Should I Be Mad?

We got a letter in the mail yesterday from the doctor's office. I had taken Sarah in on Sunday, December 21st to be checked out at the Urgent Care center because she had been throwing up for a couple of days and was on her third day of having at least a 100 degree temperature. They did a rapid throat culture which was negative and after listening to her breathe, etc. the doctor said he thought it was a virus and just to keep pushing liquids, give her motrin/tylenol, and make sure she gets plenty of rest.

She was feeling better... the fever went away, but she still has a cough and bad case of laryngitis. So the letter yesterday says that the normal throat culture came back positive and she has strep throat. Mind you this is now nine full days after having the culture. So we call to get her antibiotics and the nurse apologizes and gives us a bunch of excuses. But the bigger thing is that Sarah has been around many other kids. She went to school, she had functions with the family where there were other kids and Kris' parents who aren't in the best of health so I would think that they would be at risk. SO I ask and tell the nurse that Alison had been complaining last week of having a sore throat, but that it had apparently cleared up, though she too has now developed a nasty sounding cough. So as a precaution they tell me to take her to the lab and get a culture done.

An hour later they call me and say the rapid test came back positive and she too has strep throat. Nice! The nurse says she'll call in a prescription for Ali so I tell her to call it over to the hospital. As of 8:30 last night, they still didn't have it (we were notified about 6:00 that Ali had strep). So I call first thing this morning over to the clinic and they had the notes in their computer about her being positive and having the prescription called over, but no one ever did it. UNBELIEVABLE!

There are so many things to be mad at here I just don't know where to begin.

Gingerbread House

As promised, here is this year's attempt at a gingerbread house for Christmas. We had a little problem in that one wall and one section of roof were cracked in half. Then the frosting included in the kit was hard as a rock, so we had to make due with what we had, and that was frosting the roof and using colored icing for the shingles. We ran out of pink icing and had to finish with blue. It was a patchwork effort this year, but it was all Sarah and Ali making it, I only helped to keep the walls and roof together.

Pictures

I have finally gotten around to updating photo albums, well at least getting the photos for the photo albums. That is one bad things about having digital pictures I guess, you don’t need to print the photos. They get downloaded from the camera to the hard drive and then periodically put in CDs. It used to be that you would drop off your film and then pick up the photos to be put in albums. Now things aren’t as urgent, so you end up with what I have right now, almost two years worth of photos that need to be printed an placed in albums. I had an internet coupon from Walgreens for $.10 prints on orders of 50 or more, so I spent the better part of 3 and a half hours yesterday uploading photos to Walgreens to be printed (the coupon expired on 12/27). Overall I ended up saving almost $50 on them all, at least the ones I have uploaded so far (almost 1000).

I still have almost 200 to upload. You would think that they would make a feature for uploading an entire folder rather than having to do it one at a time. That is why it took so dang long, 12 pictures at a time was all I could upload, and at about 1-2 minutes per set of 12 (when things were uploading quickly), I was up until almost midnight doing it. The remaining ones are just getting put on a CD and I’ll take it in to the store to have them loaded/printed out.

Movie Day

We had a lot to do on Saturday, but we took a couple hours out to go see “Bedtime Stories” with Adam Sandler. We had some arguing since we went to the early matinee (12:30 P.M.) and the girls didn’t want to get moving. But once we got there, the theater was about half full, which was good. I HATE watching movies sitting in a crowded theater. The overall review.... Not bad. Sarah gives it 4 out of 5 stars. I’ll give it 3. The story was cute and enjoyable, but Adam Sandler played, well Adam Sandler. If you have seen him to one goofy yet endearing character, you have seen every movie he has ever done. He is sort of drifting into Will Ferrell territory. But I’ll still recommend it as a nice family movie.

There were some interesting trailers shown prior to the movie starting however that I think I’m going to have to try and go see when they come out. First is a movie called Inkheart starring Brendan Fraser. The second is Race to Witch Mountain. I saw both Witch Mountain movies, Escape to Witch Mountain and Return from Witch Mountain, as a kid and I am interested to see how Disney has updated the remake.

Merry Christmas

Christmas morning began bright and early. We were up around 7:00 and Alison was dying to see what Santa brought. Ali was hoping Santa would bring her the High School Musical House. For the past two weeks she was hoping and hoping to find a big box under the tree. When she came down and saw the tree, there was one really big box, and she couldn’t wait to open it. Unfortunately, Sarah was still sleeping so she had to. After about a half an hour, she had to go upstairs and wake up Sarah because she didn’t want to wait to open presents anymore.

Santa ended up bringing the HS Musical house, a couple of the HS Musical dolls (the girls needed Taylor and Chad), a couple of Gameboy games, a radio/speakers to plug her mp3 player into, and a furry pink rug.





Sarah’s thing this year was an iPod. She got the new, iPod Nano with a docking station/radio. She also got Guitar Hero II for her Nintendo DS.





The rest of the day was spent putting things together and loading songs onto mp3 players. I am sure that there is one “universal” program for all players, but I have been trying to use the programs that came with them, I think it is easier that way, plus I don’’t want to take the time to research it all. But then that means uploading the same songs/CDs to each player separately.

The past two years we had gone to a movie on Christmas Day, but this year, Kris wasn’t feeling good so we put it off for a day or two. We’ll probably end up going this weekend instead. I’m not sure what we’ll see yet, but the preliminary choice looks like Bedtime Stories. Check back for a review.

Christmas Eve

This year we spent Christmas Eve over at Kris’s parents’ house. Normally her family will get together on Christmas Eve, open presents, etc. but this year because of her dad’s troubles with his balance and walking, they just couldn’t go out, and since it would have been way too much work for Kris’s mom to get things ready at their house for the whole family, they just skipped it this year, though their family did get together at someone else’s house. No one told Kris and me about it so we didn’t have the opportunity to drive her parents there. In the end it was fine, because Sarah was still feeling the after effects of her cold, and actually still can’t talk. Hopefully resting her voice over break will help.



The girls’ grandparents got them a Wii system for Christmas this year. We let the girls open the game system itself at Bob and Carole’s and then when we got home later on they opened the other accessories. Hopefully it doesn’t cause too much trouble fighting over who gets to play what game, or who wants to play the Wii when someone else wants to watch TV.

More Snow

After watching the Packers choke away yet another game, I woke to more snow coming down. So now we are at 34" for the month of December. The snowbank at the end of the driveway is taller than I am. I thought this was the kind of thing you only saw in Buffalo.

But as I am driving home from work, there is some butthead snowblowing his driveway, shooting the snow right into the street. This is a major per peeve of mine. The chute on the snowblower is directional.... You can point it to blow to the side of your driveway. I should also add that at least here it is ILLEGAL!!!!! Where is a cop when you really need one?