B’s blog

It’s been a while since I’ve written. Guess things have been normal around here, not too exciting. Yesterday (Sunday) Jaelyn woke up at 1am puking so Erik took the night shift and was up with her until 5am. Poor thing. She wouldn’t eat anything all day yesterday and just fell asleep off and on on the couch. At 6pm she was still sleeping so I took her temp and it was 102.4F! I gave her some tylenol and finally she agreed to eat a popsicle. By bedtime she was back down to normal but still feeling nauseated. Today she’s doing ok. I just have to convince her to try to eat something. Braden and Avery both have bad coughs. I think I have to lysol my house to get all these sickies out. Today they are predicting sleet. It’s raining now and it’s definitely colder than yesterday but sleet in Texas? Come on! I guess it’s due to this Arctic storm up north. I should be glad it’s not snowing but everyone around here is a retard behind the wheel when the weather is bad so I’m nervous about going to work tomorrow. Kids don’t have school today so we are declaring another pajama day in the Sheldon household! I have a stocked pantry and freezer and we are ready to just be stuck at home. This Saturday I’m hosting my first 2007 scrapbook party at our house. I have 3 friends coming over and even Jaelyn and one of my friend’s daughters will scrapbook with us. I ordered over 500 photos from 2006 since May that I haven’t had a chance to print off the computer yet. So if they all show up on time for the party, I’ll have a ton of work to do. Erik is leaving for the day to play the World of Warcraft on the PC with his friend Brent. I’m not sure if I wrote on here or not that we are scheduling my c-section for April 30th. I still want to say for the record that I think I’m having this baby on April 24th. We’ll see if I have that intuition or not. I’m feeling pretty good, just big and pregnant, which equals sore all the time. Today I’m 24 weeks, 6 months, officially in my 3rd trimester. Only 14 weeks left until April 30th. How exciting to know that this is almost over. And for the first time in all my pregnancies, I KNOW I’m done having babies after this one. There is without a doubt that having my tubes tied during this c-section is the BEST idea ever!

This weekend went better than I thought it would. Erik and I went out to dinner at a brewery/pizzeria called BJ’s in Clear Lake, on the way to Galveston, with his coworker Brent and his wife Robin. We had a really good time there and then headed into Galveston to check into the condo/hotel to play cards. I have to say that having the condo was super nice. Usually it cost $135/night and we got 2 nights free. It had a kitchette, living area with pull out couch, table with 4 cards that we could play cards on, a bedroom suite with a closet and flat screen tv on the wall, bunk beds. Friday night Robin and Brent stayed until 1 am so we took advantage of sleeping in on Saturday. We ended up going to brunch at 11:30 at IHOP and then basically just waited until the kids made it to the beach house with Kim and Steve. We rode the ferry over to Boliver Island and I got to see the beach house for the first time all redone. It was really nice! We took the kids back with us and went to Moody Gardens to watch through the Festival of Lights. It is like going to Waterworks Park in your car in Des Moines but this was something you walked through. They had live music, kettlecorn, and even a guy who juggled battons lit with fire. The kids thought that was cool. It was super cold by the water and since we had to walk the long path, the half hour walk seemed like forever. Afterwards we took the kids to see some corny cartoon movie Santa vs the Snowman in 3D. That was fun to watch Braden wear the glasses and reach out for stuff he thought was right in front of him. It was the neatest part of the evening. Erik did manage to stand in line and get all 3 kids picture taken with Santa too. Jaelyn was hesitant to get on Santa’s lap but Braden just jumped right on. He was upset afterwards because he was under the impression that Santa was handing out the presents right then and there. When we got back to the hotel it was around 8 and we picked up deli sandwiches for supper and watched The Grinch on tv. Everyone was in bed by 10pm. We got up early Sunday and ate breakfast at the hotel for free and then hit the road. We were home by 10am. It was definitely a better weekend then I thought. Erik and I couldn’t remember the last time we had a full night to ourselves. It was sort of sad to see how our attitudes and moods change so fast from one minute of being alone without kids to the next having all 3 of them with us. Don’t misunderstand, we love being with our kids but we aren’t the same when they are around. We are much more impatient and stressed out.

Tonight after Erik fell asleep on the couch and all kids were asleep, I began realizing that I’m officially half way done with this pregnancy. Since I will deliver at 38 weeks and tomorrow I’m 19 weeks, I have 19 weeks left and that’s it. Then we will have 4 children! I guess I’m cold feet in a sense. I’m worried about how we will handle it, how the kid will do, how I’ll manage work and home. Just alot on my mind.

My back has been feeling better. I stopped taking the pain pills Thursday night just so I’d see how I’d do without them and I’m doing well. I’m back to work tomorrow night. I have 2 weeks left (hopefully that is it!) of night shifts. It just isn’t what works for our family. I can’t wait to see how days will work better for us with me in this department.

One last thing, I made my first batch ever of Wassail tonight. If you don’t know what that is, it’s sort of like apple cider only much better! Here’s the recipe for anyone who wants to try it for the holidays:

Christmas Wassail
1 qt apple juice
1 qt orange juice
2 cups cranberry juice
1 can pineapple nector
2 tsp lemon juice
1 cup sugar
4 cinnamon sticks
8 whole allspice
1/2-1 orange sectioned

Place in crockpot or over low heat on stove for several hours (4 hrs recommended in crockpot on low).

I also made chocolate and sprinkle covered pretzels for the kids and chocolate peanut butter balls.

We went to the baseball game Wed and the Cubs beat the Astros 1-0. It was alot of fun! Here are some photos of that. Also we got our photo taken and are on the astros.com website under fan photos July 5 game, gallery 8 (for those that want to look). Today Avery has his 8 year old check up with a shot. He’s mad at me. Thinks it my fault that Texas schools require all kids to get the 2 Hepatitis A shots now. I have a feeling he’s going to let his doctor have it! We are trying to get a few kids together to take him to Laser Rage tomorrow afternoon. It’s the one thing he really wanted to do for his birthday this year and I kept putting it off but can’t any longer. So I think I’ll send Erik with A and the neighbor boys. He can be crazy. I’m off this weekend. I have so many things on my “to do” list but I really only want to lay by the pool and get a suntan. We’ll see if it rains or not. That can be my determining factor I guess.

The party was really nice last night. It was a dress up event and I ended up getting a new black skirt and red top. Erik wore his suit without the jacket. They served a very nice meal; chicken, rice, green beans, salad, rolls, and a yummy dessert which Erik and I shared…aren’t we good? Then they had the 2nd Baptist Church’s high school drill team come perform for us which was excellent! I can’t say enough awesome things about these kids and how talented they are. Then they had an hour concert from one of the Christian artists, which we missed because we wanted to get home at a decent hour for our sitter to get home and in bed for school today. Overall, a very nice time. This morning Erik got surprised with a $200 Christmas bonus from KSBJ too! WOW! All I’ve gotten from any job for Christmas is a $15-20 gift certificate to HyVee or the hospital cafeteria.

Just because I’m at work today and in a mood, I’ll gripe about stupid policies and things this hospital does that are different and stupid to me. When a KCL 40mEq bolus is ordered, they call it a KCL rider, then they send you 4 separate bags of KCL 10mEq to infuse each over 1 hr. Then when you have an order to dc TPN after this bag, they say wean TPN after this bag. What that means apparently is that you have to cut the rate in half every 2 hrs and take blood sugars before every change in rate, until it’s completely gone. We didn’t do that at Methodist and it’s sort of stupid if your patient is eating and isn’t diabetic. Whatever…I just work here. I’m really not loving this job as much as I did at the start, can you tell? I come to work, do my job, clock out and go home to my family.

Back to the grind…only a few painful hours to work before my 4 days off.

PS. Megan, I know you called last night but by the time I saw the note it was this morning at 6:20am. I will try calling you soon but you’re never home girl!

We have a neighbor boy named Joshua who is a 2nd grader that has become one of Avery’s best friends. They play together all weekend from 9am until supper time. Well, this Saturday I thought it would be fun to have Josh spend the night. He’s an only child so when the boys went over to his house to ask his parents, they came back over here to talk to us face to face. They acted like they were going to be lost without him at home. I remember those days, when I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone babysitting Avery…then came Jaelyn and Braden and now I have to twist alot of arms to get an evening away from them! Erik moved the playstation 2 up to Avery’s room and they played games most of the night. One of the new fun things to do is to play in the garage at night. My kids like to ride bikes in the garage and shoot hoops. So Josh and Avery did that too. I told them they had to shut off the games and TV at 9:45pm and go to bed. Erik went up to check on them and they did exactly what they were told. Good boys! That next morning we brought Josh to church with us and then I made him go home for a while after church to have some family time. I bet it wasn’t 15 minutes before Avery was begging to go over to Josh’s house. Reminds me alot of how my friend Danielle and I were growing up in Denison.

On a side note, Erik found out that he only has to work 35 hrs a week, 8:30-4:30 M-F with an hour lunch. He’s salaried too. He got a cell phone that KSBJ pays for so we can cancel the other cell plan and save money there, plus his insurance for the entire family is cheaper so we are signing up for that too. He has the official keys to the radio station and got to meet everyone today as well as introduce himself to the 30 members of the board. He made a comment that has really made sense to me. He said, “It sure feels good knowing I’m working for a purpose and not just to fill someone else’s pockets.” That’s true. He’s not working to make someone else rich and successful anymore. He’s working to enrich the lives of others through Christian music and outreaching to the people of Houston, spreading the Word of God! I have even found myself spreading the Good News and our story almost on a daily basis! It’s something I never thought I would be able to do but the passion of it just overcomes me and before I know it, you can’t shut me off!

I went to this decorating store yesterday and came across this painting of the cross. There was this story/saying under it that was SO awesome! It went something like this: When the man asked Jesus how much he really loved us, he held out his arms and said “this much” and then he died. When Avery was a little boy I used to ask him how much he loved mommy and he’d hold out his little arms and say, “DISSSSSSS MUCH!” I just thought that was such a neat way to look at what Jesus did for us and also it brought back a very special memory for me.