An update

Our family is finally all well... ...April Fools! Joel has been sick for the last week with a virus yet again. His fever was 105.5 last Saturday night, so I spent some time on the phone with the advice nurse at 2am, and we were in the doctor's office the next day. And then this morning at 5am he woke up crying and said his ear was hurting. So, back to the doctor we went. It's another ear infection. It's never good when the doctor takes one little peek and says, "Wow, I wish I had a med student with me today." Poor Joel. We sure have been saying that a lot. I quit keeping track of co pays lately, but the computer hasn't (neither has our bank account), and I was curious, so I took a look. I found that our family has been to the doctor 18 times in the last two months. Eighteen times in two months!! Can you believe that?! Two vists were "well child" appointments (ha!), but the rest were sickness, and a couple of those visits, we had more than one sick kid checked out. Absolutely ridiculous. The winter of 2010/2011 will be memorable, that's for sure. Hurry up, Spring!

In the midst of all this, we are trying to get our house ready to put on the market. We've outgrown our 1100 sq ft home, and while it's very scary to me to think of selling and not knowing the future and where we'll live, we've prayed about it a lot and feel that it's time to try to sell. We have A LOT of stuff in this little house, and we have a lot of packing/purging/organizing to do in order to get it "show-ready." Hopefully, in the next week or so our house will be tidy and sparkly. And then I have to try to keep it that way!

We have been doing some other things lately, but I haven't had the camera out. Kari has been taking gymnastics classes (she loves it!), and we started swimming lessons this last week, too. Joel had to miss both lessons this week, but maybe he can go next week. We decided to wait to enroll Aubrey. She does NOT want to do it, so we'll just hold off on that one for now. Maybe she'll change her mind after watching for a month or so and want to do the next session, or maybe not. :)

Kari has always liked to help with things, and lately her desire to help has surged. Her favorite thing to help with right now is dinner. She wants to do all the prepping and cooking but isn't fond of the cleaning (not my favorite either). I am trying to let her do as much as possible, but as you can see here (notice stove top), sometimes that makes more work for me. It takes longer, too, but I know it's important to let her try and to teach her along the way, so I'm choosing to put my perfectionism and preferences aside to let her "help" me. It's not often that she actually asks to do things with me, so it could be a bonding time for us as well. That is, if I can keep from getting frustrated during one of the most difficult hours of the day. :) Ok, my time to sit at the computer is over. Off to pack some more!