Hump day

it stormed last night :) I love thunderstorms. in case you hadn't heard. LOVE them.

and then i woke up this morning and the sun was shining :) I love the sunshine. in case you hadn't heard. LOVE it.

and HH was home till almost 9! and i was in a really good mood. and The Pack was in a really good mood :) its only 9:20. and its already been an amazing day.

I love days like this :)

the house is clean. dishes are done. showers have been taken. laundry is chugging away. HH went to work. YG tonight. (so I get my 2 hrs to MYSELF!!!) Cutest baby in the world should be getting here any minute. :)

Little Brother received a skate board from Baby Sister for his birthday. hard wood floors + 12 yr old with a brand new board = chaos!!!! and can I say? I kinda love it. :)

my girls have been crazy lately! so much fun! and crazy :) love them to death. they make me smile :)

HH has been working. a lot. and when he comes home he hurts. and he's exhausted. so I give him a back massage and he falls asleep. can you say 'BORING!!!" ??? yeah. its boring. especially when I'm in a super good, bouncing off the walls, HAVE SO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT, mood ;) lol! poor guy. i think i can get to be too much for him sometimes.

Mouth cleaned my van yesterday. really cleaned it. it looks A.MAZ.ING!!!! so HH left his truck here today so she can clean it :) as long as she has a stereo, she's all good :) "crank up the music and dig in" is her motto (wonder where she got that?) I think anyone could find our house on a "deep clean" day just by following the beat :)

time to go. I think I'm gonna clean out the fridge and freezer. so if you hear a beat? drop by and visit :)

later dudes!!!

I'm that girl

That girl that collects all the shopping carts and puts them in the cart corral in the parking lot at Walmart. and takes the ones that are not in "order", out and puts them back in. in order. and the Pack gets embarrassed and pleads with me to just "get in the van!! plz!! MOM!!!!".

That girl that could never work at walmart because she would get stuck at the bargain bin movies, putting them in alphabetical order. cuz that's how they should be.

That girl that hates wearing shoes. even in the winter.

That girl that dreams of wandering this earth, with no destination in mind. meeting strangers, taking pictures, immersing myself in the cultures and lives of others.

I'm that girl that talks to strangers at the store. opens doors for the elderly, smiles at babies, and helps mothers with small children because she knows what they are going thru.

I'm that girl that loves thunderstorms and dancing in the rain. barefoot, with her hair down. :) She loves mud puddles.

I'm that girl that loves to sing in the shower, cranks up the stereo when she's cleaning the house, and grabs random children to dance around the room with.

I'm that girl that opens up all the windows when it hits 50 degrees in the spring of the year, but grabs a blanket to wrap herself up with to take a nap on the deck in the sunshine when its 80.

I'm that girl that cannot watch an entire movie without getting distracted by something. then loses her place and spends the rest of the movie asking everyone else what is going on.

I'm that girl that goes for walks in the middle of the night. in the rain. she stops in the middle of the street, spreads out her arms, tilts her face to the sky, and loves to feel the water cascade down her face and hair.

I'm that girl that has to sleep in total darkness and silence. When she sleeps at all.

I'm that girl.

That girl that is sarcastic when she shouldn't be. can be brutally honest when it would be best to keep her mouth shut. I'm that girl that speaks first and thinks later. gets mad quickly but asks for forgiveness just as quickly.

I'm that girl that loves to cuddle on the couch to watch a movie. but will probably fall asleep half way thru then wake up and want to know how it ended. :)

I'm that girl that loves to use her man's chest as a human pillow. but rarely is allowed to :P

I'm that girl that can have a biting comment but also will flash you a smile and a wink out of nowhere.

I'm that girl. that girl that loves with all her heart, trusts most everyone. but when you break her trust, you will have to work very hard for her to even give you the time of day.

I'm that girl that crunches on ice in the next booth over at the restaurant and in the row behind you at the movie theater ;) sorry about that.

I'm that girl that will ignore her phone for days on end. but can't live without her computer.

I'm that girl.

middle of the night randoms

its 1 am. and i cant sleep. so i blog. and i dont use capitalization or punctuation. just warning you. so if you are the type of person that just cannot abide by no capitalization or punctuation? stop reading now. seriously. this is a lazy post and i dont care about either.

i have fingernails!!! i have ALWAYS bitten my nails. always. i never used to wear nail polish cuz my nails always looked so ugly and i just could not bring attention to them. but that has changed :) i actually have fingernails. and i do plan on polishing them. and bringing attention to them.

we have been having some weird things going on around here. really weird things. hh and blue eyes were talking one night. in the livingroom. they both stopped talking and got real still. they looked at each other and asked, "did you hear that too?" they both swear they heard a little girl talking to them. and it seemed like she was standing between the 2 of them. a few days later, i was sitting in the livingroom with 'the cutest baby ever', and i heard a little girl say, "hi". i swear it sounded like she was standing right next to me. for the last 2 weeks, when i go to bed, after turning my kindle off and rolling over, the computer light comes on and goes off without the computer fully coming out of sleep mode. but 3 nights ago? i woke up at 3 in the morning, rolled over and saw the computer come on. totally come out of sleep mode and turn on. you really have to monkey with the mouse to get that screen to come on. totally freaked me out. now tonight i was sitting in the livingroom with beans and some of the toys that i had gotten out and cleaned up for the 'cutest baby ever', started acting up. by themselves. the schoolbus ran into the wall. a bumblebee spun around and just a few minutes ago a rattle moved. oh! and everyone is in bed. and i was in the livingroom by myself. but then i heard my bedroom door open. hh is sound asleep in there. the door was shut and latched. but it opened up. i got up to see if he had woken up and needed anything. but he was still asleep. it felt like someone was standing in front of me, freaked me out enough that i caught my breath and flipped a lightswitch on. f.r.e.a.k.y. any explanations????

last week i was feeling super crappy. everything hurt. every bone and muscle ached. after a few days of this i asked beans to look and see if i had a sore on my back. guess what she found? a tick. yuck!!! i hate ticks! this one really thru me for a loop tho :P i starting feeling better later on that day and after a few days i feel back to my old self. i cant believe we have ticks out already. we will be doing checks around here from now on!!!

the other night, the girls were super duper wired and hyper and did not want to go to bed.
Mouth ~"we're too hyper to sleep!!!!!"
HH~ "Mouth, what are you eating??"
at this point her eyes get HUGE and she gets a manic grin on her face
Mouth ~ "its, its, its, its...."
Beans whispers, "candy"
Mouth ~ "ITS CANDY!!!!!"
(yes, she still has a hard time remembering names of things)
HH ~ " oh good grief, do you really think you need candy tonight Mouth???"

she ate it all, and was up most of the night.

little brother went to a friends house last night. after a night of playing video games, he came home all excited. " MOM!!!! they had this really old video game! the graphics were HORRIBLE!!! that thing was OLD."
what kind of game system was it? I asked him.
"well, it was really really old mom. nintendo something...."
oh! nintendo? gray boxy thing with plain controllers?
"oh no mom, this one must have been b4 that one. it was a nintendo 64. its super old."

wow kid. thanks for making me feel old. i remember when the 64 was the bomb.
one word.
ATARI.
it would blow his mind.
LOL!!!!

hh is shinglin' tomorrow. he will be in pain for days. little brother is going with to do clean up. he will be complaining for days. (clean up sucks)
i plan on sleeping in and doing nothing. maybe watch a movie. in my room. convince mouth to make me a pot of coffee and bribe baby sister to serve it to me in bed. big plans. ;)

i am thinking we need some nice weather around here. soon. i would really like to get these cabinets painted and installed so i can get my craft stuff out of storage. so i can make cards and work on all the projects that i see on the pinterest and that i dream of making. keyword. dream.

ok. another toy just made noise. time to jump in bed, pull the covers up and pretend nothing happened :/

g'night dudes

Things getting scary for a week, makes normal so sweet.

The fear that overcomes your whole being when you have a child that is sick, and they don't know what is wrong, that fear is unimaginable. I had that fear a couple weeks ago.

I have had this post on my mind a lot this last week, but I just couldn't make myself go back there yet. Mouth is doing better now. I think that's why I have decided I can handle this post now. but there are still tears when I go back to that fear...

Mouth had went to bed on a Wed night and Thursday morning she didn't get out of bed. She was burning up with fever, (103.8) and was complaining of a horrible headache. Mouth never complains of pain. Never. This is the girl who has had stitches without any anesthetic. This is the girl who had fractured her foot and never told me.

I brought her in to the clinic Friday morning after she started complaining that her neck was killing her and she started throwing up whenever she would move. She slept in the van with sunglasses on. She laid on a couple chairs in the waiting room and slept. She crawled onto the exam table and slept. Dr D sent her to lab to check for strep, influenza, and mono. When I was bringing her back to the exam room, she looked at me, and kinda whispered, 'mom?' and her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out. I caught her and held her up while another Dr ran to help her. It took a little bit to get her to come to. and even then she wouldn't open her eyes and her words were so hard to understand. I was terrified.

The amount of pain she was in at this point was mind boggling to me. I have never seen any of my Pack in this much pain. And for it to be Mouth? I knew this was bad.

We got her back into an exam room and they hooked her up to IVs right away. IV pain meds and anti nausea meds were pumping into her. And she still was in so much pain.

She has the uncanny ability to block out everything and go someplace else in her mind. That is how she deals with pain.(She used this coping mechanism alot during the next week.) But when she does that? It means that she is just a shell of herself. blank eyes. no smile. no twinkle. It is so scary to see her like that.

While we waited for the lab results to come back I had called HH and asked him if he could come to the clinic and wait with us. I had this fear that they would say she's fine, they couldn't find anything, and they would send her home with me. I had no clue how I would be able to get her out to the van and into the house in the condition she was in.

The labs came back good. Negative for everything they had checked for. Dr D decided a spinal tap was needed to rule out meningitis. She showed all the classic symptoms. So we went over to the hospital for a spinal tap. They tested her spinal fluid and everything was good. She was starting to perk up a tiny little bit. and she wanted to get out of the hospital and go home.

We got her into the wheelchair to bring her out to the truck and the change that overcame her was startling. She went back to looking like a ghost. dead eyes. no twinkle and no smile. she was clutching her head and trying not to cry.

back to square one.

HH and I looked at each other and had no clue what we were supposed to do. No one else was around. "are we supposed to bring her home?" I guess so? and we did. she crawled into the back of the truck and laid there the whole way home. HH had to pick her up and carry her into our bedroom and put her to bed there.

the next 2 days were hell. there is no other way to explain it.

we had a 13 yr old who needed to be carried to the bathroom, and carried back to bed. when she moved we had to have a bucket ready because she would throw up instantly. she didn't talk. she didn't cry. she just laid there.

Saturday night she was complaining of her back hurting and she was having a hard time breathing. HH carried her out to the truck and we brought her in to the local ER. the hooked her up to IVs and pumped pain meds and anti nausea meds into her. nothing helped. they found out she had had a spinal tap and decided it was a spinal headache. the anesthesiologist wasn't sure that it was a spinal headache, her symptoms hadn't changed from when we brought her in Friday morning. a blood patch was discussed and dismissed. why do another procedure needlessly when she was still complaining of the initial headaches and just crumminess?

They sent us home with orders for her to drink a LOT of fluids. that's it. HH pulled the truck into the ambulance garage and Mouth crawled into the back of the truck and laid there. all the way home. HH had to pick her up and carry her into the house and put her back to bed in our bed.

Sunday we pushed her to drink drink drink.... and she would throw up throw up throw up. HH was carrying her to the bathroom and back to bed. she begged us to put dark blankets over the windows in our room, and the slightest sound would have her curling up into a ball. and throwing up. by Sunday night she was refusing anything to drink and she hadn't eaten anything since wed night.

Monday. I asked her what she wanted to do. "mom, I can't do this anymore. you have to bring me to the hospital. I feel like I'm dying." HH picked her up and we brought her in to the ER. there was no way we were going to leave that hospital until they helped her.

We got in. they paged her Dr and he came right over. they put her on IVs again. this time it was morphine getting pumped into her. more anti nausea meds and a CT scan was ordered immediately. Dr D said if he had know she was still in pain Friday night, he would have admitted her then. the CT scan came back with every sinus cavity plugged, but no masses or anything abnormal.

I think that was the first time I was able to breath since Friday. When I found out there was nothing evil growing in her head. I had had this overpowering fear that they would find something wrong. I was terrified that they were going to find cancer. SO when Dr D came back and said the CT scan was clear except for the massive sinus infection, I cried. Hard. and Mouth looked at me and said, "mom, I'm gonna be ok. my head just hurts really bad." and of course I turned into a blubbering fool.

Dr D admitted her immediately. She was in the hospital for 4 days. They had so many meds pumping into her, and morphine and anti nausea stuff . By Wednesday afternoon she was able to come off the morphine. She could lay in bed without being in unbearable pain. the only hurdle we still had was when she would sit up or stand up the pain in her head would be overpowering and she would start throwing up and she would have to lay down right away. We decided a blood patch was in order, if that didn't take care of the pain they would have to do surgery to see if they could unplug her sinuses to see if that was the reason for the pain. We did the blood patch Wed night. Later that night she sat up in her bed. She didn't throw up. She only gave us a half grin. but her eyes were sparkling. We finally got to see our girl again. it had been a week.

She ate food for the first time in 7 days and kept it down. It was only a few bites of a sandwich. but I was cheering inside :) She fell asleep that night and slept. really slept. woke up Thursday morning and wanted to go home. Dr D was smart and held off till his lunch break to come check on her. He wanted to make sure she could get up and walk around without throwing up and without the pain coming back. She was weak. very weak. we walked down the hall to the lounge and she was exhausted. but she didn't throw up and she was no longer in pain.

We got home Thursday afternoon. She slept in her own night that bed. HH and I were back in the same bed. The Pack were all home. Everything was back to how it should be. Life was good again.

We have noticed a few little things with Mouth. She forgets things easily. She has a hard time coming up the right word for things sometimes. Her appetite still isnt the best. But little things like that? I can handle those things. I have my girl back.

Last Saturday this was my FB status: "french toast, all my kids eating breakfast together, and Mouth in the middle of it all :) things getting scary for a week, makes normal so sweet"

I don't think I can say it any better than that.

Things I love:

putting on a new pair of jeans, realizing I should have got them 2 sizes smaller :)

especially when I bought them 2 sizes smaller from what I have been wearing!!!

birthdays.... for my Pack ;)

snowy photo shoots

kids wearing mismatched bright colors for snowy photo shoots

smiley baby girls

saltwater and sugar sand

answered prayer, especially when its another teen accepting Jesus as Saviour!!!

being called "mom" by children whom I did not give birth to :)

last count, I am "MOM!!" to 17 loveable kids.

hearing, "ya know what? I fricken love ya!" and getting a hug.

I fricken love you too, CB ;)

snow days. when HH is home.

migraine = hate!!!!

snow = hate!!!!

snow + migraine + HH home = bearable :)
*Amazing how God takes care of His children, isnt it?

country music in the morning

purple and red skittles

grape popsicles

birthday suppers

sunglasses

coffee. black. sweet nectar.... *sigh

yarn ball fights and silly face wars

My Pack :)

Handsome Hubby. love that man :)

locks on bedroom doors! LOL

Snow Day!!!!

I hate snow.

I'm just gonna get that out in the open right away.

But my Pack does not hate snow.

Especially when it means a snow day for all of their friends.

And then we end up with 8, 10, 15 kids hanging out at our house.

they can't get to school but they can find a way to get to our house...

hmmmmm.....

we have snowboards lined up on the deck

dripping boots all over the porch

(I hate walking thru puddles to get to the bathroom)

coats and bibs hung on every available surface

woodstove pumping out heat trying to dry everything

wet mittens and hats everywhere.

winter has arrived

:P

and you know what I am doing?

I am holed up in my room

wearing sunglasses

burying my head

waiting for this darn headache to go away

HH just put heavy beach towels up to cover the windows.

and for me? covering up light?

yeah.

you know its gotta be bad when I beg him to block out the light.

3 days of pain is not good.

time to get this figured out I think.

Manic Mondays

Its Monday.

I don't think I like Mondays.

Especially when the next day we are (maybe) supposed to get snow.

I am not a snow type of girl.

I am not a cold type of girl either.

I am more of a sunshine, and warmth, and ocean, beaches and sand type of girl.

I miss the smell of the ocean.

hmmmmmmmm...

ok.

enough with dreaming about things that I cannot have....

update on the whole,

"doorknob with a lock on the bedroom door" thing...

it is

A.MAZ.ING.

yes.

it

is.

I locked my children out of my room today.

just because I could

:)

And they were confused.

and they stood and rattled the doorknob

and whined.

And I smiled :)

How did I make it thru the last 16 yrs???

Crazy!

*Random Topic Change*

Mouth informed me that,

"If I won $10,000,

I would buy shoes.

Lots and lots

of shoes.

A girl after my own heart :)

you would never know that I love shoes.

no.

you would not.

not if you looked in my closet.

I have 3 pairs of shoes.

3

and 1 pair of work boots.

that's it.

its sad.

sometimes I sit

and I pout.

and I feel sorry for myself

and my obvious lack of shoes.

:(

*Random Topic Change*

I saw Mouths YG teacher last week.

She was wearing a pair of jeans.

COVERED in Sharpie marker.

they looked very cool

and bright

and colorful.

And I fully expect to see Mouth wearing

a pair of jeans covered in Sharpie marker.

any day now.

So,

Thank You, Mouth's YG teacher.

Thank You.

*Random Topic Change*

When I was a kid,

at the lake where we spent our summers camping,

there was a statue of a naked lady.

(and I will say it, she has a great body, she must do yoga)

and from the road,

when we would ride bike by,

we would giggle and exclaim,

"Its the naked butt lady!!!"

cuz all we could see was her naked butt from the road.

I do recall one time when,

on a dare,

I rode bike thru the circle drive.

she was naked from the front too.

just sayin'

Well, down the road,

from where we live with our Pack,

there is statue of a naked FAT lady.

throwing a hula hoop in the air.

and she looks VERY happy to be throwing a hula hoop

in the air whilst she is running around naked.

I giggle every time I drive by and see that naked little fat lady.

Throwing a hula hoop in the air.

:)

HH, you know, the one who NEVER EVER reads my blog?

Yeah. He's sitting next to me

looking over my shoulder

as I am writing this post.

and he is making fun of me

cuz he thinks I'm weird.

"You're cracked"

were his exact words.

hmmmmmmmm....

I think its time to wrap this one up.

Later dudes.