This is Adeline at 8:30am.

Her spots have turned into more of a blotchy rash now.

Thankfully the ibuprofen is working to control her fever.

We have had a long night here. Twins were up alot overnight. Augustine is still sleeping. He hasn't been out of bed since I put him down for his nap yesterday afternoon at 1:00. Adeline is still running a 101 fever as of 6am. She is miserable and it has been a chore to get her to drink fluids. She still has no appetite. She has been taking Ibuprofen and has had 4 doses of Benedryl. I am going to call the doctor in a little while. I did find some information that might explain her rash though.

http://www.askdrsears.com/html/8/T082900.asp
Viral illness – the most common rash suddenly appearing on your child is rash due to a variety of viruses. Some viruses can be easily identified, including chicken pox, fifth disease, and roseola. Most viruses, however, do not cause their own specific type of rash as chicken pox does. These generic viral rashes can have many different appearances, such as lacy or pimply, raised or flat, bumps, spots, or blotches, and they often (but not always) start on the trunk, and then spread to the extremities.
The most important thing to understand here is that if your child has a fever or is not feeling well, and breaks out in one of these generic rashes, then it is probably a harmless virus and nothing to worry about.

you know your kids are sick when...

You know your kids are sick when...

You get her water in her sparkly pink cup & milk in her purple cup...but then she doesn't want the purple cup she wants a boy cup (which is anything that isn't pink or purple). Soooo you go back to the kitchen and return with a green cup of milk.
But that is no good either; so, you go back to the kitchen to transfer the milk to yet another cup. Return with the blue, definitely a boy cup, and what does she say in return for this feat?
I want my purple sparkly cup! UGH!

You put your son down for his nap at 1:15 in the afternoon and at 10:00pm he still hasn't wanted to get up yet. All he has had since then was a baba of milk! He must be sick; I gave him a bottle of milk.

Your daughter requests applesauce...you get her a cup of applesauce
She says, "No, I want yogurt".
You get her yogurt she eats 2 bites and then asks for egg & cheese.
You make a cheese omelet and she eats 1 bite and says, "I want water & watch Dora."
You give her, her sparkly pink cup of water and return her to the couch she has been on all day. You turn on the TV, start a Dora video and after a few minutes she asks to go to bed.

You have been up to console her more than once while writing this message.

Allergic reaction?

We have had some type of illness in this house for what seems like FOREVER! One kid gets healthy and someone else picks up the slack and catches a new yucky virus. We had Adeline with an ear infection Monday 2/11. D'Angelo ear infection 2/13. Days following, everyone gets cough, congestion and irritable! Fevers. Yesterday Rick and I took all 5 to the doctor together.
How many people can you fit in one exam room? We had the seven of us, the doctor, a med student to assist and our double stroller. I think we win-LOL. The conclusion was something viral. Great, good times, let's wait this out. My favorite part of our visit was while 4 out of our 5 were crying/screaming the doc looked at the med student and sighed, "Ahhhh, the joys of becoming a pediatrician". I laughed.

This morning when I went to get Adeline from her bed I found her looking like this. I called the doctor and the nurse thinks it is an allergic reaction to the antibiotics she took for the past 9 days. Benedryl has helped with her facial swelling, but she still has the rash all over her entire body. Two doses down so far. If it hasn't cleared by tomorrow I am taking her in to be seen again.

Happy Valentines Day

We had a nice Valentine's Day here. The kids had a little playgroup party this morning at their friends Lucy & Cole's house. They were most excited to bring valentines and treats to give to their friends. There were fun crafts to make and little heart shaped cakes for the kids to frost, sprinkle and enjoy. We had a fun time - thanks for hosting the party Jill. Grandma Debbie came and took Adeline home for an overnight visit while Gaga & Papa came to take the boys home for the weekend. It feels very strange to be home with just the twins.

Thanks to my sweet husband for sending me a beautiful dozen of red roses, I was quite surprised. Rick left very early this morning with his buddy Tom to go on their annual trip to the Keweenaw Peninsula located on the northwestern end of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It is surrounded on three sides by Lake Superior which is where their water supply will come from while roughing it up there. They drive in as far as they can, park the jeep and snowshoe 8 miles, pulling a sled full of their gear to a cabin without electicity or plumbing. Not my idea of winter fun. After I snowshoe I'd like to be in a nice warm place with a hot shower available.

My little valentines

Oliver stole Adeline's apple... I guess he thinks he's a big kid. I was surprised at how well he actually ate it though.

11 months old

X and O are 11 months old today. Where does the time go? I ask myself that question quite often. All my kids are growing and changing quickly. It is so neat to see the personalities of Xavier & Oliver developing. Oliver is genuinely a happy baby. He is almost always smiling, but when he's not...Oliver is so much like Adeline with DRAMA! Yep, he is the one that will throw himself down and sob when I take something away from him. He also throws himself back -with great force- when he's upset. I can't count the times he has hit his head on the ground because I didn't catch him in time or someone else was caught off guard by his crazy antics. Xavier reminds me so much of Augustine- the happy, mellow guy. Xavier is turning out to be even tempered and happy. Both X & O love to play peek a boo and have lots of entertainment from D'Angelo and the A Team. I am amazed by these little guys every day.

Finally Outside! Daddy is going to take them for a nice walk through our yard.

snow, snow, snow!

The snow is falling today! The weatherman was not kidding. We are getting a fair amount of white stuff. Not the pretty fluffy kind, it's the very wet, heavy stuff. Schools were cancelled today, the Starbucks as well as an entire shopping mall in a nearby suburb has closed it's doors for the day, churches are cancelling ash wednesday services. It will be interesting to see how much actually accumulates. And I just received a call that my MOPS meeting is cancelled for tomorrow morning. Bummer, I was looking forward to going tomorrow.
I haven't gotten the kids together and outside yet but once Rick gets done with his work I'll bundle the big guys up & get them out there to play. I know they want to be out there very badly but I can't take them out there with the babies. We have tried to stay busy today doing crafts, playing and cooking.

CBOE Courtyard

Here is a picture that my friend Ruick's brother took this morning after a 3 hour commute into The Chicago Loop. This is where I used to sit and eat my lunch sometimes when I was working at the CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade).

From my inbox today

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2008 when...

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.
2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.
6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.
7 Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.
8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 or 90 years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.
10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.
11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile.: )
12 You're reading this and nodding and laughing.
13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.
14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.
15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9 on this list.

AND NOW YOU ARE LAUGHING at yourself.

Coco Key Water Resort

We spent Wednesday & Thursday at Coco Key Water Resort in Rockford with Gaga & Papa while the twins, X & O, spent their time with Grandma Debbie, Grandpa and Josh. We had a nice sized hotel room and great acess to the water park. Augustine wanted no part of the water when we first arrived, he was very fearful and clung to us like a cat about to be doused in a bathtub. Thankfully he overcame his fear quickly and became the big shot who went down the slides over & over again. We picked a great time of the week to go since there were only a handful of other families there the whole time. Yesterday afternoon we were the ONLY people in the place for over 2 hours! I can't imagine the boredom of the lifeguards there during such slow times. Last night driving home was not much fun. We had a messy snowstorm happening with a lot of accumulation on the highway. What usually takes 1 hour to drive took us 2.5 hours last night. Thankfully though we got home safley.

I actually have time to blog this right now because X & O are still not home yet, D'Angelo went home with Gaga & Papa yesterday, and the A team is naping!

It seems like my posts keep getting further and further apart! I guess that is what happens with 5 kids- there is only time to accomplish so much. D'Angelo is up at Gaga & Papa's house but should be home tomorrow. It was so cold here this weekend that we kept the kids in the house. I went out on Saturday shopping and the wind made the skin on my face feel like it was freezing. Unfortunatly we are all suffering from another winter cold and had to skip our Monday playgroup this morning. Ugh, another day in the house. Hopefully we will all be happy & feeling good quickly.

This past Thursday we got good news from Xavier's OT Jennifer. He no longer needs OT. Jennifer thinks he is doing great and she is comfortable releasing him from services. Now, he will only get 1 hour of PT a week with Lori. I must say that I am sad Jennifer won't be coming around anymore. I sure have gotten attached to her over the past couple years. She was Auggie's OT for a short time and D'Angelo's OT as well. I know all the kids still ask me weekly about Mrs. Amanda. When is she coming over to play, I wanna see Amanda... Amanda was D's speech therapist, but once he aged out of EI (early intervention) in September she stopped coming to the house. She was awesome with D'Angelo and we miss her around here.

I have a few pictures of D'Angelo from the end of the year that I thought would be fun to share. Papa bought D'Angelo a snowmobile and worked many hours fixing it up for him. D'Angelo was so excited to see his own kitty cat snowmobile after riding with Papa on his big sled. I can't believe my 3 year old is riding a snowmobile all by himself! The real reason I allowed it is because it doesn't go that fast & Papa is always right with him-running alongside!

Happy Friday! We've had a fun & busy week. Yesterday morning I took the kids to an art based playgroup at our friend Melissa's house-brave woman. She opened up her home to 10 toddler/preschoolers and their younger siblings to come over and do messy arts & crafts! It was a ton of fun for the kiddos! We came home ate lunch, napped & then went out to their friend Taylor's house to play. Our playgroup this morning was cancelled, so we hung out at home today. Our friend came over with breakfast which made the kids day! The big guys are coloring and the little guys are playing while I blog this...

The little things that make me happy :)

$3.99 at Target for my new coffee cup.

Tuesday was a stay at home day so we played with shaving creme :)

Sunday January 6th was a beautiful weather day here so the kids got a chance to ride their new wheels that Auntie Jennifer sent them for Christmas!

Happy New Year 2008!

We had a nice New Years with our friends! We have been gettting together with the same group of different friends for the past 7 years. That does make sense what I said, doesn't it? You know, groups of friends stay the same but the people come & go.

We used to gather in David's Lakeside House where we had the studio to crash in with the sexy lamp and all! David, what ever happened to that sexy lamp? We had the great debates, cigars, red wine, too much champagne and crazy drunken dancing fun Bill & Courtney salsa style. We had Alex, Tara & Orr, Jeff & Susan, and Tom. We had the year I couldn't even say good bye to anyone the next morning or early afternoon for that matter because I was sleeping on the bathroom floor. I can say that was the last time I ever drank too much-champagne. We had the year Charlie tried to steal our roast off the counter! The time with David insisting I not throw out the old salad because he loves it wilted the next day! Do you know what he said the next day? What the hell did you save this for? But David NEVER drinks too much.

While we enjoyed our last party there we decided to venture down over 100 steps to the beach so we could, I don't know, why did we go? I don't know why we really went down there to start with but it ended up that Tom ran into Lake Michigan! No joke- freezing cold Jan 1st Tom runs in then gets out to take pictutres to prove he went in! I'm still surprised he made it back up all those steps to the house. Thank goodness he had enough to drink that night.

The year after David sold his Lakeside house we celebrated New Years in Land O Lakes WI. at Orr & Tara's new cabin. Not everyone was able to make the trip up there but it was a great time. We had Bob & Carolyn, Tom, Tara's parents, and us with Baby D. The company was fantastic and the food was, as always, incredible. It was just beautiful there. We took a long walk in the snow covered woods and relished in the peacefulness of everything up there.

The last three years have been spent at Jeff & Susan's place. Again we have seen people come & go here as well. During our 2005-2006 celebration we had Alex & Maggie, Dave, his daughter Andrea, Tom, Jeff, Susan, Rick & I there. That year was memorable for the heated debates that went on. There wasn't a quiet, calm moment btwn any of the guys. Thankfully the next morning proved to be calm since it was just us and Jeff & Susan.

Last year was quiet with Dave not joining us. It was just Jeff, Susan, Tom & us.

We did have Chef Rick prepare us a nice breakfast New Years Day 2007 though.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008!

Here is our table that Susan decorated so beautifully. Susan always has the best decorated tables- always. Even when it isn't an occasion, she makes it an occasion. I love that about her. As for me, I am lucky to get matching plates on my table let alone chargers, napkins in rings, coordinating candles and little decorations. I did however manage to match her table this year. Forgot to get a picture of that though. My teal shirt matched the chargers, etc.

Lucia getting ready to dive into her tent and take up the spot in the middle.

No, really, she wants to take a picture!

creme brulee sideways! The torch is ready!

They gave me a girly cup!