Happy Birthday Katy!

Today was spent celebrating Katy's birthday. More on that in a minute.

Thursday night was scary for us. Erin woke at 3am VERY sick. I ended up staying home with her - rare for me! Usually I'm fine leaving her with her daddy. This just felt different. It was! At a doctor's appointment on Friday morning we found out she does indeed have strep again - and also classic Croup! She has been on Zithromax and steroids all weekend and is MUCH better.

But now Katy seems to have strep. Poor girl! Her birthday is tomorrow but we celebrated today since Mondays are CRAZY around here (school, soccer, etc.) Pictures are in the sidebar of the cake. I was hoping to get pictures of the decorations and the day's festivities up - but no dice. We opened presents at 8am - followed by donuts and reading her gift books in bed. Her presents were:

• Giant 19" stuffed orangutan
• small orangutan
• huge orangutan poster
• Care Bears poster
• 2 books about orangutans
• a Care Bears book
• a WonderPets gift box - with Ming-Ming and a book

Katy was thrilled. She said so many "I love it!"s and "Thank you Mommy and Daddy!"s that I ALMOST got tired of hearing it! But not quite. It was so wonderful to see my little girl so happy.

Especially since she is now acting like she is on death's door. She seems to have the strep. She came to be this afternoon around 4:30 complaining that her throat hurt. Her little cheeks were flushed and - sure enough! She had a fever of 101.5! We dosed her up and she proceeded to cough and whimper and whine all evening - in the sweetest, most pitiful way! It has been a long time since she's been truly sick - and never with a sore throat.

Time to go to bed - only 4 more days of school until Spring Break!!!!! Yahoooooooo!

Who knew I was so well traveled?

I've visited all the red states. That's 33!! Can you top it?

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

First letter fun!

Found this over at Simply Sassy. She found it at Random Nicole. Great fun!

Here is what you do. Use the 1st letter of your middle name to
answer each of the following. They have to be real places, names,
things…nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person you
took this from had the same 1st initial.

You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

1. Middle name letter: K

2. Famous artist/band/musician: Keith Urban

3. 4-letter word: kick

4. U.S state: Kentucky

5. Boy name: Kane

6. Girl name: Kathy

7. Animal: kangaroo

8. Something in the kitchen: knife

9. Reason for being late? kicking butt

10. Body Part? knee

11. Drink? Kool-Aid

12. Something you shout: kewl!

13. Something you eat? kiwi
***************

A weekend at home!

We spent the weekend at home... a nice change! The last several weekends, we have been on the go.

Saturday was spent buying groceries and cleaning the house. Took 2 hours to get the place spiffed up! Gah! Today we went to Target, Keith washed clothes, and we will hang out this afternoon. I'm hoping to make some Dill Crackers. Here is the recipe.

Dill Crackers

1/4 cup oil
1 envelope ranch dressing
1 tsp dill
1/2 tsp. lemon pepper seasoning
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1 16oz. package of cheese crackers

Mix all but crackers in large zipper bag. Add crackers. Toss bag to completely cover crackers. Dump into large pan (or 2) and bake at 225 degrees for 15 to 30 minutes. (All the measurements are to taste - I rarely measure them. I also buy the cheap Wal-mart brand cheese crackers. Two 12oz boxes are only a little more money than the 16oz box of Cheez-its.)

Enjoy! Store in an air tight container (I like a glass or plastic jar).

Bad Bloger Beth!

So over a month has passed since I blogged. Shame on me. I vow here and now to do better. I'm currently running 3 blogs. I will post here on Sundays. I promise! I'll post on my Classroom Blog on Fridays. I'll post on my teacher blog on Wednesdays. I'll even put that into the Palm Pilot so it isn't forgotten!

Neat Quiz....

So apparently I should vote for....

67% John Edwards
65% Hillary Clinton
63% Barack Obama
62% Bill Richardson
61% Mike Gravel
61% Chris Dodd
61% Joe Biden
53% Dennis Kucinich
50% Tom Tancredo
49% Rudy Giuliani
46% Mitt Romney
45% John McCain
42% Fred Thompson
41% Mike Huckabee
41% Ron Paul

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

We'll see after the primaries!

A Shame

This afternoon we discovered that 2 of our daughters' bikes have been stolen. They were matching, pink 16 inch 2 wheelers. We are so angry! The girls are angry but sad too. Thank goodness they have other bikes to ride. I half expect to see other girls riding them in the neighborhood. I can't imagine how it happened. We keep the bikes in the garage - which is at the end of the driveway, behind the house! Visible from the street but quite a ways onto our property. Also it is very visible from the house. So angry about this - and beginning to be worried too! What if next time they try to get into the house? DH is talking about buying a shotgun - and now I can totally see why!

*sigh* So sad, angry, frustrating, scary, ______________ (fill in your word here.)