Beware....the pox!!

I thought I would let you see the state of our son over the last few days. He is actually perking up a little today, which is SOOO good! I even have hopes that he may sleep tonight. It has been a rough few days of chicken pox for Alexander (and for me). Benjamin seemed to have breezed right through this virus with little more than a mild fever for about 24 hrs. However, Alexander has not been so lucky. He has been quite miserable since Saturday. He has MANY more spots than did Benjamin and is really struggling with itchiness and pain even though he is maxing out on both medications. Anyhow, we are sure that he is on the mend...he HAS to be on the mend; we both need a little sleep! Shawn has been sleeping in the children's room and Alexander has been sleeping with me as he has not slept much the last 3 nights. He wakes up crying and scratching, I dose him with drugs, coat him with calamine lotion and try to get us both back to sleep every few hours......NOT fun!!
So here are some pics of our poor boys and their pox:

The first victim, Benjamin...not too many spots

Victim #2, Alexander looking pretty chipper this afternoon. He is yelling "the pox, the pox"

And because I wanted a close up of Alexander's face and because Benjamin wanted a picture as well, here are the two victims together. One happy to be done with the virus, one not so happy....I am guessing you can tell who is who!!

FINALLY!!

Just wanted to share that our other big boy has finally gotten the chicken pox!! He had a slight fever last night, we saw a couple spots on his chest, and this morning he feels fine (he's outside playing now) but has quite a few more spots. So this will make 2 1/2 weeks that he has been out of school since we kept him home when Benjamin had them 2 weeks ago and they had a holiday this past week. I think/hope by Wednesday or so he will be okay to go back to school. He is not one to be kept down!!
On another note, I thought I would let you all know that we had a lovely barbecue with a bunch of other families last night and it was sooo nice! It was around 9 degrees at that time (around 6pm) so it was a little chilly for us but it was a great precurser to summer! I can't wait.... So this story is just a little jab to all you back in NB and NS who are covered in snow and can't even get into the garage to take a bbq out let alone stand outside for a couple hours for a cookout!! Hee hee!!
One last thing....Happy Birthday to my mommy!!!!

Scrapbooking and Valentine's Day

I actually did 5 pages tonight but I can only post one as the other 4 are for my mom's scrapbook since her birthday is in 2 days!! I don't want to show them....she has to come visit and get them herself! It was good to have my friend back from her visit back to USA to do scrapbooking with.
I may not be doing too many pages in the next little while unless I can find a Creative Memories consultant here as I seem to have run out of pages; I am not sure how that happened. Anyhow, without further ado, here is one of the pages I did tonight:


And now here is a little picture from yesterday, Valentine's Day. Shawn's mom and sister "sent" a huge card and some money to go to the sweetie shop....I am not sure who was more excited about picking out a treat, me or them! I forgot to take a picture of the great sweetie cake we picked out for dessert last night, but boy was it good. The children got the card from the mailslot in the doorway shortly after they woke up so that is why they are still in their pjs.
Hope you all had a great Valentine's Day!

By the way, this is my 100th post...Yeah, me!!

Fun Times and Scrapping

I only did one page of scrapbooking last night but it is one that is well overdue. My sister had a wonderful baby boy back in August and I finally did a page of him in my scrapbook. He is a great little guy and I can't wait to meet him. You can check out more of him on Tracy and Dave's link on the side!




I also added a couple pictures of our activities here yesterday. We have had kinda a long week here as the boys have been off school for the chicken pox. It has been fun to lounge around in the mornings and find new activities to do here all day. We set up a little bowling alley in the kitchen and also made a puppet stage for the children's little finger puppets.

Here is our bowling alley. Alexander has just knocked down all the pins

You have to look pretty close down on the floor to see the puppets. There is a pig and a squirrel.

SNOW TIME!!

So we were all ready for bed last night, it was 730pm, we are all in our pjs (Mom and Dad included!) and we heard some children outside. I pulled back the curtain and what to my wondering eyes did appear?? Snow! Real snow, not just little flakes mixed with rain, but real snow!! So the children and I pulled on some clothes on top of our pjs, put on our coats and boots and went outside to join the excitement of the other children. It was great!!
We stayed out until almost 830 making snow balls and just enjoying the connection to our Canadian friends and family. It made for a very late night but it was very fun!

Jacob having a blast in the snow with his friends

Hannah celbrating the snow fall as well

Benjamin getting ready to belt me with a snowball

Alexander making a snow angel

So this morning, it was around 8am when Alexander woke up and we notice some more children outside before school playing in what little snow is left. So out go Alexander and Benjamin again to play with their friends before they all go off to school. Alexander and Benjamin are still staying home from school due to the chicken pox which Alexander is still showing no signs of, much to my chagrin!
I don't think the snow will last long, but it was nice to see still there this morning.

The boys up on the hill this morning:

Still Experimenting....

You may recall that we started "New Fruit and Vegetable Day" a few weeks ago. Well on Sunday the boys wanted to try eggplant, or Aubergine as they say here.
It was less than successful as you will see when you see the great photo I captured of Alexander trying it out....Warning! The following photo is not for the weak....

Alexander was trying one of the grilled eggplant pieces which had a "sauce" on it of oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, pepper, etc. I also fried some plain eggplant in the frying pan. None of it was particularly appetizing. So I have decided to try it next time in a casserole or something instead of on it's own. I just like the children to taste "the real thing" first. We have all enjoyed exploring the new fruits and veggies, we dissect them and take a close look at the middle, the seed, or whatever they have. It is quite educational and fun!
And one more photo...
We received a nice treat in the mail yesterday and were able to call it's sender on the webcam so she could watch us open it! So here are the children sporting their new duds just before a hockey game. We still push back all the kitchen furniture and play on the floor. We are in need of some good ol' dollar store hockey sticks though as we have had to make some on our own from toys as you can see.

Marker Pox!

We have an Arthur book that shows his little sister, DW, putting marker all over herself so that she can get the attention that Arthur gets when he has the chicken pox. There was a child off from the boys' school for the last week because she had chicken pox. So...Benjamin has marker pox...NOT chicken pox! He seems to think that having chicken pox is very bad and thus is too scared to think that he has chicken pox, so instead he insists it is just marker spots all over his chest and back.
The photo below is from yesterday when he wanted to lay around all afternoon instead of playing outside as is his norm. So we set him up on our bed to watch a video and when his brothers saw his set up they too came along to watch the construction video. We thought Benjamin was just tired but when he started to get undressed for bed last night, we saw the reason for his fatigue and, by then, fever. So Alexander is still "marker" free this morning but we are just waiting. Shawn is staying home with both boys this morning so we don't get everyone at church infected; I teach Sunday School, so Shawn is the one to stay home. Hannah and Jacob have both had the vaccine so we hope they will be exempt from these lovely marker spots so I will take them along to church this morning.
If Benjamin lets me take some photos later, I will post them in the next few days. I remember a picture of my sister and I when we were maybe 4 and 6 laying on our parents bed, both covered in chicken pox. So, of course, I need to get a good photo so he can have the same memory to share with his children.

Catching Up

I AM MAD AT BLOGGER!!! I had to try 6 times to get these photos on here (and they are horrible pictures). I finally had to try uploading them one at a time. It is now 2351 and I should have been in bed long ago because Hannah has a bit of a cold and has already been awake a couple times...it could be a long night. However, I had done 4 pages tonight and I am too stubborn to let blogger win...So here is my post:

I recently realized that I had not done any Christmas pictures for the last few years so I thought I would play catch up tonight. I did 4 pages representing Christmas 2004 and 2005. I have to get to Costco to print off some pictures of 2006 and then I will be able to have a whole run of Christmas pics in our family album. I wish I had thought more about scrapbooking when I first started because I don't have things completely in chronological order. When I started, I just did whatever pages I wanted at the time and didn't think ahead. Anyhow, I try now to do things in a semi-chronological order. Oh well, just one more thing I will be able to excuse by saying, "Yeah, well, I had 2 sets of twins in 2 years!". I am really counting on that getting me out of alot of flack from my children's therapists when they are older. Hee Hee!

So here are my pages for tonight:

Sorry for the poor quality. I don't know what was going on with my camera.

Recognize any photos Christine?