Riley's 1st soccer game!

I love that even though I am homeschooling the kids they are allowed to still paricipate in the local school sports. This is Riley's first year playing soccer and she seems to be enjoying it. We pulled into the field for her first game this past weekend and she was pretty thrilled. Even more excited that Papa and Nani were coming up, bright and early, to watch her play! At half time she ran over to us and said, "Mom, my team all thinks we're getting creamed :)". They were! BUT, that didn't stop them from having fun. She was THAT girl playing defense doing twrills in the back field and playing with her hair, taking it out of the ponytail, but she did well!

Lincoln loves sports and food!

Lincoln has been doing a sports sampler class the past couple of months. It "teaches" the kids to play a variety of different sports. I love that he got a chance to play and learn about a bunch of different activities. I look forward to see what he gets into when he's older! His favorite sport they played was the "running week" and he loved rock climbing. He missed playing soccer because he was sick, but I think he would have loved that too.

Basketball:

Floor hockey:

Rock climbing:

Disney On Ice!

We had a great opportunity to take the kids on a special date to see Disney on Ice! We had a blast and I highly reccommend it. The three older kids had a blast and absolutely loved the show. We look forward to going again!!

Fred Meijer Butterfly Garden

Every year the Fred Meijer Garden has a butterfly garden exhibit and we were excited to go see them this year. Our new friends, Jen and Scott, met us there with their kids and we had a great time. It was fun to see all the butterflies flying and watching them come out of their cocoons.

 

 

Easter 2013

Our Easter, this year, was very low key. We were looking forward to a day filled with church and family as we celebrated the death and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ. But instead Emmersyn and I both got sick the night before Easter. We were bummed our plans were cancelled, but we did manage to get in Easter egg coloring and a hunt before we got sick. Ty took the older kids to church in the morning while E and I stayed in bed. I was so bummed because I had matching outfits for all the kids, but there's always next year :)!

 

 

Emmersyn's hospital visit

As far as sickness in our family goes, to say this winter was bad, would be a HUGE understatement!! We have literally had someone (or more than one) sick every single week since just before Christmas. I think a lot of it has to do with just moving (again) to the area and dealing with new germs and I also think a big part is having 4 little ones who like to share their germs.

We moved into our new home on Saturday, Feb. 16th. My dad and Jamie offered to take the three older kids so could get more done and not have to worry about what they were doing. We were so thankful because it's not easy moving with 4 little kids. Anyways, they had a GREAT time and a full-filled weekend with Papa and Nani. They took the kids (dad and Jamie also had my niece and nephew, Micah and Adelyn for the weekend! 5 kids, 6 and under!! They were brave!) to the fire department for a "tour", took them to the kids museum, went to the store and picked out new toys, took them to church and Micah's birthday party and much more!

We got them back on Monday and that evening Riley and Emmersyn came down with a fever. I talked to Kasey and she said Micah had a fever on Saturday night. So I knew whatever they had was probably what Micah had too. Anyways, my kids were SO sick. This was, by far, the worst virus we've ever had. That's saying a lot beacuse we've had a lot of viruses lately. By Wednesday morning Lincoln had come down with a fever and I knew it was going to be a LONG week.

 

Since Monday evening the kids had high fevers and complained of different things hurting. First it was their head (or brain, if you asked Riley), then their eyes, then their throat, then tummy, etc. I had been rotating between tylenol and ibuprofen all day on Wednesday and had just given Emmersyn a bath to get her fever down because the medicine didn't seem to be doing the trick. Around dinner time, on Wednesday, all three kids were laying on the floor (our new couches haven't been delivered yet!). Lincoln was playing the ipad and Emmersyn was playing on my phone. I had JUST gotten up from sitting with Emmersyn and nursing Anistyn to put bread in the oven for dinner when I heard a really weird noise. It honestly didn't register with me what it was until I heard Lincoln say "Emmersyn, can you stop doing that please...". I knew, at that instant, she was having a feberial seizure and that noise I was hearing was her teeth grinding. Talk about the scariest moment of my life. I ran to her, held her as Ty called 911. The seizure only lasted about a minute or minute and a half and the paramedics were here within 5 minutes.

They got Emmersyn's car seat out of our van, strapped her in on the stretcher and we took off to the children's hospital downtown Grand Rapids. (This was, however, AFTER they got the bunny out of the egress window. Riley was telling them how concerned she was about Emmersyn, just like she was concerned about her bunny freezing. Little did I know, the paramedics went into the window area and set the bunny free!) I was so thankful Ty had just gotten home from work when this happened because I was able to go in the ambulance with her. In the ambulance, they took her temperature and it was 104.8 and that was after they had ice packs on her! I had literally given her Tylenol 1.5 hrs before the seizure. It was the worst feeling as a mom and the worst thing I've ever witnessed. I am thankful, though, that it doesn't have any long term affects and she was totally back to herself within a couple of hours. She and I stayed at the hospital for about 6 or 7 hours. They did a urinalysis and chest x-ray to see what was causing the fever, if it was something more than a virus. The urinalysis came back negative but she did have bronchiolitis, but they didn't think that was causing the high fever.

 

We got home at about 1 am and I literally didn't let her out of my sight the next 7 days. She slept with us every night, if I did laundry I carried her with me, etc. I was so scared and paranoid it was going to happen again. All three kids ended up having a fever for 9 days straight, without it breaking. It was really scary because their fevers (especially Emmersyn's) were super high and nothing would take it down. It would be 104 then I'd give her medicine and it would go down to 102, but within 45 minutes it'd be back up to 104 or more. I don't know how many times I called our pediatrician's office, but I'm pretty sure they knew my number. I took them all back to the doctor on the following Monday (7 days after fever started) and was told, again, it's just a virus but they were starting to get concerned because of the duration of the fever. If it wasn't gone by Wednesday they (whoever still had a fever) would have to get blood work done. I was praying and hoping that wouldn't happen. Tuesday morning Emmersyn woke up without one and Wednesday morning the other two didn't have a fever either. Praise the Lord. I was SO glad. They all seem back to normal and we are praying and praying for NO MORE sickness. I seriously don't know if I can handle seeing another one of my children sick!!

This is how my little sickies spent 9 straight days!

A (first) visit from the tooth fairy!

Riley has had a loose tooth for quite a few weeks now and was excited that she was going to lose a tooth. On Tuesday, Feb 19th she woke up saying that she couldn't eat breakfast because her tooth really hurt. I tried to offer her something soft so it wouldn't bother her tooth, but she insisted on having a bagel. She kept complaining that it hurt really bad and all of a sudden started bawling and being very dramatic because she, all of a sudden, "didn't want to lose a tooth". I kept asking her to let me wiggle it, but she wouldn't let me. So I calmed her down and told her to go eat breakfast. I was in the living room of our new house and all of a sudden she came over to me in disbelief smiling...she lost her tooth while trying to eat that bagel!!! YEAH! She was so excited, said it didn't hurt a bit!

She literally carried that tooth around in a baggie ALL. DAY. LONG. Kept talking about the tooth fairy, etc. Before bed, she put the tooth under her pillow. She was expecting the tooth fairy to bring her $20 (thanks for tell her that Uncle Kolby) so I was hoping she wouldn't be disappointed with $1 and a note :)!

 

 

 

 

She woke up that morning SO excited she came running into our room saying the tooth fairy left her a dollar, a note (in hand) and an Easter bunny! I was so confused because I was fairly certain we didn't get her a bunny. She excitedly escorted me down to her room as she's telling me all about this bunny. I thought she was losing her mind or talking in her sleep. Anways, I get down to her room, she takes me over to her window and sure enough there's a real, live bunny in her window. Ri's room is in the basement so she has an egress window with a slatted cover over it and a poor bunny had fallen through the slat into that window area. But, she thought the tooth fairly had delivered it to her. haha. I thought it was SO funny, but also was worried she wasn't going to give up that bunny easily. She was so worried about that darn bunny being hungry and cold so we fed it a carrot and waited for Ty to get home to try to get it out...

 

How it got out is coming in the next post. Stay tuned...