Basically the first week of Feb was spent with all of us having a vicoius stomach bug.  Thankfully that’s over.

And here is the Tate update.  I am just copy/pasting what I put on Facebook because I am tired (Tate and I were up multiple times during the night), but wanted to make sure those that don’t have facebook can stay caught up:

The lovely month of January has brought two cases of strep (the boy and myself) and baby girl has a touch of pneumonia and a uti – and they are going to check for kidney issues.  But at least our big girl has remained healthy.

Both cars have failed their annual testing and had lots of issues.  But at least one is now legal to drive again.

We’ve had rental issues too.  But at least I think those are resolved again.

***Dear Lord, could you please let February get here soon and be beautiful?!?!?***

I seem to have made a lot of cakes this past week, so I thought I would “share” them with you.  Sorry you can’t taste them – I’ve been told they were great !

The first five were for the Adult Squadron Christmas Party.  Yes, these were the cakes I was working on during the superglue incident (btw body butter lotion w/ mittens over for SEVERAL hours did the trick!).  I made a white, spice, chocolate, lemon and strawberry.  They were meant to look a bit like retro ornaments, working in the blue/white theme of the party - hope it worked!  The sixth cake is for J’s class party.  You pretty much get assigned what to bring for these parties and he was assigned something sweet and savoury – so he asked me to make him a cake.  His choice was strawberry with vanilla icing.  With his we decided to go back to traditional Christmas colors

Pretty sure we left off at the last week of October.  I think that is about when Jason decided we needed our first REAL family vacation.  Actually, serious travel – trains, planes, boat, taxis – the full travel experience!  And he wanted to take this vacation in NOVEMBER!  So a few weeks ago we went on a cruise!!!  It was wonderful!!!  The kids, Jason and myself all had a really great time.  But the leading up to it, planning everything last minute, all of that was insane! 

We got back in the wee hours of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  Had a lovely relaxing Thanksgiving (after a super crazy day) with friends.  Then two days later we had T’s 4th bday party !  Then all of the kids were sick for a week.  In fact today was one of the first days they were ALL back in school!

So on to today.  Since they all went back to school, I tried to clean up in preparation for all of my cake baking this evening.  Tomorrow is our squadron Christmas party and I am making the cakes for it and decided to try to be creative (big groan).

Now I’m sure you are saying, gee thanks for catching us up, but what’s up with the Superglue title??  Getting there !

So I’m taking cake #2 and #3 out of the oven (there were supposed to be five altogether).  And T comes into the kitchen saying “um, I kind of got Superglue all over my hands”.  She was NOT kidding.  The kid coated her hands with glue like they were gloves!!!  Thankfully she had pulled her hands apart before they stuck together.  So while I’m grabbing her and throwing her hands in water I’m yelling for C and J to go check where the glue was all at in my room.  Which was were she was trying to glue post-it notes together.  Again, amazed that she does not have the damn post-it’s glued to her body!  After soaking her hands off and on for about 45 minutes and using a nail brush and massaging her hands and trying to gently peel, she is able to bend all of her fingers.  Her hands are awful though .  I finally sent her to bed with mittens full of heavy duty lotion.  After all of the advice that we got (thank you loved ones!), I decided this would be the best action for her still baby soft skin.

So during all of this lovely chaos, my chocolate cake fell apart from being too moist.  Okay, made another.  Then when I tried to fit my mini loaf pan (with multiple cake mixes in it) in the oven – it wouldn’t fit.  Any of the ovens.  We have a lovely 4 oven unit.  But it is a lovely British unit.  So it is all doll-house sized .  So now I am enjoying a glass of wine, laughing over the absolute ridiculousness of the evening.  And I have just finished the now sixth cake.

All in all, just another day in our Rose garden!

(oh and since I wasn’t clear in my semi-convulted explanation, I am making five round cakes to look like ornments for the party.  Starting to think – what was I thinking !)

Now the kids are on half-term break and as long as we can all kick these colds quickly enough, we should be busy again – having fun!  So hopefully more new pics to post soon

Finally worn out!!!

It was a mess, but thanks to some help from Jason’s commander(!), I got into the neurologist.  She said that I am having some seriously bad migraines.  At that point it had been going on for I think 7 weeks, everything is starting to run together on me now.  This wouldn’t have actually been such a seriously bad thing except for the fact that I was solo parenting and could not take the regular meds that would have killed the migrained in a few days and had me back on my feet, taking care of said chidren.  So instead I had to start this long convulted (I’m still on it) meds plan that has very slowly killed the migraine and allowed me to still be mainly alert to take care of my children.  It has meant me being in a lot of pain still until very recently, their summer sucking pretty much completely, me working on getting over myself and accepting help and trying very very to be nice even though I was in pain.  I failed very badly with Jason.  I did pretty decently with the kids.  He put up with a lot over the phone while he was in the States doing a class.  A class that he managed to finish in three weeks (he was scheduled for I think at least 2 months!!), to get back here to help take care of us.  Thankfully the meds were finally starting to kick in about the time he got in.  And then by this weekend I actually woke up feeling human again.  I still having a dull background headache, but it is managable and things are definitely getting better.

Now to the kids.  Jaron got better quickly after his eardrum burst.  Then the poor kid picked up a stomach bug (I’m guessing waiting around in the hospital pharmacy for one of my tons of meds).  The girls got it too, but not nearly as badly.

They all started back to school last Thursday and are super happy about it.  Tatum had her first “full” day today.  I think they are all just glad things are getting back to normal.  I know I am!

To top it off Jaron has got an ear infection.  So please don’t be too surprised if you don’t hear from us.  I’ll be back online when all is well again in the Rose garden!

Last week, I may have mentioned this, we went to get a sleepover movie and came home with almost all of the “Harry Potter” movies.  Jason and I previewed #4 last night (as neither of us had seen past #3 – which I did download a crappy copy, looking forward to getting a good copy).  I’m liking this series for the (older) kids.  Not too scary, but imaginative (not too dorky as well).  But I am starting to worry that I have been watching it so much that it is now in my dreams!!!

So hopefully Tate and I can go to tea at friend’s house this afternoon and Jason and the olders can watch #4.

But sadly to say, I am looking forward to #5 because they just seem to be getting better and better !

*I have not mentioned anything further about the saying goodbyes, because it is sad, and I really don’t want to go through it again.  The kids are doing okay though.  The olders at this point are getting pretty good at goodbyes.