The week of craziness

I'm just catching up on the blog after a whirlwind couple of months!  I think at the moment I'm 6 weeks behind, but hey - better late than never!

It all started getting super crazy the week before I went to AZ to meet Baby Sebastian.  Donna had been admitted to the hospital after a severe headache led to her finding out she had an arterial dissection (so scary, but she's doing much better now).  Also, Claire had developed a fever of over 101 degrees.   By the time I left on Friday Donna was stable and undergoing additional testing, and Claire seemed to just have some sort of virus since she was acting pretty normal otherwise.  So I decided after much internal debate to continue with my trip to AZ as planned.  Then while I was there Matt took Claire to the doctor and it turns out she had hand, foot and mouth disease!  She had sores on her mouth, hands and feet (shocking, I know).  By the time I got back Luke had a fever and sores, and then Matt had the symptoms, too!  Luke seemed to have the most mild symptoms (but enough that we had to keep him home from the week of Safety Town we had signed him up for, which he was really sad about), and Matt ended up getting it the worst.  He had a bad fever for days and awful, awful pain from all of the blisters he had on his hand, feet and mouth.  He couldn't walk, couldn't close his fingers, couldn't even swallow without pain.  The weekend ahead of us was the long-awaited, long planned for weekend that we were both throwing 40th anniversary parties for our respective parents, and we were busy making all the last minute arrangements for those (my party was Saturday, his was Sunday).  Needless to say, prepping for two large parties alone while working full time would have been hectic enough, but Matt had it even worse with battling his hand, foot and mouth disease as well and just being worried about his Mom.  To "top it off" so to speak, on Wednesday night at around 3am Spumoni got sprayed by a skunk (first time ever) and came into the house and rubbed against our furniture.  So we had a little more excitement and Matt got the added bonus of giving our skunk-sprayed 100 lb dog a vinegar/hydrogen peroxide bath in the middle of the night.  Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.  (The skunk smell took weeks to wear off completely.)  Thankfully by the weekend Matt was feeling much better, Luke & Claire seemed totally better, and I never got it at all.  We were ready for party time, double time.  Break it down, uh huh!

Here are some random pictures I've been meaning to post.

Claire "coloring" - she only likes to color with markers, never crayons which are not nearly messy enough for her

Isolene and Luke were having fun with the camera features :)  I love how they do play dough and Claire sits in her booster seat to participate, too.

She's a wild swinging monkey at the park these days.   

Isolene took the kids to Six Flags and apparently Claire was obsessed with Tweety Bird.  It started with a simple hug….

But then her hug lingered….

And she just wasn't interested in letting go...

Poor Tweety Bird had a separation problem on his hands:)  Boys beware, this one gets attached quickly!

Cutie pie Luke

Claire is big enough to go on rides by herself, can you even believe it?

This was a super old picture of Luke making Matt's father's day gift.  He looks so serious about his work.