Shopping with a five year old...

So today I had five million things to do in Bowling Green which included dropping forms to be filled out at Dr. Cavanah's office (thank you teenage boy GGC worker who insisted that I unload 2 half asleep children by myself and haul them in just to turn in a paper...I'm sure your 16 year old legs were too tired to walk the papers 10 foot across the lobby...)

Wait I got sidetracked...then I had to drop off some videos (I think they were actually on time) and then meet Travis at Hobby Lobby to pickup a frame (Yes I met him so he could corral the children in the van while I ran in, because the sight of Hobby Lobby turns my two little angels into whiny animals who sound like dying alley cats)

Actually things were going so smoothly I decided to venture to the mall with the munchkins. By the way, did you know that given then opportunity a five year old will chew the ear pieces off of two pairs of glasses simply because he was bored! It's a fact, and the look on the Lenscrafter man's face was priceless when I pulled out the aforementioned glasses and told him we needed two new sets of ear things. The man kindly asked, "Is this the first time he's worn glasses," Yes dude...what clued you in? He then proceeded to try and sell me a $150 pair of sports glasses for high impact sports (aka gym class) I kindly informed him that I didn't really think there would be much high impact sports going on in Kindergarten gym class, but thanks for asking...

And now the point of this post...I didn't realize I had a son going into high school...I thought he was going to Kindergarten. From the way he shops for school clothes you wouldn't know the difference. Anything I picked out was "uncool" and he repeatedly picked out the $40 jeans and the rocker t shirts, and to beat it all he loved the vintage 70's t shirts at old navy. We came home with a star wars one but I convinced him that a Rolling Stones one was not age appropriate. He also snaggled two pairs of camo pants, some more Old Navy T Shirts and two pairs of shoes...one of which his father nearly had a coronary over because they have skulls on them...(I tried to explain it went with the Old Navy rock and roll t shirts) but Travis insists that we will look like a juvenile delinquent...so I suppose he won't be wearing them to Sunday School any time soon. Anyway, if shopping with him was this challenging now I can't imagine when he's a teenager...I'm not even going to think about it.

He did however still want to ride the Carousel so I guess we're not quite ready to start shopping at Hollister...yet...

My Project is Finished!!!

Remember my earlier post, (you know the one about the spray paint, the fabric, etc?) Well I'm happy to report it is finished and our front porch has been given a face lift.

Basically, Travis and I are the proud owners of a vintage wrought iron patio furniture set that was going to be trashed by the previous owners. And this stuff is heavy, not flimsy like what you can buy now and it blows away. Add to that 10 cans of black spray paint (1.12 each at Walmart) a hubby who will spend a Saturday spray painting away... 10 yards of damask fabric (Walmart $4/yard) and some potted plants (3 o4 4 bucks each from Mammoth Cave Transplants) and we revamped 4 chairs a chaise lounge and 2 wrought iron tables. The result? Cute as can be!!! The best part? the entire project cost around $60 total.

OH wait, the second best part...me and my mom recovered the cushions ourselves and neither of us can sew...or at least I can't (Mom can but doesn't like too) What's our secret...we know how to fold fabric like you're wrapping a gift and use monster sized safety pins which are impossible to see unless you totally deconstruct the chairs....voil1a' a new porch for the Parsley's!

Nothing New I suppose

So today's allergy tests were really nothing new. She still has a "significant" egg reaction as well as some environmental allergens that are probably worsening her asthma. We are going to keep her on a morning and night drug regimen to try to keep the symtoms under control and we will check back in the fall (when asthma tends to flare) and see if we need to add something stronger to the mix. However it was a LONG day. We did chest x-rays this morning and then ended up in the allergist office for nearly 3 hours. I had to wait close to an hour at CVS and then run straight home to get ready to run to Kindgarten openhouse.

After open house, the kids wanted to go to the park so I delivered a photo order to a customer and we played at the park for a while. I am worn out, and it is nearly 10pm and Noah is still going strong...we had been trying to get him into a set early bed time in preparation for next week but I think all the excitement of seeing his friends tonight at school has him wound up!!!

I cannot believe that this time next week we will be officially begun on Noah's school career!!! His little backpack and lunchbox came in the mail today and it is SO Cute!!! He was so funny when he saw it he said, "I have always wanted a backpack just like this!"

I also must add in this little comment about South Edmonson Elementary. I am so impressed with the amount of work they have done in preparation for Noah coming to school. They have adopted a peanut policy to keep the campus safe for him, and my sweet friend Carol organized the open house with snacks that were completely safe for him. He was SO excited to get to eat the same cookies as everyone else, he's used to us saying, "Noah you can't have those, we'll get some of your cookies in a second..." tonight he got to just be a regular kindergartener, not the kid with the food allergy! I really feel like the school year will be a successful one with all of the strategies they have in place!!! Thanks guys, you have NO IDEA how much this means to our family. Travis and I have talked every night this week about how lucky we are to be involved in a school system that has so much care and concern for it's students.

Busy day

We are off again to the (HOPEFULLY) last checkup for a while...I think we've spent the entire summer in a doctor's office or hospital! Lil is going this morning for chest x-rays to make sure the pneumonia is gone and then this afternoon we are going for her official allergy tests. You have no idea how much I dread this, but I hope it will give us a clearer picture as to what we need to do to help get Lilly healthy again! (We had a blood panel when she turned 12 months and found out the egg allegy but that only tested egg, milk, and peanuts.) Today will be a broad test to cover a variety of food and environmental allergies. Noah is staying with Mom today because this is a stressful test for any kids, especially an almost 2 year old who has just been put through the ringer twice with hospital stays! But I am being positive that I hope it will be over quickly and we can get on the road to where we need to be. As I've said before, I couldn't have any more confidence at all than I have in our allergist. She is wonderful and she really cares about my kids and that makes a world of difference.

We will hopefully brighten up the afternoon with some chicken nuggets (lilly is addicted to chicken nuggets), a visit from Nana, and then we're off to Kindergarten open house for Noah to "meet" his teachers...only not really because they've known him since the day he was born. We're all very excited, and I cannot believe it is school time. He's still my baby! Have a great day blogging buddies, and I'll update test results as I know them.

Decorating...a little at a time

I love love love to decorate the house...I don't love love love the amount of money it takes. We moved in our home almost 2 years ago and when we moved in we had purchased new furniture for every room except Noah's bedroom (it was already new) so alot of the extras (decor stuff) had to wait! I have slowly but surely been furnishing one room at a time and I have not let myself get in any hurry.

In the past I would be in a hurry to finish a room and I would buy stuff that I didn't love and in a month I would be tired of it. Several of the rooms in the house are coming right along and I am almost satisfied with them.

Except the dining room, I love my dining room table and china cabinet, (black with dark wood top) but it is seldom used (Noah actually calls it the thanksgiving room...because that's the only time we use it). Don't get me wrong, we eat meals every day together as a family but we always sit at the kitchen table. However, I decided recently it was time to hang some wall decor in the dining room. And what better thing to decorate my walls than portraits of my beautiful babies??? So the above photo is what will soon be hanging on my wall in a 24x36 gold frame. What do you think? I will post photos of the room when it is all done, but I wanted you to see my sweet babies first!!!

All in a Day's Work...

This post is mainly for my benefit dear friends....I want to know your routine...that's right I'm being nosy and I want to know how you swing it all in a day's time!

As Mama's, I know that everyone has more on their plate than they can handle, so over the years (meaning over 5 years since N was born) I have experimented with different ways to get my routine all done in the 24 hours allotted in a day. When I worked a full schedule in the salon (when N was a baby) I hired somebody to come every other week and clean my house. I also had a job then that didn't require after hours computer work so the whole routine was pretty simple. I did a few loads of laundry a week, cooked supper when I got home and picked up toys, etc. and left the cleaning to be done by my hired person. Also, in that house we had 6 rooms (2 bed 2 bath kitchen, living room, playroom, plus a basement garage. So worse case scenario I could take a few hours and have the whole thing done! Fast forward one more baby, a job at home, and a house with 15 rooms and 2 kids home all day and it's been a challenge getting it all done.

When we made the decision for me to stop working during the day to stay home with the kids, we decided that part of that job would be also not hiring someone to keep house, because I "would" have time to do it during the day. So I started out trying to choose one day a week to get the cleaning done...never happened. I ran out of hours before the house was as clean as I wanted it. So then I revised my plan...clean a certain area each day and do basic kitchen, bathroom, bedroom every day. I try my best to get it done before the kids wake up but that doesn't always happen.

So my daily routine is this

Every day, make beds, unload dishwasher, swipe bathrooms, pick up stuff, one or two loads of laundry, washed folded and put away. (3 meals, and then clean up as you go)

Then I clean 2 additional rooms each day of the week (I combine the laundry room with a smaller bathroom) and then if all goes as planned by the weekend, the whole house is done. (When I say clean I mean, dust, take out trash, mop, and clean glass/mirrors, tubs, sinks, etc on bathroom day)

It all works beautifully until I get behind a day and then somehow I never get caught up. (Somehow I procrastinate mopping the wood floor cause I don't exactly know the best way to do it?)

Also I am addicted to products to make the whole process faster/easier!!! I use microfiber cloths and mops, method cleaning stuff (from TARGET and it's MY FAVORITE) and swiffer dry cloths sometimes. I have the vacuum for hard floors (cause we don't have any carpet anywhere.)

Mentioning METHOD, have you heard of it? It's chemical free and nontoxic. As you've read before I have asthma as well as both the kids, and I cannot clean with regular chemical cleaners. I have tried regular (clorox, etc) bathroom cleaners and wound up in urgentcare with lung problems, they are just too hard on our respiratory tracks. So I discovered method, they are all natural (they use plant derivitive cleansers and natural sanitizing agents) and that's all well and good, but I'm addicted to the scents (like grapefruit, cucumber, mint, lemon ginger, just to name a few) I would love to try the floor cleaners for wood as well but they contain almond oil, which is an allergen in our house. They are more expensive that regular cleaners but it's what we have to use and I love them!!!!!

Anyway, even with a "schedule" there are tons of weeks where I just can't seem to fit it all in a day. I do computer work at night and then somehow I never find time to get the vehicle cleaned out or the laundry put away....hmmm...I still think there's an easier method to all this, so give me some tips guys!!! Do you do house stuff in one day or do you spread it out over the week?

The Backpack Saga...the conclusion

I know your life has been on hold while you waited to see what kind of backpack we're getting for kindgergarten (ha!) We resolved it and ordered a super cute one from pottery barn. I voted for the orange and brown but Noah picked the blue one (a certain iCarly character also carries a blue backpack!) We also ordered the matching lunchbox. I can't wait for it to come in...however I am not quite so anxious to pack up my baby and send him to school! It helps though when his teacher is one of my best friends in the world and his teachers aide is my Mom. Do you think he'll be well taken care of???

No Need for Words...

Busy Day...

WHewww...the last days of summer are wearing me out....we have run like crazy today. I spent part of the morning at Mom's where I dropped off the kids to make a run to Walmart...we were out of diapers and toilet paper and laundry detergant...so it was necesary! Me and my dear hubby have a little project going as well...I'm not telling you what it is just yet...but it involves fabric and 7 cans of black spray paint and some nifty little safety pins...if it works out I will post pics, if it doesn't I won't mention it again!

On to the important stuff, Dr. C called today with the results from Noah's blood work last week. The peanut levels haven't changed, which we expected, and Noah has a very very mild positive to cashews, almond, and hazelnut. No big thing here, they have probably been positive all along, and we don't feed him any kind of nuts at all so that doesn't change anything for us. The good news is that his egg allergy has dropped down from a level 4 to a level 3(there are six levels one being the mildest, six being the highest) This drop has occured in a little over a year so we are very very hopeful that if this continues to drop he will eventually OUTGROW HIS EGG ALLERGY!!! Which would make some things so much easier for him!!!! Please continue to pray with us, I am very hopeful that he will leave this egg allergy behind in a year or so! His allergy specialist is very encouraged by this development and she was suprised as well, so we're hoping that since he has already outgrown a major milk allergy that the egg is next to come!

We also had a FEAST meeting tonight about preparing for a successful school year with food allergies and my sweet friend Meredith came along with me, so we treated ourselves to a little dinner out and followed it up with Baskin Robbins...yum!!! It was a fun but a busy day!

The Devil is in the Details...

Have I mentioned on this blog that I am a licensed cosmetologist? Not a beautician, mind you...that title went out with blue rinses and roller sets...but a cosmetologist. I do not currently work as a cosmetologist...I still own a salon and I still maintain an active license but I do not work in the cosmetic industry anymore. I am way to busy running my photo studio and tending to my children!

With that said, when July rolls around every year it is time to renew my license. I keep my license current because if I should ever want to work again as a cosmetologist I don't want to have to pay more to become active and I definitely do not ever want to take my licensing exam again.

However, I have been so busy lately that I hadn't gotten around to taking my required 6 continuing education hours. Or should I say I have procrastinated like the devil to keep from having to sit through a 6 hour course or to read pages and pages of boring written material to take a test. So just for kicks today I decided to try to take the exam without reading the study material. Lo and behold the test was true or false. I shimmied through the questions by skimming and guessing really fast whether it sounded true or false. Voila' I recieved a passing 87 percent...not too shabby for not reading the study material and having been out of cosemtology school for 8 years and not having worked in the field for 2 years. I'm quite proud of myself...not so much for passing the test...but for saving myself 6 wasted hours and for not having procrastinated until July the 31st...like I did last year...

Jon Minus Kate Plus 8

I wlll probably bore some of you to death with this post...but it's my blog so I'm venting! I have been watching Jon and Kate Plus 8 since the very first season and I have never missed an episode. I DVR the things, I watch the marathons when they come on and I will even watch reruns if I'm not watching something else. It honestly is the only show that I watch every week. I never got into American Idol, The Bachelor, the dancing stuff, nope I was addicted to Jon and Kate.

It began out of just cruising the TLC channel. I found out that once you had a child who was old enough to repeat everything they heard on TV there really was almost nothing on TV past 7 pm that was fit for little ears to hear or little eyes to see. (I did watch Grey's Anatomy after they went to bed but some of the content of the last season left me a little disenchanted with it.) So one day I happened upon the lovely Gosselin family with their massive amounts of small kids and a mom and dad who were somehow making it work despite the stress.

Then I continued to watch and as has been on all of the tabloids it has all apparently fallen apart. It makes me very sad for them and for their kids most of all.

Travis couldn't stand the show because he hated how Kate talked down to Jon all the time, and honestly the last couple of shows she was a little diva-ish. Then I saw the final show that aired with Jon and his newly peirced ears and his apartment and now he was on Good Morning America with his 22 year old girlfriend and he filed for divorce 3 weeks ago. Sad.

Anyway, probalby of no interest to anyoone else but it gives me a break from blogging about breathing treatments and blood tests!!!

Lil update

Today was Lilly's hospital follow-up. The doctor said they can still hear a whistling in her upper lung (where the pneumonia was near her heart) and that they want her to stay on breathing treatments. I was hoping today we would get to cut them down to just bedtime but we'll still be doing 4 different meds in a nebulizer a day along with a daily antihistamine to try to ease down some inflammation.

She actually is getting better at her nebulizer treatments, she has a mask that looks like a fish and we turn on a baby Einstein video and she tolerates it pretty well.

She is taking it all pretty well, but since coming home from the hospital she is not fond of sleeping in her crib. In the hospital, Travis or I would hold her all night so she didn't pull out her IV's and I think she got used to having us to cuddle all night, so we're trying to get her back to sleeping on her own. However, I am a little ashamed to admit that she is nearly 2 and we are still letting her drink out of a baby bottle occasionally. Around the time she stopped breastfeeding at 17 months was when she had the flu and since then it's been one sickness after another and honestly when the bottle soothes her when she's upset I don't have the heart to take it away. And when she was too sick to eat in the hospital I was grateful she'd drink that bottle!!!

We go for more chest x-rays and her allergy testing in two weeks so I'm hoping to get her on the road to feeling much better!!!

Labs, Lollipops, and Little Lilly along for the Ride

Today was the much dreaded yearly allergy lab workup. (Noah's, Lilly's is in two weeks) We started dreading this day when we scheduled it. His last lab work up was when he was 3 and it took two nurses and two teary eyed parents to hold him. He was supposed to have another one at 4 but he had 2 scary ER visits and we decided to not put him through any more trauma at that point.

We spent some time in the office with our allergy specialist who is WONDERFUL. Seriously, she is one of the kindest and best doctors I have ever had any dealings with and I trust my children to her completely. Then it was off to the lab. To get us through the waiting time, I pulled out the stash of suckers in the diaper bag. One red lollipop and one blue lollipop and one almost-two year old wearing white pants...um note to self, Lilly should not own white pants...

Then they finally called N's name and the nervousness really set it.

I'm sure you are thinking, what's the big deal? It's a finger stick? Oh no, it's a tube in his vein (similar to an IV) where they draw out no less that 5 very very large vials of blood. Necessary? Yes...fun...no

With that said, I could not be prouder of my little man. He did shed a few tears and got a little panicky when they tied the rubber band around his arm to find a good vein, but he leaned on my shoulder and was so so very brave. After the initial stick he was able to calm himself down and even talked to the nurses while they were coaxing all of the samples out of his veins. Now we wait 7 to 10 days to see if any of his allergy levels have changed. I have prayed and prayed that this would improve for him, but if it doesn't I am accepting that it is for a reason and we will continue to do the very best we can to make things safe and normal for him! If it does cross your mind, say a little prayer that we could get some promising results. All of the statistics say that 90% of kids will never out grow this type of allergy, but I know that God isn't concerned with statistics.

After the medical business was done for the day we did let Noah take a little run to Toys R Us to get a treat for his bravery. He picked out a remote control snake...let's see if I can be brave with that realistic looking thing running loose through the house, and Lilly finagled a new baby stroller out of the trip because...well because she's two and she's so stinkin' cute and she's so stinkin' loud when you try to wrestle the stroller out of her chubby little sticky death grip...and it was 12 bucks...a small price to pay to avoid a meltdown... (Please refrain from commenting about the backlash of spoiling your children!)

Then we fed the masses (or at least the two overly hungry children!) and packed them back into the car, made a trip to the pharmacy and it was back to Brownsville!

Also as an add on...I must brag just a smidge about my hubby...yes I know I give him a hard way to go on this blog most of the time...especially when he steals my password and hijacks my blog...but he really is the very best Dad. He went to every dr appointment with me before I had either baby and he never ever misses their appointments if he can help it. He has been our rock through all of the hard tests, the even harder diagnosis, the very very long ambulance rides and he has wiped more tears and comforted more fears than I could list in a book. When I've gone as far as I could go, he has stayed up all night with both of our kids after ER visits and when they were very sick. He then would get up at 5 am and be off to work with never a complaint. I've watched him let our kids sleep on his chest while he held them sitting up in a chair so that he could make sure that they were breathing easier. And today, as always, he was right on time to make sure Noah had Mommy and Daddy to tell him everything would be OK and that it would be over soon

And it was...and I'm thankful for that!

Miss American Pie

When You're Tired of Chicken...

I really love Paula Deen, I like to watch her cook, I like her magazines, I entertain the idea of visiting her restaurant, I love her house, etc. I read her magazines alot and occasionally venture after a recipe or two.

Anyhow the point of this post is a recipe I suppose. My kids love chicken strips and I get tired of making them so I tried a Paula recipe.

Steak Fingers!!! Basically you take two cubed minute steaks and cut into two inch strips. Mix flour, cracker crumbs, salt, pepper, and paprika together in a bowl. Fill a large skillet with about 1/2 inch of canola oil (or other oil) and heat on medium heat. Dip the steak strips into the flour/cracker crumbs then into buttermilk (the recipe called for egg and milk but I substitute buttermilk for everything and it works great!) then dip back into the crumbs and place in hot oil. Cook for about 3 or 4 minutes per side until really brown and crispy.

The best part? After you cook and drain the steak strips onto paper towels you reserve about 2 Tbs of the hot oil and the crunchy stuff in the pan and cook with 4 T of flour and some milk and salt and pepper and it makes GREAT gravy to dip it in! We had the steak fingers and gravy with Texas toast and corn on the cob fresh from the garden and it was too yummy!!! Oh and the 2nd best part? The entire meal took be about 20 minutes to make and there are plenty of left overs for Travis to take to work tomorrow! Go Paula!!!! The third best part? The recipe wasn't originally "Allergen friendly" but it was very very easy to substitute a couple of items to make it safe for the munchkins who can't eat eggs.

Backpack Saga Part 2

Because I am evil and devious I have told a tiny white lie to win N over to my way of thinking...I call Noah over to my dog-earred Pottery Barn Kids catalog and say, "Look Noah, there is a backpack in here alot like the one Freddy has..." (Freddy is Noah's hero on iCarly)

Is there actually a backpack in there like the one that Freddy carries...of course not...unless you count that it has straps and holds books on your back which I think counts...

The rest is history...

The burning backpack question...

As the beginning of Kindergarten is swiftly approaching we are starting to formulate a list of things we need to buy for Noah to start school. Obviously at the top of the list is a new backpack, which raises quite a conundrum around the Parsley household.

Mainly the question is this...do we give in to the 5 year old and let him pick out the hideous cartoon characterized backpack that will have holes worn into it by Christmas break (as did the one he used in preschool) or do we go ahead and order the better one from Pottery Barn or LL Bean which is much more durable (and more expensive) and much better suited to Mommy's taste (did I mention they are monogrammed...I'm a sucker for something you can put a name on...)? Actually, I"m not even sure it will be that more expensive in the long run because we would have to buy another cartoon characterized one before the year is out and he can carry the other type through first grade....Hmmm....

I suppose the real question is do I want to endure the wailing and gnashing of teeth that will surely begin the second we gets the "plain" backpack...I will let you know as the saga unfolds...

There's No Place Like Home

The Parsley family are all happily back under our own roof and in our own beds!!!! HOORAY!!! Lilly was released from the hospital on Wednesday around lunchtime so we are trying to get back in the swing of things while fitting in breathing treatments, steroids, and antibiotics, all while trying to keep her from getting too hot or too wound up (both things which trigger horrible coughing fits!!!)

This has taken some thought since most of our summer days consists of playing outside and the kids running around and swinging. So today I've had to get creative. For Lilly it wasn't too hard, she slept until 10 and after her pancakes and morning breathing treatments she was content to play baby dolls and to watch Little Bear.

Noah however, was a little harder to entertain inside. He played jungle animals, sword fighter, watched cartoons, and helped me clean out the coat closet.

They finally were so bored that I filled up my big bathtub with bubbles, plastic cups and spoons, stripped them down and let them "swim" indoors! That lasted for over an hour and after that they finally took some naps...I'm not sure how we'll entertain tomorrow...or the rest of the weekend, because Lilly still won't be getting out until next week at the earliest!!! Email me some ideas...

Lilly Update

Hello all...just going to update on Lil's condition this morning. She is feeling some better today. Her oxygen levels were higher this morning and she rested last night as well. We rested fairly well between breating treatments. We saw Dr. Simmons this morning and she is hoping to be able to release her tomorrow at some point.

Right now she is getting restless so I"m going to cut this short

Thank you all for your calls and kind comments and especially to Staffanne for the yummy lunch and visit

Love you guys

Poor Baby Lilly

In case you guys had not heard, we are back in the hospital with Lilly Grace. I am posting this from a borrowed laptop at the Medical Center. Lilly started wheezing, coughing, struggling to breathe again on Sunday and we were up with her most of the night Sunday and brought her into the ER early Monday morning where she was admitted.

Her chest X-Rays show walking pneumonia (microplasm) and bronchitis which is worsened by asthma as well. This is the first time any physician has actually used the diagnosis of asthma to describe her, so I guess she's joining Mommy and Big Brother in having asthma.

Throughout the day today, her oxygen saturation levels have been up and down, but they have been giving her breathing treatments round the clock, as well as hooking her up to oxygen, and giving her steroids, antibiotics and fluids in her IV. She's being good natured about most of it, but she had a really hard time having the IV put in.

Anyway she is a pretty sick little lady but she is also very tired of having to be confined to a bed and an IV cart. It's getting very challenging trying to keep her still especially when she's pumped up with so many steroids.

Anyway, say a little prayer for Lilly tonight, we are hoping she starts turning around soon. Dr. Simmons is not really hopeful that she will get to come home tomorrow but she is thinking maybe the day after that.

Until then we are missing our own beds and showers and most of all missing Noah! But he sent his sis a new blanket and baby doll, and he and Nana and Papa are holding down the fort at home!

PS Thank you guys for everyone who has called or visited, we truly appreciate it!

My Little Blessings!!!

We just got out of revival at Travis' church and thanks to my wonderful Mom, the kids stayed with her most of the services. Now, don't get me wrong, I think church is the most important place to take my children and I want them to grow up knowing that as a family, it is our main focus for our lives. However, day and night service with two very active kids is challenging to say the least.

Noah is fine at church, other than being a little too talkative with his buddies (he so can't remember what whispering is...) we pack up a drawing pad, a couple of crayons, some gummies, and his beloved rubber critters (frogs, turtles, etc) and we are good to go.

Ah but you're forgetting about princess...she is officially 21 months old. Translation...she is old enough to talk (and sing) LOUDLY, and squirm her heart out to get down and run the aisles and not old enough to understand why it is not appropriate to hold your dress up over your head and spin down the church pews while singing a rousing rendition of "Five Green and Speckled Frogs.."

The high point of the week was the night that Lilly Grace discovered that spitting large mouthfuls of milk down the front of her otherwise previously clean church dress was too much fun, especially because it got such disapproval from mom and dad. Oh did I mention, this one earned her a tiny smack on the leg which she rewarded us with by going into hysterics and wailing intermittently the rest of the service. Or perhaps, maybe it was when we were standing in the aisle waiting to go up and shake hands with the boys who had gotten saved and joined the church and Lil refused to stop pushing on the shoulder of the gentleman in front of us and saying, (in Lil talk which no one else understands) "Doh boy, doh," (Translations...go boy go)

But all joking aside, the services were wonderful and made me even more thankful for my friends and family.

BUT I did make the comment to one of my friends after a particularly challenging service with Lilly (think shrieking for Daddy up in the singing class only to refuse to go to him when he got back and then chewing up a rainbow assortment of Skittles to decorate your own dress with) that this revival gave me a new understanding for the song they sing, "It'll Be Worth it After All..."