Happy Halloween!

We started our candy collecting last night going "downtown" to Uptown Normal's business Trick or Treating.  I could not believe the ridiculous number of people out on such a windy and cold night!  The only reason we went was our time tonight would be limited before heading to church.  Our Dinosaur Diva and Little Red Riding Hood did pretty good before they started to go numb with coldness.

 We left Uptown and headed to our friends the Comadena's.  We have been making these stops since Shelby's first outing at 1 1/2.  Mark was teaching his night class at ISU so we chatted with Pam for a bit and Morgan read the book she gave her.  Thanks to Pam for tolerating 3 takes on the picture.  As you can see by Shelby's gum, I gave up after 3.

 Our final stop of the night was the Berta's.  The girls love eating goldfish at their house and Ray and Karen didn't disappoint.  They gave them goodie bags full of all kinds of fun pumpkin stuff.  Morgan read about 6 books and then we headed home.  We appreciate the Comadenas and the Bertas for allowing us special visiting hours since we couldn't get there tonight.

With our busy schedule we didn't get to make our annual visit with Jenn and Seth (old babysitter).  They are usually one of our special stops.  At school today the girls had class parties.  They both had a lot of fun.

working on the craft

 finished owl bookmark

 playing toss the ball into 4 pumpkin buckets

other game was pin the nose on the pumpkin

 her nose is #5 - not too bad!

 I headed over to Shelby's room and found her just finishing up a game.  Here she was tossing headbands on the pumpkin stems.

 halloween word search

At 5:00 we headed out for 1 hour of fun.  We met up with the neighbors and the kids all had fun together.  Look at Tinkerbell.  How cute is she?!?  She was so excited about her little pumpkin bucket.

the crew

 Shelby, Carson, Kyle, Ryan, Morgan, Alice and Henry

 our next door neighbor to the south had this great Skippyjon Jones pumpkin!

Morgan was so excited!

 another neighborhood cutie

Morgan and Jamie

he belongs to the house with the great pumpkin 

I had the idea for Morgan to be Red Riding Hood because I played that part in my 1st Grade school musical.  I knew I had that cape around her somewhere and finally found it in the 4th place I looked.  Here is a comparison picture.

I think the girls had fun even though it was kind of a rushed and crazy couple of days.  Happy Halloween everyone!

Pumpkin to Jack-o-Lantern

We have a few pumpkins but none are carving worthy.  So the girls and I picked out a good one at the Wal-Mart pumpkin patch in a box today after church.

Pumpkin carving is dad's job while I take some pictures and sort out the seeds to cook.  We cut off the top and the girls got busy digging out the goop.

The pumpkin guts are all out and we are ready for a face.  We used daddy's phone to get some ideas.  This is what we settled on.

 our finished jack

 glowing

 even the moon knows it's Halloween season

Come back in a few days to see what our little creatures dressed up for the big night of candy collecting.

1st Grade Topic Writing

Morgan brought home a packet of writing today.  She told me the teacher will give them a topic and then they write about it and draw a picture.  It is too cute not to share.  I took a picture of each page.  Sorry for the shadows.  The words are hard to read because they are written in pencil.  I will translate.

Over the weekend I play out side. and rided my sgoder

Over the weekend I play outside and ride my scooter

 This weekend I will play out side with my sister and my dad and my havf bruthers

This weekend I will play outside with my sister and my dad and my half brothers (neighbor boys)

 My best friend is henry

 When I first wake up eat braekfet and get draest.

When I first wake up eat breakfast and get dressed.

 In kindergarten I loved to hug my teacher

 Over the weekend I went to a chrch picknick and play outside with my mom my dad and my stter. why because I go to chrch.

Over the weekend I went to a church picnic and play outside with my mom, my dad and my sister.

Why? Because I go to church.

 For dinner I ate cikkn tookos and pepers.  they were ornge.

For dinner I ate chicken tacos and peppers.  They were orange.

 I painted a picture of me and the skki is Blue.  I like my smile I have prrte hari.

I painted a picture of me and the ski is blue.  I like my smile.  I have pretty hair.

(Not sure why she didn't draw a picture for this one)

I like when the weather is snowey because I can thro snow bolls!

I like when the weather is snowy because I can throw snowballs!

Dino Diva

I'm not sure how, but sometime during 2nd grade Shelby developed a love of dinosaurs.  It started out with a passion of drawing them.  She is really good at that.  Now everything she does is associated with dinosaurs.  The only books she checks out from the school or public library are about dinosaurs.  She wants to be one for her Halloween costume.  Not sure about that.  Her last major meltdown was because her sister wanted to read the books she checked out from NPL.  She hates it when Morgan likes the same things she does.  I told her last Friday that if she did a good job getting a flu shot I would buy her a little something.  What else would she pick?  We finally tracked down a dinosaur at The Gingerbread House.  One morning when I went in her room to wake her up, I saw she had created a bed complete with a mini pillow and blanket in the little drawer of her bedside table.

On another note, the girl has been in a mood as of late.  At bedtime tonight I got her to tell me some of this has to do with the idea of her best bud Quentin moving to another school in the district after Christmas.  She thinks without him she won't have anyone to play with at recess.  She could play soccer but doesn't like to.  According to her, they don't play by the rules.  So I haven't heard a lot of funny out of her lately.  But tonight at AWANA, we were walking down the hall after dropping Morgan off in her room.  I asked Shelby why she wasn't in her room and she said because no one else was in there.  I then asked her why she wasn't in the gym where I thought she was.  I was able to keep from laughing out loud at her answer.  She says, "There is too much MAYHEM going on in there."  Mayhem!  She threw out the word Mayhem.  And she was dead serious.  You know, Mayhem like me from the Allstate commercials?  I never think of that word outside of those fantastically funny commercials!

Introducing Miss Metzger - the teacher

Every day when she gets home, Morgan plays school while doing her homework.  She is to do her word sort for spelling and read at least 15 minutes.  She sets up her class in the toy room and her baby dolls are the students.  One of these days I need to get out a tape recorder to capture her words.  She is hilarious!  This afternoon I was upstairs with Shelby while she was doing her homework.  I could hear something downstairs and I asked Shelby if Morgan had the TV on?  She said no and that is was Bookflix on the computer.  She had opened a book for her "class" to listen to.  (Bookflix is something they do in the library at school).  Shelby went on to tell me that the "students" were wearing the doll baking hat and a visor.  Shelby asked her why they were wearing the hats and Morgan said, "those are their thinking caps".  Shelby and I had a good chuckle over that.  When I came downstairs I was able to take a few pictures without her knowing.

ready to learn in their desks (doll highchairs)

 Sorry the pictures are a little fuzzy.  My camera was not cooperating and I wanted to get these without her noticing.

The Great Vine Produces!

A few weeks ago I posted this picture of the great pumpkin vine growing in our backyard.

The vine did produce a lot of flowers but only 1 of them grew into a pumpkin of a worthy size.  When we got back into town yesterday I went out back and saw the vine was looking zapped from a cold night or two.  So I decided we better cut the pumpkin before it was too late.

The pumpkin grew on Shelby's vine.  As you can see it is yellow and not the usual orange.  Even though this side of it is a little flat from laying on the ground in tiny rocks, it looks better than the other side.  It has a big crack where it split open while it was growing.  Although we don't exactly have the space to produce a pumpkin patch every year, the girls sure had fun watching nature at its best.  From the styrofoam cup full of dirt to a nice sized pumpkin, even if it's not perfect.

Dr., Dr., Dr., Dr. .... & finally an answer????

Last week I posted this about Morgan's headache issues:

Morgan first complained her head hurt the 3rd day of school.  1 week later when her head still hurt, I took her to visit the pediatrician.  He determined she probably is having migraines.  I kept track of her pain levels 3 times a day for 2 weeks and then we followed up with him.  He gave her some meds to help prevent the headaches.  On Monday, she had her first of 3 times a week visits with a chiropractor.  Due to the fact the girl has had so many falls in her 6 short years, I thought her headaches could be a result of a body out of alignment. The other possibility is a sinus infection.  Next week I am taking her to see her allergist that she hasn't seen since 2009.  He is going to do a full respiratory allergy test.  Hopefully one of these doctors can help her feel better!

Since that post, her headache was still hanging around and she started to complain about her eyes being fuzzy and I'd catch her shaking her head to clear them out.  So yesterday I took her to have her eyes rechecked.  She had that done at the end of July.  The eye doctor said she does not have a vision problem and the migraine is probably causing her eyes to be fuzzy.  This morning after she got out of the bathtub, she finally said her head was feeling good!  Today's doctor visit was with her allergist.  She was a true champ laying in torture with the respiratory test pricks on her back.

first picture I took soon after she was poked 3 times

second picture I took after the Antigens worked for awhile

The A Antigens are Molds and Dust.  B Antigens are Trees, Grasses, Weeds, and Corn.  C Antigens are animals.  I've had this test done.  Although the process has greatly improved (I was poked 26 individual times with thin glass tubes), the horrible, burning, itchy, want to scratch a hole in your back results have not changed!  I stood there and held her hands down for awhile so she wouldn't touch.  Then I took the pictures so she could see what was going on.  I read to her to distract her.  It was sad to see the silent tears run down her face and make a puddle on the table paper.  About 15 minutes later, the doctor came back to read the results.  I think 5 is the highest rating for tests.  He showed me her pecan allergy came back a 5 in 2009.  Under the A:  the molds was a 2 and house dust and dust mites a 2.  Under the B:  U. Weed, Ragweed and Corn Pollen a 2.  U. Tree a 3 - which explains her awful asthma and allergies in the spring.  Under the C:  Dog a 1, Cats a 4 (already knew this was a high level for her), horse a 1, and feathers a 2.

Unfortunately for her, the fun was not over when we left there.  In the spring at her 6 year well checkup, her pediatrician advised we revisit the allergist to see if she still has the tree nut & egg allergies detected in 2009.  So we went to the hospital to have blood drawn for those tests.  She's amazing as she doesn't even flinch when the needle goes in and she sat there and watch her blood run down the line into 3 different tubes.  I am pretty confident she still has the nut allergy since she ate one last Christmas.  He was also going to test her for a few more nuts besides the pecan and English walnut like before.  I am interested to see if the egg allergy has gone away, but am certain the girl will never eat an egg as an egg.

Finally, after all of this, I am comfortable with the diagnosis that the migraines are coming from her allergies and sinus pressure.  I have to start tracking the pollen levels and fight the allergies with some Zyrtec and hope that keeps the headaches away.  Thank God as I am about done with Dr. after Dr. after Dr. after Dr.  We still have to follow up with the pediatrician next week and for now is still seeing the chiropractor and will continue to for awhile yet.