Is it finally gone???

The bug that is. It has surely been a long week at our house. As you know, Maddi came home Friday not feeling so well, then she was sick again on Saturday night/Sunday morning. After 3 sheet changes and 2 baths from 2:30am-4am, we thought the worst was over! Wrong! Mark got a touch of it starting Sunday, Leslea got it Monday night, I got it early Tuesday morning and was probably the worst out of all of us. I am sure that is because I totally hate getting sick because I can not just sit or lay around and do nothing, but someone had other plans for me b/c I could not move without loosing it. YUCK! Then yesterday Courtney came home after school with a splitting headache and a rumbling tummy. Well needless to say, I had already, once again, disinfected the whole entire house, even opening the windows letting some cold, but fresh air in. I gave her some crackers, sprite, anti-nausea medicine, and she went to bed. She was fine this morning and hopefully escaped the yucky part of it, but time will tell. I just hope and pray that it is long gone. I want no more of that for quite some time. Hopefully we can all get back to feeling 100% because now we have to prepare for Mark to leave next week to go to California for 34 or so days. That will be another adventure in itself. Maddi has never been away from him that long, so it will be interesting to see how she does. Court and Les are used to him being gone, but they have not had to be away from him for this length of time in quite awhile. Hopefully things will go well and as scheduled. It surely will be a huge blessing if it does. Well of course our weekend is busy, so until next time, have a wonderful weekend of your own.

And to think it is only Friday!

Well it is hard to believe that today is only Friday for us here in the Rose household. The older girls were out of school today, so their weekend started last night. Court and her friend Jillian had Panther Palooza after school yesterday, so they got home around 6pm. Jillian stayed with us for the first time and the girls had a blast. I think that they spent more time texting Alex(a 16 year old from church) then they did doing anything else. They made each other up with make up, did one another's hair, and so on. It really gave Mark and I an insight to what we have to look forward to. Lord help us!! Maddi had school this morning and of course came home sick in her tummy. She is such a drama queen anyway, so you can only imagine what our early afternoon was like. Les already had plans for Kasidy to spend the night, so we did not cancel, but told her Mom that Maddi was not feeling well and she still let her stay with us. Of course I have clorox wiped everything down, sprayed the Lysol all over, washed all pillows, blankets, sheets, comforter, you name it and the poor child had not even puked on anything but the sink. Guess I am a little germ aphobic(sp?), but I would rather be safe than sorry. The crowd at church had this little bug 2 weeks ago, so I am not sure if we are just now catching it or what, but it is short lived, so for that I am thankful! She is back to her normal self right now aggervating the pants off of her sister. I am much happier seperating them because they are fighting and not because one of them is sick. So things have been a little crazy here, but that is actually the norm for us. It is just hard to believe that we still have Saturday and Sunday to get through! Lord I pray we make it! Ha!Ha! We are just really hoping that no one else gets sick! Hope everyone has a good weekend! Until next time...

Les, Court and Jillian just being Tween-age girls

Mark says that Maddi looks like one of the Victoria Secret girls here

Kasidy and Leslea

Poor Maddi not feeling well at all!

Another night of sledding at Pigeon Creek Park

Well once again we decided to brave the cold temps and go sledding. It was 10 degrees when we started at 6:30pm and when we finished, it was a whopping 6 degrees. Good things we were only out there for an hour and a half. The girls had a good time with their friend Brigitte and Maddi even found her a new little boyfriend. His name is Dylan. Mark actually took a picture of them holding hands coming back up the hill, but when we reviewed them when we got home, he kinda cut most of Dylan out of the picture, so I posted one of them posing for us. Too cute and way too young for this kind of stuff!! Maybe she is going to be the one that we really need to keep our eyes on. Guess you can just call it "cute" at this age. Well that is about it for now! Hope you all have a good week! We are looking forward to seeing a rise in the mercury, but I will believe that one when I see it!

Hope you all have a good weekend!

Good Friday to all of you. Just thought that we would take a minute to wish you all a wonderful weekend. If it is cold where you are, we hope that you stay warm. That is our plan, but we do have a bit of things going on, so we will have to venture out. The older girls have their GEMS sleepover at the church tonight. They are also going ice skating so they are excited. BRRR!! Tomorrow we have game night at church and Courtney is sleeping over at a friends, so little bit of this and that happening, but nothing too exciting. Here are a few photos from the week. The one of the three of them is silly. They have some pieces from a ball on their noses acting like little turkeys. Don't quite get that one, but that is what they claim to be. Maddi is in the other one pretending to be a little book worm. She loves to have books read her, but she was reading to me with her reading glasses on. And a very dirty face from a fudgesicle that she had just finished. She is too cute and too funny. Have a wonderful weekend!

We are so proud of you Maddi!!

For those of you that know us pretty well, you know that Maddi has a few sleeping issues. Well my New Year's resolution was/is to make her finally sleep in her own bed for the whole night. I was/am determined to do whatever it takes to make this happen because after almost 4 1/2 years, I think that Mark and I deserve some much needed rest. If we were to get more than 2 or 3 hours of sleep, Lord only knows what life would be like. Anyway, I am sure that I would be scolded by the professionals for going about this like I have, but it seems to work for Maddi and for us, so I will continue to do what we are doing. Instead of rocking her to sleep(a big no no we all know), she goes in her bed with her Daddy or whomever and lays down until she drifts off to sleep. If she sleeps in her bed all night, then she has a wrapped prize in front of her door waiting for her when she wakes up. Most of her prizes have been books, puzzles, coloring books, markers, a new cup, etc. They may not be the most rewarding prizes, but the amount of determination that this has given her to sleep in her own bed has been amazing. So far she has slept in her bed for 5 nights in a row and the first thing that she says when she wakes up is, "Mom make sure you put another prize in front of my door after tonight ok!" We know that she can not receive "prizes" forever, but until she is into a regular routine of doing this, I do not mind spending $.50 to $1.00 a night.Wrong, maybe, but it is working for us. Now the next big hurdle to cross is to get Mom to sleep without wondering or worrying if she is wandering around sometimes ending up downstairs screaming and crying for us and so on. She seemed to only need a few hours of sleep before, but being in her own bed has made her sleep almost 6 or more hours. That is A LOT for her! Maybe we will get her to continue this pattern and we all can learn how to sleep again. I know that I am ready for a good nights rest. It has been a long time and I too need to learn all over again, but it will happen! I am more determined than ever! Looking back, if we could have just put her to bed in her own bed/crib then she may not be as bad as she is, but she has never slept more than a few hours at a time. When she wakes up, she is up and miserable! Leslea was our only child that slept. She was not that great, but she was much better at it than Courtney or Maddi. Well enough for now. We will continue to see how this works out for us and we will be hoping for some sleep filled nights for all of us! Enjoy the rest of the week! Until next time...

Yes we are updating once again!

This is the second winter that we have spent in Michigan and this is the first time that we have taken our girls to Pigeon Creek to go sledding. It is kind of sad because the park is only like a 2 minute drive from our house, but Maddi was just a little too little last winter. They had a ball tonight. They started out on the smaller of the two hills, and then Les and Court graduated to the bigger hill and had a total blast. I think that we were there for about 2 hours. Going down on the sleds was the easy part, but climbing back up the hill was a little challenging for them. There was nothing but solid ice in most places, so it was a little tricky. It was a lot of work on Maddi's little legs, but she was a trooper and hung in there. Towards the end, Mark would have to pull her back up the hill in her sled, but for the most part, she did great. I am sure that this will be a regular family outting as long as the weather is as good as it was tonight. Here are a few captured moments from our fun filled Friday night!!

Well guess what I found?? Not lost after all!!

A snow angel for Nana!!

Making a snow angel for Nana

Maddi posing with her "snowman" Drake.

She made this all by herself:-)

Well it was another chilly day here in Michigan with a little bit of snow on and off, but that did not stop Maddi from wanting to go outside and play. Not long after Daddy got home from work, she got her snow clothes on and headed out the door. They played for a little while and then Daddy pulled her in the sled through the cornfield behind the house. No she did not stay in there the whole time, she was in and out, but never the less, Daddy got himself a workout. Mom joined them outside and took some video of her sledding down the driveway, but Daddy somehow lost them on the computer, so we will have to do them again. I am sure that we will have many more opportunities before the winter is over. Daddy had also taken video of her telling us what she was going to make, snow angels, but that managed to be lost in cyber space too. We will do it again so that Nana can see and hear her making her snow angels, but until then, these photos will have to do. Sorry Nana! We hope that you like the photos and we promise a video clip soon!!!

I hope this style doesn't stick around too long!!!

I don't know what is up with these older girls of ours. They found these socks at the mall and just had to get them. Of course something like this is right up Courtney's alley, but Les? I would have never thought that she would get something like these. They were more than willing to have their photos taken in them, so I just had to do it and post them. They never want us to take pictures of them to put on the blog, so beings they were willing, I decided it was only fair to have a post just for them. I surely hope that they do not wear them out of the house so that anyone can see them. Poor Courtney looks like she has never ending legs! Silly silly girls!!

Guess you could call him one of the lucky ones...

This is not a great photo, but today I watched this buck come in and out of the cornfield behind our house. I called Mark and told him that he was in the field at like 1:30pm along with about 20 turkeys. Well as you can probably guess, he was gone by the time that Mark got home, but not long after that, the buck came out of the woods and once again entered the field. We got out the spotting scope and watched him for quite a while. We know that he is a 9 point and awful brave. He was well aware of the noises around him, but did not run off. Courtney came home on the bus and he just stayed in the field and stared in her direction. She even came in the house and began looking at him. It was just a treat to see him out there during the middle of the day minding his own business and doing just what he pleased. He actually came back out for the third time right after we finished eating dinner. Kind of makes you wonder just what he is up to, but never the less, it was fun watching him right out of our sliding glass door!

photo taken through the spotting scope because our cameras would not zoom far enough

So glad to be back in school!!

Well Maddi went back to school today and she was so excited. I did not have any problem getting her up and going. She jumped right up and got her clothes on and told me how she wanted her hair fixed. That is usually the big fight between us, but not this morning. I was thrilled to not have a big crying spell before we walked out the door!! She was just the perfect little girl this morning. I am sure that I will eat those words come Friday morning when it is time to go to school again, but we will wait and see. Anyway, here are a few photos of her from today. Hope everyone has a good week. We will update again when we have something to talk about.

Looking forward to getting back to normal...

Well Sunday has finally come and we were up before the chickens this morning to get Mimi and Poppy off, but we awoke to nothing but ice everywhere. They had planned on leaving between 4:30am and 5:00am, so we got up at 3:45am and waited. Mark and Poppy went for a short ride or should I say a short "spin" and decided that it was best to wait for a while before making a decision on whether or not it was safe enough for them to go. Daylight came and Mark checked the roads again and they appeared to be better than they were. They made the decision to chance it and left at about 8:30am. We were sad to see them go, but we knew that it had to happen sooner or later. As soon as they got out of Michigan, the roads were good. Just wet from the rain, but that could be easily handled. We spent the rest of the morning washing linens and straightening up and now Leslea has a friend over. Why not enjoy the last day of Christmas vacation by doing absolutely nothing? The girls are ready to go back to school and I am ready for them to go. I think that my girls do a much better job when they are on some kind of schedule. It will be nice to get things back to normal. I guess with all of the bad weather that we had, this vacation time seemed longer than usual. I think that after tomorrow, we will appreciate being on a schedule more than any of us want to admit! Oh well guess we will see what tomorrow brings! Until next time...