Things on my mind

No pictures, but a few things to blog about:

1. I always love getting a good deal. I have found some really good deals lately and thought I'd pass one tidbit on....we need a rental car for our visit to CA next week so I went online looking for the best prices. I wasn't happy with the prices I found so I went on priceline.com and did the name your own price option. I've always been leary to use it before for flights because you don't find out the airline or times until you pay but I figured for a rental car it didn't matter what company we got. My offer was for $20/day for a full size car. It was accepted by Avis so we saved over $300! So if you're ever looking for a rental car use priceline and save some money :) Another exciting good deal was at the outlet mall. I went to the Crocs outlet and got the kids each a pair of Crocs for $5.00 each. They were supposed to be $9.99 for the first pair and then half off the next, but for some reason they rang up $5.00 each. Love me some shopping, especially when I get good deals. Gotta do my part to stimulate the economy!

2. I know we live in the midwest, but to me we are still TEXANS! So, I'm having a problem with my children sounding like midwesterners. I even hear myself saying things without my Texas twang...makes me sad. We are no longer mommy and daddy. Now it's Mam, Mem, don't know how to write it...and de-ad...don't know how to write it. My kids teachers have all been great, but they are midwesterners with big accents and that's all they hear most of their days and they are picking up on it. We have to get out of here soon or they'll talk like this the rest of their lives!!!! Nothing against Midwesterners, it's just that I like to think we are Texans....

3. Keep Maddi in your prayers. Those of you who know us know that Maddi has had one little thing after another since birth. Nothing big and most things have resolved on their own but we are facing the next "thing" with her. She has been having trouble with reading comprehension and even math on some days at school. We took her to a psychologist for educational testing this week. We will get results on Tuesday. I'm afraid it's going to come back ADD. All things considered, it's an easy thing to be diagnosed with and better than some of the other things it could be. It's just that I REALLY don't want my child on medication. This girl has been on some type of medication since she was 2 weeks old starting with her heart medications, then it was meds. for her kidneys, then it was meds. for allergies and eczema. We are doing allergy shots to try to get her off meds. Now we might have to use some sort of med for attention. She is definitely not the hyperactive child, it's more inattentiveness (the day dreamer) and it's most common in sweet, well behaved girls her age. As a teacher I couldn't understand why parents would not want to help their child and medicate them if they had add/adhd. Now it's come full circle and we might be faced with the same decision and now I see the other side of the coin. I want to help her and I want her to be successful at school but I'm really struggling with what we might hear on Tuesday. I guess I could use the prayers as well!

4. I am glad January is almost over. Read in the paper today that this was the coldest January in 25 years with an average temperature of 19.4 degrees. Bring on the heat!

Not much

Not much going on here lately. Just our regular hustle and bustle of life as we know it...Maddi has still been waking up with her alarm clock and we are getting her up earlier so she has time to wake up and hang out before being rushed out the door for school. The past few days Maddi and Cade have been playing Legos together. Maddi got her own set of "girl" Legos for her birthday and they seem to enjoy building and playing with the set together. There is nothing like hearing your kids getting along and playing so well together so this morning I stuck my head in the room to see what they were doing and snapped a picture. I can't imagine what they would be like if they didn't have each other. They are so much a part of each others lives and although they have their sibling rivalry moments, I am so thankful that they love and care about each other so much.

As you can see from the picture, Maddi is still fighting off eczema. Above her lip is a combo of eczema and chapped skin. She doesn't even know she does it, but she licks her lip (nervous habit?) so her lip just won't heal. It's worst when she wakes up in the morning. We put this goopy vaseline stuff on it and her eyes which makes it somewhat red and shiny. After a while it soaks in and the peeliness, shine and redness goes away. I can't say that going gluten free is a magical cure for her eczema, but it does seem to be helping somewhat. I find that I crave gluten filled foods and try to plan my meals around when Maddi won't be around. I don't want to indulge in bagels, pizza, etc. in front of her so I stuff myself full of these things and eat at places Maddi can't eat while she's at school. I think I'd starve to death if I couldn't have gluten!

That's all for now.

5 day Weekend

Friday school was cancelled again due to the insane cold. It was Minus 26 Friday morning (not wind chill!). The worst part about school being cancelled is that we get phone calls all morning. On a snow/cold day I just want to enjoy the fact that school is cancelled and sleep in. It starts with a phone call from the computer on the house phone around 5:30 a.m., then Brett's cell rings, then my cell (though I keep my cell in the kitchen so it won't wake me), then I got a call from the subbing company because I was supposed to substitute teach so they wanted me to know school was cancelled. All I wanted was sleep, but the phone just kept ringing. Anyway...with another day of cold we decided to meet some friends to see the opening of Hotel For Dogs. It was a WONDERUFL movie! I loved it and all of the kids did too. Take your kids to see it if you haven't already. It was crazy crowded at the 10:15 a.m. showing, guess we all had cabin fever and had the same idea. Here are Cade, Maddi and Jack in front of the theater with their dogs.

A closer up pic. Noticed they are bundled up because we were about to head outside and run to our car. The kids were paranoid they were going to get frost bite from being outside for any amount of time!

After the movie Jack tagged along as we went for Maddi's allergy shots. The kids passed the time with their Nintendo DS games.

Maddi is passing time playing Cooking Mama 2. She was in deep concentration chopping onions or something.

After allergy shots we went to McDonald's to eat lunch and let the kids run around on the play set. They have the Hotel for Dogs toys in the happy meals too so that made the kids happy to get one of the dogs from the movie. From lunch we went to get Maddi's solo costume altered and then we went home and the kids played with friends.

Saturay and Sunday the kids had dance, birthday parties, and we had another get together with neighbors to watch football. We had just the right amount of activitites to keep us busy and not think about how cold it was outside.

Monday (today) is MLK day so the kids are out of school again! We had just gotten adjusted to the routine of school again after winter break and now here we are out of school for 5 days. Hopefully there won't be anymore crazy winter weather and we won't end up going to school all summer to make up for winter!

Brrr.....

We woke this morning to a phone call from school that school is cancelled. Not because of snow...because it's too cold! It was minus 24 with a wind chill of minus 46 at 7:00 this morning. You can get frost bite in 10 minutes for any exposed skin and 5 minutes if the skin is wet with sweat or snow. Ca-razy! So I'm asking myself...why do we live here?!?!? It was warmer at the South Pole this morning than at my house. Good news is we will be above zero by tomorrow afternoon. All the way up to 2 degrees!

Robe, Legos and Snow Fort

If you remember reading my post about Christmas Eve and how disappointed Cade was to open a robe for his gift that evening, then you'll be happy to hear that the robe is now his favorite article of clothing! This is winter and for those Texans reading...that means it's cold....and it can mean it's very cold! TMI...but Cade likes to sleep in his boxers so getting out of bed on a cold morning can be hard but putting on his robe makes things much better. All during Christmas break when we weren't on a schedule Cade would hang out in his robe until we made him get dressed if we were going somewhere. This weekend he spent many hours in his robe as well. Hopefully the next time he gets a robe as a gift he can appreciate it because he knows it will keep him warm on winter days. Omie, thanks for the robe, it's now one of his favorite presents. So one of the things Cade enjoys doing in his robe is building with Legos. Since I'm Parent of the Year and let me child hang out on his own in the mornings until I get myself out of bed, he has a lot of Lego building time. I love to wake up to see his latest creation each morning and he's more than eager to give me all the details of his creations. He wanted me to take his picture with this ship to send in to the Lego magazine that he reads. I hope he gets chosen, robe and all!

Saturday we got lots of snow again. We were busy getting the house clean and cooking for our football watching party with our neighbors Saturday but Brett promised to help Cade with a fort on Sunday. Sunday morning Cade and Brett headed out back and Brett shoveled an area for him to build his fort and showed him the proper way to make snow bricks.

After lunch Maddi joined in the fort building action.

After a while they had made themselves a pretty good size fort. It's going to be quite cold this week so that fort should freeze and hang around for quite sometime! Again, since I'm Parent of the Year, I watched them build from the couch under a blanket and praised their efforts. I'm just not into playing in the snow this year. I'm much more into staying warm!

Sunday Maddi got her "daddy time" working on a project for school. She had to choose from a list of ideas (think back to grade school...diarama, puppet, map, poster, invention, collage, etc.). Since she didn't have her social studies book home with her, they chose to make a collage of photos showing at least 10 different ways of transportation because they could do it without the book. The whole family scoured through the Sunday paper and old magazines to find pictures for her to use and we came up with 23 pictures! We all had fun working on her project and it looks great.

Three for Thursday

We are back in the swing of things with school and dance and Brett back to work. I was expecting big meltdowns this week with the kids trying to get back to their schedules, but so far things are going pretty well. Here are some things going on in the McDonald household this week:

1. Maddi is still gluten free. We've taken her off gluten to see if it will help her eczema. It will be one week of gluten free on Friday. She has been such a trooper and doesn't really complain about having to eat different foods. She's not a picky person so that helps. She rarely chooses what clothes to wear or what food to eat each day so she just kind of takes what I give her to eat and doesn't really question it. She can still have most candy so I think that makes her quite happy!

2. The kids have their holiday parties at school Friday. The last day before Christmas break was cancelled because of snow/ice. It seems so odd to be having parties right now, but the kids are sure happy.

3. Alarms... My little rooster, Cade, has been sleeping until 7:00 all week. It is so nice that he's sleeping longer. Problem is that I'm trying to wake up earlier so I'm not rushing to get the kids out the door in the morning. Cade used to be my alarm clock but now I have to set a real alarm clock so I can wake up and get ready on time. Maddi has started using an alarm clock to wake up in the morning too. So far, it's been wonderful. She wakes up right away and seems to be in a better mood. Apparently I was the one making her not a morning person! Ha ha. Why didn't we think of the alarm clock sooner?

Happy New Year!

Here's the whole crew snuggling on the love seat Sunday afternoon watching a movie. We had such a fun and relaxing start to the year. Brett was off work and we all enjoyed our family time together. Monday it's back to school and work and our regularly scheduled life. Sunday morning Cade was so excited that he got to go back to school Monday. Sunday night poor Cade was nervous going to bed about going back to school. Maddi was crying because she'll miss Daddy, Cade, Cocoa and me while she's at school. Breaks are always so nice but this one was just long enough that everyone got really comfortable with being on break and nobody wants to go back to reality. I think I'm going to be lonely tomorrow with everyone gone and I'm certainly not looking forward to waking up early again. Maddi and I slept until 10:00 a.m. this morning! Cade slept till 7:40 or so and then I sent him downstairs for his Cade time and I just kept right on sleeping....it was wonderful! I guess all good things come to an end. My pictures are out of order (again), so here is a picture of Brett and I before our New Year's Eve outing. We went to a progressive party at 3 houses in our neighborhood and we had a blast! We stayed out too late (until 2:30 a.m.) and were exhausted the next day, but it was a fun way to start the new year. The kids stayed up until 10:00 p.m. with their babysitter and they had fun and were exhausted the next day too. The rest of our break we've been hanging out and meeting with friends for lunch, dinner, etc. I've also been spending a ton of time researching gluten free foods. I've thought of taking Maddi off of gluten several times but this year we bit the bullet and she is now gluten free for 3 days (minus the donuts she had the first day). We will try it for a few weeks/months and see if there is a correlation between gluten and her eczema. It's not been easy going gluten free but we've just got to try this and see if it makes a difference. HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope that 2009 is a wonderful, fresh start for everyone.

The end of the visit

I got these pics out of order and I'm too lazy/tired to change it...this is the night before the Stanley family flew south again. I was so sad to say goodbye to these little guys (Blake on left, Case right). Our whole family would have loved to have kept one for a little brother, but Todd and Breezy wouldn't let us keep one. Maddi (with her fake glasses from Claires that she thinks she looks good in...) and little cousin Blake. The kids enjoyed having their cousins around and it was really sad when they woke up the next day with everyone gone.

Cade and Case chilling out watching tv. I think my kids enjoyed watching some "baby" shows on Noggin while they were here.

Friday afternoon we rode the train to the city again for some shopping and to go to Zoo Lights at the Lincoln Park zoo. Maddi was teaching Omie some hand games she plays with her friends at school while they were passing time on the train.

Getting to Zoo Lights was pretty much a disaster. We were going to ride the bus from the hotel, but Todd looked at the map and decided the red line subway would get us there 3 blocks away and with traffic so heavy we thought that it would be quicker to ride the subway rather than bus. So, we walked a few blocks to the subway and got off and started walking toward the zoo. We walked and walked and it didn't seem like we were any closer to the zoo. It had been raining for part of the day and it was above freezing so the snow was melting and we were walking in slush and puddles most of the way. We ended up stopping at a New Balance store to buy Maddi and Cade new socks since their shoes were all wet inside. The man at the shoe store told us we were only a few blocks away from the zoo so the kids put on their socks with bags over their socks inside their shoes to keep their feet dry and we trecked on. Once we got to the zoo we were all laughing hysterically when we saw the 151 bus sign right in front of the zoo. My mom got a picture of the bus stop sign so we could remember our adventure.

Since we finally made it to Zoo Lights we had to have a group picture in front of the entrance.

We watched the ice sculptor while the daddies were getting snacks since we all worked up quite an appetite on our adventure. It's just not right that the ice sculptures from the beginning of zoo lights right after Thanksgiving are still ice. That means that it's just too cold here!

*On Christmas afternoon we got all of us bundled up to go sledding. Cade and Maddi went down a few times before Maddi hit several ice patches and fell off her sled and skinned the skin between her lip and nose (you can see it in this pic). She was bleeding all over and freaking out...meanwhile...Todd and I have the twins and are climbing up the icy slope. I fell twice (didn't hurt Case, just my knees) and dropped my sled. I was stuck on the hill that was too icy to walk down without a sled, so I slid on my butt most of the way. It was a sledding adventure gone bad so we loaded back up in the car and headed back to our warm house.

Some pretty lights at the zoo that "danced" to music.

Cade was talking with the twins. He has grown up so much and it's so fun to see him enjoy his little cousins and not be annoyed by them. It ALMOST makes me want a baby for the kids because they have so much fun with their cousins, but I'm sure that if it was their baby that never left the novelty would wear off and they wouldn't enjoy it.

The boys are checking out the lights in their cool glasses. It would make the lights look like snowflakes. The boys , especially Case, would walk around the house saying "Christ....mas....ON or lights....ON" so I can imagine they really enjoyed all of the Christ...mas....ON at the zoo!

The tiger was sleeping right by the window and we were watching it and all of sudden it started waking up. The kids were screaming with excitement when it would move. Case on left, Blake right with Breezy. I think Breezy is making a tiger growl or something...sorry Breezy, but it was a cute pic of the boys.

After the zoo mom, Brett, the kid and I rode the train back to our house. Todd and family stayed downtown again. Maison was tuckered out and fell asleep on the bus ride back to the hotel. Poor little girl was such a trooper, she walked around all day in the city shopping, then all the way on our detour to the zoo and all around at the zoo. She never once complained of walking too much.

This is their last bus ride back to Union Station to get on the train to come back to our house. It stinks being so far away from family but at least we live in Chicago (burbs) which is such a great city so our family likes to visit us. We are always happy to have visitors, so if you've never been to Chicago we'd love to have you come for a visit.

Christmas Eve and Day

After opening one present Christmas Eve and then modeling the robes, we got cookies ready for Santa (no pictures...boo). Then it was story time. My cute little nephews, Blake and Case, and cute little niece, Maison area all ready for story time.

Notice how only Case and Maison are paying attention to the story now....

After story time Cade was getting his Nutcracker moose all ready to put in front of the tree for Santa to see. (don't know what crazy Cocoa dog is doing) Then it was off to bed......and Santa came for a visit!

YEAH!!!! It's Christmas morning and Santa left lots of presents for the kids.

Case found a little camera with pictures by the stockings for him.

Maddi and Cade with their stockings that my grandmother, Omie, made for them. I'm so thankful that she made these for them because she will always be a part of our Christmas for many years. Actually Cade wasn't born when she passed away, so she never made one for Cade, but he has my stocking she had for me at her house. This year while my mom was visiting she changed the name to say Cade so now we all have stockings made by Great Omie which makes me very happy.

Breezy and Case opening presents.

Blake excited about his new cars.

Maddi with a very cool book showing the inside of dogs.

Cade with his cool books about the solar system.

A pogo stick from Grammy! I was just as excited about the pogo stick because I was a pogo stick maniac as a child. Guess that's where my brain cells went...all mushed up from too much time on the pogo stick. FYI...I still have the moves on the pogo stick. Only problem is I have to watch my head on the rafters in the basement.

Also from Grammy...stilts. I was amazed at how quickly the kids learned how to walk on them.

Our gift to the kids this year...a trip to Disneyland in California in February. Maddi is reading the card telling them all about it. Cade is looking at the Mickey/Minnie ornament.

Here's my Maddi girl on her stilts. My life is often like a circus and it certainly was with all the family here at Christmas. All the craziness would be going on and then all of a sudden Maddi would appear around a corner on stilts and it would make everything seem more "circus-like".

Maddi and Maison in their matching sweaters playing with Maddi's new keyboard.

Uncle Todd, Blake, Case, Cade and Maison were playing with Cade's new flipping frogs game. It was such a fun Christmas day with all of us together and watching the excitement and joy of the kids with their new gifts.