One more thought

Loves her DAD too!!!

Weekly thoughts

Two days of alcohol and drug videos is BORING!
8th graders have their own special version of senioritize.
Two year old need naps.
Lynlee and Rylan crying all evening is frustrating.
Lynlee not wanting to wash her hair is even more frustrating.
This all together apparently makes 'mommy scary' according to Lynlee.
She got over it!
The two year old got a nap the next day and no more scary mommy.
Planning lots of fundraisers for the 3 Day Breast Cancer Walk right before you won't be at school for awhile is not a good idea.
Happy to have great co-teachers who help out a lot!
Thankful for all the students who donated on Friday.
PHA is no fun! Glad its over for the year.
Thankful for a husband who gets up in the morning and does the dishes and packs the girls for school.
Sad Rylan didn't pass her hearing test again.
Not too worries since she can hear out of one ear.
Ready to get the next test done.
Thinks its really funny when Ry covers her ears when Lynlee is crying and she is trying to sleep.
Thinks its funny when Lynlee covers her ears when Ry is talking in the morning.
Loves her MOM!!!
Hates it when she forgets appointments and is late to them.
Is really excited to paint her classroom purple.
Wants to try to have exercise balls instead of chairs in her classroom next year.
Loves it when Lynlee sings her ABC's.
Is thankful for her prayer group.
Go see www.blackrockphoto.com
How does it go from 90 on day to 70 the next?
Humidity sucks.
Is so blessed to have the two cutest little girls ever.
Only $500 to go to get to walk and $700 to reach my goal!
Thank you to everyone who donated.

Well there it is in a nutshell. Hope everyone else is doing great!

TGIF!!

Thank goodness its Friday! This week has been at least 20 days. I'm not sure how, but I know it has been that long. Let's start with Monday. Aaron and I both woke up late which lead me to walking into school at 8:25. School starts at 8:30. Not exactly a lot of time to get ready for the kiddos. Luckily, I have the two most awesome co-teachers to work with who covered for me till I could get my head on straight. Now what made the rest of the day so long you ask? Jeopardy!! 7 times with huge groups of 8th graders who have their own special version of 'senioritize'. Its so fun! Sense the sarcasm. Well I did make it through Monday without killing any 8th graders so I figure it was a good day. The afternoon flew by way to quickly with the girls and Aaron got home from baseball practice right before I was about to put Lynlee to bed. So he kindly took over and I went to run. I opted for running around the neighborhood that night instead of going to the gym. Note to self, when running my neighborhood, it is best to do the big hill at the beginning of the run and not the end of it! So I eventually did make it back home and wanted to crash, but I got myself up and went to tan and then went to my girls prayer group. I have been so blessed to have the church family here. They are such a special group of girls and they will never know how much I appreciate each and every one of them. So I finally made it to bed around 11 that night. Let me mention that my typical bed time is around 8:30 maybe 9 if I'm feeling like I could steal a few minutes the next morning before I have to get up and start all over.

So Tuesday rolls around and I'm exhausted from staying up late. For those of you who are not in tune with the education world, we had TAKS testing this week. It is the worst test in the world, and puts way to much pressure on the kiddos and the teachers. At any rate, we have the science and history test looming over our heads until Thursday and Friday. So the 8th grade teachers thought it would be a good idea to do a TAKS Camp for the kids on Tuesday and Wednesday. Good idea, bad idea! Good idea for the kids to get a refresher right before this test. Bad idea to not give ourselves any break for 4 days straight! So Tuesday was history day. Fun stuff! My classroom had a matching game. The kids liked it for the most part. And once again, I didn't kill any 8th graders so not a bad day. I had to stay after school that day to get some work done so Aaron went to pick up the girls and he brought them up to school. Reminder to self, not a good idea to bring two kids under the age of 3 up to school in the afternoon when they are both getting tired. That just equals cranky little girls for the evening. That evening is when I heard the term Swine Flu for the first time on the news. I'm still not sure if I should be worried about this or not, but it seems to be hitting a little closer to home than I would like. In the days that follow a district about 25 miles away shut down their schools and all of Ft. Worth shut down their schools. Like I said a little too close to home. There were rumors at one point that all of Texas was going to stop school for a week. Unfortunately that isn't the case yet. I would have loved the break! So back to Tuesday. Aaron is starting up his photography business, Blackrock Photography, and we stayed up way to late working on the business end for it. But I am so excited for him, and the possibilities that come with it. He has a great eye for it and does a great job. But he needs to let me go to bed earlier.

Wednesday, dooms day. Wednesday was the science TAKS camp day. So I had to make sure I was there plenty early to make sure everything was ready and I was available to answer any questions the other teachers might have about their assignments. I actually got to work the earliest I think I have been all year. Me and the other science teachers got everyone else ready to go for the day and it began. In my classroom, we made lava lamps. The kids really enjoyed it, I just hope they got more out of it than just making the lamps. I guess we won't know until we get our results back in a couple weeks. So there was day two of my 4 no rest days. I literally had kids all day except for lunch, which didn't seem that long either of those days. I picked the girls up from school and we went home and hung out with Aaron since they cancelled baseball practice that day. Want to know why? Well all of Texas did postpone all athletic and extra-curricular activities till after May 11th. This means they won't even play their first play-off game till probably May 21st. The good part about all of that is he doesn't have to go do spring football, which would have been even worse.

Thursday... Science TAKS day. I know you are all thinking, whats the big deal. Well the big deal is that our school had such low scores last year, it isn't even really acceptable. We had to file for a waiver this year to be considered acceptable and it was because of the science scores. So this year it really means a lot to have better scores. In fact that is how I even got my job. So it really means a lot for our scores to go up this year. So during TAKS, the teacher gets to do nothing, and I mean NOTHING, the whole time the students test. Oh, except we are required to just walk around the whole time. Let me tell you, this is not fun! In fact, it is down right boring. So really that also gets us to today. Same song different verse. Boring morning while the kids took their test. Long afternoon at the doctor's office. Good news, no infection for Ry. This evening has been good. Me and the girls got home a little earlier than normal, thanks to Ry having to go to the doctor, so we took advantage and played hard. Both girls pretty much crashed when it was their bed time, and I'm not far behind them.

Busy Day

So we had a busy day today. We got up around 5, after a night with both girls up for the majority of it, and took Ry up to Cooks Children's Hospital for her tubes in her ears. Everything went great, but we found out she had a pretty bad infection in her left ear. Go figure. That would explain why she didn't sleep the night before. She must have such a high pain tolerance! The doctor said she probably had it for a while! They cleared out all the fluid and got the tubes put in. It was so fast. We sat down and not 5 minutes later the doctor was out talking to us. Ry woke up pretty fussy, but after about 15 minutes she was back to herself. Aaron and I ran some errands after we left the hospital and Ry slept most of the afternoon. We then went to the urologist. I am a little disappointed though because I was hoping for an answer and all we got where options. He wasn't really able to tell us what we should do. So here are the options given and what we think we will do for now. Option 1... take Ry off the antibiotics and wait to see what happens. She could heal herself and have nothing else ever happen. No infections, no scarring of the kidney's or any other side effects. Option 2... leave Ry on the antibiotics and see what happens. He said that with or without the antibiotics you get about a 60% chance of her body healing itself. Option 3... do an endoscopic surgery. It is an outpatient surgery and takes about 15 minutes. She would be good to go that afternoon. He goes in and basically applies glue to the ureters and bladder. It is 80-90% successful. If it was successful, it would be done and over with. No follow ups, no long term effects. And option 4... open surgery when they would actually cut into her and repair the ureter. This would require her to be in the hospital for 1 or 2 days and would leave a scare, but it is 98% successful. He said we could choose any option and could always change our mind later and try something else. We have opted to take her off the antibiotics and just wait to see what happens. As of right now, we will go back in a year and reevaluate where her reflux is. We have decided to really just put this in God's hands. With prayers we have faith that we can avoid surgery, and also any more infections. So we will keep praying and give her time. I was disappointed that we didn't get a definative direction in treatment, but this does allow for time for Ry to grow and let her body to its thing. Now all of that being said, if she does get another infection in the next year, we will probably ask for the doctor to do the open surgery. We just feel that if we are going to do surgery, we should do the one with the highest percent chance of success. I hope this answers any questions yall might have about how we are treating the reflux and the possible outcomes.

Funny Lynlee Story

Ok, so lately it has been all about Rylan and I wanted to let everyone know what Lynlee has been up to. This week we have really been trying to get her to tell us what color things are. She likes to tell us everything is blue even though she knows what color things are. So we were riding to school one morning and we were going over what color the grass, trees, sky, sun, and so forth were. She got most of them right and I kept telling her 'Good job Lynlee'. So that afternoon when I picked the girls up I asked her again about her colors. She told me that everything was blue. So told her that the grass was green, the trees were green, the sky was blue, and the sun was yellow. She looked at me and proceded to tell me 'Good job Mommy!' I laughed the rest of the way home. She is at such a fun age right now. And so smart. The bad thing is that she is smart enough to get into trouble! I can't say for certain, but it would appear that she or a friend of hers has taken a pair of scissors to the very top of her head. She has this one little part of her hair that just sticks straight up right now and is very short! Oh well, we will just have to put a bow there.

Quick Ry update

Not much new news on Rylan and her reflux. We are pretty much stuck with the May 12th appointment with the urologist. I will continue to call to see if they have any cancellations, but if not that ok. We can wait. I did get clarity on the grade of her reflux. I believe she has a grade 3 on one side and a grade 4 on the other side. At lest that is what I deducted from talking to the nurse. They aren't always the most knowledgeable. Ry did start her daily antibiotics this week. She isn't a big fan of it. I did have a talk with a friend who is pharmasist and she said the the antibiotic that Ry is on won't make it so that she becomes immune to anitibiotics. She said it is one she could stay on for years without it hurting her immune system. That was a relief to hear. I was really worried that this could keep her from responding in the future to antibiotics if needed. For those of you who want more info on exactly what the reflux is and possilbe outcomes or treatments, here is a great link to read all about it.

http://www.urologychannel.com/pediatric/vur.shtml

Weekly update

Alright. So our week was pretty good as a whole. It had its good moments and some not so great moments, but overall, not bad. I started my week off with a stomach bug. Never a good thing to have when you have no more days to miss work! Luckily I have a great principal who understands. So I stayed home Monday and got myself feeling better. I was sad that I missed our ladies prayer meeting Monday night. Next week I'll make it. I've been trying to pray more lately. The last couple weeks in our church class the guy who has been teaching has challenged us to start praying out loud. Sounds simple enough, right? Not so! It is very uncomfortable at first. But once you get over that its great. I really helps you get your mind on exactly what you are praying about. Of course with two kids and a husband, finding time to talk to God out loud isn't so easy. I take every moment I can these days. So Monday I had a lot of time to myself and i loved it. Tuesday was a pretty normal day at home. Once the girls went to bed, I went and worked out. Made it 5 miles that night. For those of you who don't know I'm training for the Breast Cancer 3 Day Walk in November. Its 60 miles over thee days, and yes, you read that right, 60 MILES!! It took me a little over an hour to get those 5 miles, but I figure not bad. After I finished up with my miles, I went and watched the rest of Aaron's baseball game. They ended up winning, but barely. When I got there they were up by 4 or 5 and the only won by two. But a win is a win. Right now they are in the running to make the playoffs, but they still have 3 weeks of district left. So we shall see. So now on to the not so great part.

We took Ry to Cooks Children's Hospital Thursday to have some tests done to check her kidneys, bladder, and everything that went with that since she had a urinary tract infection a couple weeks ago. Unfortuanatly, we didn't get the results we were praying for. She has a grade 3/4 reflux. This means that her urine isn't flowing out of her bladder the way it should. Some of it is backing up into her kidneys. As of right now, her kidneys don't show any damage, which is a blessing. The doctor had warned us that anything over a 3 on the scale would probably require surgery. We have an appointment set up with a pediatric urologist in May. We are trying to get that sooner, but won't know anything till at least Tuesday next week. In the mean time, she is on an antibiotic to help prevent any further infections. The antibiotics don't guarantee that she won't get an infection, but it does help our chances, and if she were to get one, hopefully it won't be as bad as last time. Now because this genetic, we will probably have to have Lynlee tested as well. She has a 1 in 3 chance of also having reflux even though she has had no symptoms. Like I said, we will know more next week. So just keep Ry in your prayers for her body to heal itself and to keep her kidneys from scarring. She is a tough little girl who has already been through a lot in her short little life. I know she will make it through this.

Today was a better day. It was finally nice enough outside for me to take the girls to one of Aaron's games. We didn't get to stay for the whole thing. Ry goes to bed at 6! So we stayed till about 6:30 when Ry couldn't make it any longer. We saw about 5 innings and they were down by one when we left. I haven't heard from Aaron about whether they won or not. We got home and both girls were worn out. It took Ry about 2 seconds to fall asleep and Lynlee wasn't far behind her. Now I have a minute to relax and get our week down for all of yall to read about.

We hope everyone else out there is doing good. And I challenge you to start praying out loud. It is making a difference in my life and my relationship with God. So give it a try and see what it can do for you!