Ugh. sorry – this won’t be a fun one tonite folks.
During an already crazy day (many dr phone calls, therapy, newborn photo session, cranky babies who needed naps, more therapy, chiropractor appts, dance, grocery shopping….) – I get a fun call from the school nurse. When the school nurse calls, it’s never good news. Sure enough “Kealey is a very sick little girl right now, you need to come get her ASAP!”
So i throw the babies in the car half clothed, drive like a banshee over there, and find out she has a 103 degree fever, very nauseous and can hardly swallow cause her throat hurts so bad. She proceeds to lay around and nap for most of the afternoon and I am meanwhile waiting for the phone to ring that Karissa is also sick!
We manage to squeeze in a trip to Walgreens where I buy every kind of med on the shelf that is known to alleviate flu-like symptoms and/or combat the flu virus. $50 later I am loading kealey up on all kinds of good stuff, purell-ing the crap outta her poor little hands, lecturing her to not breathe near kendall, and taking her temp like a madwoman every five minutes.
When we finally make it home, the babies are just melted down – Kaylen was actually BEGGING to go to bed. Unheard of. She has had days where she didn’t even nap and she could still make it till at least 6:30, and even then, we just put her to bed cause of the meltdowns. Nope. Kaylen HAD had a nap this morning, and still brought me her pajamas, asked very nicely to please have a bubba (bottle), and go nigh-nigh. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I complied.

And then the phone call came.

Karissa had puked all over her dance teacher, the dance studio, and the hallway. Thanks to a dear amazing friend, she went and picked up my puke-covered child and brought her home so i didn’t have to pack up two sleeping babies and a sick one for a trek across town to get another sick one. So Karissa walks in the door and is just burning up – sure enough she’s just under 103, but is clearly more sick than kealey, just laying around, puffy eyes, not wanting to eat, drink or move even….
so sad for my babies!
Just then – another dear amazing friend brings by a little slice of heaven (aka portillo’s chocolate cake), and i could have just cried. It was just such an awesome gesture on it’s own, but for God to have directed that she bring it right then – it was like a little hug from heaven – that things will be ok. As close as I am to panicking over Kendall getting this, or to losing my mind about having sick kids at home all day tomorrow, I know it will be ok.
I am really just kind of record-keeping here tonite, with this post. Just logging what/when/how the sick season of 09-10 started. Because I am sure that whatever this is, it isn’t going to be the last of it.
I am relatively sure it’s not the swine flu, although I first thought that because of how quickly it hit both of them, and how hard they went down – but I haven’t heard of anyone else I know having this much nausea/vomiting with it. So then i think, ok it must be a GI bug – but typically you don’t spike real high fevers with a viral illness of that nature. So i am kinda just baffled by it.
Tomorrow I will probably lock the sickies in their room with some craft projects and the dvd movie player and some snacks and drinks just to try to at least prolong the inevitable passing to their younger sisters. Although I have a bad feeling I’ll probably wake up to a sick/warm/possibly puking Kaylen, and it really is just a matter of time then for Kendall.
I am praying praying praying that maybe its some fluke thing the girls picked up at school, and that it goes through quick. Right now, the party is still on as planned! We will go buy a few dozen cans of oust and lysol and kill every possible germ in this place if we need to!
But you know – maybe we’ll just wake up to fever free babies, and lots of happy smiles all around.
yeah, i’ll hope for that. that sounds like a great plan!

i hope this nite finds you all happy and healthy.

thanks for checking in on us. it is always so very very appreciated!

One last exciting tidbit – my dear daddy has worked so very hard on writing an awesome book that has been published and just today became available for the Kindle reader through Amazon.com! the hard copy print version will be available within the next two weeks! I am so excited for him to see this dream realized and so very proud of him for seeing it through! We’ll have lots to celebrate on Saturday!
Love you daddy!

Ok now i’m really done. I do’nt know whether to go to bed to try to get some sleep or make a pot of coffee so i can stay awake during the inevitable long nite of sick crying babies…

but i think the bed is winning out right now.

Is it Friday yet?

terra

I feel like I have so much to blog about today…

first – thank you so so much for the comments and emails last week. They mostly made me cry, but in a good way. we are SO blessed to have such great friends and family coming alongside in this journey. Every comment I read would just reinforce my strength that much more and humble me to realize just how awesome you all are! So thanks. (And keep them coming! they really help brighten up the days when I am not all sunshine and rainbows!)

second – our winner! He went to great lengths to refresh IP addresses to be THE WINNER of the “be this number” contest from last week! So he gets to choose his prize:

  $15 to Starbucks

OR

Bryan – email me your choice!

And whichever one he doesn’t choose will be NEXT WEEK’s prize! I have to pick another random number first…

third – the party! I am SO excited to see how many of you are going to be able to come celebrate with us! It is going to be a fun time, that is for sure! And so special because of all of you coming to share in this special occasion for celebration! For people who can’t make it – here, have this as a party favor:

Kendall has her own facebook flair! If you want to display the Prayers for Kendall flair button on your profile – email me or catch me on facebook! (which shouldn’t be hard considering i am on there a lot…) And thanks to zestypoop, aka my sister Noelle, for creating this awesomely cute little button for me!

It’s been a day full of therapy and work and now I have a meeting to get ready for! I’ll try to get the rest of what’s on my bloggy-mind out soon.

Hope it’s been an ok monday for all of you!

Terra

this could also be because I am currently on a very relaxing get-away weekend with some dear friends. We just decided we needed a small little break from the everyday. and it has been awesome. No medical phone calls. No chest PT to keep the crap in Kendall’s lungs broken up. No shots. No meds. NO DIAPERS!!! No whining. Just time to breathe, restore, refresh. Laugh out loud at absolutely stupid stuff that my friends do to try to make me laugh (like attempt to dance like Beyonce).

Either way – it’s an absolutely beautiful day. and I want to enjoy every second of it. The cold and snow and dreariness are coming. I feel the need to soak up this sun and fresh air and laughter in a way that I haven’t felt before. I want to scoop up my babies when I get home and hug them and tell them how much I love them and missed them. I want to hear their stories of what they did this weekend with daddy (although if history proves anything, they probably spent most of the time cleaning up their pigsty of a room and/or basement playroom.) I wonder if I’ll go back to a fully painted bedroom. And as a side update – we still haven’t officially picked a color we agree on. We are up to 9 squares of sample paint on one wall. And i kind of just like the squares in varying shades of blue and now green. it’s kind of neat. It’s a splash of happy color.

to be nicely finished later. I am on to newer and more recent posts!

T.

It was a long week with Ben gone, a long week of processing, a long week filled with way too much medical info and medical related errands. And it just wore me out.

so Thank God It’s Saturday. About to embark on a fun, low-key get away with a few friends. Just some time to get away from the routine of life with many young children around, and find time to reconnect with each other, ourselves, our own goals and dreams for life. Try to renew our spirits a little bit so we can come back to our “real” lives with just a little more zest for living. I am so excited but haven’t started packing. This will result in me having 29 different little bags with stuff crammed into them because i am just willy-nilly grabbing things i *might* need or want instead of thinking it out.

I need to continue working on Kendall’s big birthday bash next weekend! Are you coming???? We can’t wait to see you all! And yes, i do mean all of you! I was thinking back to this past April, when so many of you gathered early on a Saturday morning to pray over our baby girl, after fasting for her, pleading with God to move in her life, to give answers and directions, to have His hand on her. It was such a moving time for us, and we want to re-create that feeling of community, that sense that we are not in this alone. To celebrate how God HAS answered those pleas and prayers from  this year, and to ask for another year of blessing to be upon her. So seriously – come, please! Our house, this Saturday the 14th from 5-7p. There will be some food, cake, ice cream and leftover Halloween candy! Just email me (terra@2sisphotos.com ) to let me know that you are coming!

And now I should go get ready for my weekend of fun and relaxation!

I hope you are all having an awesome Saturday and have a GREAT weekend, whatever you have planned!

terra

I have that song stuck in my head.

It is making my already teariness even tearier. But I think they’re happy tears. Tears at realizing how very far my baby girl has come in one year. Tears of relief when I look back at pictures of her first months of life and see how sick she was, and i hear the doctor telling me how high her levels are, and i realize that she probably shouldn’t be here – and yet she has SURVIVED. She has fought. She has struggled through so much and here she is – rolling on the floor, laughing at her sisters, voicing her tiredness and desire to be picked up. These are my ordinary every day miracles.

She is here.

She is growing.

She is learning.

She is THRIVING.

For that we are so thankful.

I am on my way out the door now to go pick up her specially prepared “experimental” medication. Thank you for your prayers – it went from a projected "$800 MONTHLY tab, to just around $70 a month. Huge Huge relief. I almost lost it in the pharmacy yesterday when he told me that – I was feeling so….sorry for myself?/overwhelmed/stuck between a rock and a hard place – of how do we afford this, and how do we afford to NOT get it? There is no guarantee that this treatment will work to bring her levels down. It’s just the doctor’s best stab right now, with what we do know. And you have to hold on to that as a parent I think. This is what I have pushed for a diagnosis for for this long year – to see if there is ANYTHING, SOMETHING we can do to help her. And to have been faced with the decision to pay our bills or pay for her meds – that is such a horrible place to feel like you’re in. I know we aren’t the first OR only ones to feel like that. I am so grateful that somehow this pharmacist was able to find a way to make it not so expensive. But my heart hurts for the many families who aren’t in that position.

When we come home, I will make lunch, put Karissa on the bus, and a nurse will arrive to teach me how to inject this medicine into my baby every day for the next 30 days. I only get the nurse for three days though. After that it’s the all terra all the time show. I hope I have enough strength in me to continue doing it. As hard as it has been to hold her down for her many sticks and pokes and procedures this year, it hasn’t been ME doing the hurting. But from here on out, it will be. It’s a tough mental block to get over as a mommy. It goes against every common sense mothering cell in your body to inflict pain on your baby. And yet what can I do? To not inflict this little pain on her could lead to further damage.

So before I break down in tears again right now, I’ll end this one.

PLEASE feel free to leave questions here in the comments about what is going on – I know its all hard to understand.

we appreciate your prayers and love and support so much.

thank you -

terra

So anyways – we continue to head down this path of living with Kendall’s diagnosis. Sometimes I am just absolutely impressed with myself and how calmly I am handling it. And then I try to ignore that little voice that says – maybe that’s because you’re in denial? Because we ALL know, I am definitely not one who EVER denies things.  Nope. not me. I like to face things head on, i like to live in reality. I would definitely not be the kind of mom who tries to convince her kids every year that no, they have not actually moved up to the next number, I miscounted and it turns out they are still only four, not seven years. I ALWAYS check my bank account to be sure EXACTLY how much money is in there because I would NEVER live in denial of the fact that i MIGHT not have enough money in there for this fun frivolous target trip. I would NEVER EVER EVER keep a pair of jeans around in a size 8 because, you know, in some alternate miraculous universe i might fit into them again someday. NOT ME. I have never visited the land of De Nile.

But really – I think part of the calm comes simply from knowing this -

this burden is no longer mine to carry alone.

You have taken part of it, and you, and you – all of you reading this, praying for us, thinking of our family, lifting Kendall up to Jesus to hold and heal.

My beautiful wonderful husband has taken some of it, if even only over a teary phone call when I called to tell him the news.

My amazing family has taken some of it, by just listening to me process out loud, by letting me cry, by buying me flat top grill. oh wait, that last one hasn’t happened yet…. (consider yourself warned, don’t click on the link if you are hungry at all. you will instantly salivate and wish you had flat top down the street. I’m serious. Don’t do it.)

Our doctors have taken some of it. Knowing that the burden is not ALL MINE when we walk into an ER or the hospital, that someone else will be able to take over the directions for how to care for her, what to do in case of emergency, what it means that she has this disorder – that frees me up in a way I cannot even possibly describe.

And of course,  I know our Savior carries it all, when i am willing to lay it at His feet.

So lay it down I have. At least for now. At least for this week i am ok with it being someone else’s problem. for right now – we have an answer. we have someone else who can be Kendall’s voice and advocate in her doctors – it’s NOT ALL ME anymore. And yes, if something were to happen, of course I WOULD be her biggest advocate again – but for right now, it feels a little like spring break. Like I can just take a rest from it all for a while, and pick it back up when the need arises.

So that’s where I am today.

I have more to blog but babies are crying – back soon!

and oh my gosh you guys are so close to the special number! who is it going to be?!?!?!?!

t-crest.

so in spite of the fact that I currently feel like…well…not so healthy I guess, I am trying to choose to have a good day.

I spent the majority of yesterday on the phone with the genetics assistant, home health care company, 5 or 6 pharmacies – all trying to get this new b12 therapy in place for Kendall. The home health nursing agency recommended we just go to our ped’s office daily for these shots – “that will be so much easier”.

Really? It’s 45 minutes away – ONE WAY. I have three other kids who have to be at school, on the bus, off the bus, at dance class – not to mention a LIFE. and really, how advisable is it, do ya think, to take all these children, one of whom has a known immunodeficiency, into an office where sick kids are laying around like so many zombies, EVERY DAY for the next month? Are you REALLY telling me that will be easier????

Needless to say, we are setting up home nursing training.

Still can’t find the right meds though – and by meds i mean vitamin b12, but prepared in a slightly different way than is commercially available. Found one pharmacy that CAN make it the way Kendall needs it, but they don’t take our insurance. The ballpark number I have been given is $800. I am praying they were doing math off the top of their head and carried an extra zero or something.

So today is going to be  more of the same. 2 therapies today – speech and occupational. Which is kind of funny when you think about it because she neither talks nor works. But, you know, we’re working on it.

In some GREAT news – I just got off the phone with our Immuno doctor and we DO NOT need to start IVIG immediately as they were discussing/thinking! It’s not totally off the table and Ben and I need to discuss still what we think is the next best thing for her (attempting to give her monthly vaccines of the most likely to harm her infections, maintenance antibiotics, etc.). We will still meet on the 25th with the immunodeficiency team to see what they recommend based on the plan we come up with, and IVIG may still be in the future, just given the fact that with her metabolic issues, sickness is clearly going to complicate things even more for kendall. But HALLELUJAH we don’t need to get it started yesterday like they were first thinking.

i may or may not have just tripped this over to italicized printing. if i did, sorry. my editor is kind of wonky with showing me what it’s actually doing.

So. like i was saying. Attitude reflects leadership, cap’n. Oh wait, wrong movie…

Attitude changes things. Prayer changes things. today is going to be a good day. we’ll just keep adding up good days one by one.

I feel like I had more to tell you all. but my efforts to ignore the fact that I think I am slowly being hit over the head with some kind of sickness aren’t staving off the fact that indeed my throat is now swelling shut and my ears feel like they’re going to explode off my head.

perhaps I’ll be back later with more.

IF YOU’RE LUCKYYYYYY!!!!!!

Fun contest of the day – if you notice that you have the number 26078 in the counter over to the right ———————-> LEAVE A COMMENT! There will be a prize for you!

Did you guys think of your favorite childhood 80’s movies yet for my big post? Tell me what you remember watching over and over and over again!

hope you are all having a GREAT day!

t-shizz.

I am still trying to process all that got thrown at me yesterday in the doctor’s office. so this might not make sense completely (because, you know, I think all of my other posts make SO much sense…)

In two weeks my baby will be one. One whole year. It seems in some ways like such a short time, and yet such a very very long time – all at the same time. She has endured a lifetime’s worth of pokes, prods, sticks, hospital visits and surgeries. she has fought through each illness with a strength I can only hope to possess, and come through each storm with a beautiful smile still on her little face. She is a fighter. She is amazing. She is my baby.

And for eleven and a half months, we have searched hither and yon for someone to figure her out, to put the pieces of her random puzzle of symptoms together and FIX our beautiful baby girl. Keep her out of the hospital. Help her muscles work right. Make the pain go away. I lost track of how many doctors we have seen, how many medical record numbers she has at various hospital systems throughout two states now. And yesterday, we finally found part of that answer. A large part. A part bigger than I think I wanted.

our baby has a rare metabolic disorder.

Kendall has a disorder called “Methylmalonic Acidemia”, an inborn error of fatty acid oxidation/metabolism. Essentially her body  doesn’t metabolize proteins correctly, so some of the by-products of that process get leftover in her system. Typically, being well nourished helps aid this process via a chemical binding process where vitamins bind to the leftover acids and they all get flushed happily out of the system. So well know that kendall has a large problem staying “nourished”, so that’s issue #1. With this scenario, the treatment would be just to pump her full of Vitamin B12, and hope that that chemical process kicks in and flushes the acid out of her system.

Issue #2 is that in spite of her “malnourishment”, her B12 levels are actually normal. So this process SHOULD be taking place. and it’s not. So now the doctor is stumped.

Issue #3 is that her bloodwork also points toward mitochondrial dysfunction. Mito disease. However you want to say it. It’s not pretty. It’s what i have hoped against hope that she isn’t dealing with.

Issue #3.1 is that the mitochondrial dysfunction that her issues all point towards is something known as mitochondrial depletion. More specifically -

SUCLA2-Related Mitochondrial DNA Depletion Syndrome, Encephalomyopathic Form, with Mild Methylmalonic Aciduria

I had to copy that from a google page. I think it hits the limits of even Dr. Terra’s vast knowledge.

And to bring it full circle – SUCLA Sucks. As a friend told me “there’s no sugar coating that diagnosis”. Indeed there is not. I have not linked it above because I am not willing to breathe life into it yet. you are free to conduct your own medical research Google search on it. It’s not exactly sunshine lollipops and rainbows (holla Laura!). the best way to describe it is kind of like this (and I know i am oversimplifying this for those mito friends who check in here, but I am still learning!):

Mito disease is basically like having a copy machine that makes copies with a big black line through it. At some point, that big black line is going to interfere with SOMETHING you’re trying to read. Sometimes its just an annoying line (this would be things like hypotonia, maybe some nasty ear infections, lethargy, things of that nature). Sometimes though, that big black line is going to obscure some VERY IMPORTANT info (this would be things like GI tract shutdown, cardiomyopathy, kidney or liver failure).  Either way, you’re not getting good copies, and that’s never a happy thing. In fact it can be downright lethal.

Mito depletion is kind of like having a copy machine that only makes those bad copies, and will only make 10,000 copies before its done. End of story. It is always downright lethal.

KENDALL DOES NOT HAVE CONFIRMED SUCLA2 DEPLETION SYNDROME.  She just happens to fit a very clinical picture, as well as has testing that points that way. She has been entered into a research study to test for this syndrome, as well as having her cells and bloodwork sent to labs literally across the world to test for this. We are praying, dare i say PLEADING with God that this is not the full answer for Kendall.

The metabolic disorder on its own answers a lot of our questions about Kendall’s prior health history and how she is. It in and of itself will be a hard diagnosis to deal with, and will come with its own set of crazy new circumstances to deal with. It COULD BE deadly for her if she ever gets into a bad metabolic decompensation state.  I don’t want to sugarcoat this one either.  Having “Just” MMA is still going to be life-changing. Yes i would breathe a sigh of relief if it turns out to be “JUST” MMA. But she will still face lifelong challenges. She will never be able to eat a full range of normal foods. She will need her tubey in for a very very long time. She will always be weaker and have less energy than other kids. She will need to wear a MedicAlert bracelet and probably have more IV fluids than she would ever hope for in a lifetime. Little sicknesses like colds or stomach bugs will still likely mean inpatient admissions. BUT – she will survive. We will make it our mission to help her survive, and live life abundantly.

Having MMA with a secondary mitochondrial dysfunction/disease process will complicate things. Even this is not sure or confirmed yet. Her muscle biopsy is {finally} being sent for the testing it should have been sent for in June. This will tell us if her mitochondria are kind of “coming off the line” as defective (and thereby possibly CAUSING this MMA buildup), or if they are being defected by all the acid buildup. Horse and cart type of situation. Which one is which? We don’t know. Again, this is a situation we pray desperately isn’t happening. Secondary mito dysfunction is not as bad as primary mito dysfunction, but along with the metabolic disorder AND the immunodeficiency, well, you fill in the blanks. She’s up poop creek without a paddle. (I “de-roughed” that one just for you mary jane.)

So. thats what we know.

And as i sit and type this out i am clinging to the promises that God gives us in His Living Word – that he has plans for a hope and a future for us, that He knit dear Kendall together in my womb and HE KNOWS what goes on in each and every cell, molecule, strand of DNA, gene, down to the tiniest of organisms, HE. IS. ALWAYS. IN. CONTROL.

Always.

He’s got the whole world in His hands.

He has the doctors and the labs and the bloodwork and the muscle samples and the skin fibroblasts in His hands.

He has little baby Kendall in His hands.

and he will be the one who carries us through.

thank you for your prayers. thank you for joining with us on this journey. thank you for the emails and the comments and the cards and the hugs.

So.

Let’s get ready to CELEBRATE how very far this little has come, and look forward to many many more birthdays.

I know there are so many holes in this post. there’s so much I am working on today – getting nursing care set up, finding a pharmacy that can deliver ridiculous quantities of injectable B12 without mortgaging our house, trying to get info from all of her doctors about their input to her meds/care plan now that we have a diagnosis, and of course therapy therapy therapy!

and now i need some chocolate cake.

t-crest out.

oh hi there! sorry, i was channeling my inner karen carpenter. the one i ate. good lord that is such a sad loss – she had such a beautiful voice. don’cha remember you told me you loved me babyyyyy???? said you’d be comin’ back this way again mayyyyybeeee….baby baby baby oh babbbyyyyyy….i love you….

anyhoo. now that you know my big dark secret of loving the Carpenters, I guess i’ll move on to real blog business.

I need to do a catch up post on Halloween, but I’ll give you one sneaky peek at the FUDORABLE costumes/bakers, if I do say so myself!

As I type this, I am in between frantic preparations to drive up to milwaukee for the day. This includes dealing with a VERY teary Karissa, who we had to make the decision to pull out of school for fear that she would not be able to make it the whole day without her fever coming back that she decided to spike yesterday. It’s very low grade (100), but its right at that line that I know the school would call and want me to come get her, and that will be hard to do from 3 hours away in the middle of a dr. appt. So she gets to make a road trip and hopefully no more fever today so she can return tomorrow! Truly, I am grateful that the school is being so stringent in who they are allowing at school and how symptom free they have to be in order to stay there. But try telling that to a very emotional 5 year old. she doesn’t appreciate the finer nuances of herd colonization of a novel virus strain.

Anyways – this will be a short and sweet little post and i know it won’t hit the feed reader for those of you who subscribe till tomorrow sometime, but for those of you who DO faithfully check here first, and you are so inclined, please pray for us around noon. I know that part of why we were called back there so quickly is that they have a lot of the bloodwork results back from our initial round of genetic testing in August. The genetic counselor said that “was kind of changing the scope of their testing” – which i guess could mean anything from – “nothing’s wrong with your daughter” to “we found it and need to just narrow down a few things”. I have purposefully tried to not think about it too much, so that I don’t form too many feelings about it either way. Our world could be rocked today, or we could just get a whole lot of nothing for info. I know they will also be performing “skin biopsies” today, which will involve punching out samples of various skin patches so that they can grow more “fibroblasts” to test for various diseases, or more specifically, a specific kind of metabolic disease with various presentations.

And in a HUGE HUGE HUGE answer to prayer, we were formally referred to a program known as “Special Needs” at CHW. This is a hard program to get accepted into, but they want to meet with us, possibly today or at our next appt on the 18th. I was SO excited to get the email on Friday afternoon that they wanted to meet with us – this would offer coordination between all of her docs up there, as well as Dr. A and Dr. Natalie down here in IL, and give us one main contact point should things get to the point of needing to go up to the ER. HUGE relief of a huge burden lifted off my shoulders if we are to be accepted into this program, so please pray for softened hearts and listening ears and for our appt to meet with them to be coordinated smoothly.

Sorry this is so choppy and somewhat disjointed. I just don’t know how i feel, so i am singing sappy 70’s love songs to distract myself. chime in with your favorite Carpenter’s lyrics to help keep me distracted! I’ll be updating twitter and facebook throughout the afternoon as I can.

And I realize I forgot to put WHAT i was actually making in yesterdays post.  It was spaghetti! Totally not that hard, but you know, it’s the effort that counts, right? Tonight we are trying to decide what to do for Family Movie night, and Ben has graciously allowed me to  pick what kind of pizza we’ll have. “IF i’m nice”. Apparently I spend most of my days being dreadfully mean to my darling husband, poor tortured soul that he is with his four baby girls and mean wife. So now i am working on not using rough words and being nice to Ben. And potty training a stubborn 2 year old and teaching the baby how to swallow with her esophagus and not her airway. And keeping the house cleaner, organized and festive. But that’s it. I am not working on anything else this week!

So there’s this cute blog carnival going on at a really neat new blog I found about what people have made in the kitchen this week in preparation for Halloween. And since we all know I don’t actually COOK in my kitchen, here’s what I made for Halloween – COSTUMES!!!   The costumes came out pretty cute if I do say so myself. Each of the three older ones has an apron with a ridiculous amount of little glitter on the top, some paint, an iron on cupcake thingajobber, some half melted ribbon glued on with Heat Bond (yay for no sewing!), and then the piece-de-resistance (say that with your fake French accents) – hot pink child-size baker’s hats!!! Personalized a la their personalities with jewelled accents. I thought i was going to burn either my fingerprints off or a massive hole in the counter between my 38-attachment craft tool that heats up to 832 degrees in 4 seconds, the glue gun dripping glue all over, and superglue to hold jewels in place. and glitter that is now EV.ERY.WHERE. in the kitchen. Kendall has a permanent fine dusting of pink glitter because i was drying the glitter stencils on her changing pad. You can NEVER have too much glitter, i promise you. Kendall’s costume was easy though. Put poofy pettiskirt on baby. Insert baby into large drink holder decorated with hearts from Valentine’s Day. Put button-glued hat on baby’s head. Voila. instant cupcake as the PERFECT accessory for her three baker sisters’ costumes. And my creativity has officially been spent for the remainder of this year. Scrapbook pages will hereon out be fugly pictures taped onto plain brown paper. Now if i can just manage to get a few pictures where EVERYONE is in their costumes, looking at me and smiling – the world will be a happy place.

the Costume Parade at school was cancelled today – boo hoo!!!!

the girls were so looking forward to marching around their school in full baker regalia. And yes i was dying to go get the requisite photo’s of this event. Maybe next year. I am sure there will be lots of picture taking over the next two days!

It seems like there was something else I had to blog about today…but yeah, it’s totally gone now. I’ll come back if i remember it!

Enjoy your rainy Friday nites, party people!

Terra