Day 6 of my confinement!

So little Ella started to be very cranky on Friday. This is definitely not typical behavior for my happy little girl. That night she was pretty congested and woke up several times during the night. Saturday day, she was extremely cranky and took herself to bed for a nap. Our weekend was taking a turn for the worse. Chris worked the entire weekend due to a small crisis at work. We were supposed to join his family at the racetrack for his dad's birthday celebration but I had to stay home. Not only was Ella not well, but I was starting to feel icky too.

Sunday morning came, Chris headed back to work and I moved from the bed to the couch. Thank goodness Riley and Ciara were feeling cooperative that day and were mostly able to fend for themselves. Monday morning came around and I was definitely down for the count. I couldn't stand for more than a few minutes and could barely swallow my own saliva. Ella had cried most of the night. A trip to the doctor was definitely in order for both of us, so Chris stayed home and took us lest I crashed the van in my woozy state.

So turns out Ella has Strepp and an ear infection. I of course had been sleeping with Ella to comfort her - so Strepp for me, ear infection, migraine and mild dehydration. Today is day six of us being stuck in the house. My older two kids really have been troopers, attempting to entertain themselves and help around the house. Ella seems to be fighting her germs off and of course like most children only seems uncomfortable at night. I on the other hand feel like someone beat me up and poured glass down my throat.

So go away Strepp throat, I want to enjoy the few weeks of summer that I have left with the kids!!

Preparing for PreSchool

Believe it or not, our little Ella Bella will be starting preschool in late August. She barely makes the July 31st cutoff. Yesterday we went to the school for a screening, which basically consisted of a teacher showing Ella something such as a car, asking her what it is, and what color it is. Ella would answer and look at her with a quizzical look on her face. As if she was wondering why the teacher didn't know her shapes and colors. Eventually she got tired of answering silly questions and refused to participate any more. Thankfully, at this point it was clear to the teacher that Ella is indeed ready for preschool.

I promised Ella that we could go visit the preschool playground when we were done. Both Riley and Ciara attended the same preschool when they were little but they have of course made some changes over the years. They have a bicycle trail with little stop signs, a gas pump and a house. There are some interesting displays that make music. There is a weather station and a garden. Then of course there is a traditional playground with swings and slides and such. It was fun for Riley and Ciara to revisit their old stomping grounds, and for Ella to see what she had to look forward to.

Yes, I admit it. I am a reality TV junkie.

Much to my husband's disappointment I am a reality TV junkie. As I type this I am watching Tori and Dean on Oxygen. I love this show. Tori Spelling is just so darn cute. Maybe I like her so much cause she was on one of my favorite shows growing up: 90210. I love the fact that she takes her kids everywhere with her. (Yes, I know she has a nanny and tons of help, but she could just as easily leave them behind.) I like her honesty, her openess (is that even a word?) and I love that she shows whatever emotion she is feeling.

I usually like most everything on Bravo TV, however yesterday I actually had to turn the TV off. In a few moments of sheer boredom, I turned on a show called NYC Prep. Apparently the show is supposed to follow these high school age kids who are filthy rich. These kids were terrible! They are driven around town in limos making fun of other kids that they believe don't share their station in life. They go shopping and drop thousands of their parents money without batting an eye. They have casual sex and seem to be proud of it. They appear to be catty and two faced.

I decided that if wealth and privilege raises these kind of children, I'm glad to be raising my kids in a middle class Midwestern family. Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.

I know that "reality" shows are usually nowhere near reality. Perhaps they are fun because they help us escape our own reality for a little while. Plus, compared to their crazy insane life's, maybe things around here are normal after all!

Happy 3rd Birthday Ella!

Every time one of my children has a birthday I'm shocked a little. How can my first born be 10? My beautiful Ciara is 7?! How can our baby girl possibly be 3?!

Yep three years old today. She hardly acts like a baby either. She can carry on a conversation with an adult. She is soo witty. (Much like her father and brother) She is sweet and kind and fun loving. She always has a hug or a kiss ready for anyone ready to accept one.

She has been sort of oblivious about her birthday. She kept saying "It's sissy's birthday" Probably since Ciara celebrated the last birthday. On friday some cards arrived for her from England. She saw the number three on them and all of a sudden it dawned on her, that it really was her birthday! She started to get pretty excited.

Ella loves animals so we decided to take her to the zoo. It was an amazing summer day here in St Louis and unfortunately it seems like everyone else had decided that visisiting the zoo would be a great idea. After spending approximately an hour stuck in traffic, right in sight of the zoo we decided to leave the zoo for another day and head over to Toys R Us.

Other than some kind of Leap Frog type item, I had no idea what to get her for her birthday, so we just set her loose. She had a great time running through the isles from one toy to another. In the end we picked out a Leapster (handheld video game made for little ones) and a game to go with it. She picked out some new bottles and a carseat for her babies, an umbrella with a monkey print on it (she LOVES monkeys), a pink Magna Doodle and a giant bottle of bubbles. She tore everything out of there boxes the moment we got home.

Today we went to church as usual. After dinner we had cake. Ella had requested a yellow cake. Our house is full of chocolate cake lovers so I was trying to think of a cake that would please Ella yet still be appealing to the rest of the family. I decided on Ice cream cake. I made a simple yellow cake layer, put a layer of strawberry topping, followed by some vanilla ice cream that I dyed yellow. It was very simple but yummy. Ella decided to start eating it while I was finding a cutting utensil. But hey, she's the birthday girl right.

Me too, me too!

I realized after I posted the last entry that I failed to include pictures of my sister's other two children. I'd hate for them to think that Aunt Clair doesnt think they are just as cute as their younger sibling.

Don't you just love this adorable smiling face? Too cute!




Donovan - The big brother

Viva Las Vegas

The last time I had seen my sister Danielle was when she and her family joined us here in St Louis last summer. So the birth of my new niece, the sweet little Mackenzie Avalyn was the perfect reason to jump on a plane and head out to Las Vegas for a visit.

Life at my sister's house is busy to say the least. She has two other children, she works full time and her hubby is a police officer. Their first born, the adorable Donovan will be three in december, beautiful little Meagan followed shortly after and turned one a few short days before Mackenzie made her arrival. Yep, that's three kids under the age of three! In her household there is always a diaper that needs to be changed and a mouth that needs to be fed. There's also always a little person that wants to give you a hug, a cuddle or a gorgeous smile. I had a wonderful time visiting them - I miss them soo much already. I am sad that I can't see them whenever I want and that I have to miss the "inbetween stuff" between visits.

Most of my time was just spent visiting with them in their fabulous new home, but thanks to Beau's mom and dad (Thanks Rod and Lyn!) we were able to duck out a couple of nights and have some fun.

The first night we went out to Bingo. Many of my friends gave me a hard time about this, but I have lived in Vegas before - I've played the slots, played the tables, been there done that. Danielle and I grew up with a grandmother that loved bingo. Our father worked in a bingo hall for a while and when we were kids we got to be the bingo checkers. Bingo seemed like a good choice.

Now let me tell you, Bingo is not for the feint of heart. We bought a package deal that included 12 games . For each game we had to mark 12 cards each. They do have an electronic version that you can play where this machine does everything for you and you just sit there. This seemed boring to me, so we opted for the old fashioned paper version that you mark with a bingo dobber. (We even found "Luck of the Irish" dobbers and being part Irish, we thought this was perfect) They started calling the first game. They would call one number, make an annoucement, call another number................seemed fairly easy. But then they started calling the numbers at an alarming rate. We no longer could keep up. The games started getting more complicated. It wasn't just regular bingo anymore. Now we had to make an X, or get a row of six, or double bingo, or five in a row without using the free space. We were trying really hard to keep up with all the numbers called while trying to keep an eye on our cards to see if we had actually won. We didn't win a single game. So we left the bingo hall and met Danielle's husband and went to watch Transformers. Much more relaxing. We did go back to the Bingo hall after the movie and played the electronic version. Not really that much fun but way less stress.

The second night we went out, we went to see Phantom of the Opera at the Venetian Hotel. If you ever are in Las Vegas and have a chance to see this show, it is definitely worth it. The theatre, props and special effects were fantastic and we were lucky enough to have center seats about 8 rows from the stage. It was incredible - we both loved it. Next time we have to take our hubbies.

Really! I'm going to keep it up this time!

So, it's been a while since my last post. In my defense, I have been moderately successful at keeping up our family website. (You can peek at this at www.fivejordans.com) The company that hosts our site have been promising blogging software for a long time. It is available now, but I have not been successful in making it work. So here I am.