The Zoo

My little monkey boy.

Josh's favorite bear.


Josh with his new zoo shirt.

The Space Needle - and yes the picture was taken from the car.

So we headed up to Seattle on Saturday because we desperately needed to get out of the house and actually do something. So what better place to go than Seattle - I mean, hello, we're only 2 hours away and the Woodland Park Zoo is definitely one of the better zoos than I've been to. We left around 9am, got the the zoo, ate lunch, and the headed off to look at all of the animals. Josh was really funny because he took charge and was holding the map and kept saying "What's next, what's next?" And all he wanted to go look at were the bears - which were all the way on the other end of the zoo from where we parked. And it was such a beautiful day - it was 75 degrees in Seattle. Seattle! It was the perfect day to go to the zoo. We brought the stroller for Maddie and Brad suggested that we bring our wagon - which I'm glad that we did, because we used it. Josh and Maddie loved seeing all of the animals. This was Maddie's 2nd trip to a zoo, but first to where she really knew what was going on. Josh loved the bears, aldergators (alligators), spiders, snakes, and the monkeys. Maddie loved everything.

It was just a really good day and we got home around 5:30 that night. Good old family fun! We still want to go to the aqaurium, the space needle and walk down by the pier - but there is plenty of time for that. We didn't want to cram everything all in one day, so next trip we'll do more stuff. We'll probably stay overnight as well. It sure was nice in Seattle, I'll tell you that. :)

My Week (LONG post)

My, oh my - where do I begin? Well it has been one of the worst weeks I've probably had in quite some time. Let's see I'll just start off with the beginning of the week.

Sunday - at about 4 or 5am, Josh got sick, throwing up to be exact. We couldn't get him back to sleep - I slept out on the couch for a little bit before finally get "up" at 6:15. He had also been coughing a little since Friday - which was in full swing by Sunday.

Monday - we had Josh's hearing test. Which that was a lot to deal with. Brad worked on Sunday night, so I had his mom come up to watch Maddie so I could take Josh to his hearing test. So I get home from that, and Maddie is acting up. She's being really whiny and won't eat. We finally get the kids down for their naps and Maddie wakes up after only sleeping a hour. One hour. Brad goes in there, and she has puked all over the place. We stick her in the bath, get all of her bedding in the washer, and I'm holding her in the kitchen. Lo and behold, she pukes all over me. Yuck!!!! So after putting her in the bath again, more laundry, me taking a quick shower - ughh. She ended up getting sick a few more times that evening and really wasn't herself. I'm just so glad that Brad was home to help with all of that. The kids didn't sleep good that night either.

Tuesday - I woke up early Tuesday morning (1am) to find my stomach in knots. It was literally turning over and over, and I was trying to fight it - but I couldn't. I ended up getting sick at about 4am, and it just went down hill from there. I was extremely sick (no details needed), and I had a fever, body aches and was just hurting all over. I thought I was going to die, I was THAT sick. Brad called in sick from work so that he could take care of the kids for me, because there was no possible way that I could have done anything! I was sick the entire day - I couldn't keep anything down, and my fever finally broke at about 9pm. I went to bed feeling a little better, but definitely not 100% and definitely feeling beat up! And to top that all off, the kids were even sicker - and there is no nice way to put this, but they had the runs. Both of them!

Wednesday - Brad got sick. So it was me not feeling the best, feeling so weak trying to take care of the kids - but luckily Brad's mom came up again and we got the kids out of the house, but then I started to feel sick again, but that passed and I was glad. Maddie was still a little sick, but was starting to get better. The rest of my day was spent doing damage control - doing dishes, laundry (mounds and mounds of nasty laundry), disinfecting, etc. Plus on top of all of that - Josh decided to poop in the tub when Brad was giving them a bath while I was cleaning the master bathroom so Brad could take a bath for his beat up body. So I cleaned 2 bathrooms that night as well - I was bone tired.

Thursday - More laundry (and this was just to get the rest of the stuff caught up), more dishes and we had to run to Target because after not getting a paycheck for 30 days - things started to add up! Big time! So $200 later - we finally had everything we needed.

Today - I'm still exhausted. The kids woke up several times last night, much to my dismay. Brad also worked until about 10 last night, so I was on my own. This just has not been a good week. I'm so tired and if I could just get like 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, I think I might feel a little bit more energized. But oh well. And that's where we are right now.

Josh's Hearing Test

The doctor looked in his ear and didn't find any fluid or wax build-up. He did 3 different hearing tests on him. One was to test for any pressure build-up in his ear, another was the standard hearing test (beep, etc), and the other was to test the actual bones in his ear. So for the first test, he failed (if you can call it that). They usually like to see a peak when doing that test to show that the eardrum is actually moving/vibrating because that’s how we hear, but Josh’s ears just showed a flat line, which was elevated – so obviously pressure. The 2^nd test he also failed – but that is probably because of the pressure. He did say a couple of times to the doctor – what, I can’t hear that. And the 3^rd test (testing the bones) – he passed. So there is no permanent damage to his ears, thank goodness! So the doctor said that he will pass this information on to our regular doctor and go from there. I asked him if we were looking at possibly putting tubes in his ears, and he said no. But it is something that we want to definitely keep an eye on. He said that one of his daughters had this same thing, and it finally cleared up in about 6 months – but six months!!! He also said that the doctor might want to prescribed antibiotics, but we would have to see. And one of the things I need to doctor about is if we can get him re-tested when he doesn’t have a cold and isn’t congested – if that would make a difference. Because it just happened that he was sick for the test. Which I still need to follow up with the regular doctor about all of this, but after the week I’ve had – I’ll just have to do it next week.

Slip-n-Slide Party

So Josh got invited to a Slip-n-Slide party by one of his classmates on Friday and we decided that we would go and I'm so glad that we did. And it wasn't just any ordinary slip-n-slide - it was 150 feet long! They had made it out of irrigation tarp and PVC pipe - it was awesome. And now that I'm thinking about it, I didn't even get a picture of it - dang it! And they had a hill that it went down, so it was perfect. They had the sprinklers on it, a hose, and had blow up pool toys to ride down it. Josh ended up going down it once, but he did it. They also had a huge blown up slide - one of those huge things that you can find at Costco, which Josh didn't want to get out of. There was also a big trampoline (that was maybe a foot off the ground), a huge sand box area and lots and lots of food, candy, chips, etc. - basically every kid's dream!

We stayed for about 2 hours and Josh got to visit with all of his little classmates and by the time we left, my little man crashed in the car on the way home. It was a blast, the weather had cleared up - so that was perfect and I got some great pictures. Brad worked the night before, so he was able to stay home with Maddie - which I was glad. It was great just being able to hang out with Josh and do something fun with him, and I'm glad that I didn't have to bring her because she is fearless. They had a decent sized hill/slope to their yard and I know that she would have tried to go down the "mountain", she would have been in the water, probably going down the slip-n-slide - I just would have been baby wrangling more than enjoying watching Josh have fun. So it was a good day.