Alex took second. We were still very proud of her and a lot of people came up to her and told her she did great!

So we had a lot of fun and the girls made some new friends. But I am glad to be home and getting back to a normal routine. Now it is time to start planning for our school year!

an eventful June

It seems appropriate to post about June, since I last posted on the first day of June and I am now finally posting again on the last day of June. Of course we are always busy in June, but this year we had an unexpected event to rob us of 2 weeks of this wonderful month.

On June 6 my oldest daughter, Alex (14), ruptured her appendix and had to have it taken out. It is rather a long story and I am going to write it all down here, so that in the future I have a written account of it, which comes in handy when doing her scrapbook years from now! If you do not want to read the lengthy story then skip down to the bottom to see my June Uppercase Living creation.

On June 4 she complained of a cramp on the upper right side by her ribs. A few hours later she said she had a belly ache in addition to the cramp and that she just did not feel right. At that point I thought nothing of it, except she may have some sort of bug. It is easy to brush everything off on a "bug"! She had jumping lessons on her horse that night and when it was time for me to go to a meeting she said she did not want to go to her lessons. That sent red flags a flying! She had a few hours before the lesson, so I told her to come with me and we will see how she is doing. She did decide to go to the lesson, but called me after an hour or so to tell me to come and get her (mind you, I was in a middle of a Relay meeting that I was conducting so I did not go get her until 45 min. later!). By the time I got her home she started to throw up.

She was sick every hour until Friday, June 5 at noon. By this time I was concerned, especially about dehydration. She also said the cramp had moved from her chest to the lower right side below her belly button. But she would also sometimes say that it was all through her lower adomen. I got out the medical book that evening because the cramping had not gone away. Now at this point her pain was a 5 on a scale of 1-10. I asked her the pain level all the time and it never really got above a 6. So when we were looking at the medical books and I noticed she had all the symptoms of appendicitis, I ignored it based on the fact that she did not have high pain level nor did she have much of a fever. By this time I had figured it was the flu or some "bug" and possibly her period starting.

She slept with me that night and at 6am woke me up to tell me to call the doctor. After explaining to her that the doctor was not in until 9 so we would have to go to the emergency room, she said she would wait. The "cramp" was so bad that she could not get out of bed. I gave her two motrin and told her to rest some more. Within an hour she was up and said she felt much better. In fact she even had breakfast and sat downstairs watching TV. So I figured it was better and the rest of us went to Curt's ball game. She called me half way through the ball game and said that the pain was back and was worse than ever. OK I finally came to my senses and figured something major was wrong. I had a friend leave the ball game with me and come and check her out. He is an emergency nurse so he sees appendicidis cases all the time. After examining her, he said she had some of the signs my not all, but that we need to take her NOW to the ER. So I went and got Bill from the game (which of course was going into extra innings) and we headed to the ER. (Here is a GOD thing... our good friends who often watch our kids for us were at the ball fields so they could take Curt and the rest of them home and we did not have to worry about what to do with the other 4!).

So we got her right in at the ER. Well right into a room. There we waited and waited and waited. Now mind you, doctors and residents and students of all types came and checked her out, but none of them did anything for her or ordered any testing. Finally the surgeon came in and ordered her to get a ultrasound done. By now her pain level is a 6-7 (still not excrutiating like you would think). The ultrasound was terrible. Imagine having someone push on your belly so much when it is irritated. Alex said later that it did not hurt that much, but she cried through the whole thing... because of the anxiety of what was going to happen! After doing an adominal ultra sound, they were expecting to do a pelvic ultrasound. The technition told us to do this they had to "blow up her abdomen" with carbon dioxide (I think) in order to do it. She said if the first ultrasound hurt the next one would be even worse. Then she left the room. Ok, NOT the thing to tell a 14 y.o. who is already upset and crying. We sat there for at least 20-25 min. waiting on her to come back and tell us the results. It seemed like hours, Alex was so upset! She finally came back and said they did not have to do the pelvic ultrasound, because her appendix had ruptured. So back to the ER we were taken (after waiting another 20 min. for a transport - which never came so the technition finally took us).

Finally Alex was given morphine for her pain and she slept comfortably! It is so hard to watch your children suffer and not be able to do anything but hold their hand and try to reassure them. They said she would be going to the O.R. soon. So we waited and waited and waited. Finally a doc. came in and I said shouldn't this be an emergency and she said "we have to wait until a room opens up." Hmmm what do they do when a trauma comes in and it is an emergency wait until a room opens up? I guess since it had ruptured it was not an emergency? No big deal... just millions of bacteria swimming throughout her body!

So transport finally comes and gets us to take us to O.R. or at least that is where I thought we were going. We ended up in a regular hospital room. I questioned why we were not in the O.R. and they said they were told to bring her there. So we waited. Finally a nurse comes in and saids I was right that she was not suppose to be there. The nurse herself takes us to O.R. quite quickly I might add. The O.R. was waiting and were not happy about the mistake. So they explain the procedure to me then took her away. That was the worse feeling ever. In the waiting room I prayed over and over that she would be ok. Bill had went to our friends house to tell the kids and make sure they were all set for a while. I had called my dad to let him know what was going on and he decided to come to the hospital that night to make sure she was ok. How sweet!

She went into surgery at 11pm and about 1 hour later I got a call in the waiting room from the surgeon that it was going to take longer because of some minor complications. Not something you want to hear. They were done at 1am and everything went fine. We got her settled in a room (the same one we went to before!) and she slept throught the night on heavy medications. My dad and Lin arrived at 2am to check on her. I mentioned this because Children's hospital in Columbus is not in the best area, in fact it can be pretty scarey to go there. My dad actually had a security guard escort him to a parking place and then to the enterance!

Bill and I stayed with her through the night and in the morning she was doing quite well. In fact they said that she would probably go home the next day since she was feeling fine and eating some. OK, I am no medical genius but the surgeon told me that she would be there for at least 5 days, so why are people changing there minds based on one day? They took her IV out.... big mistake! After about a half day she went down hill quickly. I am sure it is because her meds from the surgery were wearing off and then not being hydrated enough. She started getting fevers and feeling quite misserible! So they hooked her back up to the IV and changed her pain meds. After the surgery they had started her on her antibiotics and gave them to her 3 times a day. Her belly started to look quite puffy. The docs were concerned with this, but said they had to wait 5 days to do a scan of it, but if she did not spike a fever for 24 hours then she could go home instead. Well on hour 23 she spiked a fever. So on Thursday, June 11 they did a CT scan of her abdomen. That was quite interesting... like going into a space ship! At least it did not hurt her.

The CT scan showed that she had 2 absesses. After taking out the appendix they try to wash out all the bacteria from her body, but of course cannot get it all. What remains they hope will be fought off with the antidibiotics. Sometimes the bacteria form absesses and grow. One of Alex's were small and was by her hip the other was HUGE and started at her pelvis and ended at the top of her abdomen. SO they put tubes in them with little balls at the end of the tubes to collect the puss. They reassured us that the procedure to put tubes in was painless. Well, they were wrong. They cannot put you under for this procedure (or they choose not too) so they give you large amounts of drugs to make you sleep through it?! Well, they gave her the highest amount of childrens drugs they could give her and she said she still felt everything. She mentioned that they had to hold down her arms while they did it. She told me all this at 2am in the morning when she woke up from a nightmare about it! I was just as upset as she was to think that she had to go through that. I searched out the doctors that next day and told them that they were wrong that it was a painful procedure. The doctor that did it said she was out for most of it, but when he had to put the tube in she woke up from the pain, but it was not the whole hour she was in there. Made me feel a little better. But needless to say that doctor was not a favorite of Alex's.

So for the next 4 days we waited for the tubes to drain. She was getting better every day. She was losing weight though and did not eat much. In the end she lost 11 lbs. She weighed 111 lbs when she went in and only 100 when she left. She is 5'7" so you can imagine how much of a skeleton she looked like. Her eyes were also sunken and very dark. But at least she was eating some and getting out of bed on her own. The home nurses came in on Tuesday and taught me how to do all her meds at home. They brought me this huge box full of stuff... I became nurse mom! I only had to do if for 2 days thankfully! We finally got the last tube pulled out on Tuesday, June 16 and were discharged!

For the last week or so she has been recovering. She spends a lot of time on the couch watching TV and even doing a little reading (because I make her!). She has been out to the barn to see her horse only a few times. I am not sure about how she feels about being out there when she cannot ride, but I do know that she just does not want to do anything. I would not say that she is depressed, just "blah" about doing anything! She is starting to come out of it now that the end is near. We go to her doctors tomorrow, July 2 to see if they will release her to do physical activity. We are hoping that they say you can start where you left off before the "surgery" but reality is that she will have to only do lite activity. I actually think that she preferrs this anyways. I am sure she will be anxious about doing anything right away. That is the way it should be! Our county fair is in 18 days so hopefully she we be good to go by then!

So that is what has been keeping me busy in the month of June. Not the best way to start the summer, but we still have 2 months left!

I now have to concentrate on getting my Uppercase Living business going! (among getting our school year planned!) So here is a photo of my latest UL creation! Let me know if you want to do a show or just order something