Halloween in September

These pictures were taken about 15 minutes before he fell for the second time. I woke him up from his nap (which he was sleeping pretty soundly) to get into his costume to go for a contest that wasn't really a contest at all. The kids lined up, gave a girl their name and that was it. She put a star by the kids she thought were cute and that was that. Definitely not worth waking a sleeping 2 1/2 year old for. So I felt a little bit bad about that, but I felt even worse about the fact that he fell immediately after the contest, which I had woken him up to participate in. He so did not want to get up, he wanted to just lay there and go back to sleep. I was soooo torn! I had been looking so forward to this and I thought the costume contest would be fun, not just standing in a dumb line to have a girl pick who she thought was cute. So I have had to deal with this guilt and I have dealt with it mostly. I still feel pretty bad, but I know it was an accident that could have happened at any time. Oh yah, the bribe I used to get him up out of bed to put his costume on was to have candy later that day, which he was never really able to partake in because of the fall :( Such is life!!

(I love this picture...my flying little superman...to bad he couldn't have flown over the cement instead of hitting it head first ;O)

Shortly after the fall, we decided to make a trip to the ER, but were back in time to go trick-or-treating around teh campsites. We also handed out the candy that we had bought for handing out :) Josiah enjoyed putting one piece of candy in each persons little bag. The bummer about the candy though, is that we had left our haunted house all set up with the candy out in a bowl and some stupid young boys came in and took half the bowl. The neighbors noticed that they had been in there too long and went and rescued the bowl of candy so we had a little bit to hand out, but still kind of a bummer. At any rate, Josiah put his costume back on and we headed out to get some candy that he would not be able to eat, but he still had fun going around and seeing everything. All you had to do is ask him to do Superman and he would either put up just one arm or put both up in the air. So cute!!!

He did sneak a piece of candy, but we ended up have to cut it into small pieces and have him push it to the back of his mouth (which he was very good at doing). The doctor had wanted him on a liquid diet. Tell that to a 2 1/2 year old who just wants to eat hot dogs and PB&J's. So we just cut everything up small and made sure it was good and soft.

After trick-or-treating, we went to find out if he had won anything in the halloween contest (which he didn't), but we got to get a picture with Boo-Boo and then a bunch of cute girls at the Yogi statue :) My kid the little socialite!!

The campground has Halloween in September every year. We knew this ahead of time and I prepared for it for a couple of weeks. Getting Josiah's costume together and putting together decorations for our campsite. There was a campsite decoration contest, which I didn't win, but I didn't go out and spend hundreds of dollars like the people that won. But I had fun setting up the decorations at our campsite. I was really looking forward to that since we live out in the country and don't really get trick-or-treaters at our house.

Update

Thank you for the concern for those of you who commented on my last post. We made our trip to the pediatric dentist this morning and there is good news and bad news.

The good news: The dentist believes that he will only lose 1 tooth instead of 3. He thinks that the other teeth might die and turn black, but we won't know that right away, they will turn black over time. I had a black tooth from riding my bike down the steps when I was around Josiah's age and they didn't end up having to pull it until it became absessed when I was in 1st grade or something like that.

The bad news: That tooth has to be pulled. We are going in at 8:15am on Thursday morning to have it "extracted". So this will be the first time that he will be sedated. They will give him the concoction first to make him kind of sleepy. then 45 minutes later they will give him Nitrous and then numb the area with shots. The dentist assured me that Josiah won't see the needle or anything. Most kids just fall asleep. Hopefully!!! But thankfully, he will only have to have one tooth pulled!

The other bad news: No more Dappas (better known as pacifiers to the general public :) The dentist said that they are damaging his bone line along his jaw. I don't necessarily agree because Dan's teeth looked exactly like that when he was Josiah's age and his teeth are fine now. So the pacifiers got thrown away at Kim's today. He asked for them at naptime right away because we had been talking to him about having to get rid of them and he wanted them. He finally calmed down after a little bit, but never really went to sleep. Kim had the idea to have him throw the pacifiers away and gave him a little lamb with a tape measure as a trade. He seemed to like the idea. I have not talked to Dan yet tonight to find out how it went at home. But Josiah did throw all the pacifiers at home away too. Dan told him he was a big boy now and didn't need them anymore. But again, I haven't talked to him to see if he went to sleep yet or not.

So keep us in your prayers on Thursday morning. They said we will be there for about 2 1/2 hours. And prayers that I remain good and strong for my little man.

The Good, the bad and the ugly!

We are back and mostly recovered from our camping excursion. We had great times and not so great times. We loved Jellystone Yogi Bear park! The pool was awsome, the playground was 100% according to Josiah and we had some great neighbors. I took over 500 pictures and had to narrow it down to just a few to post here for everyone to see, a task that was not easy by any stretch of the imagination. This new camera is going to make it hard to select only a few pictures to blog and scrapbook. But I do love the new camera. And the longer I spent selecting pictures the more pictures I had to add to this post...so enjoy!! The pictures at the end are of Josiah's bad fall. The story is at the end too.

Yogi Bear

Flying with Daddy

Excersizing
(This picture is for Grandma Sherry :)

Camp-Fires
Roasting marshmellows, making s'mores and sparklers :)

Raining

Making the best out of a rainy couple of days

Family Pictures

Camping

This is our campsite all set up!
Go-Karting

Sleeping

My Cowboy

Swimming

Swinging

Biking

Josiah's 2 Big Falls

(The pictures that follow are graphic, so beware)

Josiah fell out of the bed in the camper and hit his face on the ground (at least we think that is what happened, both Dan and I had just turned our back when it happened). He banged up his upper lip pretty bad and may have jarred one of his teeth. His lip swelled right up and the gums were bruised pretty bad.

(Thank goodness for portable DVD players. This helped him get through the hardest part of the pain and swelling. He just hung out and watched movies for a 2 days)

Unfortunately that was not his only fall. That happened on Thursday night of our camping trip and on Saturday afternoon we were going for a walk through the campground and he tripped onto a cement slab and hit face first. This fall was bad. Again lots of blood and lots of swelling. It looked like one of his big teeth had been knocked out of place, but we couldn't really tell with all the swelling and bruising of the gums. We called our family doc and he told us to head to the ER. He informed us that Josiah would probably lose 3 of his front teeth. I couldn't believe it! How could a simple fall cause so much damage? But it did and my little man will be toothless for many years to come. We are going to the pediatric dentist tomorrow to see if they can get some x-rays to make sure there wasn't any damage to the adult teeth and to find out what other trauma happened. So please keep the little guy in your prayers. We go to the dentist at 10:00am tomorrow.

Even though we had all that going on, we still had an awsome time, as you can tell by all the fun stuff we did and fun we had :) there will be Halloween pictures posted at a later date :) So stay tuned :)

A Week away from Work

My lists are completely checked off; our bags are packed, the food is packed, the toys are packed, the camper is packed and we are ready for a nice long week away in the sun, on the beach, at the pool and doing whatever we want with no work or co-workers in site.

And it couldn't come at a better time. I need a break from work, from the people at work. They drive me crazy! One day they are in good moods and fun to work with, the next day they are moody and won't talk to me (apparently because they are tired and don't want to be at work today...who does). I hate having to stick around on a Friday night until 9:00pm when our work was done at 6:00pm...but at least we don't have to stay until 11:00pm. There is a new girl here who is now the only one with me on this shift. She is young and like I said moody. I tried to help her today, but got no response, so I stopped helping. I asked if she was done and her response was "yep" as she walked by and said nothing more. What the heck. That was all she talked to me for the rest of the night?? I asked her if I had done something to upset her and she said no, she just didn't want to be here and wasn't in the mood to talk. Funny, she is in the mood to talk to everyone else around here but me. Why do I have such a hard time making friends at work...I just don't understand. I hate it when people make me doubt myself and make me feel like I am doing something wrong because they are in a bad mood on a particular day. I think mostly I care to much about what people think of me and I end up doing and saying the wrong things...but it really sucks to be stuck here for 2 hours with someone with nothing to do and they won't talk to you. I understand being tired, I understand not wanting to be here, but I don't understand being rude and short and not saying thank you when someone helps you. Can I attribute it to her age, she is almost a decade younger than me. I don't know! We just must not click or something or she just needs to get past the training phase when everything sucks. I know I did and I forget that sometimes. I will do what I can to give her her space and try not to be rude in the meantime. However, I get to be gone away from here for an entire week and I won't have to deal with any of them and their mood swings for 9 days.

30 more minutes and I am free (okay, now 21 minutes)!!!

Garage saling side note: I bought a laptop at a garage sale today for $15. Can you believe it! It came with Windows 98 and had lots of errors popping up whenever you started or shutdown. But luckily we have a copy of Windows 98 at home and can erase the hard drive (which Dan is doing as I type this) and start fresh. There is only 64MB of ram and 4GB on the hard drive, but for putzing around and playing games with Josiah, it should be fun! If I get a wireless card, I could also check my email, but it will be very slow, so I don't know if I will want to deal with that or not! But $15, what a buy!

The Menu and lists

Here is our camping menu, I wasn't sure how else to pack food for an 8 day trip without coming up with a menu. That way we can decide each day what we feel like, but have everything we need on hand to make it.

Breakfast meals:

1. Oatmeal or Cream of Wheat
2. Dry cereal
3. Poptarts
4. Eggs and cornbeef hash
5. Swedish pancakes and ham (which reminds me I need to add syrup to my packing list)
6. Eggs in a nest with sausage and bacon ( from 2 Labor Day's ago).

Lunch Meals

1. Chicken Salad Sandwhiches
2. Hotdogs and baked beans
3. Ham and cheese
4. Spaghettios/Raviolis
5. Tomato soup and grilled cheese
6. Peanut butter and Jelly of course

Dinner Meals

1. Hobo Pies (meatballs, carrots, potatoes, onions and italian dressing cooked in aluminum foil over the fire)
2. Spaghetti, corn and garlic bread
3. Bacon and Cheese Hamburgers
4. Bagel Pizzas (pepperoni, ham and pineapple, black olives all cooked in our new toaster over that I got at a garage sale just for the camper)
5. Brats, chips, pickles
6. Tacos or Taco salad, whichever is easier

I have been working hard to get the camper ready. I have cleaned out all of the cubby spaces and consolidated all of the stuff. Even though we are still just storing the camper for my mom, there was a lot of stuff in there that was old and rotting, 10 year old toilet paper, dead bugs and whatnot...and it just needed to be cleaned thoroughly. There was a lot of stuff in there that was duplicated between my stuff and their stuff that I just made into one big lot and took out all the extra stuff. Much more organized and much easier to locate the stuff we need. For those of you who know me well, you know that this part of packing is fun to me. I love taking things that are chaotic and making them clean, nice and neat. I also had fun packing and organizing the food. I got a few tupperwear containers that I can put cereal and what not in them, so I got that all done today. Plus I made up the swedish pancake mix (minus the wet ingredients of course), but that way all we have to do is add a few things and Wala! Pancake mix.

Tomorrow: I am going to go shopping for the last of the stuff we need and finish making the beds. I got Josiah's bed made, and all the bedding is cleaned, I just need to make our bed. I was also going to make some cookies tomorrow, but we will see how early we get up and around tomorrow.

Wednesday: I have to do laundry and start getting bags around to pack, so that Thursday I can fold the rest of the clothes and pack our clothes.

Thursday: I am going to take pictures at the daycare again. Several of the kids are going to be leaving the daycare (because they are too old, have older siblings to watch them or are going to full day Kindergarten). So Kim asked

Friday: Take everything out to the garage that won't fit in the camper, so that Saturday morning we can back the truck up to the garage, load it up and head on out :)
Satuday: We are off to go camping :)

Day Care Fun

The day after I bought my new camera I asked my daycare provider, Kim, if I could come over and take pictures of the kids. I thought it would be great way to help determine if I wanted to keep the camera. It also helped me start to feel comfortable with the camera. A long ways to go, but I was able to capture some great moments on camera.