A Bit of a Rough Week

Well, this past week and a half have been VERY mentally and physically exhausting. My grandma's year and a half battle with two different kinds of Leukemia is taking it's toll on her poor body. She has been in ICU for over a week now and had to have a major surgery. This woman continues to amaze me. She has fought this nasty cancer, been taking Chemo, constant blood and platelet transfusions for a year and a half, with rarely a complaint. She's now been lying in a hospital bed, with a 14 inch long incision up her belly, for a week and a half, and is still in good spirits. She just puts a smile on my face. It is so very hard to see her body finally showing her struggle with this disease.

Our whole family has really been able to work together to keep someone with grandpa. He's another story. We went out and stayed with him last weekend, helping with laundry and yard work. He's very self-sufficient, but he needs to be watched with his diabetes. Grandma has kept his diabetes in check for the past 40 years, but with her not around, it seems to be all over the place. He had a low, while we were there. While I was walking him to the dinner table, his legs just started giving out on him. I tried to brace him, but we pretty much fell to the floor. I pulled a muscle in my leg, trying to catch him. It was a pretty pitiful sight. Quite a scarey experience though. I think I was shaking more than grandpa.

So, it's been a week of ups and downs, lots of emotions, and lots of long trips to the hospital and out to their house. My poor sick husband hasn't gotten too much pampering. The rest of us are fighting really hard to not get any sicker too.

Well, I just wanted to share some thoughts that have been weighing heavily this week. Now this weekend we are spending setting up and working at the carnival fundraiser at Caitlin's school. I'm SO ready to have a weekend to just lay around and do nothing. I'm TIRED!!!

A Relaxing President's Day

What a nice day! Caleb and Caitlin went over to Oma and Opa's, Sunday night, for a much awaited sleep over. They got to go to build-a-bear workshop for belated birthday presents. They had an absolulte blast. And I enjoyed 24 hours to myself. I love my kids dearly, but once a year, it's great to have some time alone. It's so different though, to just be able to do whatever, whenever. Ryan was working for half the time. So, the house was QUIET. I think I had forgotten what that sounded like! It was also great to have everything in it's place and have it stay that way, even if it was only for 24 hours. I'll take what I can get! :) Now we're back to the chaos of the week, but boy was it a nice 3 day weekend!

Their new buddies!

Caleb had to try Caitlin's pirate outfit on.

Wiley thought that their houses were pretty cool! Just the right size!

My Favorite Blogging Tools...So Far!

Okay, I have to take a minute to thank Paige for sharing all of her helpful blogging tips and share them with all of you. I hope that you enjoy them as much as I have.

1) My favorite tool is Google Reader.
You enter in all the blogs that you like to check out. It shows you when they are updated. I had to update my windows explorer to the 7.0 version, so that I could have it on one of the tabs at the top. Then it shows me a number there, when anybody updates. Then, whenever I'm on the internet I can see when there's something new, without having to check anything. This has been wonderful, but then I don't have an excuse to sit down and go through my list of blogs to see if there is anything new, when I get bored(or just don't want to do what I SHOULD be doing.) I'm getting use to it now and I love it! I must admit, for a while I still had to check them to make sure it wasn't missing anything! :)

2) Next is cute blog layouts.
I think that these are really cute. I LOVE how easy they are to use. I looked and looked at other sites for a new layout. I never really found anything and when I tried one, it wiped out all of the stuff I had on the side. I love that these ones leave everything, but the background alone!

3) Last is Stat Counter.
I think this is pretty interesting. After you set up a free account and go through a few steps, and add the HTML code to your blog, it starts collecting info. It shows the IP address and aproximately where they are located, where they came to your page from and a whole bunch of other information. Of course it's not TOTALLY acurate with servers located all over the place, but it gives you an idea. It's kind of fun to log in and look at. Being the nosey person I am, I love it.

Valentine's Day Festivities

Well, we had a good Valentine's Day. It wasn't the most romantic one for Ryan and me, since we only saw a glimpse of each other before we both headed off to work. I tried REALLY hard to stay up for him, but I'm pathetic, by the end of the week. I was out. Oh well, the kids and I had fun.

Checking out all his goodies from his preschool party.

Caitlin's prince charming. ;)

Trying out the new race track. Yes, another one!

Opening "Valentines" with Nana and Papa.

Caitlin has started a tradition with Papa. She cons him into going Valentine shopping for everyone with HIS money. Man, she has some papa! She picked out presents for everyone, including the turtles, cats, and dog. She's really got him wrapped around her little finger! She had lots of fun with the whole thing though.

Caleb loved his snake and new car.

He even got a new race track.

Caitlin had WAY too much fun with her SpongeBob whoopie cushion, until she jumped on it and it popped. Shucks!

Posing with her beautifully sprinkled cake.

I don't know when Valentine's day turned into a mini Christmas. I guess that's what you get with a nana and papa around to spoil you!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 17 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

There are 215,450 people in the U.S. with the first name Jill.
Statistically the 298th most popular first name.
There are 24,276 people in the U.S. with the last name Browne.
Statistically the 1454th most popular last name.

There were only 6 of me, with my maiden name Hannan. And only 3 of both the kids. I guess they have fairly original names. Who'd have thought!

I thought that this was kind of fun to play around with. Caitlin thought that it was absolutely hilarious. We, of course, had to try all the names in the family. And Nana was the one and only. Caitlin says "Wow, there is only one of her, and I know her!" She thought that was REALLY cool! What a hoot! Thanks for sharing, Paige!

Book Tag

I was tagged by Paige. This tag is a little different from any I have seen, but it's kind of fun to see what people are reading.
Here's how it works:
1. Pick up the nearest book (one of at least 123 pages)
2. Open the page to 123
3. Find the 5th sentence.
4. Post the next 3 sentences
5. Tag 5 people.

The closest book to me, right now, is Supernanny, How to Get the Best from Your Children. What can I say, I kind of enjoy watching the show sometimes. I think that she has some good pointers sometimes, and mostly, the kids on the show usually make me feel like mine are pretty well behaved. ;) It's pretty good so far.(I'm only half through it.) Hey, I'll take any advice I can get on making parenting, my strong willed, non-listening daughter and short tempered 4 year old, a little easier.
Anyway...


"Later on, if your child acts up at mealtimes or rejects the food you have given her, you're bound to find it difficult to be patient and objective. Feeding children is an emotional issue right from the start. By setting routines, rules and boundaries, you can begin to take the emotional heat out of the situation so that mealtimes become something to enjoy again."

Okay, I tag Mom, Stefanie, Lyndsey, Annie, and Tanya.

Mud Puddles

After a lot of begging, I told the kids they could play in the puddles, as long as they didn't get drenched from head to toe. They walked around a little, then I went to play fetch with the dog for a few minutes. THIS is what I came back to!!! By the way, Caleb was fully clothed, when I left them.

Who's wild child is that!?!

Caitlin wasn't much better. After I saw that, I made the mistake of saying "Go for it, I don't care." That was all Caitlin needed, before she plopped down and was pretending to swim in it!!! Brrrrr! Actually it wasn't too bad, 55 degrees today. It by no means seemed warm enough to me though. Crazy kids!!!

This week just keeps getting better!

Well, another interesting day to add to my week. We had a strong wind storm come through early this morning. It caused a major power outage around the preschool. So, you guessed it, no power this morning. We only have one main room down their that has enough windows, so we could see. So, it turned into a mad house with 4 classes in one area. The power came back on about 45 minutes into class, but starting a day off in such a chaotic, unorganized way just never really corrects itself. What a crazy day! My preschoolers thought that it was GREAT though. What fun to have school in the dark! They're so funny!
My goodness, thank heavens it's almost Friday!!! I'm ready to get back into a normal schedule! I sure hope we have an early spring!

Crazy Hair Day

Today I had crazy hair day at school. Caleb joined me with a crazy do. He was so funny with his mohalk! He walked around so carefully all morning, like it might fall of his head. What a nut!

An Interesting Week

Well, it's been an interesting week already and it's only Tuesday! It's gotta be Friday by now! Monday morning I got up for work at the usual 5:45, checked online to see if school was on time(since we've been closed for so many silly days recently), it just said there were a few buses on snow routes. So, I went ahead and got ready for work, got the kids ready and in the car. Then thought that I better check online, one more time, just in case. Wouldn't ya know it, classes for me were canceled. I was so annoyed! It was a little frosty out, but come on! I'm getting so frustrated! So, I protested and went to school anyway, hoping some of my students wouldn't have seen the update and shown up too. But oh no, I guess all my kid's moms are a little more on the ball than I am. Oh well, I got a lot of work done anyway.

Then last night I got a call from one of the other teachers needing a sub for today. Ryan had to work. So, Caleb was stuck with me for the day. It was a LONG day for him(teacher Debbie actually works a full day). So, we were both exhausted, by the time school was out. I have decided I've become quite spoiled with my 3 half days of work. It's pretty pathetic that I can't even work a 6 hour day, without being completely exhausted!

And Ryan has a meeting in the morning. So, poor Caleb has to go back, in the morning with me, to join my class. I'm not use to getting us ALL out of the house by 7:30, every day. I'm ready for FRIDAY!

More Snowy Fun

My sore muscles cringed, at the thought of making a snowman today. So, I was a horrible mother, and sent Caitlin out to make a snowman by herself. Of course, one wasn't enough. She had to make a whole snowman family and dog. She's so creative. I love to see what she comes up with. I thought that she did a great job all by herself. And I enjoyed watching from the warmth of inside! :)

The final product. The middle one tumbled over in her process. So, she's a little worse for wear!

Snow Again!?!

Happy Groundhog Day...six more weeks of winter it is! Yes, we woke up to snow again this morning. There was actually enough to play in this time. We were out there for almost 4 hours! The longer we stayed, the more snow we got. We ended up with about 4 inches.

Here's Caitlin's snowman head, on my car!

My snow cuties!

He made snow angel after snow angel. What a face!

Caitlin did a great job pulling her brother.

It was great, until they both wanted a ride. I got my workout!

Caitlin made a snow bed.

Catching a few flakes!

Caitlin's snow fort.

I have realized why I like it so much when Ryan is home on snow days. As I sit here typing, every muscle in my body is either sore, pulled, or strained. I broke a blood vessel in my hand, while pounding the snow in, so, it's all swollen and bruised. I am one pathetic, severly out of shape woman!!! I hope the snow is melted by morning!

Caleb Is Trouble!

Caleb has been full of trouble this week. I don't know if he's going a little stir crazy, or what. All I know is I hope it passes!!!

He thought that Wiley would enjoy some milk and cookies too. (I'm sure you all have a look of disgust on your face right now...no the cat is not usually allowed on the table!)

I left the room, while Caitlin was working on her Valentine's. this is what I came back to. "Now he has a valentine's day shirt," he tells me.

Then, today, he was ready to come in from playing in the snow, but Caitlin pleaded for me to stay out. I got him set up with his video game and cozy clothes. Came back to sprinkles and powdered sugar ALL over the floor. What a pill!

We stayed home for 2 more snow days this week. This time we actually had snow on the ground...wasn't much, but at least it almost covered the ground. The kids still had a blast playing with Nana in the snow.

Caitlin...being Caitlin.

Catching a few morning flakes.

Nana got in on the action too!