The List Is In!

Liam, Brendan and I have made our Vacation List.  As you'll see it's unlikely we'll hit all these places this year, but we'd rather have too big a list than too small a list.  We had hoped to go with Eric on his first week-long trip to CA, but unfortunately he had to make his travel plans while I was super sick and I just couldn't muster arranging plans for us as well and switching my work hours and whatnot, so we won't be joining him when he flies out next week.  But he'll be going to CA for his new job at least a couple times a year so we'll definitely catch a ride out there on a regular basis and hopefully at least once this year.  Ok, drumroll please:
- Champaign (the boys LOVE going there, and actually I do plan on Marching in May so we most likely will be going)
- Alaska (Brendan's addition)
- Indianapolis ( we were supposed to go last week to see the Butler / UIC game, but sickness thwarted those plans.  I was able to give our bball tickets to my old college roommate and she has a 4 year old so it worked out reasonably well.  We'll go visit my prof either this Spring/ Summer or for a football game in the Fall.  Most important of all is that we see Blue II (and maybe Blue III)!
- California (Eric's new job is in Mountain View, so we'll do San Fran and Muir Woods, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium)
- New York City (but Brendan specifies that we will NOT ride in a cash cab)
- Baltimore (we plan to go here to visit my aunt this summer)
- Florida (we may go here in November to visit Eric's cousin in Clearwater Beach and as he is a marine biologist Liam may get some face time with his work in Tampa Bay.  Also the boys have a strong attachment to him even though they've only met a few times, and he has a little girl just about Aidan's age)
- Tennessee (my brother and his family want to go here to because they like the Smokey Mountains, and while we're there we want to check out the firefoxes Eric's new company has at the Knoxville Zoo)
- Water Park (I added this, and we are going to a water park to kick off Spring Break since I am working a lot that week and I want the boys to feel they have some memories from the break.)
- Hawaii (Liam's addition)
- Italy (we have all been wanting to go here for years, and I think we are getting close.  There's a song we sing, "Senor Don Gato" and while it may be Spanish Liam and I decided long ago we will go to Italy and look for Don Gato up on the rooftops.  Also Italy has agriturismo so we will check that out.  As an added bonus Liam and Brendan are learning Italian in school!  !molto bene!)
- Ireland (obviously)
- Africa (Liam & Brendan's addition.  Liam thinks when he is 9 and Brendan is 7, I thought much older than that)
- Asia (Liam & Brendan's addition.  They are more exotic than I am.  Also, I spelled Asia wrong when I first wrote it on our list and it gave me a headache trying to figure out what was wrong with it.  I plan to stick with Little Saigon and Chinatown, but they have to dream.)

Stop! Growing Up So Damn Fast!!!

One of my patrons at work told me possibly the worst thing I could ever hear, just before Liam started kindergarten.  She said "once they start kindergarten, it's over.  They will be in college in the blink of an eye."  Now why she told me such a horrible thing, I have no idea.  But I'm sure it was just a week or two ago when I was crying over Liam's too-fast-approaching first day of kindergarten, and now he only has THREE MONTHS LEFT!!!!  What?!?! How did this happen?  I know we lost about a month with the pneumonia, but still this just can't be.  I am totally sick about it.

 And you mean to tell me this was over a year and a half ago?!?!

About Last Night

What can I say?  We survived.  That was our first time with three sick kids at once.  Fortunately Brendan's at the tail end of this illness, Liam in the middle, and Aidan just got hit (and as of this morning seems to be on the mend already.)    Liam slept literally all day and all night yesterday, with just bathroom breaks in between..  He wouldn't let us give him any meds, and since he slept through the doctors' hours and then the Immediate Care Center hours (the docs said we should go get him tested for strep) we decided to let him sleep and watched him like a hawk.  With no medical knowledge at all we didn't really think it was strep, just cause he did have a bad cold and didn't have trouble swallowing and had a cough and didn't have a particularly sore throat and from what I could see of his throat it didn't look red or white or weird.  And also Brendan seemed to be one step ahead of Liam in this illness and was doing much better.  And the doctor said you need to catch strep in the first 9 days, so we decided to give him the rest he wanted and long story short today he seems better this morning and is fever free.  I'm still going to be watching all three of them and will take them in the second it seems necessary.  But I'm trying really hard to be the right mix of cautious without being neurotic.  It's an uphill battle.  :o)

Eric has to go to CA for two weeks in mid March, and I am trying to decide if we should go with for the first week.  That could entail me flying in at least one direction with three kids by myself.  yowzers!  And my germaphobia will be in full swing at an airport in March.  And the boys would miss a week of school.  On the other hand we would be in California in March, so that would be awesome.  And I really don't see L, B & A being too comfortable with not seeing Eric for so long.  Ah, decisions, decisions.  Ok, back to laundry!!


Here's a pic of the boys playing either Angry Birds or Shoot the Apple.  Aidan really likes to be in  on everything...

And here's a cute pic from the Liam and Brendan's joint birthday party in January with their friends from school...  (realllly hope we can get the thank you cards sent out today.  You know, just a month late.)

The Thursday That Wasn't

What was supposed to happen:


Wednesday, Eric works in the day, I work in the night

Thursday, Eric works in the day, Brendan doesn't have school so his friend comes over to play, I work in the day, Eric takes the boys to the dentist in the afternoon and we take the boys to Grandma's and have a night out on our own, the first in quite a while.



What did happen:

Wednesday, Eric works in the day, the boys and I clean up the house for the playdate. Good day. Eric comes home, I go to work, Eric has a good night with the boys, baths, dinner, and then Brendan starts feeling sick, throws up a bunch of times, Liam starts crying that his ears hurt, I get stuck by a freight train in the rain on my walk home from work sans umbrella, we do 6.2 million loads of laundry, Aidan wakes up too early Thursday morning, I go to work, Eric misses an important meeting, we have to cancel the dentist and the babysitting with grandma.



I can't be too bitter though because FORTUNATELY Liam and Brendan got to go to their class Valentine's Day parties, which were super cute and they had a lot of fun, and I was supposed to work tomorrow night but someone switched with me at the last minute so now I have the night off. And Eric has a 5 day weekend coming up, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everyone will start getting healthier.

Casual Conversations

Liam told me before lunch today that the Dalai Lama's favorite animal is monkeys.  (for the record we rarely have talked about the Dalai Lama, and not at all in recent memory, so this just came straight out of the blue.)  I said "Oh, did you learn this at school?"  He looked at me, furrowed his brow, darted his eyes around pensively and said, "No, I think I just knew this ever since I was born."  See, I TOLD you!!  No one ever believes me!!!
Things here are going well, even in spite of winter (which has been scarily mild KNOCKONWOOD)  Aidan is babbling up a storm and I'm starting to decipher more and more words in there.  (So far this week 2 new ones - "stuck" and "roomba."  And he was right!)  He is so adorable, and man does he have a funny range of facial expressions.  "Implausible!"  "Puh-lease" "I cannot believe you are even suggesting that" "I am smiling so hard no one will ever see my eyes" and the list goes on.  Brendan slid perfectly right into the preschool where Liam is in kindergarten (there were many adjustments made After Pneumonia.)  Both the big boys had amazingly excellent parents teacher conferences and I am so proud of their awesomeness.  And Brendan had a performance in his classroom for Valentine's Day and he sang the loudest and the most on-key.  A Star Is Born!  :o)  Were heading off to Indy soon to catch a Butler game, and life these days is generally full of:
school (for Liam and Brendan - not me!  yay!) 
basketball (Liam)
Irish Dance (Liam & Brendan)
playdates (Liam & Brendan)
work (Me & Eric)
new words and demands to get toenail polish and have his shoes put on when anyone else does (Aidan) (and also Liam & Brendan actually)
a reemergence of exercise (me)
Roomba (Aidan)
Harry Potter (me, Liam, Brendan and sometimes Aidan)
finally watching some new on DVD movies (me & Eric)

Ok, I think I am going to go take a quick rest while the boys play downstairs.  Any guesses how long til the yelling starts?