Dear Bloggers

Instead of a Dear Abby in the newspaper, I am asking all you fellow bloggers for advice.  Gracie has a serious hair twirling problem.  I can't find a solution to help her quit.  As you can tell her hair is suffering.  She has major hair loss on the twirling side.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  (Disregard the crazy bangs.  That is from a unrelated hair cutting incident)

What happens when your 1st grader is mad at you?

Christmas Shopping

I had to take a picture of my boys looking through the Lego catalog working on their Christmas  wish lists.  

Sharing

I cut up some apples for the kids to snack on while we were playing outside.  After running around together a bit we came back for more and a bird was sitting on the apple eating it.  Layla said look mom we are sharing our apples with the birdies, birdies like apples too.  

My kids....

I wonder what they are thinking ........

On our way home from preschool, Gracie told me that she had corn stuck up her nose.  In class they did a project where they took corn cobs and rolled them in paint and then rolled them on paper.  Anything involving paint Gracie totally loves but apparently some of the dried kernels fell off her ear and they just needed to be in her nose instead.  I was worried because they were dry and I didn't want them expanding in her moist nose.  After a lot of hard blowing and serious praying they came out. 
Crew was complaining of pain and Gracie said"maybe it's hurting because of the silver thing you ate" Don't swallow things that you aren't supposed to and your stomach won't hurt.  I tried to figure out what it was that he had swallowed.  When Aaron came home from work Crew was still complaining.  Aaron thought maybe it could be a battery.  After looking at lots of pictures online of button batteries we found one that Crew identified as what he had swallowed.  Aaron called poison control to see what they had to say.  I had no idea swallowing a battery was so dangerous.  We had to take him to the ER immediately.  After two hours batteries start to corrode and start burning the esophagus either by the acid leaking out causing chemical burns or the electrical current causing electrical burns.  The plan was to knock him out and go down with a scope and tongs and pull out the battery.  The anesthesiologist had finished explaining to Crew what was going on and Aaron was finishing up all the paper work.  Just before the Dr. put the needle into Crew's IV  he told the Dr he felt like he was going to throw up.  The Dr. said that is a common feeling when you have something stuck inside.  Crew started throwing up and miraculously puked out the battery.  The Dr. didn't even know what to do.  He said this has never happened before I guess we will do an x-ray again.  We were so relieved that he didn't need surgery.  They still had to keep him over night for observation and insure there were no complications or infection.  
Here's the battery on the right.  It was lodged behind his heart in his esophagus. In the x-ray he looked like Iron Man.  So now Crew has a new nick name to add to the list.  When he swallowed the battery it was shiny and you could even see the words on it.  After about 4 hours inside it was almost completely black.  He was sore for awhile and couldn't eat much but thankfully he was fully recovered in time to enjoy a fabulous Thanksgiving feast.  

Aviation Nation

For Veterans Day we celebrated by going to Aviation Nation.  It's the biggest air show in the world (ok maybe not).  It was so awesome that Crew couldn't even take his eyes off the action long enough to get his picture taken. What would an air show be without the Thunderbirds, which were completely unbelievable! 

Our Air Force is Amazing

I just have to say that I am totally impressed with our military and am sure proud of them.

The things these pilots can do is astonishing.  Most of the things I saw I would have never believed planes could do or pilots.  I really can't figure out why I have never been to an air show before.
My favorite plane in the air show.  It was so awesome!

C 5 Galaxy

I don't know what this little expression means but it sure is cute
Here we are inside this huge airplane.  Crew was totally fascinated to learn that tanks and hummers are flown around in these
Of course this one is from Wright-Patt  where my dad happens to work.  

Pumpkin toss

We had to play pumpkin toss on Halloween.  With no school for Nevada Day, we had fun doing lots of Halloween activities.  This was one of the kids favorite.  We made little ghost and threw them in the pumpkin.  Crew happened to get his ghosts to go through both eyes on his first and second toss.  I couldn't believe it!  He was pretty excited too.  

The Harvest Carnival

Crew's school had a fun little carnival and he was so excited to go.  We had a fun time playing the games and running around on the playground too.  Crew and Gracie went through the haunted house with Aaron and maybe that wasn't the best idea.  Both the kids were pretty spooked afterward.  Gracie was really scared for several days and kept saying "Haunted houses are just people playing dress up and pretending huh mom" 

Layla didn't want to stop playing and let me get a picture of her


Gracie won the cake walk and this is the cake she picked.  I wasn't expecting her to pick this one.  We had so many Halloween treats that we ended up just throwing the cake away after taking the spiders and bugs off of course.