I love these three!

Boys will be boys

I got this short video of the boys "playing". Notice who is on top? Yup, Cooper doesn't let Mason push him around.

3 Months

It's hard to believe, but this little girl is 3 months old! She is such a wonderful little girl. She is busy learning new things every day. She loves to learn through watching, or should I say STARING at things around her. We have had staring contests with her, she wins every time. This girl can go forever without blinking! She smiles, coos, laughs, and talks to us all the time. She has discovered her tongue and loves to stick it out all the time. Oh and look at those chubby cheeks, I love love love to pinch and kiss them!

I just got this video of her. Notice her kicking her legs and staring at her bears. Maybe if she kicks her legs enough, she will reach the bears. What do you think?

Sticker man

Cooper found these Cars stickers in a book and decided to stick them to himself. He even had one under his chin.

3 Valentines

Last night I went to my Dad's house while Jeff was at drill for the fire department. My Dad got some good shots of these three. I think these are the first pictures we have of the three of them together. Sad I know. Shiloh is almost 3 months old and these are the first.

Our little Valentine

Look at that cute little bum!

Epstein-Barr

For the last two weeks I have not felt well. I started out having flu like symptoms, without the puking. I would get so cold that my mussels would constrict and my toes and fingers would go completely numb. It would take me a long time (like an hour) to get warm again. Once I was warm, my body temp. would continue to go up. I felt like my internal body temp. was at least 120 degrees, like I was sitting in a sauna but only once did I have an actual fever. On top of all this, I was pretty weak and tired-more tired than I should be with having a little baby. After about a week of this, the freezing cold phase went away. I was left feeling like I was in a sauna all day long, ans still weak and tired.

This past Monday I finally called my OB's office thinking maybe I had mastitis or some other postpartum infection. I have had mastitis three times before, I wasn't feeling anything I like I had the other three times, but I figured they would be able to tell me what was wrong. I spoke to one of the nurses, who wasn't at all sure what I had, so she had me come right in to be checked out.

My doctor did a full body exam including an exam to see if I had a uterine infection. In the end everything checked out just fine, so he sent me to have blood drawn to check for different viruses. One of the viruses he thought I might have is the Epstein-Barr virus, or mono as we all know it as. He also gave me an antibiotic just in case I did have a mild case of mastitis.

I got a call from the nurse yesterday. I didn't fully understand everything she said, but basically my blood work came back saying that I did have the Epstein-Barr virus. That could mean that I had mono at one time, or was exposed to it at one time, or that I do have it now. The blood work also came back with an elevated IgG level, which if I understand that correctly, IgG are antibodies that attach to viruses to get rid of the virus.

I will go back in 4 weeks to have more blood drawn to check my levels again. I guess this will tell them if I do have mono, or if I was just exposed to mono as a kid. I guess once you are exposed, you will always be a carrier of the virus and it will be present in any blood work done.

If I do have mono, it can take 6-12 months to fully recover.

As of right now, the feeling like I'm in a sauna has gone away. I am just really weak and tired still and I have a constant headache.

$350.08 for $22.48

These past two weeks have been great weeks to build up my food storage again.

Albertsons is having another great sale. Pretty much the same sale as the one they had about 6 months ago when they had tons of ConArga products on sale. It was the same deal as last time. Buy $25 worth of any ConArga products and get a $10 catallina coupon to spend on your next transaction. The awesome part is that the $25 is on the regular price, so once the sale price came off at the register and you use a $10 off catallina (if you have a previous transaction) you can walk away with lots of stuff for free or next to free.

On Wednesday, even though I was not feeling well, (I could not pass up this great deal) I went to Albertsons with Shiloh (Mason and Cooper were both in school) and did 15 transactions. Here is what I got:

85 cans of Healthy Choice soup
15 cans of Chef BoyArDee ravioli
6 Hunts BBQ sauce
4 Hunts Ketchup
3 Pam cooking sprays
2 Wesson oil
2 Jars of Salsa
26 cans of green beans(on sale for $0.50)-6 to make 3 of my transactions $10 trans. so I could use my $10 off coupon and make the trans. free, and 20 cans so I could use my last $10 off coupon, making that trans. free as well.

My final out of pocket total was $22.48. If all this stuff wasn't on sale I would have spent $350.08. That is a 94% savings!

I am going to show my step mom how to do this sale later today, I just might pick up a few more things.

$60.32 for FREE!

This past week (Wed.-Tues.) Albertsons had Classico pasta sauce on sale for $2 each. Albertsons also had double your manufacture coupons coupons in their add. I found $1 off 1 Classico pasta sauce coupons on ebay. So when you double that manufacture coupon, it makes the sauce FREE! I got 16 jars of sauce, which would have been $60.32 at regular price.

And yes, I did know that Hunts pasta sauce was going to be on sale the very next day for pretty much $0, but can you say YUCK!?!?-when it comes to Hunts pasta sauce. It was well worth getting the coupons on ebay to have the better tasting sauce.

Interactions with Shiloh

Cooper is starting to be nice to Shiloh. He has not tried to sit on her face or awhile, nor has he tried to cover her mouth and nose with his hand. She has realized that he is not very nice to her when he comes around and I am not holding her. She has learned that all she has to do is cry and I will come to her rescue. One day this past week she was on her play mat. Cooper crawled on next to her, she didn't cry, he didn't try to hurt her. Maybe, just maybe we are making progress.Mason on the other hand, is very good with Shiloh. He does really well holding her. He is very proud that he can hold her without the support of a pillow now. It helps that she can hold her head up pretty well and can also sit up well with help. So yeah, he thinks he has mad skills, but really it is Shiloh who has the mad skills. This particular day I gave Shiloh to Mason to hold for a few minutes so I could use the bathroom or something. I came back and found her asleep in his arms. He was very proud that he got her to sleep. Again he has mad skills, so he thinks.

Our Anniversary

This past Tuesday was Jeff and my 8th wedding anniversary. We started a new tradition this year. I made a cake and we sang "happy birthday" to our family. Last night Jeff and I left the boys with my sister and we went out to dinner. I really didn't want to go out because I have not been feeling well for over a week now, but I am glad I did, because it was good to talk to Jeff about being sick and exhausted and how I was feeling and doing with that. We took Shiloh with us because she hadn't slept all day and I didn't want to leave a crabby baby with anyone. Turns out she slept the whole time we were at dinner.

Sad day

Today I put all of Shiloh's 0-3 month clothes away. I keep telling her to stop growing up, but she doesn't listen to me.

Employment

Back in September, Jeff called Lincoln Hospital in Davenport to see if they were going to have any Respiratory positions available in the near future. The only reason he called was so he could get 3 employment contacts that week so he could be honest on his unemployment claim. Who ever he talked to in Human Resources asked him if he had heard somewhere that they were hiring. Jeff told them no, and that he was just trying to find out. The HR person said that they currently did not have a Respiratory department, and hadn't for at least the last 15 years, but that they were looking into starting it up again. She told Jeff that he could go on their website and fill out an application and they would hang on to it until they got the RT department up and running.

So Jeff filled out an application and then didn't give it another thought until...

Last Tuesday morning Jeff got a call from Lincoln Hospital asking if he was still interested in a job and if he could come in for an interview. An interview was scheduled for Thursday morning.

Thursday morning Jeff went in for his interview. He met with the Chief Clinical Officer, the CEO, and the Director of Nursing Services. During the interview Jeff found out that they were still in the beginning stages of starting the Respiratory department and that they were looking for someone with enough experience to start the department for them. They were impressed with Jeff's amount of experience not only as a RT, but also with management and his knowledge of all the equipment. (What a relief! Usually he is told that he either doesn't have enough hospital experience, or is over qualified for the job.) They told him they would let him know in about a week if they would like to hire him.

Friday afternoon we were out running errands until after 5pm. When we got home there was a message from Lincoln Hospital offering Jeff the job.

Monday morning Jeff called them back and accepted the offer and went in to sign paperwork and all that fun stuff.

Jeff starts this next Monday morning. He is the Respiratory Department Supervisor and will be spending the next 3 months developing the department and then hiring more Respiratory Therapists. While he is developing the department, he will be working Mon-Fri, but once the department is up and running, he can choose his own schedule.

He is still going to work in Colfax per diem so we can get back on track financially. Not that we got way off track, but we were well on our way to having no debt before, and want to get back on track FAST!

Painting

Ever since we painted Shiloh's room, Mason and Cooper have been begging us to paint their room. We have been holding off, not knowing if we were going to be staying in Spokane or not. Now that we know we will be staying, we painted their room on Saturday. They wanted a spider man themed room. So here is what we did.

We found this poster, got a frame for it and went off it for the paint colors. I love stripes, so we put stripes on two of their walls.

We want to get a book shelf and two bean bag chairs, or some other kind of chairs to put on this wall.
My two best helpers.
Cooper's favorite color is green, so the other two walls are green, just for him.
I'm thinking the boys will be getting spider man or hulk bedding for their birthdays. Please excuse Cooper's awesome outfit, he had an accident, but didn't want to take his painting shirt off.
Jeff drew these pictures a while back for no particular reason. We thought they would go well in the boy's room, and we already had these frames.

Now that their room is mostly done, they better not decide they want a transformers room!

EXCITING!

It has been almost 7 1/2 months........but Jeff finally


got a job!


Jeff got a job!


Jeff got a job!


More details to come on Monday!