A long couple of days

Friday, the wrestling team went to Greeley. That started at 2, so Taylor and I went up right after lunch at school. Kyle and Jake both got second place. Brad stuck his first and third kids, but lost his second and fourth. His second match, we all just hoped he wouldn't die. The kid was that big. He lasted longer than we thought he would though, and got some good shots in. Taylor and I had to leave around 9:45 (finals hadn't even started yet) because we had to go to a speech meet today. I got to bed around 11:30, and we left on the bus to Ord at 5:35 this morning. Allen and the guys left from Greeley to O'Neill to spend the night, then on to Ainsworth this morning to wrestle. Kyle got fourth place today. My novice freshmen OID placed fourth, so we were pretty happy. We got back to school around 6:30 tonight, and Allen's on the road. I think I'll go to bed!

What a weekend

On Friday I was on the treadmill for my morning run, and felt something itchy on my back. I scratched it and about screamed because it hurt so badly. What the? I looked in the mirror, and there was a cluster of red bumps on my left side. Hmmm. I had no idea what the heck it was. I went to school and had my friend Robin (the health teacher) look at it. "Ooo. That's not good. Looks like shingles. They're brought on by stress, you know." Aaargh! What are you talking about? I've been stress free for the last month or so! NOT. Robin has had shingles, so she knows what she's talking about. Anyway, I emailed my sister (who had shingles last year)and she told me to run, not walk, to the doctor, because if I don't get on the medicine within the first 48 hours, I'm pretty much screwed. I went to the doctor, who only had to glance at my bumps before grimacing and telling me "sucks to be you." (He's a family friend, so this is normal and quite expected.) He called in a prescription for me. Good deal. I went to the pharmacy. "Your insurance needs authorization from the doctor before they pay. We've faxed the paperwork, but it will probably take a few days." WHAAAAAAT?? Remember it's Friday. A few days???? Thankfully, my sister stopped taking her medicine when she started feeling better, and had 8 pills left to hopefully get me through until mine is filled. I have a sneaking suspicion it's not going to be ready on Monday, and I'll be screwed either way. At least I'll have had a couple days of the medicine. (3 pills a day). I'm not the first in our family to go to the doctor this week, though. Cael has a sinus infection, but I think he has a viral thing on top of it, because his fever of 100 just broke yesterday. He's still coughing, but he'll be ok. I'm sending him to church with Brent and Kassidy since I don't think I should go to church. We have infants and nursing mothers in our congregation, and if anybody came down with chicken pox, it would be obvious who gave it to them. On a lighter note, I took a couple kids to a speech meet yesterday and got a superior ribbon. Allen went to Neiligh with the wrestlers. Unfortunately, they figured out Jake has walking pneumonia and had to be pulled from the tournament after he couldn't catch his breath for 20 min. after wrestling. Kyle, however, beat the 6th ranked kid in the state and won first!

This morning Cael was rocking out with Allen's Guitar Hero guitar. He's singing the newer "Larry Boy" song. "Larry Boy. Rock on Larry Boy!"

Palmer and stuff

Cael got a late Christmas present from "Uncle Ben" Peters. A remote control firetruck. He loves it! Mary Jane, not so much. We went to Palmer today to the wrestling meet. Meets can get awfully long for us since we have three wrestlers - Jake-135, Brad-140, Kyle-215. There's usually a long wait in between Brad and Kyle, and since Cael came with us today, I brought the portable DVD player (THANK YOU, MOM!!), so Brad and Cael watched Ratatouille together. If you've seen that movie, you've seen Brad. Linguinni is pretty much Brad with red hair. Jake saw me get ready to take his picture. Yes, the guys did wrestle today, but I didn't get any pictures of that, since I'm down at the mat with water and the med bag. Cael had to try on Brad's headgear. This pose was our wrestling team inside joke last year. They would be all serious and then mug like Cael is. Cael had to sit with Coach Daddy for a bit. Behind Allen's head you can see the back of our wrestling shirts. It says "Determination" at the top and then our verse underneath. There was a half hour break, so Cael got to go down on the mats and wrestle like the big guys! Jake and Coach Daddy took him on. During Kyle's last match, Cael was trying to take off his shoes so he could go and "help." Cael crawled up on Taylor's lap for a bit. (The one that came over last week.) He figured she was safe because he was getting tired, and we would've tried to get him to sleep. She would kill me if she knew about this picture.:) Jake and Kyle got first and Brad got fifth. Everyone got to wear their final's singlets today! Our team only had one loss. Not bad!

Even snowier

Allen and Taylor (our stat girl that was supposed to go to speech with me) got to our house about 1am this morning. Allen wasn't going to let Taylor drive home because she lives by Aurora (30min away). We figured she might as well stay with us because she'll be with me anyway, and there was no sense in her dad coming all the way into town to get her. I got up at 4:30, but the State Patrol website and phone number both said the same thing: extreme caution due to ice and snow on roadway - at least until Elm Creek (more than halfway to Lexington). I wasn't comfortable chancing it, and I didn't think parents would mind me not wanting to take their children out on yucky roads. I called our AD, and he said that he backed me up on the decision. Even at 10am, Allen went out on the highway going into GI, and he said it was still really bad. We finally went into town around 3:30, and the roads were fine. I'm just glad the trucks were able to get everything off the roads before sundown. I guess we'll try it again in a couple of weeks. At the wrestling meet, Jacob got 2nd and Kyle got 3rd. Brad pinned his second kid, but got beat out in his third match.

Snowy Day

Today was the wrestling meet in Burwell. Actually, it's still going on as I write this. I took the two stats girls up there (an hour forty-five minute drive) this morning. It "started" at 1:30 (they almost never start on time) and I left at 3:45 because the snow was coming down and I was worried about the roads. I didn't want to get home at midnight because I am taking some of the speech team to Lexington tomorrow morning for a meet. We leave at 6:15am. Since it's frowned upon that I take a nap while traveling (I'm driving the van), I suppose I'd better get to bed at a decent hour. My niece Kyla, who is in the 7th grade, will be joining us since she really wants to be in speech when she gets to high school. She takes after her mom and Aunt Jenn in the drama department. I'm sure it will be an interesting day. I'll have lots of results to post tomorrow (hopefully:).

Centura and Batman

Yesterday was the Centura wrestling meet that had to be rescheduled from Dec. 19th. Kyle got 3rd, and Jacob got 1st. Brad shouldn't have lost his first match, but he made a dumb mistake, and couldn't recover. This Friday we go to Burwell. Cael just came upstairs to tell me goodnight. Tonight we took family pictures at church for the picture directory. The photographer had a fun time with Cael. She put him on the black background and let him pose. It's like he's done that before! :) He shot webs at her, made muscle arms, made goofy faces, and smiled sweetly. We're getting the proofs of those. Can't wait.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone! We hope this year will be a good one for you. It will be one of readjusting for us, but we know that God will give us the grace and comfort we need. We had a good end of the year. So did my sister's family, who got a new puppy, too. Buster is his name, and he is a Shorkie. I think he should be called Wicket because he looks like a baby Ewok, but that's just me. We had to have a trial separation from Mary Jane because Cael was suddenly breaking out in hives! We figured out it's not Mary Jane, so everything there is ok. We still don't know what caused the outbreak, though. Kerrey thinks it is an ingested allergy (maybe nuts?) so we'll have to go see the allergist sometime. Cael and I returned to Cairo on Tuesday. We picked up MJ and brought her home with us. She was at Grandma and Papa Tom's while we were away. Cael got to hold her the whole way home!