Surgery

Yes we are looking at another surgery in our future. Fortunately Addy is NOT the one! It's ME! I'm not looking forward to this at all but unfortunately I've had 4 doctors tell me the same thing so I guess I better listen. On November 1st I am having this. Yes the lovely HUGE beasts in my throat must go bye bye. I have asymmetric cryptic tonsils. The cryptic part is not a big deal at all. The asymmetric part is. My left tonsil is far larger than my right, however, both are huge and always are. The concern is tonsil cancer. Yeah, I never had heard of it either! Whenever I do get sick (which I now have lovely bronchitis too) my left ear always hurts, it's due to the hugeness of that left tonsil! So getting them out should help tremendously. I had strep three times within 5 1/2 months. I also get tonsillitis all of the time so it's time for them to go.

I have heard from several people that the recovery for an adult is absolutely horrid. Great. My ENT is ordering that I'm off work for two full weeks, no lifting over 20lbs for 2 weeks (Addy weighs 26lbs), and lots and lots of fluid and rest. He did tell me that if I have bleeding or any other concerns I will have to be off 4-6 weeks. That really won't work! I'm going to be an extremely good girl those two weeks, I know I need to be at school for my clients! I have a wonderful friend that is also a certified SLP that is going to cover for me while I'm gone so that's awesome! Won't have to make up all of those sessions! Another good thing is is that I could lose 10-15lbs! Woo hoo! My weight is a whole other story, it's fine but haven't been losing very much lately :( I'm going in for a lap-band fill next week so that should help, then surgery will really help! I am back to exercising everyday and I'm eating beautifully so that's all good!

I shouldn't have to stay overnight and hopefully will be pampered beyond belief so it's going to be just fine! Right???

No time for anything else/Wordless Wednesday

Contest, Glasses, Football and Nightgowns ;)

On Monday morning I checked the status of the Parents Magazine contest that I entered Addy in. She was still number 2 and the voted had ended. I was a little bummed. I know she had a TON of support and votes! It wasn't a big deal, just a little fun! Well, on Tuesday after work I was checking my email and found this:

Congratulations! We are pleased to announce that your entry was selected as a potential prize winner in the Parents Kid of the Year Photo Contest. The prize is a gift card for $250.00.
to see the winning announcement click here

Woo hoo! I was so excited! Addy had been number 2 ALL WEEK! The precious little girl that was number 1 all week was actually dead last at the end of the week so I'm not sure how that happened! Anyway it's a great thing that that card should be coming soon because I just dropped $191 on Addy's new glasses yesterday :/! She lost her new pair (from May). We have no clue where they are, we took the car and house apart. I'm pretty sure she threw them away. Ugh. Fortunately she had her old ones to get by but they were the wrong script. We picked up her new PURPLE glasses yesterday :) We're hoping they will be easier to see than her light pink ones! Dr. Pierce (whom I love I tell ya) came to see us as we were picking them up and I told him how she is really fighting wearing her specs. He thinks that they just aren't fitting right so he talked with the lady that was adjusting them and he was very specific on what he wanted. She worked and worked. Addy smiled at herself in the mirror and walked around saying "purple glasses". We got in the car and in about 1.2 seconds they went flying to the back of the van :( I'm thinking that may have just become a habit. She keeps them on at school and when we are out, it's just in the car and at home. Which is strange because we always have her wear them. Now I'm paranoid to since she is mobile and we already have one pair MIA I was pretty lax about it today. She disappears and so do they! I didn't get a pic yet, I'll post one later, they're pretty cute :)


Today Jake (#52) played his first football game of the season. He had a game last week but it was canceled due to lightening. I was at an amazing DS conference (will post more on that later) so I'm glad I didn't end up missing it! Our team lost by two (I think). They played really well, it's amazing the difference in fourth and fifth grade football! I have no idea what Jake's positions are, he's told me a million times but I can never remember! He was a blocker, that I know! I think he's the only one that comes home with a clean uniform. I swear that kid gets filthy all week and you put him on the football field and all of his aggressiveness is gone! So not his usual self, he's pretty timid on the field but he's better than last year. At least this year he is usually where the ball is and not lagging behind :)

I went to my brother and sister-in-laws yesterday to pick up a power washer to clean the lovely gunk off our siding, it's time! I have to do it tomorrow after Scott puts the darn thing together for me! While I was there my SIL gave me 7 tubs of clothes!!! Jake and Addy and I spent most of the evening going through them! (Cooper went camping with Youth Group from church and had a blast!) He was thrilled with some of his hand me downs and Addy will have quite a bit once she grows! I was able to put a nightgown on her for the first time, I never could before because she always got tangled in them crawling! It's a 3T so it's pretty big on her but it's cute :)

Addy's birthday is less than a month away and I have no idea what to do. Have a party? Just have a family gathering? (which most likely will just be us) or just do her celebration at school? It's so hard to plan a party for her, she doesn't like inflatables, eating, dressing up etc. So I'm a little stuck what to do. She does have friends at school and church we can invite. Not sure they would come but we could try. As you can see in my header pic Addy does have quite a following at recess! Those precious boys sit with her as she demands which songs they sing. There is a set of twins that always play with her, they are sooo cute! Love them!

First day of AUTUMN

I fell in LOVE with this precious little girl on Reece's Rainbow one day, Donna, probably because she reminds me of a certain little someone that I absolutely ADORE!

Well, this precious little girl's name is going to be AUTUMN QUINN! Her family is in the process of raising funds to help bring her home and save her from a life in an institution. Children in Eastern Europe that have special needs are usually transferred to an institution by the age of 4 and over 80% die within a year. The Quinns are doing everything they can to get to her soon! So I am hosting a fundriaser for this family to help bring AUTUMN home! I am an Avon Representative and for the next week, the first week of AUTUMN I will donate all of my profits this week to their adoption fundraiser! So please visit my Avon page here. You will also get free shipping with all orders over $10 when you enter the code AUTUMN2011!!! You can't beat that! So please go and make an order to help bring AUTUMN home!

Another milestone!

(this is a cell phone pic after therapy, you get the idea!)

Addy had a huge milestone at feeding therapy on Wednesday! I have it on video but it's on my phone and it's too large to send to my computer apparently so I just have still pix of Addy's latest skill!

At therapy she was using a curved spoon so she did much better than these pix show but you get the idea! I am ordering curved spoons! I'm going to get both right and left handed because she uses her left at home and her right at therapy and school so I want to have both sides covered! She definitely wears more than she swallows, but the proof is in the tube :) she is definitely swallowing it!

Parents Magazine

Addy is in a contest for this week for Parents Magazine :) Please click the link and vote for Addy! You can vote until the 18th of September, so please go daily!!! Thanks!

http://photos.parents.com/kid-of-the-year/37/2011/19?esrc=nwphotofaves_koty

The Amazing Race

Yesterday Scott, the boys and I headed to Springfield to participate in a Geocaching Amazing Race event around the city. It was a 10 hour race! If you don't know what Geocaching is click here. It was pretty much just like The Amazing Race you see on CBS :) complete with Road Blocks, detours and mandatory rest periods. We had sooo much fun! It was a great day, gorgeous weather (until the afternoon rain), no fighting and no really stressful times! The funny thing is, Scott is the expert Geocacher and he is the one who made mistakes!

We started off with our first clue and we were sent to a Rest Stop right off the bat. Also in our big envelope was a little one that said "Your Key to Success" on it. Assuming we needed to do that first to do the race we went to the coordinates on the card. We ended up at The Library Center . A couple of other teams were there and appeared to know what they were doing and we were clueless, we only had the coordinates, no clue about what to do. So we decided to go on to our first destination Wilson's Creek National Battlefield. We had to watch a movie and answer some questions for the challenge. There were also several bonus questions to answer and we got most of them. We enjoyed that stop, so much history there! Our next clue was completely backwards but it led us to The Library Center for real! We had to find a fake reference book with our clue. There is a huge line of authors' names on the floor that we had to find in a word search on the back of the clue. So I started that because I am the puzzle whiz :) it was taking a long time, I think we were there an hour before Scott heard another team say that they would go on to their next destination and work on the puzzle later. HUH??? Scott had missed the OTHER piece of paper in our clue that led us to our next destination! We had wasted over an hour!!! The word search was all bonus but still! So we figured out our next clue and headed to the Springfield Nature Center. We all talked on the way there that we would be much more careful and attentive this time! We rocked that one! We had to answer some questions on a page about several exhibits. I held onto the clue and we would each be assigned a question to answer. We only had trouble with a couple of questions but we got them! Jake even found a bonus cache at our check in point an scored us 3 bonus points :) Our next clue led us to a park to participate in a round of Disc Golf. Only one person could participate. However, they were blindfolded (with a Tiger Woods mask) so other team members could lead them. Jake was the thrower, Scott was the voice to throw to and Cooper and I led Jake to the disc. It was so fun! He did really well, got it 4 throws!

Then we headed to The Discovery Center for our first Road Block. The player had to build a 7 foot tower out of blocks. One person could assist after the tower got tall enough that the builder needed a chair. This challenge was mine! I got it about 5 feet tall and it crashed! UGH! Then I got it and Scott helped steady it at the very end and I got it within 15 minutes! Pretty good I thought! My boys were cheering me on too :) Jake wandered out front and found another bonus cache! Way to go GEOJAKE8!



Our next clue sent us to the Missouri Department of Conservation. We had to see Mark Kee for our clue ;) Mark Kee was obviously a marquis in the window of the door :) It gave us the coordinates to get our clue which was behind the building in black and white balloons. We had to pop the balloon for our coordinates. It then sent us to Reliable Scion. There we had a Detour. We could either Build It or Count It. With two people with autism on our team we definitely chose Count It lol. We had to count the number of parking spaces in the first three rows of the lot between two signs. Scott decided to split the autism and he worked with Jake and Cooper worked with me. We were in charge of counting the first row and Scott and Jake worked on the other two. The first time we counted Cooper and I got 67 spaces and Scott and Jake got 88. NOPE! So we tried again, there were two spaces that Scott wasn't sure if they were spaces or not. Still wrong! So the third time we counted I counted the rows 2 and 3. Count on row 1 never changed ;) So third time was the charm and we got it! Sooo once again the expert numbers dude screwed up! LOL! Our next clue sent us to Dickerson Park Zoo. Once again we were hit with a Road Block. This one was listed as Kid Friendly so we gave it to Cooper ;) he had to feed a giraffe :) perfect for him, nice and easy!

Jake Planking

Our next clue had a Zooduku puzzle to figure out for our next set of coordinates. We solved that and it sent us to Springfield/Branson National Airport. All we had to do there was find a sign that had our next coordinates on it. We then went to Rutledge Wilson Farms. What a fun place! I'd never been there before and we will definitely go back! We had a Detour here too. We had to Pump It or Milk It. We chose Milk It. We had to find Irene the Dairy Queen cow to milk. We found her pretty quickly and milked her really fast! We were given our next clue that had coordinates on it in the middle of the cornfield. Scott left his GPS in the car! Seriously??? So Jake went back for it as Scott headed on out to the field. Cooper and I worked on some bonus questions and he even took some pictures of the animals. I'm definitely taking Addy there soon, I think she'll love it! We all headed out to meet Scott in the middle of the cornfield, crazy in there! He had to find our team number's coin in a jar of about 100 coins and take it back for our next clue. We were running and it was crazy!

Cooper's awesome picture of the piglets ;)

We got our next clue which then sent us to Wing Stop. Another team had always been just a step in front of us the whole race and were finally leaving a stop before them but they still beat us there! This was another Road Block. Fortunately Scott is an expert wing eater and this was a no brainer, he was taking this challenge. He had to eat 3 Atomic wings for our next clue. He started after the person in front of us and I'm pretty sure he had them all eaten in about 15 seconds!

We were off for our next destination, Bass Pro Shops. Our clue led us to find the GPSs which was pretty easy. There was a sign there with our coordinates for our next destination on the sign. We took a little bit of time to find some bonus questions while we were there. If you don't have a Bass Pro, there's really no other store like it! Our coordinates sent us to Lake Springfield for our next challenge. Once we got there it was the last road block so we knew that it was all Jake. He was so excited! He got to kayak across the lake to get our next clue. Scott was able to go too to make sure Jake was safe :) Right when they got back it started raining :( Scott said our last clue was our pit stop finish!

We had to finish the race within 10.5 hours and we still had over 2 hours before we had to check in so we decided to go for the bonus destination the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. It was raining pretty good so I didn't get pix of us there but the boys really enjoyed this stop too. There are busts of famous Missouri athletes with information about them on a plaque that we had to answer questions about. I think we did it pretty quickly too :) Then we finally headed to the Pit Stop. We were all beginning to drag! They had bbq ready for us, Cooper was thrilled! All in all we had an amazing day and had soo much fun! We didn't win since we had overlooked some simple bonus points and simple caches at all of the stations too!

We also had a gorgeous double rainbow once we got to the Pit Stop too :)

Jake did win an electric box to hide a cache in and Scott won 4 day passes to Doling Park so that's going to be fun! What a day we had! Sooo much fun and we are so thankful that we had an amazing friend offer to keep Addy for us, there is no way we could have done it with her! But since this post was lacking an Addy update, here ya go!

Oh Yes She Did!!!

Soo we just started this whole straw thing and Addy is totally taking off!! She is now able to suck the liquid up all by herself! She needs no help at all squeezing the bear!!

I put a little strawberry quik in her formula (which is unflavored, yuck!) and she went and got it off of the table by herself and started drinking it! The pix are awful, it was a spur of the moment opportunity!

If you are a friend on facebook (if you're not you should be!) you already know about this:



Yes my poor van got sideswiped by a pole while it was on vacation to Nevada with Scott :( now to find the $500 deductible :(