The Road Goes on Forever...

Well...we did it. We made our first trip back to the panhandle of Texas. What for you ask. What else than for Josh to play in a golf tournament with his high school buddy. We left Wednesday after work in the heat and humidity of the day only to arrived at 2:00 am. to the coolness of the panhandle evenings. Josh literally played golf all day everyday while the kids and I tried to visit and see all who we could visit and see. We couldn't go without hooking up with our park posse. Here is the motley crew...posing so mindfully foe the camera!
We also spent lots of time hanging out with our cousins. Andrew sure misses having them next door to play with. He certainly made up for lost time and got as much of them as he could!!!
What would be a visit to the panhandle without supper and games with the Shelleys...shoot their family in our books! We played Loaded Questions with them and the rest of the Davis and Brown clans. Very fun if you have never played...we would recommend it. And better yet, they entertained the two baby girls while we played! They are so good. :)
What goes better with playing and getting all sweaty...swimming. Both sets of grandparents have pools for us to swim in and boy did we take advantage. Check out the farmers tans on those two Shields boys. It is enough to blind ya! :)
And to top it off, we got to see the great-grandparents. Here is Andrew and Grandpa chewing the fat, solving all the world's problems. Pretty special times!
We did not have enough time...so little time, so many people to visit. The trip was such fun, but as Andrew said on the way home, "I miss my house Mama!"

Oh...What a week!

For those of you unfamiliar with the above building, it is the College Station hospital. We are now quite familiar with its ER. Andrew has been having a reoccurring fever...in May, June, and now July. Fever and a bad throat (but not strep) seem to be his only symptoms. The latest bout started on Tuesday afternoon. Andrew laid down for a rest and woke up with a low 100's fever. Wednesday morning it was up to 104.4. I gave him a lukewarm bath...yeah that went over real well with the three year old...and proceeded with the medicine swap of Tylenol and Ibuprofen every 3 hours. His fever came down to the low 100's again and I called the doctor.

You mothers know how this goes...leave a message for the nurse and she will call you back. Well, I called at 10 am and by 2 pm I still had not heard back from her so I called and made an appointment. We got in at 3:00 and saw the doctor. We went through the whole story again and our doctor decided, after doing a bit of research, that we would run some labs. "Can Andrew pee in a cup?" the doctor asks. "Well, we have never tried, but we will see!" No problems there...the fun part came when the lab nurse went to draw his blood. I have to admit, he did not like it, but for a little guy he did a great job.

The first 2 tests came back very quickly and were fine. The third test, called a Sed rate, took an hour to get its results, so the doctor sent us home and said he would call. At 4:50 the nurse called and let us know that the doctor would like to see us...I informed her that he already had and that I thought she was calling to give us our lab results. How's that for office communication. She put us on hold and the doctor answered. According to him, the Sed rate was not high enough to convince him that it wasn't still an infection, but that it was high enough to make Him "squirm in his chair" and not rule out the bad stuff. I had no idea what Sed rate was or all that this bad stuff included, but a quick google and I knew that bad stuff were not things I wanted to be talking about in regards to my three year old. That was the last I spent on the Internet!!! Too much bad stuff to consider before it was warranted. The doctor said he would wait to see us again until Friday unless Andrew got worse. Well, not 20 minutes after hanging up with him...and time enough for the doctors office to close...his fever spiked to 105.8! Here we go again with the cool bath, more medicine (which had worn off since being at the doctors running tests), and some ice cream, we got it back down to 103.1.

In talking with a dear friend who called her doctor friend, we were back on the phone to the doctors office, waited for a after hours nurse to call us back, and then explained what had just happened. Praise God that our doctor was the one on call Wednesday evening. He sent us immediately to the ER and ordered a blood culture and antibiotics. So at 7:00ish on Wednesday evening Josh dropped Andrew and I off at the College Station ER. He ran Ainsley to our dear friends for them to watch so she would not have to endure the ER also. We are so blessed to have the Robertson's here to help. They are a huge blessing from God...since we were so used to having family around in times like these.

Things went very quickly and smoothly...as far as ER go...and we were in a room in less then half an hour of being there. We saw a million nurse, PA's, and 1 very nice pediatric ER doctor and explained our story a million times. We went through many pokes, prodes, and 1 strep test, which came back negative. Still no diagnosis, but through conversations between the ER doctors and our doctor, they opted not to do the blood cultures and just give him a daddy of all daddy antibiotics shot. He even got some numbing lotion on his leg to help with the pain. He survived the shot and got to pick out about 100 stickers with the nurse who felt awful about having to give it to him. At 11:00 we walked out, still not knowing what is causing the fevers, but medicated and tired.

We were told to continue the Tylenol/Ibuprofen swap every three hours around the clock and to call our doctor in the morning. The daddy shot worked and Andrew's fever broke in the night. His little jammies shirt was sopping wet with sweat. The doctor decided to try Thursday with 1 medicine every 6 hours, like it is supposed to be given, and see how his fever does. It stayed in the 99's and low 100's so we were good. Called back on Friday and the doctor told us to take him off of all meds and see what the fever does. We have been successfully off meds since Thursday morning and his fever has not broke 100!!! Yeah. Now that plan is to go in on Monday and run the labs again to see what his Sed rate is fever free and medicine free. If his Sed rate is back down, then this was just some bacterial infection that the medicine took care of and we will do further testing if and when a fever returns later down the road. If his Sed rate is still up, then it is one of the not good things and we will continue with further testing now.

All this to say, please keep us in you prayers. Ideal situation would be that his Sed rate is back down and if it does come back it is just chronic tonsillitis or something very manageable! We will keep you posted...

Poppy and Gammy Came to Town

Gammy and Poppy made the trek down from the Panhandle to visit! Boy did we show them the sights...all of our favorites of course. :) The evenings were so nice that we spent them out back on the porch swings.
Little Man was overcome with excitement when they got here, I was a bit worry he was going to tear up the inside of the house being crazy for them. Instead of destroying the living room, what better to do than strip down to one's elmo underwear and run through the back sprinklers. If this does not burn off some energy, than I do not know what will...and the yard gets watered for Dad...a win-win for everyone!

One of our absolute favorite sights to visit is the pool. Little Man was soooo excited to show them the pool he fell asleep in the car on the way there! :)
Well, once we finally got there, it did not take much to wake him up! He was ready to go. Much to Little Man's dismay, Poppy did not go down the slide, but Little Man was sure to show him how! His favorite way is to go down is backwards on his tummy and come shooting out the bottom like you see here.
After Poppy was released from his slide duties, Gammy took over. Andrew is not a great swimmer yet, but he can sure hold his own. He loves for you to pick him up and either push him through the water or throw him in the direction he is wanting to go!
After a full day at the pool, Gammy, Little Man, and Little Miss sat back and talked over the events of the day! Ainsley is getting better and better about voicing her opinion...when she can get a word in edgewise around her brother that is!

Getting Bigger Every Day

We started back to church about 3 weekends ago. Here is Little Miss in her Sunday best. I tried to get her brother in the picture, but his good clothes were off the second we walked in the door. She had some very cutie shoes our friend Amanda made for her, but they did not last long at church...neither did the bow for that matter, but we put it back on for the picture (and for her Poppop since we know how much he likes them :)).
I am not sure if Little Miss is getting a tooth or what the deal is. Please notice Gammy's shoulder...it is sopping wet. She drools like there is no tomorrow. And blow bubbles. This Girl can blow bubbles till the cows come home. I am not sure where all the spit comes from! Good thing she's cute, or I might be worried.
And smile...she smiles more and more every day. Her little legs get to kicking and her little arms get to swinging and she just laughs and laughs. Big brother cannot wait for her to get up one of these days and come out to play, not just sit in her stroller and watch. I think she is about ready for that day as well!
Here she is just a "talking" to her Daddy! One of many conversations to come...hopefully Daddy will be talking more than clicking in those. Who knows. Whatever works I guess!

Move Over Bob the Builder...

What an adventure. For those of you interested, Home Depot has a kids workshop the first Saturday of the month. Boy it sure is entertaining. More so for Andrew than Ainsley, she just hung out and observed...wondering what on Earth all that pounding was. Its kind of hard to see much from her angle.

The workshops are pretty neat. The kids get their own Home Depot orange apron, as modeled by Andrew below, on which they get to write their name and take home to bring back next month when we come again.These workshops are a mom-teacher's dream. The kits come with instructions the kiddos get to follow. The are a dad's dream because the spaces on the wood are pre-drilled for nail holes! Andrew had a big time finding which numbered instruction we just did, and which one comes next, and what pieces we needed, and where were the nails, and where was his hammer, and where was our wood glue we had to share with the girls next to us.
Here are the proud builders. Now all we need is a little bird seed and we have the perfect bird house. When we moved into our new house, we had a bird nest in a dead hanging planter on our back porch. The nest had 3 babies in it that we got to watch grow up and fly away. I think Andrew is hoping this will make a better home than a dead plant hanger. He put the bird house out on the back window sill hoping one of these days the birds will come back and make a new nest in his house.
"Look Sister, I made a bird house! Isn't it great."

Here is the crew in action. Please notice little man's tongue. Unfortunately he gets that from me. Apparently it helps our brains to concentrate better if our tongue is sticking out!