Bad news/good news

So off we went to the Special Talk yesterday. Pull up at the Kingdom Hall, go to the ladies room to put on the lipstick I didn't have time to put on before we left and whoosh! Lily throws up allover my skirt and shoes. Lovely. Fortunately Tim and I had taken seperate cars and I was able to listen in on the phone. (Great job Bob btw!) But ewww. Not pleasant at all. Poor baby was pretty pitiful all day but today the bug seems to have disappeared! Hooray!


This morning I didn't know how well she'd be so we popped home and picked up the stroller and headed down to the River Walk for a nice, brisk 3.5 mile walk. The weather is so beautiful in the mornings. When it's hot during the day it seems a shame to waste the lovely cool mornings, so we took full advantage of it. Apart from not being able to play at the playground due to a creepy homeless man making it his bed for the morning.... we had a great time.

Lily is the perfect walking partner, as soon as I slowed even a little, she started cheering "go mummy go!" bringing a smile to lots of faces that we passed on the way.

Doesn't she look much healthier today? Hopefully this is the end of sickness in our house for a good long while.

Urgh, what a week.

I am on anti-biotics for a stubborn chest infection. Last night Max was up in the middle of the night vomiting. So today we are all home feeling very sorry for ourselves and more than a little sleep deprived.

On a happier note we had a lovely weekend. We went to a surprise party for our friends Heath and Kelly's 10th wedding anniversary. The surprise went off without a hitch and they genuinely didn't suspect anything. Heath's sister had made a fantastic picture/video show about their lives together. His mother had also saved the bubbles from their wedding 10 years ago. Kelly was very touched. And the kids had a blast blowing bubbles.

This weekend is the annual IDMI company picnic. We're going to one of the VPs horse farm. There will be bouncy castles, pony rides and (whoop whoop) onsite babysitters!! It's amazing to see how the company has grown and there will be a LOT of little kids there. Should be very fun. Let's hope this gorgeous weather holds up for us.

Breaking the silence!

Sorry about not updating for a while. To be honest, the Disney trip really left me exhausted and I've been trying to catch up on sleep ever since.

It was a fabulous trip, however and we had more fun than any of us expected. Max was thrilled to be just the right height to be able to go on all but the very scariest of rides. He really surprised us with how brave he is - he had no fear of the rollercoasters and somehow managed to score the front seat on every ride he went on! And he lost his second tooth while we were there. How cool is that?

The first day we went to Sea World and the kids got to feed and touch the dolphins. The dolphin show was spectacular and they've really made it into a show rather than just a dolphin exhibition. It was very cirque du soleil with high wire acts, music, flying parrots and it was a real highlight for us. The Shamu show was great too of course.

The second day we visited the Magic Kingdom. It was so much fun! Lily got to meet Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Belle. She was so star struck at the first two that she barely said a word, just stared in awe at them. She hasn't seen Beauty and the Beast so she chatted away to Belle without any shyness. She wouldn't let us wipe of Aurora's lipstick and walked around with it on her cheek for the rest of the day.

We went back to Sea World the next day to catch the parts we'd missed on the first time round, like the manatees (wow those things are enormous!) and pet the dolphins one more time. Tim and I also got to ride the amazing Kraaken roller coaster while the children were with Grandma and Pappa at the Shamu show. There were no lines to wait in because everyone was at the show and we rode it until I got so dizzy we couldn't ride any more! Good times.

On Saturday Denell and Devin had to go home so we saw them off and went to Epcot - the one place Tim wanted to see before we left. We had fish and chips in England, eclairs in Paris, beer in the beer garden in Germany and falafel in Morocco. In Paris Lily got to meet Sleeping Beauty again. She took quite a shine to our little princess and wouldn't let her go! She spent a long time with her and really made her day.

We stayed until closing so that we could see the breath taking fire works display, it was worth waiting around for!

We must have walked for miles and miles every day, no wonder we were so tired. But it really was a fantastic trip, we enjoyed it thoroughly -thank you Charles and Eunice - happy 40th wedding anniversary!

Testing out email blogging

Just testing out the wonderful blogger function where you can email your posts directly to your blog! Pretty nifty.

After starting our day with a hearty breakfast at Cracker Barrel we are now on the road. We can't wait!
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Rough day yesterday

I am such a clutz. I wasn't feeling very well on Thursday, got a bit dizzy and managed to put my hand down on a hot plate turned way up! Doh. Burned it pretty badly and then woke up the next morning (after 3 hours sleep) to find I've got a stomach bug and can't keep any food down. Fun fun fun. Seems like I can't take a vacation without some medical emergency beforehand.

Feeling much much better today, thankfully and it's been POURING outside. Heavy rain and thunderstorms and the dark gloomy weather on a Saturday = the kids sleep in and we all have a lazy morning! Hooray!

So on the agenda for today is catching up with the house cleaning - one handed - that was supposed to be done yesterday and packing our suitcases - just four more days to Disney World!

Max had his interview at the school yesterday - I couldn't go unfortunately but attended via speaker phone (thanks babe!). At first I thought he wasn't in the room since he sat perfectly quietly while the adults talked for a while. But when the teacher spoke to him, he was his lovely, charming, happy self. Tim and I both had a little sniffle to ourselves as he breezed through the tasks she asked him to do and chatted away to her. He is really excited now that he's seen the school in person. We can't wait for him to start.

Yay Max!

In other family news..... Max has been accepted to a very good magnet school! You are assigned a school according to which school district you live in but Macon has three magnet elementary schools that anyone can apply to go to, then they have a lottery to pick the lucky students. We put in an application to the Science and the Art magnet schools. We aren't in a very good district so you can imagine our relief that he got a reply from the Art school telling him he'd been accepted!!

Each subject at his new school is taught by a teacher with a degree in art integration - meaning that they encourage learning through visual and auditory means rather than sitting at a desk reading from a text book. They have one extra class a day - with art, singing, music lessons or dancing to choose from. The atmosphere is very fun and their test results seem to show that their methods work. Max seems quite excited about it too and he will get to see the school for himself when he goes for his interview next Friday.

His teacher wrote him a beautiful letter of recommendation. Well done buddy, we're proud of you!

A little allergy warning!

Just a little post to let you know we haven't all disappeared. We've just been very, very busy. The kids are extremely excited about going to Disney World in two weeks' time and I think this weekend we'll start crossing the days off the calendar.

Yesterday we had a little scare with Lily. Someone had baked her some brownies and she was very eager to eat them. We were way out in the country and had a few hours before we were due to pick Max up so I told her she had to wait until then to eat them so that he could have one too. Thank goodness I did!

I picked Max up from school and gave them a brownie each to keep them happy in the car while I drove to the mall to find Lily a princess costume for Disney. I saw her scratching her face and thought nothing of it - she's got such sensitive skin that something is always making her itch.

Half way round Target and she'd developed red blotches around her mouth. I grabbed a costume and marched her straight to the pharmacy and by the time we got there her lips had swollen up, they had blisters on and she was starting to sound wheezy. I grabbed some Benadryl off the shelf and opened it right there in the allergy isle and gave her a dose. We paid for our things and drove straight to her doctor's office. By now she was looking a LOT better and they checked her out and declared her perfectly fine. The Dr. prescribed her an epi-pen just in case - apparently the next time could well be worse. She is also booked in for some allergy testing on Monday.

The only other allergic reaction she's had is to cats - and once it was quite severe, so I am beating myself up over not having her tested then. But since she'd been eating peanuts for a long time I thought she didn't have an allergy to nuts. Turns out there were walnuts in the brownies and tree nuts are in another family - what a way to learn that botanical nugget!

The mind boggles when I think about what would have happened had she eaten the brownie twenty minutes away from the nearest town or pharmacy. So please, never let your child eat a new food or something cooked by someone else unless you are near a store or hospital! And if your child has an allergic reaction to one thing, get them checked out - they could have a sensitivity to other things too!

But as it is we are relieved that she is fine, have given her lots of extra hugs and kisses and will now carry a little pink bag (decorated with Hello Kitty stickers) where ever we go to make sure she stays that way. Just in case.