Birthday/Wedding/Sickness

Hailey is now starting to get the hang of going to school.  I think she's enjoying it, but it's still pretty hard to get out of her what they do for 3 hours every day.  Thankfully the teacher has a newsletter that summarizes what they are doing every couple of weeks.  She brought home a monthly homework assignment that we have to help her complete.  It's a "journal" where she has to draw four detailed pictures of specific topics.  We completed one of them today, the topic being something that has made her laugh.  She also had another assignment of decorating an apple to hang at school.  We had fun doing that today as well.

We celebrated my youngest sister's birthday on Wednesday evening at my parents' house.  Her actual birthday was on Friday, but her brother-in-law was getting married on Saturday and she and her husband had the rehearsal to attend that night.  My parents, siblings, Brian, Hailey, Clara, and I were invited to the wedding, so we got all dressed up and headed over to the church, which was in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Hailey had complained of a "foreheadache" as she calls them throughout the day, so we had given her two doses of Advil by the time we left.  After the wedding was over, she was complaining again of a headache, but it was too soon to give her another dose of Advil.  We got to the reception and it was just downhill from there.  We managed to get through the appetizers and salad (she ate just a few pieces of fruit...one of her favorite foods...and didn't want to touch the bread...another favorite) before she was sitting in Brian's lap with half-closed eyes saying she just didn't feel well.  We ended up going home, taking her temperature (which was 100.7), putting her pajamas on and putting her to bed.  We checked on her periodically through the night, but she slept straight through (we're waiting on her to teach her younger sister how to do the same thing) and woke me up out of a deep sleep at 7 am saying, "Mommy, Mommy, it's morning time."  We checked her temperature then and it was 99.7.  A couple hours later, 97.8.  It did rise again in the afternoon to 99.5, but never got back over 100.  So, she should be good for school tomorrow if everything remains the same.

We had plans to go to church in the morning, because they were starting their first week of the "school year" for the church and we wanted to figure out if she had a new room to go to.  We also then had plans to attend a Bears football party at a friend's house after church, but we weren't able to do that either.  Darn sick season!  We were really looking forward to both!  Instead, we did some outdoor work...the weather was beautiful, low 70's and sunny...baked some chocolate chip cookies, watched the football game, and worked on Hailey's homework.  It was a good family day!

 Clara tolerates a lot of what Hailey does to her, because she loves the attention.  So Clara thought this was pretty neat.  These are car seat toys that Hailey has strapped around Clara's arms.

 

Hailey was cold on Friday and decided Clara must be, too.  So, since she couldn't find Clara's jacket, she put her own jacket on her.

 The one pumpkin is getting much bigger.  Brian put a small (fake) grape next to it to give you some perspective.

 

Where there are Cheerios, you can find three little girls.

 

Daddy and his girls.

 

Brian helps Hailey with her journal assignment.  They are practicing drawing a grasshopper before drawing it on the actual journal page.

 

Working on decorating her apple.

 

The finished product.  Our worm in the middle didn't turn out like we wanted it to, but oh well!

 

Brian fixed up tonight's dinner...a recipe from one of our cookbooks...one of the best things about the meal was that 90% of it came from our garden.  Tomatoes, summer squash, zucchini, red bell pepper, and basil.  The only two things purchased from the store were the chicken and onion.  It was delicious!

 

Clara loved the meal, too.  She no longer wants to eat the processed baby food and has graduated on to regular food.  There's actually not much she doesn't like and we're hoping it stays that way!