Birthday, Oxygen, and horses

This past month has been crazy for us! Starting at the beginning of February, the sick bug hit us with a VENGEANCE! First, Tysen caught a cold... then of course, I got it. More on that later. I thought I would put some pictures on here of Madi's Birthday on Valentine's Day. My baby turned 4! We had a quick Family Home Evening lesson that night, which ended up making for much too long of a day... Madi was just NOT in the mood by the time it came to having her Birthday Party afterwards. But we still managed to have a good time. I made a Family Bingo game with different pictures of the family, and we played that together- which was really fun!

Then we opened presents. Madi was really not into it, so Aspen gladly helped out.

After that, we tried to do cake and ice cream... Madi went straight to bed after the song. We enjoyed her chocolate cake, though.

I just had to put this picture on- it is so rare to catch a good smile on Madi with the camera! A few days before her Birthday, Madi caught the cold that had been going around the family. And, as is always the case, what ends up being just a cold to anyone else in the family turns into something much worse for Madi...

I took her in to the Dr's because she developed a cough like Tysen's, but it sounded really bad with Madi. They checked her oxygen levels, and couldn't get them to stabilize above about 86. The goal is 97 or higher. They wanted to put Madi in the hospital, but apparently there is a lot of this respiratory stuff going around and it's hitting kids pretty hard... so the Pediatric Unit in the hospital was full, and the remaining beds were being saved for the really sick kids. Madi hasn't been acting really sick, like passing out, turning blue, or having extreme difficulties breathing, so they set us up on oxygen to use at home. I'm SO glad they did it this way, rather than hospitalizing her. That would have been mizerable! So here is her equipment: a home O2 concentrator for use at night, and portable tanks for use during the day. Since she will NOT wear the cannula on her face, we figured out a way to get her to use the oxygen:

...by chewing on the tube. She is really into chewing on soft, rubbery things right now so this was a natural fit for her and she will chew on that thing for long periods of time before getting sick of it. There she is, chilling on my chair.

And here, sitting on the couch. She is finally doing better, and not coughing nearly as much. Tysen is starting to get over his as well. His lasted for almost 4 weeks- but the poor kid was teething at the same time, so he got hit with a double whammy. Good thing we have a nebulizer- that made things easier for both babies!

This has nothing to do with any of the other pictures. I decided to try my hand at chocolate molding before Valentine's Day, and ended up having so much fun with it that I made little candies like these for Aspen's class. Cute, huh! We also had a Super Saturday activity the last weekend in January, and I was asked to teach a small mini-class on doing chocolates.

One of the other girls at the Super Saturday taught how to dip strawberries. Now, I am not a fan of the ones you buy in the store- I think the chocolate gets too hard, and the strawberries get too mushy inside, and it's just not a great combo in my mind. But lemme tell you, there is nothing better than dipping them yourself, and eating them freshly made! YUM!! Especially the key-lime pie ones (those are the ones dipped in white chocolate, then lime jello, then rolled in graham cracker crumbs... REALLY good!).

And here is my little Aspen, riding a horse in Idaho. We went up to Idaho for President's Day weekend, and it was so much fun! It was right before the kids got really bad with their Bronchitis and all. Jim took Aspen out to his friend's place where she got to ride this horse. She is really into horses right now, so she was on cloud 9! While at home, I went with Jim's Mom and my sis-in-law to a quilt shop where they were having an awesome sale, and I bought a quilt kit that uses 30's reproduction fabrics- I'm so excited about it! I just love buying kits, it takes all the guesswork out of picking the fabrics, and gives you the right amount of yardage. More on that later... I'll have to post some pictures of my current projects. I have about 7 of them in the works right now, but to be honest, most of them are just patiently waiting to be quilted- the tops are all done. I'll have to get busy, now that the babies are starting to feel better. Can't get a thing at all done with sick kids!