Grandbabies

This is a picture I made for my mom. These are her two newest grandbabies. She will be welcoming another grandson in December. It has been an exciting year.

Just part of being a parent ADVISORY- graphic story details

October has been a interesting month at our home. The kids took turns being sick and one night they all managed to be sick together. Carson got it first and stayed home sick from school for a day. I just thought he had the 24 hour flu. He was fine the next day, but when he got home from school he was sick again. Then Luke got it. And it was the same thing. Sick one day and totally fine the next. I was feeling really lucky because both had made it to the bathroom every time they had to throw up so we had successfully avoided any major accidents. That is until the night of what I call the "perfect storm". Both Carson and Luke had been fine this day and I thought maybe it had finally passed. Ben and I put all four kids to bed and went downstairs to watch some TV. A little while after putting the kids to bed we heard crying coming from upstairs. We both rushed upstairs, knowing that one of the kids was probably feeling sick. When we got upstairs we found Luke standing in the bathroom covered in throw-up. It was all over him, the floor and the bathroom rug. In my mind I was thinking "oh great." Ben threw Luke in the tub while I gathered his clothes and the bathroom rug and threw them in the wash. As I passed by Luke and Carson's room I could smell that same terrible smell coming from inside. I turned on the light and searched Luke's bed. Nothing. The smell was so bad. I was dying. I walked out and told Ben that their room smelled bad. Ben walked in the room, quickly came out and said, "go look at Carson's bed." There was Carson laying asleep in his bed COVERED in throw-up. We got him up, put him in the tub and began the process of cleaning his bed. We immediately decided the sheets were not worth saving and sent them to the trash. As we took apart his bed we realized it was worse than we had originally thought. He had thrown-up down the side of his bed onto the wall, covering his headboard, and in between the box spring and mattress. He couldn't have planned it any better. Ben took the box spring outside and hosed it down, while I tried to clean everything out of the carpet and off the wall. We both had our shirts pulled up around our noses as we tried to get rid of the terrible smell. We were tempted to drag everything in the entire room out back and have a big bon fire, but after a full hour of scrubbing, disinfecting and air freshening we felt like it was clean again. We put a big sheet on the floor between the two beds and gave each boy a bucket just in case they couldn't make it to the bathroom. Later that night James woke up crying. We go into his room and he and his bed were covered in diarrhea (that's right). I was just thinking, "you have got to be kidding me". We threw James in the bath, and did another load of wash, put some blankets on James' bed and got him back to sleep. I was so tired at this point I went to bed. Later that night as Ben was coming to bed he said, "I think we are really going to laugh at this someday". I responded, "Maybe someday, but I am not laughing yet". Oh the joys of parenthood.

Flashback Friday

This is a picture of our little family when we first moved to Cleveland July, 2001. Guess we've grown a bit since then.