Directory Photos

As you know we took our photos for the new pictorial directory at our church just about 3 weeks ago.  We got them back last week and we were really happy with them!  They didn't turn out half bad. :-)

All the kids were smiling and happy and still.  Since we've had kids, we've either had someone crying or mad or something.  Granted, what you don't see in the picture is me between takes totally stressed out and ready to get everyone home and in bed (it was closing in on 9pm at this point!).  I kept yelling at them to stand still and SMILE!  But, thankfully you don't see the behind-the-scenes problems.  You just see a happy family and that's all that matters, right? ;-)

I really didn't want any additional photos, but I caved and let him take a couple of the kids.  I absolutely love this photo too, so I guess I'm pretty happy that we took a couple extra.  So, tomorrow is our make-up day of photos and then we'll get the directory out to be published.  We'll get a sample print to approve and, hopefully, by the end of May we'll have directories to pass out!  Let's hope it all goes smoothly!!

Reconnecting

Some of you may remember that 2 years ago we said goodbye to some very dear friends of ours as they moved FAR AWAY to Arizona.  Thankfully they still have family in the area, because every time they come back to visit family, they always make a point to come to our area and visit all of us. :-)  And, by "all of us", I mean our small group.  

Our kids absolutely LOVE them and always have the best time together, even if it's only a couple times a year.  All the kids had a great time playing together again today.  They came to church, so the "playing" began then, and carried on when we went to our friends' house for lunch, and carried on when they came back to our house to hang out.  They got nearly 12 hours of together time and they loved every minute of it. :-)

Our friends, Shawn and Chris, invited us to come to their house for lunch.  Their little boy naps during our church hour, so they aren't able to come very often.  Not to mention they moved 30 minutes away, so we were excited to see them and see their new house!  It's beautiful and Shawn created quite a yummy spread for us.

Ella and Madie are such great friends.  They have been for years.  So, it's always fun for me to see them getting time to be together.

After lunch, we all sat around and chatted.  It was fun seeing the guys get into their own little huddle as well.

We were so caught up in conversations that it took us over an hour after church to finally LEAVE the church, then we had another couple hours at Shawn and Chris's to hang out and chat some more!  Pretty fun!  Brett and LeeAnn came back to our house with the kids, so they could play and Brett stayed for dinner, while LeeAnn went out with some of other friends.  It was a full day, but a really great one and I'm always so thankful when we have time to see each other, especially since it's not often anymore.

Solo and Ensemble

Today was the Solo and Ensemble Contest and this year it was at OUR school!  Gotta say, it was a whole lot of fun for me for lots of different reasons.  I'll get into why in a bit.

Madie's first performance was with her all girls' choir and they were set to perform before 9, so we had to be there early.  Plus, I was in charge of the door to the room that she (and a bunch of her friends) were performing in and I needed to be there by 8:30, so we got up early, got dressed up, and headed out the door.  She's so cute. :-)

Since I was busy making sure the door was closed during performances and stuff, I wasn't able to leave the room.  That means Madie got to enjoy, literally the whole day, with all of her friends, going from room to room to see her friends perform and then hanging out in the cafeteria.  I remember as a kid doing the Solo and Ensemble thing, and I remember how fun that was for me, because I got to hang out with my friends.  So, instead of having her go home between performances (the first one was at 8:52am and the second at 1:37pm), we let her stay so she could do that.  Looks like she had fun!

Her girls' group went right after her friend Michael's group, which also had several other friends of hers.  They all did a great job and all got a #1 rating!  Way to go!

The results were posted in the cafeteria, so you could see who performed in what rooms and what they did for their performance (vocal, choir, duets, instruments, etc..).  She's showing me her name and rating.

I only hung out with her and her friends during the lunch break, because I wanted to go back to the classroom and hang out and help my friend Patty, who spent most of the morning in the room I was monitoring, so we could chat and watch our kids.  She was covering the same room in the afternoon, so I went back to help her like she did for me.  It was a lot of fun!!  During lunch though I got a real glimpse into the new life of a tween.  They would sit there together and laugh and joke and text.  Constantly!  Hilarious!

I never got to hear her flute solo, so I was really looking forward to hearing it when she performed.  Oh my gosh, did she rock it!!!  I try not to brag too much,  but seriously, she did an amazing job.

The coolest part for me was seeing so many of her friends come to watch her perform.  That was really cool of them and they all told her how awesome she was.  She got another #1 rating and we were SO proud of her!  I didn't get a photo of Pete and Noah, but they were there too.  They came to watch both performances.  Livie ended up spending the rest of the afternoon with me to see Michael and some of the other kids perform, and she really enjoyed doing that too.  It was a really long day, but so, so much fun!

Ketones

 The longer we are in this journey called "Diabetes", I realize there will probably never be a time where I know everything there is to know about the disease - never a time when I'm not hit with something new.  Today, after 2 yrs, we were given a new experience called "high ketones".  What are "ketones", you ask?  I have no idea.  If I understand it correctly, it is something in the blood that, if left untreated, can lead to diabetic comas and death and at a minimum cause flu-like symptoms.  I remember on our 3rd visit to Peoria - about 3 weeks into Noah's diagnosis - we had the DKA talk.  It was a scary, scary talk.  DKA stands for diabetic ketoacidosis.  They had diagrams, notes, etc... all about this part of diabetes.  We have little test strips that Noah can pee on to test to see what his keotone levels are.  He can get them with high blood sugars or sickness.  Even a scrape on his knee can cause his levels to fluctuate and cause ketones.  As scary as ketones sound, I've never been nervous enough to test him regularly for them.  If he's exceptionally high, he'll test.  If he's sick, he'll test.  But, he's always been negative.  Guess you get pretty comfortable after a while and don't worry about it as much. This morning, about 2am, he came in our room and felt really sick to his stomach.  He ended up puking several times throughout the rest of the night, finally just dry-heaving during his last 2 sessions at 5 and 7am.  We tested his blood sugars, which were steadily rising into the 300s as the night wore on and ended up giving him a correction dose around 7:30 to help combat that, but we didn't think to test for keotones.  I had to go to church and then decided to go to the grocery, because I wanted to get some food before I ended up being home with (what I assume would be) flu-ridden kids all week.  While I was at the store, Pete called and said he tested Noah's ketones and it was high.  High?!  I immediately started freaking out.  High meant a hospital visit.  High meant coma.  I know that's not completely rational, but it's where your mind immediately goes as you remember that DKA talk back in February of 2011.  

I finished up my shopping and quickly headed home.  Pete had gotten out our notebook from the hospital that we got that first day in Peoria.  He read up about ketones, because we honestly had no idea what to do, and he started administering his first ketone insulin supplimental dose.  When I got home, I saw things laying out all over the table that Pete had been researching and managing.  We called his doctor, per the notebook that said to call immediately if he registered as "high".  She quickly reassured us that 95% of the time, high ketones are caught early enough to be treated at home that he probably wouldn't need to go to the hospital.  I was breathing a little easier.  She told us Pete did the right thing by giving him a correction dose AND a supplemental dose.  Now our job was to monitor him and check his blood sugar and ketone level every 2 hours.  Usually the levels come down after a couple supplemental doses.  Again, I was breathing a little easier.  He was still feeling really miserable, but at least we had a plan!  After his second supplemental dose, he perked up quite quickly.

You can see from the chart above that his level, that 4 hours earlier was a dark brown, was down in the moderate range in the dark peach range.  So, now we're wondering if he had the stomach flu at all.  DKA symptoms are nausea, vomiting, headache, stomach cramps/ache - all of which he had.  His numbers have been on the high side the past few days, but nothing that really raised the alarm.  Or, it all could be a coincidence that he had the stomach flu and the DKA reaction.  Only time will tell.  For now, we're quickly learning about the scary side of diabetes and feel like we acted in the right amount of time.  Even when he was diagnosed, he wasn't sick like this.  We caught it before that happened, thankfully.  So, looks like Noah is on the upswing, which is great news, though he has the rest of the day to continue with the 2-hr blood sugar checks and insulin doses to bring him down to a normal level, as well as continued urine tests and watching out for any lows that may develop, because of the extra insulin.  But, glad to say we've made it through the first 12 hours of his very first DKA with pretty good results.  It's definitely scary and, sadly, a lot of extra pokes into Noah when he's really feeling his worst, but it just reminds you how blessed we are that technology has come such a long way in the fight against this disease.  We were able to act quickly, because of that technology and it's saved him from a trip to the hospital this time and for that, I am so thankful.

Sharing Day

In class these past few weeks, we've been talking about sharing.  When another teacher came to me to see if we might want to join classes for our Center Time, I thought what better way to celebrate sharing then having another class join us!  So, today, the 4s class came to join our 2s and it made for a really fun (messy, chaotic, hilarious) morning!  We usually have most of our class time in our classroom, before having our music time in another classroom.  We knew we were going to need a lot of space for all those kids and our 2s parents, so we moved some of our stations down to the Music Room.

By having the painting projects and toys in our main classroom and the other stations in our Music Room, it made it a really open space for everyone to play in.

They worked on projects together.  They made a fun monster face using paint droppers and then folding the paper in half and squishing it, so when you opened it up, it made a unique shape.  They they worked together to put the face pieces on.  Everyone did a really great job together!

They painted the letter "M" for Monster together as well, each taking a different color to color their side of the M.  It turned out great!  Look at how little our 2s are next to their tall 4s!

They shared space as well when working in the Science Center where they played with noodles.  They made Glad Monster and Sad Monster stick puppets and played a matching game together.  They all did really well and I was so proud of them!  I was a little nervous to see how today would go, but they all seemed to have fun and one of my former 3s, now in the 4s class, was so excited to help our little ones that she picked out a special "teacher's outfit" and was ready to help. :-)  It was a fantastic morning!

The Groundhog Lied

I've decided that the Groundhog is a filthy, filthy liar.  All this stuff about spring coming sooner?  Please.  I'm sure there was some special lighting rigged up to make his shadow appear just so he could reclaim a bit of his former glory in the years following "Groundhog's Day" fame.  Either way, I think he should lose his job.  Give it to a ground squirrel or maybe even a badger, but the groundhog has lost its charm.  We have literally spent the entire winter without so much as an inch of snow.  So, as we were getting ready to welcome this "early spring" it decides to dump snow on us - TWICE!

Can't be too upset in the long run, because it gave the kids yet another opportunity to do a little sledding in our backyard, which they absolutely LOVE!

It's not much of a hill, but they can go pretty far, so they just have the best time.

Livie was so excited about going sledding that she would go as fast up that hill as she could, which meant about 30-40 min into it, she was so exhausted, that I had to pull her in her sled, so we could work on our snowman.  More about that in a second.

Noah too absolutely loved the sledding, but ended nearly every ride down in a crash of his own making.  I guess he just loves laying in the snow!  He too got tired, so he went inside after about 30 min, so he could warm up.  That's when the girls and I decided to head up front with Tater and build our snowman.

Madie decided to take pictures and throw snowballs for Tater to eat - his totally favorite thing to do! - while Livie and I worked on making the base of the snowman.  After we got the main figure made, Livie had the oh-so brilliant idea of making it a Yeti.  We enlisted Noah's inside help to find all our tools, while the girls and I worked on creating arms and scary hands.

We were quite proud of our creation.  We Trolingers don't make cute snowmen with sweet little coal eyes and a corncob pipe.  We make fangs with sticks and claws!

And, I gotta say, the effort paid off!  We have one scary, amazing Snow Yeti!  Now that we've had our snow fun, I'm ready for it to all melt and for spring to finally arrive - you hear that Groundhog?!