Quick update, then on to pictures!

I know you really come here for pictures of the kids, so I'll make this brief.

Update on Kate's amoxicillin / rash / whatever - I caved and took her to the pediatrician Tuesday once I realized that the Benadryl wasn't doing a THING to make the rash any better. Turns out, it's just a virus and she said it'd be gone in about 5 days. Guess what - it's gone :) This is why we love Ms. Mandy. Good news - she is NOT allergic to amoxicillin AND her ears are actually clear! I take back the majority of the amoxicillin-hate from my post below.

On to Brett - I got a phone call at work from Todd today. Brett has a fever of 103.4. Seriously. Ugh. Can't we get through ONE month where everyone is healthy??? I need to buy stock in kids' Motrin and Tylenol. We'll see where this goes. He seems pretty much ok attitude-wise and says that nothing hurts. Hmm... mystery.

Anyway, on to the pictures! Enjoy!

Museum

After the birthday party (see post below), we quickly walked around the rest of the museum to see what else was there since we'd never been before. The kids LOVED this enormous dinosaur!






Utterly amazed by ???



We tried so hard to get a good picture of them in the dinosaur footprint... this is as good as we could get!



Kate was tired at the end - good thing that Auntie Erin is a sucker for a cute ponytail :)

Birthday party!

The kids got invited to a birthday party at the Museum of Natural Sciences on Saturday. The party was so well-done for that age group! The birthday boy, Chase, was turning 3. Everything was centered around various animals. The kids even got to "dig" for little creatures (plastic ladybugs, frogs, etc.) and pet a few real animals. They got to pet a dove, a rabbit, and a turtle. They made little frog party horns and still had time for cake and ice cream. I was impressed, and the kids had a great time! They didn't want to leave!



Brett is digging for his treasures.



He had to show Auntie Erin what he found. "This one is a frog, and this one is a bird, and this one is a..."



Blow the party horn - skill mastered in under 2 seconds!



Jenn helping Kate to pet the dove while Brett waits for his turn

Clearing off the SD card :)

Some quiet play time after preschool... this is the classic "I'm tired, but don't want to go to bed" pose!



Getting ready to cheer on the Golden Eagles with Daddy! GO MU!

Busy little bee!

Check out what I've been up to lately. It'll explain the lack of pictures :) Just click on my link on the right, or go to it directly by clicking HERE.

Chaos reigns!

Chaos definitely reigns in the Lopez house this week! It started almost 2 weeks ago, with a phone call from my mom, saying that my Memere (my grandmother) was being admitted to the hospital for pneumonia, probably MRSA (methicillin-resistant staph aureus) - translation - a really nasty, hard to treat infection, complicated by her age and other numerous health issues. This phone call was at 11am. At 12:30 the phone rang, in the middle of the kids lunch - my mom again saying that it was not looking good for Mem... her blood pressure was constantly dropping, despite meds to keep it up. An hour later, a phone call from dad, saying that Mem had just passed. That was Monday, March 9.

This same week, Kate had Brett's preschool ebola virus from hell - high fever, nasty cold, etc. Yes, that's what I've named this virus that keeps going around our house in circles - the preschool ebola virus from hell. I honestly can't remember which night it was that week, but there was a night that her fever was so high that we could not get it down with Tylenol and Motrin. You know what worked - a nice LONG bath at midnight - which made Kate a much happier girl than taking more medicine. Thanks, Dr. Raasch for teaching me "Think Drugs First." It did absolutely nothing for my daughter's fever... the old grandma approach worked much better! Lesson learned.

Anyway, as you can imagine, my mom was stressed out dealing with her mom's sudden passing, and all of the planning and arrangements that we along with it. Wouldn't you know that she got the preschool ebola virus from hell too?! Just what she needed to deal with that week. Anyway, we had ALL of the family in town for the wake on Wednesday and funeral on Thursday. While it wasn't a joyous occasion, it was still great to see everyone. We had 15 out of 16 grandkids - pretty impressive! Overall, it was a great celebration of her life. She will be missed greatly.

By the end of the week, we thought Kate was better as her fever was gone and she was starting to get her spunky personality back, so we thought we were good to go. The weekend was rather uneventful, watching many many basketball games - some better than others.

Sunday night (a week ago today), Kate was up half the night, saying that her left ear hurt. So, Monday morning, we head to the pediatrician. Mind you, I never took her to the doctor when she had a fever for 4 days because I did take Brett to the doctor when he had it and they told me it was just a virus... I'm not wasting another copay for "it's just a virus." I fully anticipated a repeat of Brett's appointment, but they said that her ears look "barely infected" but headed that direction, so they gave us a prescription for amoxicillin. I won't get into how much I detest amoxicillin because it's never done a damn thing for either one of our kids, but I smiled and said thanks.

Fast forward through last week, more basketball games, a few work days, etc. and that gets us to today. Kate's ears seemed to have been clearing up, but the last day or two she's said her ears hurt again and she's queen grump-in-her-pants. This morning, after church, Todd noticed a nice rash all over her belly and back. Fabulous. Penicillin allergy? Probably. I didn't give her the dose tonight and gave her Benadryl all day today. We'll see what it looks like in the morning. Either way, I now seriously detest amoxicillin.

I do have some miscellaneous pictures from the last week - playing at home before naptime, a trip to the park, etc. Stay tuned!

SOOO big!

I don't realize just how big and old Brett is until I do something like this:

Check out Brett on the red car at "red car park" (aka Baileywick).


March 2007


March 2009

Princess Kate

GO, HEELS, GO!

 

 

 

we {heart} baileywick

Who would've guest that a week ago we had 3 inches of snow and today it is 82 degrees?? Only in NC!

Baileywick is one of our absolute favorite parks. Apparently, most of North Raleigh agrees with us as it is ALWAYS packed on a nice spring day. We even ran into our good friends, James & Valerie and their two daughters, while we were there! What a fun afternoon!

Driveway fun

Happy Birthday, Auntie Erin!

Brett and Kate had a great time helping Auntie Erin celebrate her 26th birthday! Brett thought that every present was a car of some sort. He insisted that her "big" present was a big racing car that he "thinks he loves." Unfortunately for him, it was a garden hose reel. Luckily, it had wheels :) Kate celebrated by stealing all of the bows!

Snow day, take 2

It's March. We live in North Carolina - not the mountains of North Carolina, but seriously smack in the middle of North Carolina. And there's freakin' SNOW on the ground, AGAIN! Late Sunday night and early Monday morning we got another 3 inches of snow dumped down on us. As usual, IBM and Target did NOT close down (unlike the schools, and the doctors, and every other place around us). This time, we were smart. We knew we both had to work on Monday, meaning that we still needed my mom to watch the kids, so Todd took the kids over to their house Sunday afternoon and they got to have ANOTHER sleepover! Woo hoo!

It was a little sad that we didn't get to see their reaction to the snow first hand, but I did get to talk to them on the phone before work, which was almost just as good as seeing the reaction in person :)









The kids actually did NOT get to go out and play in the snow because Brett has been fighting a cold or something this week, so we're trying to get him healthy again.

Tonight is our last night in the teens (projected low for tonight is 14 degrees, a good 20-30 degrees below normal). Forecast high for Saturday is 75. Jenn is a H-A-P-P-Y girl!!! Spring is right around the corner! Kate may actually get her "go down slides" request granted multiple times this weekend. I see a visit to our favorite parks, playing with bubbles, and drawing with sidewalk chalk all in our very near future!