Emmy's Activities

Emmy's season of activities are coming to an end.  We were extremely busy from last fall until this spring with gymnastics, dance and swimming lessons.  She enjoyed them all but says that swimming is her favorite.  She says that she doesn't want to take dance lessons next year.

Her dance recital was May 19th at the Osseo Sr. High.  It was absolutely adorable watching her up on stage.  Emmy did really well during her routines.  We are so proud of her!  She danced to "Fun To Be A Bee" for her tap song and "I Love Colors" for her ballet song.  The entire company all participated in a routine during the finale.  Emmy was right in front.

Dancin' on Broadway wouldn't allow any cameras inside the auditorium during the recital.  MAJOR BUMMER!!   It forces you to go buy the $40 DVD. Below are some of our snapshots that my brother Scott took with his camra. 

  
Gymnastics ended last Tuesday.  She received a medal and an award!  She loved the trampoline, swing & monkey bars the best. 

She has two more weeks of swimming lessons and then we will be all done with activities for the summer.  Emmy has to work on her flips in the pool.  She's had to repeat the same class two times and her teacher recommended she retake the class a third time to get better at flipping over in the pool.  I don't like how they do evaluations at her lessons.  They evaluate the kids about four weeks into the 12 week session.  I don't think it gives the kids enough time to learn each step in the pool.  I personally would rather see evals closer to the end of the session.  That's just my own two cents.
We can work on flips this summer when we go to the local beach. 

Next fall we will be starting Erin in swimming lessons! 

Erin's ABCs

Erin has just started singing the entire alphabet.  Although her version goes a little something like this...
ABCDEF Cheese HIJKLMNOP etc...

Mother's Day

We spent part of the afternoon/evening attending a baptism for our niece Annie (Scott & Missy's youngest). 
On our way home we stopped for treats at Dairy Queen and headed to a nearby park.  We ate our treats and fed the fishies that were in the pond.  The girls want to go back to feed the fish some more food!
I had a nice relaxing day.  Brad and the girls gave me a family tree that you hang pictures on. 

 Erin was not cooperating for picture time.  She wanted to be by daddy and eat her ice cream treat!  I thought that this was a cute picture of Emmy & I.

Grandpa Harley's Birthday

The girls and I drove out to Willmar to visit Grandpa Harley for his birthday.  He is now at a new nursing home in Willmar.  It's a nice facility but he doesn't like change.  He was in good spirits and seemed to have a good memory that day.  He was asking all about my brother Bob.  He remembered that Bob lives in Dallas and was curious about how Bob was doing. 
Emmy and Erin brought their Great Grandpa Harley some treats for his birthday.  He loves Snickers and Hot Tamales.  The girls were glued to him the whole time just waiting for him to share his treats!  It was pretty cute. 
My cousin Cloey and her adorable baby Aubrey stopped by to visit with us too!  It was so nice to see them both.  We don't get to see each other enough!

Asthma?

We arrived home from our trip last month to a sick little girl.  Our plane landed around 6:00 pm and we headed straight for home.  We were so excited to see everyone!  Brad's parents were watching the girls for us and told us that Erin was running a 104 fever and showed signs of an ear infection.  By the time we got home, we checked her over and noticed she was also working hard to breathe.  We thought she had pneumonia again.  Since it was after normal clinic hours and also a weekend, we had another ER visit.  This time we brought her to the local ER that is just a mile from our house. 
The doctor listened to Erin's breathing and did an x-ray.  He was sure it was pneumonia since he heard some crackling in her lungs.  The x-ray eventually came back clear.  She did have a really bad double ear infection though so they gave us a prescription and sent us on our way.
The next day she was still miserable and she seemed to get worse into the night.  I gave her a neb treatment, but her breathing didn't seem to improve.  We made the decision to bring her down to Children's Hospital around midnight.  
The doctor at Children's did another x-ray and this time it came back showing signs of pneumonia.  Erin was also a little dehydrated since she didn't have very much of an appetite all week.  They put in an IV and then also did a neb treatment.  Erin's oxygen levels were not improving and staying around 86-90.  The doctors wanted to see improvement and decided to observe her overnight since she just had a week long hospital stay only four months ago. 
The next morning the doctor told us that they took a second look at Erin's x-ray and said that there wasn't pneumonia.  However, they diagnosed Erin with what is called Reactive Airway Disease (aka Asthma).  They can't test a child for asthma at Erin's age, so that's why they label it as RAD. 
So...our overnight stay turned into a three day hospital stay.  The janitors are starting to remember us!  (just kidding) 
We are now giving Erin a neb treatment every day for 30 days.  She will then probably continue to be on a daily neb treatment...we will find out at her next doctor visit this week.

During the neb treatments, Erin still found a way to suck her thumb!

Cruise Control

Brad and I went on a cruise to the western Caribbean last month.  It was a first for both of us and we weren't sure what to expect.  Our six night cruise started in Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday, April 29th (also Brad's birthday).  Our first stop was Key West on Monday.  We have been here a few times before and knew our way around a bit.  We decided to hop on a trolley ride to take a narrated tour of the city.  We stopped at Earnest Hemingway's home; the southernmost point of the United States buoy; we tried to take a tour of the local cemetery to find the tombstone that says, "I told you I was sick," but we got stuck in the rain and decided to walk back to Duval Street to get a bite to eat.  We were soaked by this time.  No fun walking around in wet clothes.

We had a full 1 1/2 days at sea until our next stop on Wednesday in the Grand Cayman.  We rented a private luxury yacht in the Grand Cayman that took us to a reef a few miles off of shore to go snorkeling near Sting Ray City. After snorkeling our guides provided us with lunch & rum punch, tequila & Jagermeister.  My first shot of Jagermeister EVER...yuck.  The guides then took us to a tiny island where we played with star fish for a while.  Then on our way back to town, we sailed through an iguana park.
We had a few minutes before our bus came back to pick us up, so we got a chance to meet some people from our ship that were on our same excursion.  We ended up going to Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville with two other couples to get a drink before getting back on the ship.  Our two drinks cost us $50...OUCH!  But they were really good!

We set sail again heading for Jamaica on Thursday.  We booked a couple of excursions in Jamaica.  Our first was zip lining through the jungle.  Neither of us had done it before.  It was fun but it started pouring rain again during our tour.  Another day of wet clothes...it didn't matter much because our next excursion was hiking up the Dunn's River Falls.  I was really nervous about this tour because of my back & knee problems...but I did it just fine.

Our days at sea were spent either eating, drinking, gambling, lounging by the pool or taking in a few shows.  I only got sea sick once.  Our first day was pretty rough.  We had bad weather in Ft. Lauderdale which resulted in 6-10 ft waves.  The ship was rocking back and forth.  I took dramamine and wore sea bands around my wrists which helped a lot.

The food was pretty good on the ship.  We were seated with the nicest couples during dinner.  We sat at the same table each night.  I was talking with one of the ladies at our table the first night...We talked about where we were from, etc.  Come to find out, her mother was from Atwater, MN and they come up to Green Lake in Spicer ever summer.  Talk about small world!!

Funny story...When we first stepped onto the ship, we went to our room to check it out.  Then decided to get a cocktail at the bar in the main lobby.  We're on vacation right?  Let the fun begin!   The drinks were a little spendy...they ranged from $5.95 - $12.95.  The drinks were really small so Brad asked for a double shot which was why it cost $12.95...After getting our drinks, it was time to go to our "Muster Station" to get our emergency evacuation drills. (Don't worry, we were sober for the drill)  We were standing in our designated area when one of the ship crew told us to put down our drinks.  By the time all the passengers were filing in and the drill was done, we headed back over to pick up our drinks that were sitting patiently for us on the ledge.  Someone had thrown a napkin in Brad's $13 drink.  Crap!!  We immediately went back to the bar to get a refill.  Thank God the bartender ended up refilling it for free.  That was about the only thing that was free the entire week.

All in all we had a good time.