never what you expect

This isnt going to be a long post, because frankly I dont have the energy.
This week brought lots of good in the midst of so much bad. The girls had a blast at school when they went and zane and I got a lot of work done around the house and for my school work.
Friday we woke up to the phone ringing at 6am. It was the police doing their town wide messaged call. I listened to the police chief telling us to stay in our house and lock the doors. We spent all day in our house, looking nervously our the doors and windows, listening to the military helicopters fly over our house, realizing how quiet it was with no one out and about, marveling at how well the girl took the news that they werent going to their pony ride party at school, watching our neighborhoods on the news with tanks and rifles and snipers, trying to be productive but not knowing how, and finally hearing word that the shelter in place ban was lifted even though they hadnt caught the bad guy yet.
We put the girls to bed and came downstairs to make our dinner when zane noticed they were giving new updates on the news channel. While we were upstairs, shots were fired just 2 miles from our house and they were closing in in the suspect.
We ended our night watching a movie called "butter"; I picked pickedt bedause I thought it would be ridiculous and help us escape from reality. It was and it did, but I still ended up in tears...of relief, of exhaustion, of happiness and grief.
Saturday came and it started out crappy.  We were all tired and even though we could leave our house now, I didn't want to. We got to tell the girls that the bad guy was caught and the police kept us safe like theyre supposed to, but I cringed at the realization that we had to even tell them about real bad guys.
It will seem sureal for a long time that all of this happened right here, in the sleepy little towns outside of boston. Not in a movie, not in the run down and sketchy parts of boston.
Tomorrow we go back to work and school and theres another relief in the mundane and regular routine. What a week off...

vacation!?

today was the first full day of our april break! i spent about 4 hours of it working on finishing up some things for my practicum, the girls (and zane) spent 2 hours of it resting in bed (zane and nola fell asleep), the family spent about an hour lounging in the living room (see picture below) and not doing much of anything which felt amazing, and we spend 2 hours out eating dinner and running errands.

i'm just about to call it a day.

we lost power last night randomly for a couple hours. the girls instantly started crying when their sound machine and hall lights went off. so zane and i spent the night on their floor with a battery operated sound machine and flashlight propped up in the hallway. we were all pretty beat today. particularly avery who didn't nap at all. at one point this afternoon nola looked at the bottom of her own foot and said it was dirty. so i said "lick it", and she tried to (and almost succeeded), so i said "no silly! don't really lick it." a few minutes later i looked at avery who was scowling at me, until she burst into tears and yelled that i "shouldn't have said that!!" i asked nola if she was upset by what i said, and she wasn't, so i tried to tell avery (without laughing) that i would make sure to never tell her to lick her feet since it upset her so much.

the girls have monday off from school, but then have a fun week planned with their classes. they have pajama day, ice cream day, bubble day, and then they round off the week with a pizza party complete with pony rides! i have to say that it's nice that they're going to have so much fun at school so zane and i can not feel guilty about being home alone (and cleaning/purging/sorting/organizing).

snapshot from this afternoon. a few minutes before this was taken, bitzer was with us too. it was a chair full o' love.

nola's finally doing better after days and days of (mostly low) fevers. avery's still holding on to a nasty cough, but seems to be fine otherwise. i don't know how i managed to get all my hours at my practicum site this semester with all the sickness and time off. looking forward to some time off and just being responsible for my hours at the middle school. 

i've sworn off coffee for the time being. i was starting to rely on it too much and didn't like how i would crash in the afternoon. instead, we bought a bunch of fruit and spinach the other week and i created juice drink ingredients in plastic baggies to freeze. it's easy enough to blend one in the morning before work (of after to share with zane) and after the first few days of nasty headaches, i feel much better all around without all the caffeine. i do miss the warmth of sitting downstairs before the girls wake up and drinking my coffee, so i may just have to switch to decaf or find a good hot chocolate. 

11 days until new orleans! which means 10 until i'm officially done with school work.

this better be it.

nola woke up from her 3 hour nap with a 103 fever this afternoon. this is after a 101.5 fever this morning with red cheeks. this is after she's been on medicine since monday night. this is after went to the dr on monday afternoon to find out that she has yet ANOTHER ear infection.
the good news in all of this is we have an appointment with a specialist at the end of may to find out if her adenoid is enlarged and if that's what is causing all these ear infections. i'm really hopeful that if this is the cause then she could have an ear infection free winter next year! until then, i'm hoping with everything i have that this is the end of illness for us for a long time.
on the down side to all of this, i keep missing work (i took nola to work with me this morning after receiving a text about when i'd be making up the 2 hours i missed on monday). and i have about 5 major reports to write up before next tuesday when i have a meeting with my advisor.
wah. rant over.
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*found out tonight that avery can count by 2's to 10. and she can count by 2's to 10 in odd numbers.

*at work this morning (before my co-worked insisted i bring nola home and give her a popsicle on the couch), nola saw some words on the edge of a book rack and promptly read all the letters as fast as she scanned them. i knew she knew her letters, etc, but it still surprises me when she shows what she knows.

*since the weather has been getting nicer (very gradually), the girls LOVE to ride their trikes in the driveway. the other day zane brought out their real bikes and they took turns helping each other up and down the driveway with their training wheels on.

I wish I were kidding.

On monday I picked the girls up from school and averys teacher goes so did you know Avery has a rash? Sure enough on her neck and upper chest she had a nice little rash. She wasn't complaining that anything hurt so I brush it off thinking it was he rush. Tuesday morning we're getting ready for school and I decided to check a rash randomly. Sure enough it has spread to her arms and back and she was saying it was a little itchy. Off to the doctor we go and the rest should spread a little more.the doctor was mad she didn't have an intern in with her because it was a classic rash for scarlet fever and the interns always complain I never get to see rashes. But a rapid strep test came back negative and she still didn't have a fever or sore throat. So we got a note that she was fine to return to school and we get a call if the strep test comes back positive. So now it's Wednesday she still has a rash but no other symptoms and I'm just praying for this is our last doctors visit for a long long time. on the bright side I'm writing this on my early graduation present to the family, a tablet that will be good for traveling and entertainment. I never thought I'd want to read a book on a device but I love it. I'm actually writing this by speaking into the tablet and having it convert my words so if some of these sentences don't make sense it's because my english isn't good enough :-)