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Hannah woke up at 2:30 Thursday morning and came crying to the door that she couldn’t breathe.  I was >.< this close to taking her to the ER when we found the bottle of albuterol syrup in the bathroom cabinet.  Gave her a dose of that and her breathing eased up in a few minutes, so we waited until morning.  Got her in at the clinic after lunch, and it’s bronchitis and an ear infection.  Just one ear, at least.  So we’re continuing the albuterol and adding an antibiotic, in addition to the robitussin.  She still sounds a bit wheezy, but doesn’t have trouble breathing now.  Charlie’s keeping her home from church tomorrow, so I’ll be going by myself.  Or maybe we’ll pull Sarah’s car seat out and put it in the other car so I can take her with me.  She doesn’t even have a sniffle, and I hope it stays that way!

Hannah was fine last night.  Absolutely fine.  This morning she has a raspy cough!  So she’s already had her first dose of Airborne Jr.  I hope it works as well as last time - a couple days of Airborne and the sniffles that I could hear dropping into her chest never got any worse.

This was our weekend to go up to Salem and see Terry Fator!  We headed up Sabbath afternoon, with the kids and our babysitter in tow.  Armed with a stack of Veggie Tales DVDs and some snacks, the four-hour drive went surprisingly well.  We got there with time to grab some dinner, then check into the motel and get the kids settled before heading over to the show.  I’m glad we decided just to wear our clothes for the show in the car, because we wouldn’t have had time to change.  Parking was horrible!  We drove around several blocks and finally found a parking garage about 4 blocks over.  With 8 minutes until show time.  Yikes!  We had to hoof it, and fast!

We headed up the stairs to the balcony and were told that we had the last two empty seats up there!  Front row, center, right on the aisle, so at least we didn’t have to climb over anyone to get to them.  We barely had time to sit down and catch our breath before the house lights lowered and the emcee came out on stage.  Talk about timing!  I think they waited for us.  

What a fantastic show!!  Terry was fantastic, but we really didn’t expect anything less.  He was very funny, and just flat-out amazing - my eyes bugged out of my head a few times when he’d move into the next part of his act.  Honestly, if you ever get a chance to go see him - even if you aren’t a fan of ventriloquists, or impressionists, GO!  It’s worth every penny.

He is such a down-to-earth, caring, generous guy.  He told us that he’d been a long-time fan of a Christian musician and had been able to get to know him over the past few years, and that this musician had fallen seriously ill.  So, all the money that Terry made at the show that night was going to help with his medical treatment.  I think his realism is part of the draw that is making him famous.

We purchased an audio CD of his own singing - not impressions, just actual singing - and waited for the chance to meet him briefly and get his autograph on the disc.  I wish I’d known ahead of time that his policy is “want to take pictures during the show?  Go ahead!  Want to take video clips and stick ‘em on YouTube?  Go for it!”, because I’d have brought the camera so we could get our picture taken with him.  He promised to stick around at the end of the show until everyone who wanted to meet him or have their picture taken or to get an autograph, had the chance.

Sunday morning found us at IHOP  for a delicious pancake breakfast.  I miss IHOP!  The local one closed several years ago when the freeway off-ramp was re-routed and they didn’t open a new one in town.  Phooey!  I couldn’t believe how much the kids ate, either.  Lots more than they usually eat at any single meal.

Then we headed up to the Woodburn Company Stores  for some outlet shopping.  Found some awesome deals!  Matching dresses for both girls AND one for their cousin, plus socks, for only $20 total at Gymboree!

On the way home, we stopped for a late lunch at the K-R Drive Inn at Rice Hill.  I know, it’s just Umpqua Ice Cream, which I could bring home from the grocery store, but it’s fun, and it’s yummy, and they even do a good job on the Gardenburgers!

The one sad note was on the way home, our babysitter got a call that her Dad was at the hospital and might be admitted.  She text messaged me today and he was admitted and may have to have surgery.  We’re praying for you, Bob!

Or maybe I should say, if it’s not one of us, it’s one of the others! Today was Hannah’s turn to be rushed down to the clinic, bleeding like everything. She fell off the top step of her bunkbed, into the little gap between the stairs and the wall at the end. Yes, a railing for that end of the stairs has been requisitioned! <eyeballs Daddy> In the process of falling, she bit her tongue, and has a hole the size of her tooth in the side of it. It’ll be ok, didn’t need stitches or anything, but she was pretty hysterical for a while.

The doctor recommended these new weight loss strips she’d noticed at Wal-mart. They’re a numbing agent, kind of like choloraseptic I guess, but in strips like those Listerine strips that melt on your tongue. It seemed to help the pain almost instantly, so that’s good. We also got some popsicles for her - that made her happy.

And again, nothing much going on, LOL!  We did get into town the other day and picked up all kinds of fun stuff at the Dollar Tree and a few other places.  Everything we need to create our classroom, from alphabet borders to pencils, crayons and markers to safety scissors, construction paper and glue sticks to workbooks and card games to use as our teaching tools for now.  We got a couple little desks that have dry-erase-board tops and the alphabet and numbers 1-20 on them, on clearance at Big Lots.  We have a cork bulletin board and a magnetic dry-erase board for “teacher”.  We have pencil boxes.  Well, vinyl zip-up cases, but they’re the same size as old-fashioned pencil boxes and that’s what they’re for.  We have posters with shapes and colors with their names printed on them.  Then we were blessed with a desk from the local Freecycle-style group.  It’s an old style desk with a cubby under the seat and the desk mounted to the chair.  It’s just Hannah’s size, with room to grow for a few years, and it’s painted bright yellow with frogs on the back of the seat and the front of the cubby.   Both girls love it - I wish I’d been able to get two of them!

We’re thinking about getting a fish tank and a couple of goldfish or minnows or some other inexpensive fish, to have in the classroom area.  The girls always ask to go see the fish when we go to Wal-mart, and the last time Charlie took them to look at them, they asked to bring some home.  They hadn’t asked to bring them home before.  It might be nice in the classroom, if we keep it simple.  I know I’m going to be the one cleaning it, but oh well.  I’ve dealt with fish before.

I’m baking cookies later today - white chocolate macadamia for one, and lemon cookies for the other.  The lemon ones are the easy ones that you just add a tub of cool whip and an egg to a lemon cake mix and roll in powdered sugar.  They’re for tomorrow night at a friend’s house.

I was all caught up with work, only having one batch to do every day.  Then last night, they dumped five on me.  Fun, fun.  Better get back to work!

Nothing too exciting to report these days. Just every day stuff.

I just took the crib apart and will be getting it out to the shed later today. Going to move the craft desk from the guest room into that alcove of my room, so the guest room isn’t so cluttered. I hope to go to the Dollar Tree this afternoon and pick up some preschool workbooks and “classroom” decorations to set our dining room up as a classroom. We never use it as a dining area, anyway, so it’s perfect. I’ll have the girls do preschool work until Hannah turns 5, and then I will enroll her in the Griggs University Kindergarten course, and Sarah will continue with preschool work, as much as she wants. I’m not going to push her, but I know that she’ll want to be involved in whatever Hannah is doing. I hope to get two student desks for them so it’s a bit more structured.

Potty training is going well - the next step is just the overnights.

My finger is just about healed up - it’s still tender if I bump it, and it has one little spot that dries out sometimes, but then I just put ointment and a bandage on it overnight.

I’m caught up with work - yay! It’s nice to be able to work on projects around the house today and not feel guilty about not working. I only have about a half day’s worth of work to do tomorrow.

The sun is out but it’s raining. How’s that for an oxymoron?