There Are No Words. . .

It has been a surreal 14 hours.

My dear friend Marsha called me last night around 8:00pm, living every parent's worst nightmare. She told me that her youngest son, little 3 year old Christian, was missing. I was at a loss for words then, and still am. As the night dragged on, she continued to call me with updates. For a small window of time, it appeared as though the worse case scenerio had been ruled out as a possibility, which alone was cause to give praise, and hold onto a little bit of hope.

Unfortunately, that glimmer of hope faded at 10pm when she called again to tell me that her youngest son, her baby, was gone. I was in shock -- still am. The entire night, while I was wanting to go there and hug her neck and offer my support, I also did not want to overwhelm her. . . many of us "Marthas" know that it is easy to fall into the role of taking care of others, and I wanted her to be concentrating on her family and the many friends already with her. However, after that last call, I couldn't stay home any longer.

I got in my van and drove the 45 minutes that felt like eternity. What would I say? What could I possibly do? The answer - - nothing. No words can help in situations like this. The only thing that matters is that we let our loved ones know how much we care for them, and that we are there whenever they need us. I pray that Marsha knows that.

Marsha is an amazing mom. She homeschools her two older boys and was excited for Christian to start preschool this year. She is the most hilarious person I have ever met, is beautiful inside and out, and has an amazing faith. I know that God is with this godly family, but additional prayers are certainly coveted at this time.

If you would like to read a lovely tribute to this ADORABLE little boy, and send any condolences, please visit our tribute at Heart of the Matter, Celebrating the Life of Little Christian "Dozer" Drews. My home address is listed there for any cards or well wishes you would like to send.

Go and hug your children

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My family in pictures

This blog is my digital scrapbook -- I am GREAT at taking pictures. . . getting them printed and put into a photo album, not so much.

This blog helps me to keep some of these wonderful pictures and memories stored, and allows me to share them with relatives who live across the country (ok, mostly in Louisiana, but with gas prices, it might as well be on the other side of the country). So I hope you don't mind me sharing some family pictures we took this weekend.

Mom, Ryan, and Dad

My family is very close. My parents have always put a priority on family, with an importance on celebrating the holidays, lots of vacations, creative memories, silly traditions, and just plain silliness in general. While no one's family is perfect, if I can create the same loving and accepting atmosphere in my own home, I will have succeeded as a parent.

Me and Ryan

I absolutely adore my brother Ryan. He is seven years younger than me and as a result, I have always been very protective of him. Our favorite story to tell is when he was first learning to ride his bike on the busy street in our neighborhood. He told my mom, "Please don't tell Rachel. . . You know how much she worries about me!" Yeah, I can be like his second mom at times, but I love him to pieces and that is what counts! My master plan involves him marrying his current girlfriend (who is just like me, therefore is PERFECT) and having them both move to Houston. Hey, it could happen.

Ryan is "technically" Jordan's godfather, and Cali's godfather is "technically" Gregg's very close cousin David, but with the girls being so close in age, we have decided to call all the godparents "Paran" and "Nanny." (I realize I am probably showing my Cajun heritage here with those names. . . and maybe even with having godparents at all?) Anyway, both of my girls love my brother -- probably because he is just as silly as me!

As you can tell from these pictures, my entire family loves to laugh. . . and we all love to tickle each other. Apparently not all families do that, based on the interesting looks we get from other people, but maybe we just all rate "Physical Touch" high as a Primary Love Language. Regardless, tickling leads to laughing which is the main goal. Life is just so much more fun when done with a smile and a laugh, don't you think??

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My Budding Musicians. . .

My girls LOVE Music! They love listening to it, they definitely love dancing to it, and love to play it! While they have always enjoyed music, it was during our unit on Berlioz the Bear, when we really learned about the orchestra and the various instruments, that I really noticed how much they enjoyed it.



My parents live next door and this weekend, when my brother was in town, we spent a lot of time there. My brother is the musician in the family -- he can play just about any instrument you can imagine, he writes his own music, has been in numerous bands, and has even produced a CD where he not only sang all the lyrics but played every single instrument in the background! I will be relying on him for the music portion of our curriculum in future years! They enjoyed showing off their "skills" for their "Paran Ryan" this weekend. :-)


If you asked my girls they would probably list the flute, violin or trumpet as their favorite instruments, but whenever there is a piano or keyboard, they run for it. They get the biggest kick out of banging on the keys and singing at the top of their lungs -- and I get the biggest kick out of calling it music class for the day!

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A Camping we will go. . .

Yes, we are going camping, and the girls are SUPER Excited! While I was a Girl Scout, and did do a few camping trips that involved platform tents, my favorite "camping trips" with the troop were in hotels, so I am pretty excited, too! :-)

Being sick last week apparently caused me to lose my mind because I forgot to order any books until Thursday evening. . . so we will be adding to our unit table throughout the week as the books come in, but maybe this will be fun -- "What will there be on the table this morning?"

This morning, they had several books, and we have read almost all of them (my voice can't handle Amelia Bedelia quite yet, I am hoping my cough will be gone to read such a long book later in the week). As soon as they saw the books, they grabbed all of them (and the sleeping bags), and brought them to the sofa for us to read! After we read the stories, we laid the sleeping bags on the floor, climbed in and watched The Sneetches for their roasting marshmallows by the campfire and then Bambi. Since we will be in the park camping, I decided to also tie the woods, nature and woodland creatures into the unit. My favorite book for this is Play With Me by Marie Hall Ets. In it, the little girl is upset when all the animals run from her, but then realizes if she is still and quiet, that they will come back and "play with her." I thought it would be good to remind them of this before our trip this weekend!

While watching Bambi, the girls wanted to make a tent. We do have an outdoors tent, and we have a large castle tent upstairs, but what is the fun in that? So I took out a large blanket and grabbed two chairs. I draped the blanket over the sofa and two chairs, secured the blanket in place by large pillows, laid down a floor of sleeping bags and more pillows and voila! An indoor tent! The girls are LOVING this right now!

There are several camping episodes of their favorite shows saved on TIVO that we will watch throughout the week, as well. That is definitely a plus of planning so far in advance and knowing what units are ahead -- it makes searching TIVO that much easier.

We will continue to read the stories throughout the week before leaving for our camping trip on Friday. We have a YUMMY menu planned and we are really looking forward to it!

So that is our week ahead. . . any ideas or suggestions for this unit, or for good "scary stories" that aren't really scary (all the characters in the stories talk about telling scary stories and I am at a loss in this department!) I'd love to hear them! I'd also love to hear what you are learning this week!

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God Directed Lessons

This summer, I began a much lighter and enjoyable approach to our homeschool preschool. I am taking wonderful unit studies, along with my children's delight directed topics, and using them as jumping off points to create a fun learning environment.

What this has meant for us is not following the traditional FIAR approach of Monday - Social Studies, Tuesday - Language Arts, Wednesday - Art/Music, Thursday - Math, and Friday - Science. Instead, I am pulling together TONS of books and fun videos, reading whatever books they ask for (attempting to read each book at least once), and going over lessons as they come. There are several topics I go into the unit wanting to cover, and there are several topics that come as a complete surprise -- either resulting from something the girls ask me, or coming from a God-inspired moment. Often, this has also led to multiple units happening simultaneously!!

An example would be a few weeks ago. I believe at the time we were learning about Kangaroos. One day, after reading our books, we decided that for our movie time (this summer, we started a tradition of cuddling on the sofa together after lunch for movie time several days a week) we would watch The Land Before Time: The Time of the Great Giving. We had never seen this movie before, but really enjoyed it. The story is about a bunch of dinosaurs who are struggling because their water supply had been cut off. As a result, there is a water shortage and the trees in the valley were dying. Toward the end of the movie, lightening struck one of the dry trees and started a fire.

As the movie was ending, it started to rain at our house. We turned off the television, pulled up all of the blinds, and sat next to the windows, watching the rain. We talked about how that fire was started and talked about our trees and plants that had plenty of water and weren't dry at all. That led to conversations about what plants need to survive and various weather topics.

The next morning, we looked out our back window and saw a man climbing my parents' tree. . . I had totally forgotten that they were having it cut down! The week before that, we noticed that the needles were all very orange and brown, in comparison to the neighbors' trees that were lush and green. It continued to get worse throughout the week and it was obvious that the tree was dead. So that it wouldn't become a hazard (like the dead trees in the movie!), they had arranged to have it cut down. . . it was just a total coincidence that this happened the day after our big discussions about this type of thing! So lessons were scrapped for the morning as we sat next to the window and watched the tree being cut down.

Watching the process led to more conversations on what plants and trees need to survive, why that tree was dangerous and needed to be cut down, the observational differences between that tree and surrounding ones, how the man was being safe while climbing the tree (an intricate system of straps and rope), the tools he was using, and the process of cutting down the tree itself! We were just amazed by the entire thing, capturing it all in pictures -- much to the amusement of the workers!

That was just a two day mini-unit, but I just love how these things come together. . . and this is just one of several mini-units that have resulted the past few months. Being open to the world around me, my environment, the girls interests and questions, events that are happening and divine inspiration has led to exciting moments in our homeschool, and I pray that I can continue to be as open to His gentle leading throughout this journey!

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Dogs and Cats and Birds, oh my!

My apologies for not updating last week! I have Bronchitis and just about all of my energy went to spending time with the girls :-) I will be posting a final recap of our China/Olympics unit soon with pictures of our lapbooks and a slideshow from our Harris Family Olympics (we had a blast!)

Last week we learned all about PETS! There are tons of animals that fit into this category and it was my intention to become familiar with all of the different types of animals that people keep as pets. Last Monday morning was spent finishing up our Olympic lapbook and driving to the library to pick up the remaining books for our unit, so this week was a bit different -- Jordan helped me set up the Unit Study Table and had so much fun! Cali had fallen asleep during the drive and continued her nap on the sofa. I asked Jordan if she wanted to watch a video while I set the table up (and be surprised by the finished result) or if she wanted to help. . . She got so excited that she could help set it up and was very proud of herself!

We pulled together all of the books and videos, as well as a few toys. Jordan had fun looking at all of the items, grouping them together and trying to make them look pretty. After the table was set up, we had enough time to take a few pictures before we dove into all of the books! We read and learned about dogs, cats, birds, frogs, lizards, iguanas, turtles, horses, fish, chickens, salamanders, bugs and ants! We read so many wonderful books, many were re-reads, that I will just highlight here our FAVORITES!

Cali -- loves anything Clifford, and she likes the Biscuit books a lot. She also really enjoyed re-reading Harry the Dirty Dog and Angus Lost, and especially loved the videos that went with the books

Jordan -- Loved re-reading Harry and Angus, and was excited to see the other two books in the series as well (Angus and the Ducks and Angus and the Cat). She also LOVED The Perfect Pet, although I admit my humorous antics during the read alouds probably helped. . . I couldn't help it, this story was so funny! It is about a girl who resorts to having a pet BUG because he wasn't too big or loud and didn't jump, scratch or shed! Finally, she really enjoyed The Berenstain Bears' Trouble With Pets and Sesame Street Puppy Love, a Little Golden Book. I loved these books, too, because they really showed the work that is involved in having a pet.

Our favorite snuggle time movies this week were 101 Dalmations and Lady and the Tramp. We also watched a lot of My Little Pony throughout the week, while playing A LOT with all of my old ponies. . . and talking about how many people have horses for pets as well. Jordan is in a very big pony/horse kick right now!

I had planned on taking a trip to Petsmart again, one of our favorite FREE Field Trips, but we didn't make it. . . however, I totally recommend this trip to anyone else planning their own Pets Week!

Next up is our Camping Unit, ending in a fun family camping trip this weekend! What are you learning about this week??

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Update on Mission: Potty Training

I have been asked by MANY people for updates on how the potty training is going! I have been sick for the past several days, or I would have updated sooner, but let me brag on my girls a little now :-)

Things are going WONDERFULLY!! I am so happy and surprised and sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop! Jordan, who had been trained last year and just totally regressed, picked it up right from the beginning and except for a handful of accidents that occurred while running to the bathroom, she has been accident free since beginning over a week and a half ago! Including bedtime!! Cali was totally new to this but is doing amazingly, too. She hasn't had an accident, including at bedtime, in a week!!

There are several things we did differently this time that helped a lot, and I really think training them together worked nicely for us -- they motivated each other and cheered each other on, which was just so cute! Here is a quick break down of what we did:

We started, Saturday morning with two potty chairs sitting in our living room. With the entire family home together and with the Olympics on, it was just easier to move the chairs into the room we would all be in anyway. Having the chairs in close proximity was key. I had checked out 6 "potty" books and 5 "potty" videos. We watched each of the videos on Saturday and read the various books. While most of the videos were decent, there were two that were HUGE hits! Potty Power and Go Potty Go! are AWESOME!! They have catchy songs (that my husband and I still find ourselves singing unfortunately) and really play up the whole "Big Kid" thing. Often they would ask to watch these videos over and over again and they loved sitting on the potty while watching them. Jordan immediately picked up on the "feeling in my tummy" that they talk about that is a clue to let you know you need to potty, and it was over at that point -- she has got it down!

For naps and bedtime, we put one pad under their fitted sheet "just in case." Cali is sleeping in her training pants with a vinyl cover placed over it. For Jordan, as I had mentioned before, the vinyl pants were a bit tight, so we did try a recommendation from one of the comments on that post which was to put a pull up OVER her regular underwear. We only had to do that for a couple nights, however, and have since been putting her down with just her regular underwear and it has been great!

Daddy got Jordan a new package of pretty big girl underwear which she loves and that has helped a lot, too. We haven't done stickers or anything like I did with Jordan last year, but we have been doing treats when they go potty -- I had a stash of left over Halloween and birthday party candy and they are able to pick a treat (usually a tootsie roll or peppermint, with the occasional tootsie pop thrown in) whenever they make it to the potty. Calling grandparents when they went for the first few days was also a fun incentive, as well as whenever MamaRosie or Crawdaddy (my parents) would come over and bring them treats for being such big kids!

Supplying them with a lot of liquids, frequent potty trips, asking if they had "dry pants or wet pants," and making it light and fun all worked wonderfully! Last year when I worked with Jordan, I used a system that claimed you could be trained in a day and encouraged you to have them do practice runs to the potty ten times in a row every time there was an accident. This resulted in tears of frustration from both of us and looking back, I can see made the process miserable. We didn't do anything like that this time. When an accident happened, we brought them to the tub and cleaned them off, put them in clean underwear, told them how nice it felt to be in clean and dry pants and had them help clean it up occasionally. Much easier for me and much better results!

We did have a fun hiccup in our plan, however, when my wonderful Heavenly Father thought He would show off His sense of humor by giving Cali a touch of a stomach bug during this process, but she handled it so well (and for the most part, so did I), and in hindsight I think the frequent potty runs and slight accidents that resulted from the 48 hour bug helped her to learn the process even more!

Yesterday was a great test. We decided to temporarily go down to one vehicle in our efforts to work the debt snowball and get out of debt. We sold Gregg's truck and yesterday was when we actually finalized the transaction. I needed to drive across Houston, over an hour drive with traffic, to pick him up. When we were almost there, Cali started telling me that she had to go potty! I knew Gregg was waiting for me, but I didn't want to test Cali's bladder, so I pulled off as soon as we could and the three of us went into the gas station bathroom. She was very proud of herself :-) She told me she had to go again when we got to the couples house who was buying the truck and again, success! Jordan decided to wait until we had been back in the car driving home for five minutes before telling us that she had to go, but that was one extra stop I was happy to make. Even after eating dinner in the car, including drinks, they arrived home over an hour later completely dry. . . WOO HOO!

They are now both in regular "big kid" underwear (no training pants and certainly NO Pull-ups!) and are going to the potty all by themselves. I am sure that accidents will happen but I am very very very pleased with the results already!

Thank you all so much for your prayers, advice and shared stories. It inspired, encouraged and motivated me, and also gave me quite a few laughs :-)

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Favorite Books and Curriculum - HOTM Meme!

Welcome to the Heart of the Matter Online meme. Every Friday we will feature a different topic for our meme. Mr. Linky is set up below so please share with us your Favorite Curriculum or Books! With the new school year beginning it would be wonderful to hear why your curriculum works for you, new ideas you're looking forward to trying, or really great book ideas you would love to share.

I have had a lot of fun reading everyone's posts for this Meme. We are in our second year of homeschooling preschool so while we haven't tried a ton of products, I have looked into several and we know what we like/works for us :-)

My favorite would have to be Five in a Row! What a wonderful curriculum! We don't follow it exactly as planned but use their reading lists and pick and choose from their MANY lesson options. We supplement with items and units found at Homeschool Share, and I also write a lot of our lessons myself. We love themed Unit Studies (which is totally stating the obvious for any of you who have visited more than once, ha!)

I also LOVE The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach by Robin Sampson. I love this approach and will be implementing SO much of it in our schooling. I love her 4 steps and all of her ideas for doing this delight directed approach. This totally fits in line with our family's vision for homeschooling.

While I can go on and on about my favorite books that I have read regarding homeschooling, the other book that is a "can't miss" would be Real Learning by Elizabeth Foss. A very practical, modern approach to Charlotte Mason. While it is written for Catholic homeschoolers, I have found that all of the ideas in her book are applicable to any denomination and is just a breath of fresh air for creating a beautiful and unified family.

For more great reviews and favorites, you have to check out HOTM's Meme!

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Our Olympic Week

This week has been so much fun! When we decided that Gregg would be taking a week off of work to help with "Mission: Potty Training," we thought it would be perfect timing to do it during the Olympics, and we were right. Having him here has not only lessened the burden in the potty training, but we have had a lot of fun teaching the girls together this past week!


Friday evening, we watched the Opening Ceremonies and had a carpet pizza picnic :-) The girls watched parts of it, and then we paused it (I love Tivo) to put the girls down and finish watching it without continually rewinding it to hear what the reporters just said! Saturday and Sunday was a light introduction to the Olympics and China by simply watching some of the coverage and pointing things out -- the majority of the time we were focused on potty training, which I will talk about in another post :-)


Monday is when we began our unit on China and the Olympics. We had covered China for two weeks earlier this year (posted here, here and here), so we chose to focus on panda bears for this unit and just recap all of the earlier information while reading stories like Ping and The Story of Chopsticks, and looking at pictures of China. I was BLESSED to win the Geography section of the Homeschool Share Blast and one of the prizes was an awesome prize pack from Jimmie that included Chinese money, post cards, Olympic stickers, Chinese character stickers, artwork, Chinese snacks and bracelets, decorations, map, and several other items. . . it was awesome! Those items filled in the majority of the fun decorations on the Unit Study Table (along with our fun dragon and tiger puppets Gregg had brought back from China that are shown hanging from either end of the bookshelf).


On Monday and Tuesday, our focus was China. We read the stories and did a lapbook on pandas. We made a fan craft from Ni-Hao Kai-lan and learned more Chinese words. We looked at pictures from Daddy's trip to China and looked at the Flat Stanley pictures he had taken of the girls that made it look like THEY were in China! We also began our Read Aloud, The Hour of the Olympics. We have had a lot of fun learning more about Panda Bears and I have been impressed with how much they remember. It has been fun showing them some of the snippets of video from the late (late, late, late) night coverage of the Olympics that included, a few days ago, an adorable segment on panda bears :-)


Wednesday we began discussing the United States of America. We got out a few flags, talked more about it in detail and looked at it up close, and we went over the Pledge of Allegiance and The National Anthem. We talked about what "indivisible" means, discussing how our family is also "indivisible", and we divided our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I also showed them the Pledge in Sign Language (one of the very few things I remember learning in Girl Scouts in the fourth grade!). They quickly picked up on how to say "America" in ASL and are having fun with that! Then we sang the National Anthem, talked a bit about it, and then hopped on Youtube. We listened to our country's best singers perform the anthem at various football events, listened to an adorable 6 year old sing it, and found an awesome video of a 3 year old girl say the pledge in English AND Spanish! We are definitely saving that one! The girls loved it :-)

Wednesday night was our Chinese party. We made Chinese lanterns from Nick Jr.'s Kai-lan site, put chopsticks on the table that Daddy had gotten for us in China, and dressed up. Cali wore a silky kimono that my mom had made for me when I was a toddler and Jordan wore a Chinese shirts with tons of Chinese characters on it. Daddy wore a Karate Gi and I wore a Chinese robe :-) We ate yummy homemade Chinese stir fry and dumplings. Our dessert was red, white and blue Popsicles! After dessert, we watched the Olympics while making some more Chinese crafts including a "fortune teller" from Kai-lan (I remember making these all the time when I was younger!) and origami art including a grasshopper, flower and Chinese tiger (ok, Daddy made these mostly but we all "ooh'ed" and "ahh'ed").

Thursday we reviewed what we had discussed the day before. Gregg and I had fun with the fun $1 bin Target finds that quiz you on all of the states (dry erase placemat that we used to test ourselves on states and capitals. . . let's just say that DADDY will be teaching all three of his girls this stuff) and looking at an old Fisher Price map that I had when I was little that shows every state's capital, landmarks, scenery, famous people, and fun facts! Unfortunately I woke up with a horrible headache and Gregg sent me to bed around noon, which I happily listened to, assuming I would take a quick cat-nap. Around 5:45 pm, the girls hopped on the bed to tell me it was time to wake up LOL! I guess staying up till 3 am the past few nights watching the Olympics coverage and then waking up at 7 am to bring the girls to the potty had finally caught up with me!! The girls had a blast with Daddy though, who was MUCH braver than I was and brought them to Wal-mart (remember we started potty training on Saturday)! Since it was a lazy day, we decided to celebrate America by eating some of America's finest -- pizza rolls and macaroni and cheese. Let it not be said that we don't provide wonderfully nutritious homemade meals here, HA!


Today we will be doing a few flag crafts and finishing our lapbook on the olympics (I glued two file folders back to back, so on one side you have a traditional red lapbook on China and panda bears, and on the other side you have a traditional yellow lapbook on the olympics). We will be going over the Olympic Oath, medals, looking at our various books and fun links and talking more about the different sports. Tomorrow we will have the Harris Family Olympics and an olympic celebration, complete with Olympic cake and then Sunday will just be a fun review!


I will post pictures of the Family Olympics and the completed lapbooks soon. How is your week going???

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Striking a Balance

Balancing my many roles of Wife, Mom, Teacher, Maid, Cook, Friend, Daughter, Sister and Writer is something that I struggle with daily. From the emails I receive, I know that I am not the only one with this dilemma. It seems to be one of the things all women have in common – the quest to find balance in life and hush the never ending to-do list in our minds. As homeschooling moms, on top of all the other balancing acts we are performing, we also have to find a way to balance the busyness of the day and all the items on that to-do list with the fun moments that truly make the entire journey worthwhile.

As we bring this series on experiencing joy to a close, I only thought it appropriate to address ways that we can practically participate in those family traditions and rituals while still fulfilling the other roles our families need us to perform. The first step I took to strike this balance was something I learned on a retreat I attended late last year. My sweet friend Chelsea told me that she was completely exhausted just thinking about my day and all the things that I tried to accomplish . . . and the guilt that I carried around from not crossing all those items off of my list. She helped me to see that to have peace and joy in my life, what I needed to do was become intentional and plan. I needed to figure out what REALLY needed to be done around the house, the activities I needed to be a part of (if any), and how many from-scratch gourmet meals I needed to fix each week to feel good about myself. Most importantly, I needed to get my husband’s input. Then I just do what is on his list! It is wonderful if you can be Mommy Mrs. Perfect, but for the rest of us, the important thing is that your family knows how much they are loved. Wendy told me something that has stayed with me, “One thing’s for sure, my dear children do not worry about cleaning, mopping, laundry, dishes, etc; But they will say, ‘Mom, you didn’t sit with me and talk’ or ‘Mom, you don’t play with me.’"

Secondly, I put all but one of my yahoo groups on “no mail.” Those groups can be invaluable in the wisdom you can receive, but that wisdom is also provided by searching the archives. Chances are that they have discussed every topic you can think of at least twice anyway! Stopping all those emails from coming into my inbox every morning immediately lightened my load and helped calm me down.

Now, I’ve only been a Mommy for 3 ½ years so I thought it best to get insight on this balance thing from some much more seasoned veterans. An overriding tip was . . .

To read the rest of this article, please visit me at Heart of the Matter Online.

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A Rosary Bead, Cali, and our $75 Emergency Room Field Trip. . .

Oh, my beautiful, curious, daring and keep-me-on-my-toes daughter, Cali. Mommy loves you. Your giggle and smile can light up a room. But you also have the ability to stop my heart in an instant with your adventurous nature!

Let me share with all of you the fun day we had yesterday! We were gearing up for our week ahead learning even more about China (we had a two week unit earlier in the year that the girls loved) and about the Olympics. We were getting ready for the Saints opening game last night against the Cardinals. It was a good day :-) Then, for whatever reason, I felt led to look up my youngest daughter's nose. I don't know why I felt this desire, but for whatever reason I proceeded to put said child on my lap, tilt her head back and look up. And to my utter surprise, I saw. . . something.

"Cali, what is that in your nose? Did you put something up your nose, baby?"

"Uh huh."

"You DID?!? What is it?"

"(gibberish)" Now I can normally decipher my beautiful two year old's speech with no problem, but as luck would have it, that was not the case this time.

PANIC!

I pick up said daughter and lay her down onto the kitchen counter and get a closer look. It looked like a holly from a Christmas ornament but that couldn't be because we don't have any decorations up (while I was really late in picking them up, luckily they have long been put away by this point). I tried grabbing it with my fingers but that appeared to push it further in, so I immediately stopped. I called my mom and she recommended those bulb syringes. Tried it -- Nothing! My father was outside in his yard so he came over to try to help and we tried tweezers -- with her little bitty nose we saw that whatever we did, it would end up pushing it further back, so I called Daddy and loaded the girls in the car and started the drive to the Emergency Room.

Oh the joys of parenting, huh? Cali fell asleep on the drive to the hospital and stayed that way for the majority of the visit, luckily :-) I should say that she was not in pain or uncomfortable at all during this process - the only way I knew there was something up there was because I happened to look! They got us back pretty quickly and the doctor used his nifty tool and had it out in a matter of SECONDS. What was the object she shoved up her nose?? We were all sure it was a crayon, possibly a broken Mardi Gras bead. . . but no. My daughter had found a rosary my grandfather had brought me back from the Vatican during a recent trip to Italy and was playing with it a few days ago. Upon getting it back from her, I noticed that she had broken it but it looked like two beads had simply gotten unattached and I just put it up to fix later. If I would have looked closer at it, I would have figured this out much sooner, I am sure. Although we go to a Methodist congregation now, YEARS of saying the rosary would have led me to realize that a bead was missing from one of the decades, but I did not, so here we are two days and a $75 copay later with a bead stuck in my daughter's nose. FUN!

We did give one of the doctors a laugh, though. When we were waiting in one room getting our information put into the computer, Jordan looked around and asked, "Is this a baby hospital?" I told her it was where babies are born, in fact it was the same hospital that Cali was born in. She then asked if we could see the babies, and I told her that if they were good, that we would take them to the nursery after they got the THING out of Cali's nose. That made Jordan smile, and then she asked:

"Will we see the alligator?"

"Um, WHAT?"

"The baby alligator and baby Cinnamon."

Luckily I enjoy Noggin as well, so I knew she was referring to an episode of Blues Clues where Mr. Salt and Ms. Pepper had baby Cinnamon at the Baby Hospital. All the characters visited the baby and saw the other babies that included a variety of animals and condiments lol. So, I then had to explain to Jordan, much to the amusement of the doctor in the room, that we would NOT be seeing any condiments, spices or animals in the nursery upstairs!

She was still excited, though and it was great motivation to listen and not touch anything in the room they brought us to that was FILLED with fun looking gadgets. So after everything was done, we drove around to the front of the hospital, rode the elevator up to the nursery and excitedly looked through the windows and saw. . . a TON of empty beds! Yep! Were no women having babies yesterday????

I was so proud of the girls, though. They were disappointed but handled it beautifully. They walked out and we had fun on the elevator ride and told them that we would come back soon, and that satisfied them, thank goodness!

So that was our fun field trip to the Emergency Room and Hospital, and our story about Cali and her Rosary Bead.

Have a wonderful weekend!!!

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