Odds n' Ends

So we're here on the eve of our last day of the first quarter of school. We are 1/4 of the way through 4th grade and 1st grade. And we are excited to be finished this leg of the journey! We will take 3 glorious weeks off and the girls can hardly wait. In fact, they can't. They are up in a shared air-mattress (more about that later) with Lydia finishing tomorrow's Bible test and Abigail doing as many math problems as she can keep her eyes open for! And to be honest, I have gotten a jump start on a project which was scheduled for break--but I couldn't wait! We have 4 wonderful kids. None of the first 3 wrote on walls. The 4th, however, writes on walls incessantly. Pencils are his favorite, but this week it was also a double-fisted-pink-crayon kind of day. The magic eraser is no match for our flat wall paint. I had been desperately biting my lip every time I passed the incriminating designs--and in fact, used them as "reminder" tools to my young son: "What's that?" (pointing at pencil marks) "Pencils" "Yes, that's right. NO NO NO! We do NOT write on the walls." "Yeah, ma'am." So, tomorrow we will wake up to bright clean walls, probably like a clean slate!

This week has yielded a few medical visits as well. I have been having more frequent migraines, and in between the migraines I've been having lots of debilitating headaches, head pain and eye pain. So, I went to the dr. and she suggested I had allergies and took a nasal spray and that I also go with my gut to get an eye exam. Today was my pupil dilation day. I'm happy to report I have 20/20 vision and perfectly healthy eyes. I could not see however, to make out the check to the receptionist, so I hope that she didn't fill in her name. I thought it a little ironic that I couldn't see to pay, yet they were perfectly happy to send me out to my car to drive home! It was pretty awful, but I drove slowly and on my side of the road.

Lydia has had a smoker's cough for the last 3 weeks so I decided it was time to take her in. She has walking pneumonia. It's a great kind of pneumonia to have because you have no other symptoms other than a hacking cough. She should be better next week.

All in all, we're looking forward to break. The girls will go and spend their usual couple of days with my parents for a treat of a "sleepover" and I will take advantage of two napping boys!! We'll hopefully get in some visits with other friends and some pool time. Ah, I can't wait!

Oh yeah, the air mattress. After dinner the girls ran upstairs and called out what they were finishing doing, but I couldn't understand it. Anyway, turns out that earlier in the day I had agreed to a request for them to blow up the queen size air mattress in their room for them to sleep on tonight. I remember NOTHING of that conversation. I vetoed and said that was for break. Abigail, with her huge eyes just welling with tears, appeared and asked, "Please, please Mommy. You said that we could and we've cleaned up our whole room in order to fit the mattress in." Okay, Dr. No gives in and gains most-favored-parent status (for a few minutes!).