Croup

Ariel got up from her nap on Saturday and sounded horrible. I quickly grabbed a snack for her and a drink, fixed her nap hair and went to the Redi Clinic in Wal-Mart in Pleasant Grove. The Dr. said that she has croup and bronhcialitis. She gave Ariel antibiotics and a steroid. I have opted out on the steroid, she seems to be doing better without it. She feels fine but just has a horrible cough that sounds like a seal barking and she also has weezing. We are on the way to being healed. Poor thing!

I am going to clean my house today...well attempt to anyway since I have both kids in the house. I thought about putting the tree up but wasn't sure if it was still too early. I will be fairly busy next week with Christmas Dinner Theater so I think I may try to get it up this week. Ariel and Caleb are really excited about getting the decorations out!

Breakin out the Humidifier

Ariel woke up yesterday with a horrible cough. She sounds like a dog barking when she coughs...it's terrible. She has been feeling fine rather than that and has run a very low temp...like 99.3 low. So I am not sure what is going on with her. Last night before bed, I gave her some Triamic cough and some Motrin and then put peppermint essential oil on the bottom of her feet and on her chest. Then I got the humidifier from the top of her closet and put some peppermint oil in it as well. It smelled SO good in her room last night! Dan called her his little peppermint!

She slept great through the night. She has been doing this odd thing though. She will get up in the middle of the night and go and lay down in the hallway. She doesn't really make any noise, I only know she is doing it because her bear has a rattle in it that I can hear. She has even fallen asleep once when she did that, and we weren't sure how long she had been asleep! It's weird! Anyway, she did that once last night and that was all, and woke up this morning sounding a little better. I hope she is better by in the morning because Dan and I are supposed to work childcare in the morning.

Dan and I are dancing in the Christmas Dinner Theater this year. We have had multi practices every saturday morning for the past three weeks. My mom has been watching the kids for us, it has been nice to have some time with Dan in a different way...we don't dance together at all so this is a treat! Today we actually did the practice on stage and I felt lost most of the time. I only hope and pray that I can get it down by the 8th...which is opening night!

My mom and I went to Linens and Things to see about their going out of business sale. I would have figured that there would have been more on clearance but they only had 20% off most of their items. My mom bought me a set of Queen size egyptian cotton sateen 540 count sheets with two bonus pillowcases for $54.00...I thought that was an incredible deal! I won't be able to sleep on them until after christmas since that was my christmas gift from her but I am still excited about it!! It will make getting out of the bed at 5:45 to go to the gym even harder once the first of the year comes around!

Dan and I borrowed Casey and William Lewallen's Wii last night...I am feeling it call my name so I think I am going to go play some Mario Kart! Thanks Casey for letting us borrow it!

WE'RE DEBT FREE!!

Dan and I payed our last credit card about a week ago. We are now 100% debt free...except for the house! In celebration of that we went to Branson just the two of us last weekend and stayed Thrusday and Friday night in the Hilton. We had nice dinners and adult conversations that weren't interrupted by the kids. We shopped all day on Friday...I mean from 10:00 until 7:00 and got Dan tons of new clothes. He had been saving up all of his cash from the pizza delivery in order to buy some clothes that he desperately needed.

We have also splurged and got these items as well:

-A new desktop computer for me at the house, with a 19" LCD screen
-Two new home phones (they even have a "jingle bells" ring on them for Christmas!)
-A new router for networking our laptop and desktop...and...my favorite item that I just ordered today......

-A new camera!!! I am SOOOOOOO excited about this camera! It is a Nikon D60 (Perfect for a beginner like myself!) and it comes with two lenses (they range from 20-300mm) and a 2G memory card. I should get it before Thanksgiving so that I can mess around with it the whole time we are in Harrison.

I feel so spoiled! We never get to splurge on these kind of items but Dan did inform me that these were our Christmas presents...for the next 5 years!! He was kidding but after these purchases we won't be getting anything else.

On another note...While Ariel was at her Granny's this last weekend when Dan and I went to Branson, she started seriously potty training her. Ariel has done TERRIFIC!!!! She goes almost everytime I sit her on the potty (about every 45 min.) and is now telling me when she needs to go! She has a dry pull-up all day long (except for nap). I was even up at the church all day on Monday and Tuesday getting ready for Christmas Dinner Theater and she was in childcare and we left there with dry pants!!! I am so proud of her! She is still uncomfortable with going #2 and has cried both times she has gone on the potty but I am not going to force her at all.

I am staying pretty busy with Christmas cards. The money I make from the cards is going to pay for the kids gifts this year (that and Dan's money from the pizza delivery...which by the way he is still doing on Saturday nights). Ok hopefully I can keep blogging from now on...I know I will at least be posting a ton of pics when I get my camera!

Halloween Cookies

Caleb and I made Halloween Cookies one day after school. They were my first homemade batch of sugar cookies. I think I prefer the slice and bake myself but they sure did look pretty!

Costume Parade

Caleb had a Costume Parade at school the day befor Halloween. He had a great time marching around the school with his friends showing off his costume!

Caleb (the martian) and Abbie (Snow White)...they are good friends at school...she is so tall and she is only a few months older than Caleb!

The whole class! Ike and Nate are twins and I can't ever tell them apart but they were Percy and Thomas the train, Finley was Spiderman, Caden was Wolverine, Caleb of course was a Martian, Sarah was a Bentonville Tigers Cheerleader, Abbie was Snow White, and Denashi (sp?) was Cinderella!

Caleb and his teacher Miss Melanie.

Pumpkin Carving

Meet Jack!

Shew!
Digging the guts out!

Her face says it all!

The Tuesday before Halloween, we all decorated our pumpkin that we got from the pumpkin patch. His name was Jack and he sat on our dining room table for few days so that the kids could actually look at it more than they would if it were out on the door step.

Our Anniversary Pictures

On our anniversary, Dan and I took the kids to Cooper Chapel where we exchanged wedding vows 7 years ago. When we drove up, we noticed that there were 3 or 4 white cargo vans from Iowa State. We weren't sure if it was ok to walk up to the chapel or not be we decided to at least get out and check it out anyway. As we got closer to the chapel there were college students all sitting on the ground with sketch books in their laps. Some of them even had their cameras out and they were taking pictures of the outside of the chapel. There was a sidewalk that went off and around the chapel so we thought that we would take it instead of intruding on the students. I said to Dan as we were going off the main sidewalk, "They must be design students." Dan and I should know what a design student looks like since we were both in design school for four plus years! Before we got off the main sidewalk, we were stopped by the main professor that told us that we would not intrude on them if we wanted to go inside. I asked him if they were design students and he said that they were Landscape Architect Students from Iowa State. Of course that is when Dan chimed in and told the professor that he was a graduated from the U of A with Landscape Architecture and that he was starting his own business...and yada yada.

Dan and I thought that it was pretty ironic that there would be design students at one of our favorite places in Arkansas, and on the day that we were married. It was obviously pretty special to the professor too because as we were going into the chapel, he introduced us to his 40 plus students that were in there. He told them that we were married in the chapel 7 years ago that day and were there to show our two kids where it all started!