St Patrick's Day

We were able to feed the Sister missionaries Monday evening. I hate deciding what to make for dinner lately. It is hard to come up with new ideas that the kids will actually eat. Justin suggested a lemon chicken recipe that I jazzed up with extra spices and served over spaghetti noodles. It was pretty good, like darn delicious. All you need is chicken spiced with salt and paprika; the sauce has thyme, butter, garlic, cream, parmesan, lemon, spinach/kale and mushrooms. We had an entertaining FHE with the Sisters. They taught a lesson based on the new Mormon video for Easter. The sisters enjoyed our version of "Glory," where we single out each child and tell about the awesome things the kid accomplished the previous week. The kids choose what kind of Glory we shower them with (car, cat, ninja, and fart are the favorites lately). Phillip showed the Sisters how to play Pickle-in-the-Head, a version of copy cat, but doing strange actions. The kids played some Charades after that while we ate Strawberry ice cream for dessert.

Josie is smiling more, I captured a video of her first smile (lucky me) in response to me talking with her. It is precious! After her cute smile she ended the video with a silly poop face. Josie loves to hang out in the bath on her cute yellow bath flower. The undressing and redressing are not so enjoyable. Evelyn often plops herself in the tub at the same time. She pours water on Josie's belly for me. Amelia loves to dance to Frozen in the kitchen holding Josie with Evelyn bopping along. Seems like Amelia had a better week, not as Badger-ish. Sister Elliott is taking her to PT most of the time and is making progress. She often ditches her crutches at the door and will not use them in the house. It seems her hip is feeling better so she does not feel like using the crutches. We pressure her to use them because that means the crutches are helping keep her bones from disintegrating.

Tuesday evening we went to Everett's parent-teacher conference. He is improving but still shows signs of emotional immaturity. I am really considering the option of waiting until next year for kindergarten. What is the hurry? Let him be a kid for a while longer. He is super smart so that is not an issue. He might be too smart for Kindergarten. The kids were quite excited to pick more books from the book fair at the preschool. Right before bed the kids suddenly decided to make Leprechaun traps. I tried Sunday and Monday to help them but they were too busy with other activities. Amelia and Phillip whipped up Lego houses. Phillip's had a trebuchet that would launch the sneaky devil into the house where the money was hidden in plain sight. Amelia's had a fake door, if closed the door would make a statue fall and block the door. The back door was actually blocked off with more legos.

The traps did not entice the Leprechaun. He sprung the traps, must have been too upset about the traps because he left the money and made a mess on his way out. He zapped Speedor the remote control car up on the ceiling fan; created an epic Power Ranger battle complete with dinos eating the Power zord's toes, stuffed Mia's back pack with clutter, flipped a chair onto the horse, and made some dolls ride the bumble bee. We had lots of laughs before school about his antics. The kids had green pancakes for breakfast. Everett would not touch the strange colored pancakes, Evelyn ate 6! I had a blast dressing up the kids in green. We had corned beef, baked potatoes, and braised cabbage for dinner. I made soda bread for dessert. Justin was more excited to make a large amount of corned beef hash the next day for dinner. He was surprised the kids did not whine more about the meal. I finished reading On the Banks of Plum Creek with a tear in my eye. Phew, such a compelling series. We can relate with the strange weather being on Prairie lands. I've read 4 books of the series out loud now to Amelia and Justin. We finished off St Patty's on Friday with a family movie night watching Darby O'Gill. Both boys were pretty disturbed with the movie and hate banshees now.

The sister missionaries came over to help me move the big furniture from the craft room into the man cave. It is hard moving from a large space into a crammed space, still I am grateful Justin is reluctantly sharing his space with me. I am cleaning out all my craft stuff to pare down what is stored in said furniture. I trashed a lot of paper, scrap yarn, scrap fabric, and other craft supplies I have not used in years. Now all my craft stuff will fit into the cabinets and drawers I have left. The worst part about the man cave is going from natural light to crappy one bulb ceiling light. I bought a new light so hope it will brighten up the space. The room is slowly coming together. At the same time I sold a bunch of items on Sidney's For Sale FB page. I rather enjoy Spring cleaning and the subsequent purges. I am slowly posting and thrifting away toys so the kid's don't notice. By the time school is out Amelia and Everett will be ready to move into the basement room.

Justin and I got a NEW MATTRESS! This is huge! Our previous mattress was 11 years old, a pillow top mattress that could not be flipped. It was awesome for many years but slowly became molded and trenched. My back and hips always ached after sleeping. Justin purchased a "Purple" mattress. It is pretty amazing. The mattress came compressed in a roll, sort of like a roll of carpet. Once the packaging was cut away it popped into a King sized mattress. The mattress is made of some crazy space age gels and foams. Our last bed was so tall that it swallowed the room, seeing such a low profile mattress now makes our room seem bigger. I like that I don't have to jump into bed, I can climb. Ha ha.

Evelyn and I got haircuts this week. I went with a short pixie like I sported late last year. Evelyn got a cute A-line cut. Hopefully her hair will grow in thicker. She was not happy about her first salon hair cut, but handled it well. My hair is once again cut into a 3-minutes to style length. It suits my current lack of time.

I heard back on from O'Bryan Computer Services about my back up drive. The drive had power issues that cause it to disconnect the directories stored on the device. Sounds like I either hand over $600-1000 dollars or count the files stored there as lost. Most are redundant, some folders are only stored there (like my iPhone pics and videos). Makes me want to cry thinking about the loss of those files.

Justin worked on our taxes most of Saturday. It was a stressful day for us both. We owe money this time around because I made quite a bit of money last year and did not have as many expenses. Justin also got some cash payouts from stocks that we had to pay taxes on. It is no fun having to pay taxes! We like getting money refunds. We worked on claiming business expenses which really cut our owed taxes.

Yesterday we had Kelsey Watchorn over after dinner. She had Perthes in both her hips, a severe case. We are gathering information before Amelia's next appointment on 4 April 2016. It was interesting and heart breaking to her about her life with Perthes. We hope, of course, that Amelia's case is on the less severe side of the spectrum. Some points I want to remember are:

-only use pain relief when pain is bad, it seems to cycle and pulse. Extended use cause intolerance and reflux.
-use pillows between knees to center bones in hip socket
-one comfortable sleeping position is laying on back with legs up on couch or recliner back
-condition is genetic
-if she has more pain the next day then we need to evaluate what was new that day and modify that activity
-swimming and biking are the best source of exercise for her
-changes in pain level could indicate that the disease is worsening
-use PT and chiropractic to keep scoliosis and arthritis at bay or control the pain from secondary conditions.
-keeping the hip muscles strong is the BEST therapy available. The muscles alone can keep the bone in the socket even if the hip and bones are deteriorated.
-expect arguing and fighting from her over using crutches, limiting activity, and such. She will be grouchy because the level of pain can be so intense.

I am so, so happy that Mrs Watchorn is willing and able to "mentor" Amelia. She totally understands what Amelia is going through. She can also help me understand and be more patient with Amelia. I made Aunt Mary's congo bars for a dessert. Yummy.