Yeah! Pictures!

Ok, only two for now. I didn't have much subject matter to take at the moment. So I thought I would share Isabella's prairie dress that I made for her for the Father/Daughter retreat a while back. I am hoping the pictures come out ok. They kept coming up small on our windows explorer. Tomorrow we'll have a birthday boy, cake, and other happy children to take pictures of.



As a side note, please pray for Jedidiah. His g-tube site has been looking worse. I have been using a prescription cream for 6 days now and it is getting worse. The GI doctor decided to call in the oral antibiotic. If we do not see an improvement in 48 hours we have to call Wed. afternoon so they can squeeze him in on Thurs. So far the area is a dark pink, and not red. Although the site is goopy, and it is painful. He also does not have a fever, which is a very good thing. I am of course a bit bummed as he has been doing well on the Nystatin. I weighed him today and he was 20 lbs 8 oz. He was 20 lbs 4.5 oz on Friday. So this is a GREAT weight gain. He has been on the Nystatin for almost two weeks and he has gained a total of about 9 or 10 ounces! That comes to almost an ounce a day. This is amazing! I am hoping by keeping him on the Nystatin and mega doses of good bacteria that the antibiotic will not wreak havoc on his intestinal track and slow his gain down.

Here is Isabella modeling her dress. Excuse the wrinkles, she wore it to church yesterday, and just put it on for the picture. She wanted me to make sure to tell you all she is holding her stuffed dog, named Buddy.

Here is the back of the dress. The apron has two buttons on the back, leaving it open the rest of the way. I will have to find a way to make this into a short sleeved dress as she really loves it, but with the hot weather, it's a bit HOT.

A big THANK YOU to my aunt who sent us her camera so that we could have pictures of Jedidiah's birthday and the for the birth of the baby. I am sooooo excited! I would hate to miss having pictures for such special occasions.

Just some catching up

Although not much is going on, which can be a good thing! I was very successful at cleaning up all the rooms of the house, well, almost. There is a tiny bit left in my bathroom, BUT everything else is cleaned up, even the horrid computer room. Seriously I would not open that door if we had company, it was that bad. But now it looks GREAT!

Tomorrow we will be getting something really neat....a camera, from my very gracious Aunt! I am so excited as we will have it in time for Jedidiah's birthday. His birthday is on Tuesday! I can hardly believe he will be TWO!!! We all got hit by the tummy bug last week, Jedidiah got it the worst as he actually threw up a few times. But in spite of that he still gained an ounce. No that is not a lot, BUT he didn't loose weight, and that is what is important. The poor guy has some sort of infection starting at his g-tube site. I am not too happy about that. I have some prescription cream to put on it from the past and after two days it was looking really good, and then it took a turn for the worse. It is getting worse and I will be calling the doctors early tomorrow morning to see what we need to do. I would really hate to have to give him oral antibiotics as that will only work against us in fighting the yeast. BUT he is in more harm if we let an infection take over, so we will do what is best for now and then pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off and restart the yeast fight once the infection is gone. I'll let you know what happens.

Tomorrow we will be getting a few things done here. The girls will be making up the cake for Jed's birthday. We will frost and decorate it on Tues. We have a very busy Tues. so that is why they will make the cake up ahead of time. Tomorrow we will decorate with streamers, and I need to make a birthday sign for Jedidiah. Then Tues. will be errand day. Library, school store, and grocery shopping. Then we will celebrate Jedidiah's birthday in the evening. The rest of the week will be spent trying to tie up loose strings. I have a few more things I want to put away in the freezer for after the baby. I also have to clean out the birth pool. And I need to sterilize the towels (we keep forgetting to get a stack of paper bags to do so). I am also trying to get an idea of how I want to structure our time after the baby comes. I'm talking about the time when Jeremiah goes back to work. He'll be taking a week off. We will also be getting two weeks of meals from church. So all of that will be very helpful in just relaxing and recovering. Then after that week I will need to be more in the action. So I want to have a plan to keep the girls busy so as to lessen any chaos. There was a woman at church today that just had a baby on Monday. It was her third child. And that explains why she was at church so soon! Ha, ha! I was the same way with my first three. BUT I learned after that that there is no rush to be getting back to normal life within three days of having a baby. The Bible is very clear of the time a woman should take to heal and recover after having a baby. The length of time for the recovery is different if you've had a boy or a girl. Longer for a girl and shorter for a boy. I want to say it is 60 days for a girl and 40 for a boy. Or it was 40 for the girl and shorter if a boy. Sorry I don't have the exact passages. BUT here I was after three days of having a baby trying to go back to normal life. I am thinking God is smarter than me and if He says I should be resting for a month, well by golly there IS a reason. Our human minds can't always conceive of why God does things in a certain way, but His ways are right. So for the last two children I took a much longer recovery period. It is not possible for me to take a month off, but it is possible by the work I do now to make that month after the baby as easy as I can. Ok, got off on a tangent there! Wow!

Anyways....if you look off to the right, we are now in the teens!! I haven't had any extra contractions. I am up to three herb pills a day. In another day I go up to four. I don't think I've gotten past taking 4 or 5 before I had the last two babies. Although Jedidiah is a special case as we induced. But that may be why the induction with herbs went so well as my body was very ready. One can only speculate. So maybe we will be having a baby in a week. My bet is somewhere between the 7th and 10th. Jeremiah is hoping for a July 4th baby. I don't think the baby will come that early, but hey, they have a mind of their own :-) I am really itching to find out who this wee babe is!! So look for a change in blog color (pink or blue) to announce what gender we have. I feel like a little kid the night before Christmas! What are we getting? Truly I have to say for the first time I actually want to have a boy. However I would be so wowed over if it is a girl. To think we have four girls, all different in looks and personalities, and to put fifth in there seems so impossible. Will she be different than all her sisters, will she look more like one of them, or share more of one's personality.....I am just assuming that if we have a boy that he will be different. I am not sure why I think that way.

Ok, I'm off to bed. I had a rough nights sleep last night and am hoping to not have a repeat! I am hoping to get some pictures up soon!!!

Commence crying NOW

Yes, more laundry woes. I had those clothes hanging out to sun, except that the pole to keep the laundry high enough off the ground kept falling, and then eventually broke. That wasn't nearly as bad as what I just read on line as I was still trying to find any natural solutions to killing off mildew. As a recap when my sister visited us back in August she determined that we had a mildew problem on our clothing. So we washed all towels in bleach and everything else in vinegar and hot water. The clothes came out smelling clean....for a while. Once our towels got wet again at least a wash or two later they had that smell back. So we thought maybe we had to buy all new towels, that they were just "bad" towels. But I just read that front load washing machines are the worst as harboring mold!!! The problem is the actual machine!!!!! So I am washing all these clothes in a contaminated machine! We thought maybe we just had a chain reaction, one item got mold on it, and it spread, etc. NO, it's being spread by the machine itself. Cry, cry, cry.......wipe nose, repeat. Now not all is for not, as my sister just told me. The measures that I have taken probably did kill off a bunch of mold. I did find a product out there that will kill it off in your machine. And from our own experience and others, bleach did not work. I made sure to bleach our machine, just in case it was the problem. But we have still had the mold problem. Come July first we are ordering the product on line that will do the trick. It has articles by reputable people, companies who have seen this work. So there is hope, its just that after ALL this work, to think for one minute it was a bust just makes me want to throw in the towel and say, "I quit!". Add in some more crying here, for dramatic effect. Don't worry I am not really crying, although I feel on the verge of it. There I got all that off my chest, how very therapeutic this blog can be. Now I need to go put some more laundry into the dryer, reload my contaminated washer, practice relaxation (for the birth), crawl on hands and knees (to turn my posterior baby--which I think has worked, but I will do it some more for good measure), and then tackle some cleaning.

Puzzle Pieces Fitting

The pieces of Jedidiah's health issues that is. So we had a trial run with the Nystatin this week. And I am very pleased to announce some very good results. Nystatin takes longer to work, but even still we saw some great results by the end of the week. He gained 4.5 ounces this week. This is *huge* seeing as how the last 6 or 8 weeks he only gained 3 ounces total. We did not change his feedings or anything else, although I did increase his good bacteria. I wanted to make sure that something good was replacing the bad yeast. Jedidiah started eating double what he has been. And he has stopped digging at his throat! These are all very good signs. We are now going to proceed to "stage two" and add some changes. The first being that I need to get Jedidiah on a sugar free diet for the next three weeks. I was supposed to sit down last night and print out some information on calorie contents of common foods. I need to make sure he is getting at least the same amount of calories as he is now. But our computer was temporarily down. So I am hoping to get that done today. These foods have to be able to be pureed and put into his tube, no small feat! Plus we got a new supplement in. It has a few of the same things that the current supplement does, plus some. So we will see if that helps him in any way.

I have been working away on the clothing. This has really added a lot of work to the table! I had to take EVERY piece of clothing out of the dressers. I am washing ALL of it, with a solution of vinegar and tea tree oil. Then washing it again, then drying it. I am not hanging it in the sun due to finding a tick on one of the towels after we brought them in. Then this past Sunday we found a tick on the back of Jedidiah's ear. We really don't need Lyme's disease on top of this! Then I sprayed the girls drawers with Lysol. However that stuff is just toxic and it took days for it to be ok to go back in the changing room. So I made a stronger solution of the vinegar and tea tree oil and am using that on the rest of the drawers. Just about everything in our closet is out. I took the stuff on hangers and just hung it out in the sun this morning. What a feat! I only have some bedding left in there. I bagged up all of Jeremiah's and my winter clothing as well. We usually just have it sit on the wire racks up above in the closet. However there truly is only so much I am willing to do right now. I am up to my ears in laundry and anything I can put up in the attic and deal with later I need to do that.

In the midst of this I was able to make some extra breakfast meals for the freezer. I am almost done spring cleaning our bathroom. I am hoping to finish that today and get most of my bedroom done as well. I need to wait till I get some more tea tree oil before I can put our dressers back together in our room. Plus I gave Jedidiah a buzz the other night. And I am sure there are a few other things that have now slipped into the abyss I call my brain :-)

I am sure you are all tired of hearing of my dilemmas of laundry and what not, but that is my life at this moment :-) I will add some excitement to the mix and say that I noticed my braxton hicks working differently the past three days. Not sure if that means much, but I think this baby is getting ready. I am thinking another two weeks. We have found a couple of girls names as well. I am still wanting to find another boys name as each version of the name we have one of us doesn't care for the other. I would hate to name any child with a name that either Jeremiah or I just "settled" for. I want their name to have meaning and one that we both really like.

We have been dealing with yet *another* tummy bug. I got it first, then Isabella had it yesterday, now Flannery has succumbed to it this morning. Isabella just layed around, and actually slept a lot. Flannery however is sitting here just whining and whining. I am not sure if I will be able to get all my things to do, done. Oh well. That is how it all works, being a mommy. Things pop up and you need to reprioritize.

Ok, I am off to make some breakfast and tackle more laundry :-)

Midwife appointment

So I had an appointment with our midwife today. Everything is going great. The only "problem" is that this baby is still posterior. It's gonna get it's first spanking if it doesn't obey and turn! :-) A posterior position makes labor longer and harder. But with prayer and some exercises I am sure this baby will be ready in its proper position at the right time. The baby is growing, I'm growing, my blood pressure great. I was a bit disappointed to see that my iron went down. I've been feeling a bit more tired lately and wanted it tested. It is still in the normal range, but it did drop a whole point. So I am going to try to get some extra iron rich foods into my diet these next couple of weeks. I'm not sure if I will have time to boost it, but even if not I'm still in the safe range.

We are having some guests over for dinner, and Jeremiah is cooking :-) The other couple is expecting their 6th in the next two weeks, so he is giving us a night off of cooking. Gotta go get a few things tidied before they arrive.

Job start date, testing results and ears

Ahhh, you all must love my titles. I am sure you are all wondering why I never became some famous author or something :-) Yeah, that was supposed to be funny! OK, so we have a start date, which is VERY soon. June 30th, which is only a little over a week away. I am so very thankful to the Lord for that. That was a definite prayer of mine, that Jeremiah would not have a gap between jobs. His current job was to go until the third week of July. We went out to celebrate last night. We all ate too much of course. Then the girls asked if they could do something that we told them they could get done almost a year ago......get their ear's pierced! For one reason or another we kept pushing it off, but last night we said, sure why not, hopefully they are still open. We headed to the mall, and may I say we were reminded of why we hardly ever set foot in there!! We went to one place, but they said it was too close to closing time, but a customer in the store told us of a place down the hall. At first only Isabella and Moira wanted to get theirs done. After seeing how well her sisters fared Flannery decided to go for it. For a minute there I really thought Flannery was only going to have one pierced ear! She finally sat still for a second for the lady to do her other ear. It proved to be much more painful than she imagined. I wasn't surprised by her reaction, although I was very surprised at how well Moira did. You'd have to know Moira to know why. All of them held my hand and I was expecting Moira to leave marks on me, but she never even gave my hand a squeeze! She winced, said, "ow" (with out capital letters OR exclamation marks) and was over it. Blew me away. They all look very cute. They all tried to convince Saoirse to go through with it, but I KNEW that would have been a no go!!! They all picked out the same design of a flower, but different colors. Once we get a camera I'll make sure to take some pictures. They were very proud of themselves :-)

We got the girls test scores in. I was very pleased with them. Moira did as I expected, but Isabella actually did better than I thought. It was very neat to compare Isabella's rough spots last year to this years scores. I am very happy to say that the extra work we did this year really paid off. With Moira we slowly eased her into some of the same books (a different grade level though) as she needed more time to adjust to some things. Moira does very well in school, but she doesn't have the confidence in what she is doing, which can make things very difficult. But I would say about half way through the school year we saw a change in her, and the last month and a half, she really has improved in that area. For example I have been very surprised by the fact that she wanted to do all her math lessons on her own. This is VERY surprising since her last years math (grade three) she would not do ANYTHING unless I was there reading it to her, or watching her do it. She got done with her third grade math early, so we started the 4th grade, which although it is the same publisher has a different format. And there she was just a weekend past finishing her 3rd grade math with me sitting beside her telling me, "Oh, I can do this on my own, I don't need help." WHAT?!? Who are you, and what did you do with my child? Ha, ha!

So for the actual test scores. There are many different numbers I could list, but the easiest would probably to give you the grade level that they scored them at. So the number will be written as a decimal. The whole number represents the grade and the tenths spot represents how many months along in that grade. So 5.4 is fifth grade, fourth month. At the time of the testing Isabella was 5.9 and Moira was 3.9

Isabella's scores:
Vocabulary 7.7
Reading Comprehension 8.3
Spelling 6.9
Capitalization 7.3
Punctuation 12.4
Usage and Expression 10.8
Concepts and Estimation (math) 7.1
Problem solving and Data Interp. 8.3
Math computation 5.3

Her combined average for those core tests: 7.8

Moira's scores:
Vocabulary 4.4
Reading Comprehension 6.7
Spelling 3.4
Capitalization 4.0
Punctuation 3.1
Usage and Expression 6.8
Concepts and Estimation (math) 4.9
Problem solving and Data Interp. 3.6
Math computation 3.6

Her combined average for those core tests: 4.5

Both did very well in reading comprehension and usage and expression. Isabella's weak points were what Moira's weak points are presently. As you can see Isabella did very well this year in all tests. This year I did not do a review of things like punctuation or capitalization, and for Isabella that was not a problem, but it proved that Moira was not retaining that info, so that is something we will work on next year. Both did well in their math concepts. Moira freaked out on the problem solving and math computation parts of the test due to the timing issue. So it was no surprise that those are lower scores. The math computation is how quickly they can do math facts. Both of my girls are not good in that area, as we have just started working on those the month before. However compared to last year they did do better. Moira is an avid reader, devouring books (Isa for that matter as well), and it is surprising to me she has such a hard time with spelling. We have a wonderful program that she had the hardest, hardest time with, so we changed to another approach a few months ago, and that has helped her, but you can see she is low in that area. Just confirmation that we need to keep her going on this new path. That is what I like about the testing, it helps to confirm my thoughts on how they are doing. Sometimes being here with them, and seeing their struggles you can loose sight as to where they are really at. Last years scores helped us to know what curriculum we needed to change and what was working. I am actually a bit nervous as we are thinking of getting a different curriculum for math this coming year. Saxon has been working just fine for us, but the format for the earlier years is very time consuming. I haven't seen another program that has what I like in Saxon though for the earlier years. So to see if it makes a difference in how much time I put toward their math we are going with a program called Teaching Textbooks. The lessons are on DVD. We did the demos with the girls and they really liked it. They are new, which is why I am hesitant. The lowest grade they have is 5th grade, so Moira will have to finish out with the Saxon 4th grade. So Isabella will start with the new program and we will see how she does. It is hard to compare the content between the programs, so we are hoping that there will be no gaps.

And a note about the grade levels. They might, at least in Isabella's case, seem impressive, however I'm not sure if they should be taken that way. Here is why I think that. Right now my children are doing grade level work. Although Moira did get done with her 3rd grade math early and she has started the 4th grade book. But for the most part all their materials are for their grade level. So we can take their testing grade levels in one of two ways (or maybe a little of both). It could be that my girls did really retain and learn all that I taught them this year and were able to apply what they learned to the different questions. Or, since the test we use is used across the nation in various school settings, public being the largest just by their sheer numbers, that due to the nature of public education, without a doubt proven to not be very effective that the average 7th grader is only doing 5th grade work. Isabella is testing at a 7th grade level, but again we have only been doing 5th grade work. I am not sure which is the case. It would be nice to think that my kids are just smart :-) Who knows maybe they are! (Of course I being their momma, think they are regardless of what any test would say, that's the way mommies think)

Ok, this post is almost novel length. On our agenda today is kitchen cleanup, hang out more laundry (this will be a daily thing for a while), finish my bedroom preps, schooling, OT, and maybe just maybe get some food into the freezer (something I planned on doing yesterday but didn't happen)

Have a great day!

Oh, PS....in case anyone has any questions as to the herbs I take for pregnancy: I use the Polly Jean Antenatal Formula that I purchase from http://www.birthjunkie.com/ . It is to be taken the last 5 weeks of pregnancy, although I usually don't start till week 37. I also take less than half the dosage when I first start and build up from there. The intent of the herbs is to stabilize your hormones and to prepare your uterus. And they do a WONDERFUL job doing both!!!! I can not say enough about these herbs. I would NOT be without them!! If anyone has any other questions about them or other things we take, please feel free to email me. I just had a few people ask about those in particular so I thought I would share here in a post as well.

HE GOT IT!!

Praise the LORD with us for his provision!!!! Just a little while ago there was a call from the person working to get him this position. I was wondering why he was calling as we thought the job was falling through. They kept pushing the decision off, and then Jeremiah saw the job up online again. We were told they wanted to keep up the interviewing process. So we felt this was a closed door. BUT the message that the middle guy left was: I was wondering if you would be available today at 4:30 to go over the offer. UM, YES he's available :-) We do not know when the new job will start, but his current job goes through till the third week of July, with the possibility of extending. So there should be no gap. I am sooooooo happy, and soooooo relieved, and soooooo thankful, and sooooooo....well you get the point :-) We'll be celebrating tonight!

Must be off, I have a screaming child. He wants to go into a room that I had to close off as I just sprayed a ton of Lysol in there. I went through and got all their winter clothing out of their drawers, and then sprayed them down with Lysol. In hopes to kill off any mold spores that may be there.

We made it!!

Well we made it to the 36 week mark, we are now in the clear if the baby should decide to come now. We have just about everything, less two items. I have my room almost ready to set up. It is getting very exciting.

I will be starting my birth herbs today. Usually I start at 37 weeks, but since we are not sure if I am 36 or 38 weeks I decided to start now. I start off way below the dosage level anyways. Plus they recommend that you start at 36 weeks, but we've always waited an extra week. Soooo this is really feeling like the time is short. Today's to do list consists of making up a bunch of breakfast burritos, some for today's breakfast and some to freeze. I have more laundry to hang out to sun bathe. I want to finish up my room today as well. And to top it all off I need to get some general cleaning done. We have the OT coming tomorrow and the program coordinator. I think this will probably be her last visit with us. It is amazing to see how much change and growth there has been for Jedidiah over this last year and even these past few months. It will be weird not to have someone coming to our house for some sort of therapy visit.

I really want to be able to get the kiddos outside a bit more. With all the stuff to do inside getting ready, outside time has been minimal. They were out last night at someone elses house. That of course is always more fun than outside time at your own house :-) They had a tree swing that did not risk your life or limb like ours :-) Plus baby swings, which Jedidiah just loved, and a big play structure, along with a neat see-saw. So they were having a blast. Over here we have a yucky pool. Not sure how it got yucky so VERY fast. But it is and it will need to be cleaned out. And we have some tick infested woods, or the dogs. But we also have a fun gravel road to race or bike down, since it is a hill.

Okee dokey, I need to go hang that laundry, the sun if finally coming up over the trees.

Yesterday

Yesterday was Jedidiah's two year check up. The doctor was pleased with his growth in height. He actually just about touches that 3rd percentile mark!! He said that it was very encouraging. However his weight is still another story. It is making very, very, VERY slow progress to the curve, but at this rate he'll be like 10 before he hits it! He wants us to see Neurology and G.I. again. I told him we already have appointments made with them for this coming month and next. The amazing thing about our doctor is that he actually *listens* to you! I told him we had a couple of theories as to what may be causing this. He said he was totally listening and I went on to tell him. He said that sounded feasible and then went on to prescribe some Nystatin without me asking!! I told him we thought it was yeast. So we started that last night. Plus we changed out his g-tube as well. There was this black stuff inside of the tubing, that is above his skin. I asked the doctor what he thought is was, he said it looked like MOLD to him! That was what I was thinking, but wasn't sure if I was being silly in thinking it. He did say that it could be stomach acid mixed with blood, which would turn black.....I'm open to that too, but we shall see. I am really nervous about giving him the medicine. Not in the way you may think though. To me, at this point, this is our last hope. We have nothing left to go on, so if this doesn't work......Yeah, I'll be upset! So the plan of action is not to introduce any new supplements this week. We were going to start giving him a new supplement that has the glyconutrients in it. But the doctor said we need to know what makes him better (if any of these does). So the medicine is for one week, and I am to keep giving him the good bacteria, although I will increase that drastically. And then its the waiting game. Waiting to see if ANY changes take place this week. From what I heard (form a very reliable source :-)) Nystatin is great because it is the safest choice of antifungal meds, but it does work slower than the other meds out there. So we are not sure when we would start to see a change in his weight due to the meds working. I'll keep you all in the know.

We went grocery shopping yesterday. I had a huge list of non food items that I needed to get. A lot of little things still left on my list of birth supplies. And I'm not sure if it was our luck, or demise, but they were just putting out the school supply sales. Ha, ha. We got a ton of notebooks. I plan on using those a lot more next year. Usually we use them for church and for plain paper. It's cheaper to buy a notebook than a pack of paper. It's like half the price per sheet! I got some pens, folders, glue and rulers. I am waiting for the pencils as the last two years Staples had a pack for a penny! I'll keep my eyes out to see if that sale comes again. I just don't remember the time the sale came out. Around here schools start up in August so our sales come out sooner than other peoples.

I am hoping to have a quiet but productive week. I have a handful of meals to make up, then I will be done. I still have cleaning to do, and am hoping to engage the girls in that more. This is supposed to be our last week of school, but I think Isa in particular will have a couple of more days of math to do.

Have a great day! And if you look over to that spinning baby it's on the number "30"!!! That means tomorrow it will be in the 20's!!!! And you know what comes then, the teens and then the single digits!!! WOW oh WOW!

A little more on our weekend

I just thought I would share this with you. Like I mentioned earlier I finished washing all the baby clothing, which consisted of copious amounts of gender neutral colors, but a handful of all of Jedidiah's boy clothing. I kept all the pink stuff in the boxes. But now I am wondering......hmmmm....is that wise? The other day we had the privilege of picking up a gentleman from the airport to drive him to our pastor's house. He is from Australia and is going to be moving his family to the USA. The incredible thing is that he is basing his decision on where to live on his final church choice. Pretty amazing! So we got to talking about a lot of things, one of which was just the normal, how many children, ages, etc. He asked first, so we told him we have 4 girls and 1 boy with another baby on the way, what we think is a boy, but do not know for sure. He told us he had the opposite, 4 boys and 1 girl, with another on the way, which they were sure was a girl....until they had an ultrasound which revealed that it was a boy! Uh, oh.....:-) His wife is due just a few days after I am, and their children are close in age to ours (the oldest being 9, with the rest going down by the odd numbers, ours on the even year plan at the moment :-) ) Now obviously I know this baby could be a girl, but I'm wondering if we need to be more prepared, with a few pink things washed. As if the baby is going to care what color they wear! Not to mention that although I really felt that our boys name was "it", I have been having feelings of doubt over it. I'm not sure why, it's not like I don't like the name. But all our babies names were just rolling in my head, I would say them over and over and it would just seem so "right", but this time that isn't happening. Hmmmmm.....I suppose I am making more of this than need be....by golly I have a whole post on it already! :-) Just thinking out loud I suppose.

We had church here at home as Flannery got the throat thing that Moira and Saoirse had two weeks ago, and what I am now assuming that Jedidiah had this past week when he kept grabbing his throat for a few days. Not being one to share *everything* we stayed home. I will be making up the lemon pie and then trying to keep the house from getting messy again before our guests arrive. Jeremiah will be bringing home some chicken fryers (he went to church, as he has to drive the Australian guest back to the airport) for our dinner. I have to make up the grocery list as tomorrow is shopping day. And let me tell you, we need to go shopping! Granted I have a freezer full of dinners, but I refuse to dig into those. I was totally shocked to go in and grab some more wheat from the 50# bag to find that we have very little left, with all the cooking I've been doing. The next order goes in for mid July and will get here early August. I won't be doing any cooking during those times, but I'm not sure if the grain I have left will last the next month. Some people from church go to this one store way up yonder where they carry 50# bags, and they take orders from everyone before they go. I'm hoping that they are going soon!

Ok, enough rambling....but just enough to say "shame, shame" to my sister if she read all this because she should really be packing right now :-) Hee, hee! Their family is moving across the country in like 4 days!!! On top of it she has two scrub tops to make......so she'll need prayers to get everything done quickly and patiently. And prayers for safety on their travels.

And to my lovely sister: I know antibiotics are for bacteria only.......but my hormones didn't care at that moment :-) I'm just going to pump my kids with that lovely garlic concoction I have. I don't know how I will get it into them! I'll have to have some bribe. With Jed, I can put it in his tube feeding. Trust me this stuff is Nasty (with the capitol "N").

Didn't hear an answer yet

Sorry to keep anyone hanging. Jeremiah did not hear back about a decision for the job. He did hear that it seemed to go well and the middle guy will be talking with their hiring person on Monday about it all. So a few more days till we hear any other news. The funny thing is that with the last job he was interviewing for he sent me an email that he got and he didn't think it sounded good, while I thought it sounded positive. But the job fell through. This time he feels the information he got about how this interview went is very good, I was thinking it was not. But he seems to know how these things work. Our pastor/elder's wife has this saying (she got it from some book) that he'll (the husband) do the thinking and she'll (the wife) do the cooking. Too funny, but I say AMEN! Ha, ha.

For all of those who were praying for Bethany, thank you. She is at home now recovering. She has a couple of bulging discs (ouch!). She can not do any lifting, bending, or pretty much anything right now. So continued prayers for a quick recovery would be wonderful. With a house of little ones we know that Mommy doesn't have any down time!

Please be in prayer for our health as well. No we are not sick. However we have been in contact with someone who was. When I found out this person was sick I just wanted to cry. I pretty much want to cry about everything when I get to the end of a pregnancy. Normally I would be bumming, and cautious about sickness, but right now I'm pretty much freaking out. Jedidiah has his well child visit on Monday and I'm ready to ask the doctor for an antibiotic....you know, just in case. No, I won't really ask for one, but I tell ya those hormones have a mind of their own! Just pray that we all stay healthy and free from any illness from now till ooooohhhhh, a year from now :-) I already had a newborn (Flannery at three days old) be exposed to sick children. She got sick a few days later and she was sick for NINE WEEKS!! Um, not fun. I really don't need a repeat of that! Jedidiah's cough has seemed to have gotten better. He still has one a bit, but now it's not all night long like before, just during the day a few times here and there. My concern of course is that it will turn and get worse. I've been faithful to give him his medicine, and I know it can take up to two weeks to heal from any damage that was done, which would be causing the cough.

We will be having Jeremiah's parents over tomorrow for father's day. I wish I had something really nice planned. But unless you think that a lemon meringue pie fills that criteria, well it will be pretty normal. It's been a while since I last made the lemon pie, and I am hoping it turns out really yummy.

The countdown is on....well I suppose it's been on since I first got preggers :-) But the last few weeks are when I need to start gathering and readying the birth supplies. I'm making up my grocery list, which should have the last of the things to get before the 36 week mark. I'll be 36 weeks on Thursday! We'll be in the home stretch! yahoo! I've started my herbal concoctions for wellness. I have a really "yummy" one for garlic I'm currently taking. Yummy is a joke of course. I have all the baby clothes washed. Next week I will get all the towels, washcloths and receiving blankets washed and put into bags. I have a few more meals to make. I am pretty happy with what I do have done, but I really want to make a couple of breakfast things. I have a ton of dinner stuff. I am hoping to get those meals done in the next two weeks. Then it will be just trying to keep up with the house work until Labor Day!

It's almost time for bed. We had a long day and I'm pooped. I forgot to tell you all that we had run out of gas today. Thankfully we were at an exit already, and the exit was down hill AND the light turned green right when we needed so that we were able to coast into the gas station. Ahhh.....memories in the making! Good night all!

Taking a break

from sorting clothing that is.....lots and LOTS of clothing. I did say LOTS, didn't I? Just wanted to be sure :-) I have to say I wasn't smiling this morning. I was on the verge of tears really. Hormones for sure. After spending almost 5 hours sorting out all the clothing I was ready to toss it all and start from scratch. Not to mention that although my work yielded organized boxes (and bags) of clothing, it did not yield any actual usable clothing for the girls for this summer. How is that possible. I mean Saoirse is 4, ,and we've had 3 other four year olds. So surely we would have a bag/box of four year summer clothes. Um, nope! And the same with Flannery, we've already had two 6 year olds. But there is NO 6 year old summer clothing! I was not surprised that Moira didn't have any, although I know Isabella must have worn something when she was 8. Of course Isabella, being the oldest wouldn't have anything handed down. I plan on cutting the long sleeves off of some of Moira's winter jersey dresses to give her something to wear. Then it's "off" to ebay for everything else!

We are hoping to hear about a job interview Jeremiah had the other day. We are supposed to hear by close of business today. It sounds positive so far. You can be sure I'll put up an extra special post later today about it.

Well off to do more clothing. Now that the boxes and bags are done I have to go through all of their current clothing in the closets and drawers to put up this past winters clothing. I feel like I have clothing coming out of my ears!!! I will be so HAPPY when this is done. I won't want to touch another piece of clothing for a long time :-) As a side note, I am 35 weeks preggers today (or possibly 37 weeks). Only one more week till we are assuredly in the clear! Yeah!

We have been adopted!

By a cat! We get rid of puppies only to have a cat show up a few days later. I actually dont' mind. After our little mouse guest below our kitchen sink, I was thinking about our last cat, Spot. I was thinking it would be nice to have a mouser around. And low and behold up he, Morris (that's what we named him) comes, meowing. He is extremely friendly. So friendly that I am sure it would be the right thing to do to look in the lost pet adds. He's been hanging right here on the front porch. I woke up to be greeted by him looking into the living room window meowing at me incessantly. We are feeding him, so I suppose he's sticking around for some chow. But he just LOVES all the attention the girls are lavishing on him. He tries to come inside if they open the door, making me believe he may have been an indoor cat. I can really imagine he would be a "lap" cat. I really think this cat would just hang out on who evers lap that was sitting at the moment! BUT I prefer animals to be outside.....I really don't want a litter box. We already have one of those for the indoor ferret, I don't need two stinky boxes :-)

I know I don't have a lot of readers here, but whoever does stop by if you could pray for my online blogger friend, Bethany. I had just read on her blog that she was being taken to the hospital for severe back pain. She has four young children, and her husband is staying home to take care of them. I am sure this can be a scary time for all, so pray that they each would have peace and that her pain would be able to be managed. Thank you!

Can we say, "Twenty Pounds?"

YES, it has FINALLY happened! I put Jedidiah on the scale this morning and there it was in all of its glory.....20 0.0 The "0.0" is where the ounces go, but he was just 20 flat. Now as exciting as that was it was still not great. Only because that means he has gained a meager 2.5 ounces in two weeks or so. BUT at least he is gaining, and not remaining static, or losing. I just wish the gaining would be quicker. I called one alternative doctor, but she no longer comes to this area. I have another one to call, hopefully today or on Monday. Jedidiah has his two year check up coming up on the 16th. I am hoping to get some insight into his new brown patch that I noticed on the back of his hand this past weekend. When he had visits with the neurologists they kept asking me if he had any white or brown patches on him. At the time he didn't have any type of patches. Then.....Sunday I see it. It takes up about a third of the back of his hand, but it is very light. Not something anyone else would probably notice just hanging out with us. But non the less I called about it and they want to see him. The soonest appointment is July 18th. It looks like Jeremiah will be taking him for that appointment! I personally do not plan on having this baby late, and this baby is due July 17th. I am personally planning on having a newborn in my arms by then :-) As if I had control over these things :-) Anyways, his two year check up comes much sooner and I am hoping our family doctor will be able to tell me if this is something really to worry about. We will still be keeping the neuro appointment, just to be sure of things, but I am hoping to hear something much sooner than 6 weeks.

I have Isabella's dress almost done, just have the hem and the buttons to do. But I still have to cut and sew the pinafore. I should be able to get it all done tonight. The only thing I don't think I will be able for her to have for tomorrow is the bonnet. There are only so many hours in the day. And lets just say I borrowed some of today's hours last night to get as much done as I did. While the girls are at the first gathering of the retreat tonight Jedidiah and I will go out for some special time and to get some buttons for the dress. I am looking forward to hopefully getting a camera sometime soon and can't wait to take pictures of Isabella in her dress. She picked out the material and it came out really nice.

Have a great day!

Just popping in

I am still alive. I have been VERY busy. VERY! I have really cut back on my computer time and have been focusing on the ton of work here at hand. The past few days I have had the girls do school, just their workbook stuff. I'm trying to keep up on everyday cleaning. I have made many meals for the freezer for after the baby. We have had prayer meeting, grocery shopping, milk pick up and for today a field trip. The trip will be to a friends house who is having a police officer and his canine come and demonstrate the importance of obedience. The girls are very excited about it! For the past couple of days we have also had two extra residence with us. Two very messy and sometimes noisy (think 3 AM) residence. Puppies. But they should be gone by today, much to my joy. Don't get me wrong they are cute and all, but from the above work that I have been doing I certainly do not have the time. Now for the actual work of puppy care I have not had to do *anything*. Isabella and Moira have been doing it all, much to their delight. However taking puppies to the potty takes forever. Not to mention that we have two other girls who want to go out with them, who leave doors open for Jedidiah to follow out. So I am on door alert constantly. Animal control should be here sometime today to pick them up. Then life can get back to its normal hectic schedule :-)

Oh and the girls are going to a father daughter retreat this Friday and Saturday. Isabella is hoping that I will finish her prairie dress before then. I am thinking God will need to give me supernatural powers to do that, but I will try. I got the dress parts cut out. I will try to sew those tonight. Then tomorrow I will need to get the pinafore done. That way she will have it for Saturday to wear.

Well off to put make some bread, then our breakfast of scrambled eggs. Then get everyone dressed and ready for the field trip. Have a great day!