End the R-word Day 3-31-09

Soccer

Anna had a soccer tournament Saturday. It was so cold. We watched her first game from the Suburban because Libby had just taken a shower and her head was still wet. The girls played great and took 2nd place.

Way to go girls!

Wordless Wednesday (Almost) - My Sweet Zachary

A little background on why I am posting these pictures today...

I received this e-mail from my sister earlier this week. She is the mother of the 10mo old that I watch one or two days a week.

"Speaking of forgetting to shut the door, this weekend I was sitting in the living room watching TV & I thought the bathroom door was closed. Emily had been close by, but that mother instinct kicked in as I suddenly realized that I hadn’t heard her for a few minutes. So I got up to see where she was & she’d pulled herself up onto the toilet and had her arm hovering over the toilet & was just getting ready to reach her hand in. I yelled “Emily NO!”. I got her & Leo’s attention. I did wash her hands. Now that I think of it, I probably should have washed her mouth & face just in case she’d decided to give the seat a taste test just like she does with everything else! YUCK!!!!"

So I replied with, "I will have to pull out the picture of Zack for you when I found him standing IN the toilet. I will try to keep a better eye on your child."

And then a little "sister love" back from her, "Hmmmm, so you find your child standing in the toilet, and instead of screaming and thinking that you can't get him out of there fast enough, you stop to go find your camera???"

That one cracked me up so I sent back, "Just a little insight into how my brain works... I dare you to try figure it out. LOL!"

So here you are Julie. I love you and promise to keep on taking pictures of my beautiful niece for you. ~Smiles!

See other Wordless Wednesday participants at 5 Minutes for Mom.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

An Award and "5 whatever gal"

Joanne over at Blessed gave me this "sweet" blog award. The rules of this award are to choose 5-10 blogs that show kindness and sweetness in their entries. For times sake I am choosing 5 so without further delay...

Angie at The Knightly News
Mari at My Little Corner of the World
Tonja at Gatherings
Diane at My Journey's Path
Melissa at Melissa's World


Lisa at Extravagant Grace is starting a group called "5 whatever gal". I love it! It is a commitment to get up while it is still dark to have time alone with God. It doesn't have to be at 5am or at 5:30am just 5 whatever time. I had already committed to myself, this past January, to getting up at 5:45am every morning so that I would be up before the rest of the family. I didn't think I was going to be able to stick to it because I am not a happy morning person. But you know what I found out? I am a much happier morning person when I can wake up WITHOUT family pressuring me to start helping them get ready. LOL! So it has become a double blessing for me. I get a set time with God every day and I am able to get myself moving before the family does it for me. Wink!

BREAKING NEWS FOR ALL MY BLOGGER FRIENDS

In 2009 the government will start deporting all the mentally ill people. I started crying when I thought of you.

Run, my little crazy friend, run!
Well what can I say???? I am NOT going alone!


(I got this from a friend in an e-mail and thought it was too good to pass up. LOL!)

I have great kids!

I love it when my kids get inspired to help each other. While I was gone this past weekend my older two girls helped my youngest clean, organize, and re-arrange her bedroom. I couldn't even walk into this bedroom before I left because Libby is known for trying on clothes and leaving them on the floor and bringing up clean clothes and not putting them away. It was a mess and a headache for me every time I seen it. I just haven't had the time or energy to help her tackle it and it had become to overwhelming for her to accomplish it on her own. Sisters to the rescue. Anna and Kaylyn spent much of Saturday helping her sort through things that could be given to Goodwill and things that could be dumped. Bless their hearts. I am REALLY glad they showed me her bedroom and the hallway closet (more of their organizing) before I found the results of the cleaning in the laundry. It was much easier to over look the unsorted clothes all on the floor after seeing how much work they put into the closet and Libby's bedroom.

A wonderful worship song

Her mother has to be so proud of her!

This was sent to me in an e-mail and it is excellent!

How many is too many?

No wonder I haven't had time to blog lately. All of my computer time is spent catching up on all of your blogs. Hope asked me on Twitter this morning how many subscriptions I have in my Reader. I was on my iPod at the time and you can't see that on there but curiosity was killing me and my iPod was almost dead anyway. So I went over to the kids computer to plug in my iPod and check out how many subscriptions I had. Remember this isn't how many unread posts it is how many different blogs I have in my Reader that I like to read. I can't even post it. It is terrible! How about y'all take a guess.

Go ahead and make a guess and I will come clean later.

No fair if you are on Twitter and seen my answer but if you are curious, make a guess and THEN go get on Twitter to see the answer.

Okay now off to get groceries and be a productive member of society.

Smiles!
Jennifer

Happy Valentine's

This is a fun little Valentine's Day Meme I found on Melissa's blog.

♥ How long have you been together? 19 years, 7 months
♥ How long did you know each other before you started dating? We met at a Friday night "get-together" and he asked me out for the next day.
♥ Who asked who out? Mark asked me out.
♥ How old are each of you? Mark is 42. I am... younger than that. LOL!
♥ Whose siblings do/did you see the most? We see mine more. He sees his brothers more during hunting.
♥ Do you have any children together? 4
♥ What about pets? 2 dogs
♥ Did you go to the same school? Nope
♥ Are you from the same home town? Nope
♥ Who is the smartest? Well that is a loaded question. I'll play safe. Mark.
♥ Who is the most sensitive? Me. Mark has compassion issues. Shhh.
♥ Where do you eat out most as a couple? Rose's. It is our favorite!
♥ Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple? California for the '88 Rose Bowl game Mark played in. However we didn't technically "travel" together but we met up out there.
♥ Who has the worst temper? That is a tie. Both are bad.
♥ Who does the cooking? Mostly me but Mark chips in when the need arises.
♥ Who is more social? Mark. He talks to anyone and everyone.
♥Who is the neat freak? Mark.
♥ Who is the more stubborn? Me.
♥ Who hogs the bed? We have a King size so it doesn't seem like either of us do.
♥ Who wakes up earlier? Me.
♥ Where was your first date? Mark took me out for ice cream while I was camping at the beach with girlfriends.
♥ Who has the bigger family? Mark. He has 3 siblings I have 2 sisters.
♥ Do you get flowers often? Yes. Mark works in a Greenhouse but he still buys me flowers because he know it means more than grabbing a plant on the way out the door. Wink!
♥ How do you spend the holidays? We divide it up between our families.
♥ How long did it take to get serious? We were dating exclusively from the get go.
♥ Who eats more? Seriously? If you know us you know the answer to this. Mark eats his meal and half of mine.
♥ Who’s better with the computer? That is funny. Mark avoids the computer at all cost.
♥ Who drives when you are together? Mark is the only one who drives when we are together because if I drive he is busy telling me how to drive so he might as well do it himself. Smiles!

They got "HIM"!

I haven't posted about this because I wasn't dealing with it well. I am ready for closure now.

My 13 year old daughter got a cell phone for Christmas. She had been wanting one forever and she had found the "perfect" pre-paid one. We had told her she was too young but then surprised her at Christmas with it. She couldn't have been happier. Just ask Jen Suits. Wink!

Anyway the day we were activating it she got a phone call on it before we had even called anyone on it. I told her not to answer it because she doesn't know the number so don't waste your minutes on it. The caller left a message and the message that he left was weird. My husband called the number back with his own cell phone and told the guy that he must have the wrong number because the phone he called belonged to our teenage daughter. The caller apologized and said he thought he was calling his nephew's phone. We hadn't yet set up her voice mail so he would have gotten "you have reached such and such a number".

MISTAKE #1: Never tell ANYONE that a number belongs to a teenage girl.

So we went ahead and finished programing her phone and let her put her voice message on it for her answering service.

MISTAKE #2: Never let your teenage daughter have her own voice or name on her cell phone. Leave it with the "you have reached such and such a number".

I saved that first call in her phone book as "do not answer" in case he called again. He did but that time he didn't leave a message.

Then the weekend after New Year's she received another weird call so again I saved the number as "don't answer" so she would know to ignore it if it came in again. It was from a different phone.

Then mid-January at 4am in the morning while her phone was turned off "HE" left a message. She was at a friends house with 2 other girls. When they woke up in the morning and turned the phone on she seen she had a message. This is where I have to type through tears. The message "HE" left was more vulgar and profane than anything I have ever heard and I am an adult. My innocent daughter and her 3 friends heard at least part of the message of him explaining what he was doing to himself and what he wanted to do to her and use on her and he used her name. The father at the house she was at told her to turn the phone off and call us.

I couldn't even listen to the whole message because I was crying so hard knowing my daughter and her friends had heard this. I had to give the phone to Mark and he was a bit caught off guard as to why I got so emotional, until he heard the message for himself. We immediately called the police. They were at our house within 20 minutes. I was very impressed with that. After the police left Mark drove to the other girls houses to explain to the parents what happened so they could be informed when they talked to their daughters.

Over the last month we have pulled our daughter's phone records, the police have been pulling the phone records of the numbers on her phone and we have transferred everything on our daughter's phone over onto permanent records for the police but as of 3 weeks ago the police felt they hit a dead end. Every number we have has proven not to be his. He has covered his tracks by some means. But all the numbers we had were from a neighboring city to us. That is the part I have a hard time stomaching. Does "HE" live near us? Who else is "HE" doing this to?

I have had to pray so hard for this because it was consuming my thoughts. I told my husband that I can't keep wondering who "HE" is and how close "HE" might live to us. I gave it over to God and have had a lot of peace about the fact that God has it under his control.

We changed her phone number. Listed it in Mark's name. And left the voice message as the pre-recorded one that just lists the phone number, no name.

And then about an hour ago I got a call from the detective. They got "HIM"! "HE" has been arrested. He does live close to us and the detective wanted to give me his name to make certain that we didn't know him. We don't. "HIS" telephone records show he was making over 100 calls a night! He calls random numbers until he finds a phone with a young girls voice on the message. (Remember mistake #2) They have had a lot of complaints since ours and they all are they same vulgar messages. "HE" will be prosecuted!

I am praising God!


PLEASE if your teenage daughters have cell phones warn them to not answer calls they don't recognize and to not use their name or voice on their answering machine.

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who has prayed for Libby. Yesterday was her first day without hives. She had an appointment with an allergist on Monday. Apparently what ever set off the hives put her body into histamine overdrive and is causing her body to put out histamines over everything now. We need to use all dye free and fragrance free products until Libby is off all medications and remains hive free. She put Libby on 2 more medicines that will give us a longer lasting effect than the Benedryl. The allergist thought I was probably right about the seasoning packet causing the hives but Libby can't be tested until the hives have stopped and she is off all of the medicine. She has to be weened off the medicine so it will be awhile before we find out for sure what she is allergic to. The allergist also told me that there is always the possibility that she doesn't test positive for anything and we might not ever know what did it.

This picture was taken Wednesday before the hives hit her face.


On another note, last week Wednesday Zack signed his letter of intent to Michigan State. We are very happy for him and glad that the recruiting process is over and he can focus on his last HS track season.


Here he is with Mark and me and his HS track coach and throws coach.

Hives Go Away!

We are still dealing with hives over 48 hours from the first sign of them. She is now on Prednisone and has an appointment Monday to see an allergist. She is also taking Benedryl every 4 hours and is miserable for the 2 hours leading up to the next dose. I am hoping the Predinsone will start kicking in and give her some longer lasting relief. Poor thing!

Pictures taken at 4pm this afternoon.



Pictures taken at 7:50pm tonight right before her next dose of Benedryl.

My poor babe!

For some unknown reason my poor Libby has a bad case of hives. They showed up after dinner last night so I am assuming it was something she ate. They are worse today than they were yesterday. I have a doctor's appointment set up for her tomorrow if they aren't getting any better. Until then we just keep taking the Benadryl and try not to scratch. Doesn't she look miserable? Poor thing.