ear infection

I picked up B at lunch today because I had the afternoon off, and Loree said he'd been poking his fingers in his ears all morning. So I called the clinic to get him checked out before the weekend came. They managed to squeeze him in this afternoon. Sure enough, B has an ear infection. He did NOT like Jake putting the light in his ears, especially his left one, which is the one with the infection. Jake said it was medium-bad but was going to get worse and not better so B is now on antibiotics for 10 days. After the appointment, Brecken got to pick out one of the Ty beanie bears that was in the lobby to take home with us, but B wanted nothing to do with them- he only wanted to play with the bead rollercoaster thing!! Oh, he threw a fit when I made him put his coat onto leave!! He cried and cried and I had to pick out his bear for him. While we were waiting to get in to be seen, B had loved those bears and picked them all up, but hugged one of them, so that's the one I picked for him. :)

We didn't take his clothes off to get weighed today, but he weighed 19 pounds, 7 ounces! He only weighed 18 pounds 3 ounces 2 weeks ago. I don't know how much a onesie, jeans, slippers and a diaper weigh (and I changed his diaper before we went to the doctor) but he seems to have gained some good weight for 2 weeks! WAY more than the 3 ounces in a month that he gained last!

this is why i love my commute!

Driving home, I saw TWO huge bald eagles right next to the road sitting on a fence. I was 5 miles out of Saratoga and didn't have my camera. So I drove home, got B so Josh could go to basketball, grabbed my camera and headed out to see if they were still there. They WERE! Only, I got out of my car and they flew away. I could only find one and he was a long way away, so I zoomed as close as I could and had to crop the pic when I got home.

Josh had to go get Brecken at lunch today, Loree called him at work and said B wasn't feeling good and needed to go home. He slept from 1:00-3:00, which is crazy long for B! He's been pretty normal since then though. I'm not seeing much sickness, other than a few coughs.

home sick.

Not me, but Brecken. He woke up crying hysterically last night and it took forever for him to calm down. Then this morning, his nose wouldn't quit running and he couldn't quit coughing. He also woudn't quit crying and wouldn't let me put him down. He can't go to daycare like that, so I stayed home with him today. Josh has already stayed home once AND brought him to school with him, so it was my turn. So, I changed back into my sweats (I was already dressed for work) and got comfy with Brecken. He's feeling a bit better after a nap and some juice, and we managed to get my Christmas Village put up. It was quite comical- at one point, Ditka had shoved himself into one of the styrofoam boxes and Brecken was wearing another one of them on his head like a hat. Silly boys.

too funny.

My dad apparently has a lot of time on his hands, because he made this really funny video starring Brecken, Ryan, himself, and my grandma. It's hilarious to watch, check it out: http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9559253829

Brecken is now walking. Saturday, he was only walking a few steps at a time and on Sunday he was walking a lot of steps at a time! He's getting really good at it!!!

I've been gone for a few days, I went to Wheatland with a couple of my students for an honor choir. We left Sunday and got home last night. This morning, B and I are finishing up packing and when Josh gets home from basketball practice we're headed up to Lingle. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

babysitting, sharing, and mountain lions

We have the babysitting thing all figured out. Whew! Josh talked to Jake at 5 am this morning (they go lift weights at the school together) and Jake said they could probably do Mondays and Tuesdays for us, even though Tuesdays are his days off. I felt really bad thinking he'd be babysitting on his day off!! He babysat for us today because Loree's husband had his surgery to repair his back, but Deb was home when I got there and she said she'd rather have Wednesdays and Thursdays so that Jake wouldn't have to use his day off. But then she said that if things get too crazy at Loree's, just bring Brecken to their house for the whole week. Hopefully it won't come to that, but it's nice to know we won't be scrambling if Loree changes her mind again!!!

Brecken has been very into sharing lately. He likes to force feed you. Yesterday he grabbed a handful of Cheerios and tried to shove them all in my mouth. He cried when I wouldn't eat them. Silly. He tried to force his sippy cup into Birdie's mouth the other day. Birdie was too startled to actually take it- otherwise she would've jumped at the chance to have B's milk!! :)

I guess our next door neighbor had a mountain lion on his front step theother morning. He went outside to leave for work and scared it and it went running. THAT'S a little scary! I worried about the dogs being outside while we're at work but Josh said the mountain lion wouldn't come
in the daytime- I don't know how he would know that... We now make sure both cats are in at night now though!!

fired

I was messing around at school the other day and created this photo. I thought it was kind of neat.

Well, we got "half-fired" from daycare today. Loree is pregnant, due in June, and is very afraid of having a miscarriage, since she had one earlier this spring. She's cutting down her daycare kids. She's keeping the 3-year old full time, but we only get to go half time, and poor baby Sophie doesn't get to go at all. What a frustrating feeling. Brecken is already going to Deb's house tomorrow, so we're going to ask her if she'd be a regular babyistter again and do two days a week, plus Fridays when Josh has away games. If she doesn't want to be that permanent, I don't know WHAT we'll do. And poor Sophie's mom- she doesn't know anybody to ask! I feel bad for Loree, I really do- I wouldn't wish a miscarriage on ANYONE, especially with our troubles to get pregnant, so I know how precious a new life is. But at the same time, I wish, for once, we could have a "normal" daycare situation!!! :) Annie, wanna move here and open one? You'd be rich!!!

sick boy

We found out why Brecken wouldn't eat and was whiny yesterday.... Josh finally got home at 1:11 this morning and just as he got into bed Brecken started crying. Josh went in there, thinking his coming home woke Brecken up, but instead discovered that Brecken had thrown up. :( Brecken cried and cried and cried. We had to change his jammies and pull the blanket from his pack and play mattress. No fever according to our ear thermometer but I think he had a bit of the stomach bug. So Josh took him out to the couch and he watched the end of the movie he missed, and a while later Brecken came crawling into my bedroom so he laid with me and fell asleep again. He wasn't interested in breakfast this morning, or lunch today, but is finally now snacking on cheerios and some milk. No more puking, luckily!

teeth, whining, blood, and an accident

Brecken sure has been whiny today and won't eat anything. I think his 6th tooth is about to come through and it's bugging him. Hopefully he sleeps well tonight.

I let the dogs inside right before dinner, they had been out most of the afternoon. Then I noticed blood all over the floor. Hogan has several puncture wounds on his head and one ear- I wonder if the dogs were wrestling and Birdie got a bit rough. We had to wash the whole kitchen floor. I let them back outside so we could finish eating, and after Brecken went to bed I let them back in and he still had blood droplets. So I held gauze over all of them until they stopped and he's laying on a towel now so I can make sure if he does bleed a little again, it's not on the carpet. Poor dog- wonder what happened?!

Josh and I were watching a movie and his pager went off, for an accident on some road I haven't heard of before. There were 4 patients though, and Rawlins had been called first so I think it's out that direction. Rawlins needed help because they cannot transfer 4 patients. The dispatcher said after Saratoga got to this road, call somewhere (she said some initials that I don't know what they stand for) for more directions. Sounds bad!! He might be gone a long time.

first steps!

Brecken has on quite the outfit right now: A white onesie and his black tennis shoes. He got into his diaper bag and pulled out the shoes and tried to put them on himself, so Josh put them on. We had been working on walking this afternoon, but after he put his shoes on, Brecken walked his first steps! They must be magic shoes!! He walked four very slow and deliberate steps from Josh to me! Yay! He had no idea why we were so excited, but he got excited with us after I said that deserved some Smarties. :)

YAY, Brecken!!!

moving on

We'll be moving on to a new sport in this house. Basketball season starts next week for Josh and football practice ended last week, though none of us knew it at the time. Josh's team had the semi-final game in Big Horn yesterday and it didn't end in our favor. :( It was a heartbreaking loss. The final score was 13-8, and if we had been able to do anything with our last position it might have ended with us on top, but it didn't work out that way. LOTS of tears after the game, I'm not sure I saw a dry eye anywhere on our side! Or on our side of the field- the boys were pretty teary, too. But WOW, the crowd we had! We had just as many on our side cheering for our boys as Big Horn did, I bet! And the field was really neat- you could pull your car up and around the field and that was so handy because my van was right next to the bleachers we were sitting in, so B could take a nap inside the car and out of the wind! It was a really cool field.

So, Josh now gets a week "off" after school before basketball starts. I bet he won't come home too early though- he won't know what to do with all that time, so I bet he stays at school and finds something football-related to do for a while each day. :)

We had a fun weekend though. I went up with Peggy Hayes and their two girls, and stopped in Casper for a couple hours at the mall, then we stayed in Buffalo at the same hotel as the team. Tons of our fans did too- it was neat to see the breakfast room full of purple clothes yesterday morning!!

"first" halloween

I say "first" because Brecken slept through the whole thing last year!

Brecken had a really fun Halloween yesterday. I picked him up from daycare (where he had a great day- he even ate all his lunch for the first time ever! Pizza and peas.) and took him home to get his costume on. Then I took him downtown to the Trick-or-Treat down there. He wouldn't say anything to anyone but gave good smiles and waves. And he loved it when they let him pick out his own candy!! He got REALLY excited at the art gallery because they were giving out helium balloons! He chattered and chattered about that with the biggest grin. He loves balloons. He got his picture taken at the newspaper office, so we'll see if it makes it in to the paper next week. When we got home he got into his candy bucket and held up a package of m&ms, way up high so I could see them and said, "Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom?" He's never had candy before. He LOVED the m&ms! He had a blue nose to prove it.

Then we went to Encampment's Halloween carnival that happens every year. I bought him some tickets so he could play some games. We did the fishing pond a couple times and the first time got a treat bag with a small notepad in it, a bat tattoo, a little monster that when you squeeze it his eyes bulge (B thinks its funny!) and a couple other silly things. Then the next time he fished, he got a blow up black kitty! His eyes got real big and he grabbed that kitty and KISSED it! It was so funny. He also threw the football and did the beanbag toss too. :) He got to pick out his own candy for playing the games, and he would pick through the selection until he found something he thought he liked and then would put it in his bucket. Smart boy. :)Josh met us at the carnival after football practice was over, and took B home early so I could stay and make sure everything was cleaned up. The Senior class that I sponsor did easy booths this year because they didn't want to stay and clean. :) They did a basketball throw, a football throw, a booth where the kids guessed how many Tootsie Rolls were in the jar (397) and the closest one won the candy, and a bowling lane. Each booth took one or two tickets and tickets were 25 cents each. I have to count my class' tickets today and see how much money we made.

Brecken sure likes candy, for never having it before! Josh said he knew Brecken would, because that's what Brecken inherited from his mother. :) B was WIRED last night, and he didn't even have that much candy! He wouldn't go to bed. After Josh brought him home he gave B some dinner and gave him a bath and he said he was all over the bathtub being crazy. Crazy after I got home, too! We had one trick-or-treater all night while we were home (one of Josh's students) and a high school kid selling Christmas wreaths. On my way into our neighborhood, there is a house with lots of Halloween lights and decorations, and the main door was open so you could see into the house, and there was a HUGE buck deer standing right at the steps, staring into the house like he was asking for candy too. It was funny.

I'll post pictures when I get around to loading them on the computer.

lil' pumpkin

We had to take a roadtrip to Laramie today; Brecken outgrew his shoes and it's way too cold to be just hanging out in socks when he goes outside. We couldn't even shove his shoes on. So we needed to go to Laramie to buy some more for him today. While there, we stopped to see my sister and Ryan and take a few pictures of him in his halloween costume.

I of course had to take a few of Brecken, too!

semi-finals, baby!

Oh my gosh, what an exciting game we just witnessed! Saratoga WON, 26-20, against Tongue River! Tongue River was "picked" to win by the Casper Star-Tribune. Josh loves when they pick against Saratoga because Saratoga usually wins that week. It was a heart stopper, that's for sure- the last 2 minutes were especially intense. And the last 8 seconds- oh my gosh! Tongue River had the ball and threw a long pass and ALMOST got a touchdown to tie it up, then who knows what would've happened with the point after. What a heartbreaker it would've been to lose 27-26. LUCKILY, that didn't happen and we won!!! WAHOO!

The next game is in Big Horn. It will be Saturday, Nov. 3, at 1:00 p.m.

a world away from the world series

Josh and I, along with a gazillion other people, tried really hard to get World Series tickets. We were both online yesterday morning trying our darndest before we found out the whole server crashed! We tried again today with no avail. My dad was also trying- we figured if we all ended up getting lucky somehow, it would be OK to have 12 tickets because we surely would know people that would want to buy our extras! However, we don't have to worry about it, because like the other gazillion people, we couldn't get through the countdown page.

So sorry, we won't be asking any of you to join us at a World Series game. :) But how cool that our team made it- who knows how many more times in our lifetime the World Series will be just hours from us! GO ROCKIES!

home field advantage

Well the past 24 hours have been full of anticipation. We've been awaiting scores from around the state from football games last night and then the brackets to come out this morning. Saratoga tied for the conference championship, but it was a 3-way tie. We won against Pine Bluffs on Thursday so we were hoping for a Sundance loss to guarantee a home game in the first round of playoffs next week. Didn't happen that way- despite the 50 mph winds in Burns Friday afternoon, Sundance won. Hence the 3-way tie. We were all thinking we'd have to go to Riverside (Basin) next week, but then this morning we learned that we might be wrong about how the tie-breaker works. We thought the criteria might apply to all three teams, but then heard that they might just use the tie-breaker to figure out who would be seeded #1 in the conference, and then the tie-breaker would start over for the other two teams: Sundance and Saratoga. That would give us a home game. This is what we read on Sports Goulash:

Lusk, Sundance and Saratoga are all tied for first, and we know that Lusk wins that tiebreaker on the third criteria — strength of schedule. From there, we’re not exactly sure if the criteria starts over between Sundance and Saratoga or not. If so, Saratoga wins the tie with Sundance because of the head-to-head win. If not, Sundance wins the tie by having a higher strength of schedule than Saratoga.Our first projection had Sundance as the (3) and Saratoga as the (5). We’ve since changed that to reflect Saratoga as (3) and Sundance as (5). Sorry about the confusion.

So we waited all day for the news, and finally the brackets were posted. We get a home game! WHOO-HOO!!!!!!!! Josh spent the next hour on the phone. :) We are hosting Tongue River Friday afternoon. Wear your purple that day!!

Here are the 2A brackets for anyone interested... http://www.whsaa.org/stateevents/football/2a/bracket.asp

tired

Man, am I tired this morning. I drove to Pine Bluffs last night to watch Josh's football game with Peggy, the head coach's wife, and her 8 year old daughter and the 8 year old son of another coach. Brecken got pretty bored on the way over but slept the whole way home. I sure am glad Peggy was with me- she kept me awake on the way home! We didn't get back until 1:15 this morning. Yuck! 4 1/2 hours of sleep before coming to work isn't doing much for me today. Lucky Josh, with his 4-day schedule, got to sleep in with Brecken this morning. I had to wake them up to say goodbye when I left for work- I sure was jealous!

Josh's team won, 21-8! It was FREEZING cold though. The wind was howling hard. Luckily, there is a street that passed the football field that people can park on and watch from their cars. So that's what we did!

Now we need Sundance to lose to Burns this afternoon and we'll have a home play-off game next week.

adventures in babysitting

Brecken got to spend the day with his Aunt Annie and cousins Trevor and Karlee today. Loree's son was still sick so she wasn't taking kids today. Luckily Annie was here and she wanted to have Brecken over to her cousin Maria's house, where they are staying, for a play date. So today was the day. He had a great day playing with Karlee and Trevor and Maria's daughter Madison who is 2 months older than Brecken, and also Maria's preschool aged son, Geoffrey. Annie said he only cried when she turned on the vacuum cleaner. :)

Brecken gets to hang out with Aunt Annie tomorrow, too. Loree called Josh this evening and said Carter is still sick. I'm not excited about that- it's looking like we paid Loree $100 to watch Brecken for one whole day this week. A lady Josh works with sends her son to Loree also, and she told Josh today that she had a chat with Loree and said she's not paying her for any more days off. Loree's contract says she gets 4 paid days off, and she used her 4th one today, just since we've started there! So next week I think our check will be lower- docking tomorrow's pay and Friday's pay if she can't babysit on Friday too. Thank the Lord that Annie is here and is saving us!! The poor other teachers- they are paying double this week because they have to pay someone else to watch their kids! The science teacher Josh works with is new to town and today she didn't even know the lady that watched her baby- it's one of Loree's friends. How nerve wracking to have someone you don't even know, watch your baby!!

Anyway, when you read this, Annie, we REALLY appreciate you keeping Brecken for us!! How lucky we are that you are here in our week of need!

Brecken got his first haircut last night. Josh made me do it. Annie trimmed the back of his hair so he looks like a little boy now! I scooped up all that pretty curls and put it in a baggie so I can save it in his baby book. I was putting off getting it cut because once I did, he wouldn't be my baby anymore! He sure hated the clippers. Cried like they were slicing his head open the whole time. I think the vibrations on his head freaked him out. Poor kid. Afterwards, I was holding him and Annie picked up the clippers to put them away and he started crying again at the sight of them!

yay!

I took B to get weighed today after I got him this afternoon. I was hoping really hard that he gained more than 2 oz... and he did! He kept trying to wiggle off the scale and laughing really hard about it, but it finally centered on 18 pounds. Yay! A 14 ounce increase in a month. I was really happy. So was the nurse.

Josh got to stay home with Brecken today. Our babysitter called late last night and said that her son had a fever, but she'd call us in the morning. We didn't have a backup babysitter today- Deb works in Rawlins on Tuesdays and Jake had to go in to the Clinic today too. Loree never called, so I finally called her at 6:50 this morning. She said she was OK to take kids. Then she called 5 minutes later and said that Carter still felt warm so she was going to see what he felt like when he woke up. We didn't have that long to wait- Josh needed to get a sub ASAP. So he told Loree to forget about us today and he called in to work. I'll have to ask him when he gets home from football what the other two teachers that take their kids to Loree did today.

walk to d'feet

We participated in the Walk to D'Feet ALS walk in Fort Collins yesterday. My great-aunt Dorothy has ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and her granddaughter puts together a team last year and this year to raise money and walk for this great cause. It was POURING rain yesterday, so it wasn't as much fun as it could've been. My sister went last year and it was perfect weather. Brecken didn't seem to mind the weather yesterday, he had on his winter coat and hat and mittens and was nice and cozy.

This picture is my uncle Earl, my aunt Dorothy in the middle, and her daughter Becky. It was on the CSU campus. I don't normally like CSU, but it was really pretty yesterday. Their leaves are just beginning to change colors. The loop we were walking in had green leaves, red leaves, yellow leaves, and peachy-pink leaves. How pretty!

another win!

Saratoga knocked off Burns this afternoon! Hip, hip, hooray!! We were the underdogs but we didn't even struggle, led the whole game. The score was 27-6. What a great homecoming for the kids, and an even better for those Seniors since it was their last regular-season home game. I think the win today made it official that we'll go to the play-offs. If it will be at home or away will depend on next week's score against Pine Bluffs.