We’ve grown! and grown again!

Matthew was finally prescribed growth hormone replacement therapy at the last endocrinologist appointment.  That was the beginning of July.  Since he was prescribed the same brand as Meagan, and I had a bunch of extra vials in the fridge, I went ahead and got him started then even though we didn’t (and still don’t!) have a shipment of meds in his name.

He’s been to the pediatrician 3 times in the last 3wks, but I never caught the height until today. He was 51″ at the endo visit.  He was 51.5″ today. =)  He had measured himself on a doorframe the day he started and again about a week ago.  He was so excited when he saw a visible difference! He measured the gap and discovered he’d grown half an inch.  Today that was confirmed.

Also… our family has grown yet again.  The pets are now 5.  Samson, Delilah, Rachel (da bunny), Gracie (the starved, but looking much plumper and very healthy now,  stray found on our porch), and Freckles… a kitten found by a neighbor girl when she was visiting her mother in a neighboring town and brought back here… and then immediately to our door.

Freckles -so named because of the splotches of color on her back-  is mostly white with a little ginger… her ‘freckles’ and then ginger tabby stripes on her head and tail. Very playful, very affectionate, very sweet.  NOT starved, no poopy problems to deal with like with Gracie.  Just an abandoned (or stray) kitten about 12wks old.

So there’s our growth report. lol

Mike says we are to grow (in #) no more!  Thing is he said “no more kitties”. He didn’t say anything about fish… Shhh! hehe  ;-)

Actually, I thought we had stopped adding kitties when we got the twins back in December. Then Gracie showed up desperately needing help. And now there’s Freckles needing a momma. I love kitties, but I do have to agree with Mike and say I hope no more needy ones present themselves to us. I’d have to turn it down, but it’d break my heart having to do it.

Updates, a surprise, and some great shopping deals!

Thought I’d give an update of both how Rachel (the new bunny) and our cats Samson and Delilah were getting along, as well as an update on Mom and Dad’s new house. Oh and some other stuff, too. lol

Yes, it’s another one of those mixed posts with a little bit about a lot. Some sort of planned randomness, I suppose. hehe

The three animals are all doing just fine. Well better than fine, actually. We put the rabbit cage on the floor in the living room temporarily. We can leave the cage door open all night while we sleep or all day while we’re gone. The cats watch the bunny and LOVE to lay right up as close as they can get to her in the cage, but they don’t ever actually go up TO her. Rachel, on the other hand, will go up and sniff the kitties if she wants (and if they don’t jump backwards which is the norm), but mostly she just completely ignores the kitties. She (Rachel) is loving being able to explore instead of being in that little cage 24/7 and she’s also quite pleased with the first change we’ve made to her diet/litter/habitat/etc. In this case it was making timothy grass available to her at all times. Oh boy does she love that stuff. And of course she gets a chunk of carrot or apple once a day, too.

Mom and Dad were finally able to close on their house last week. They got the keys either Wed or Thurs, I can’t remember. On Friday she got hold of the city to turn the power and water on and was told they couldn’t because their meter base was not in the proper position. It was ‘red-tagged’ and they were going to have to get and electrician (licensed and registered to work in the city) to put in a new meter base and weatherhead and whatever else that stuff requires.

Since then we’ve been working, working, working on all the different little projects (and 1 big) that Mom and her crew wanted to get done before they move in, as well as trying to get hold of an electrian. We’ve just about finished painting both boys rooms. J’s is in gray with black trim and 2 big horizontal black stripes all the way round, and R’s in a butternut squash soup/puree color with gold glaze on top and American barn red trim. Both are looking really, really good!

We’ve also been painting the pantry. It somehow got missed when they whitewashed EVERYTHING when they put the house on the market. It was pretty icky! =( So, we’re painting. Right now it is a very light shade of tan, actually closer to coffee with a LOT of cream in it, and the shelves are the palest of pale blues. It is so pale it is almost white. Her pantry is a big pantry, but it’s not walk-in and there’s not a light, so she wanted light colors. Tomorrow we’ll be texturing the walls with the blue, a hot pink, and a hot orange; and the shelves with the ecru(?), the hot pink, and the hot orange.

Also we’ve done things like install a carbon monoxide detector (haven’t gotten the smoke alarms up yet), replaced all the locks, put up the American flag, installed a new shower head and toilet seat, and tried to get all the windows open after having been painted shut with the white paint, and who knows what else. My brother M (28) got one to open but his elbows popped the glass and shattered it. Praise the Lord he had only 3 teensy, teensy little nicks! Last time one of my brothers broke a window (J) he fell through and got cut up bad. I think he had 22 staples altogether.

So the window was replaced. The big project is getting Mom’s new kitchen flooring in. It’s a roll-out vinyl. Well, she went to putty up the slight cracks and holes and what-not in the existing flooring so they wouldn’t transfer through to the vinyl and she discovered the old self-adhesive tiles were actually peeling up. So we had to take that layer off. A friend came over to help and she started scraping stuff up and didn’t stop with the first layer. She pulled up ALL the layers down to the plywood subfloor (now covered in icky, tarry glue). Now it’s all gotta come up to make stuff even… which means there’s been a LOT of floor scraping/tearing out. =)

Today an electrician came out (in answer to Mom’s and my own prayers) that was able to get the job done today in like 1hr. He had originally thought it would take 4-6hr! All that’s left before we can have light to work with in there is for the inspector to come out in the morning and then the electrician to connect something or another; it’s supposed to take like 5min.

Now, another topic. J is turning 17 tomorrow (Wed), and I decided since his room is kinda car garage themed to get him a garage nuts/bolts/etc holder. One of those with like 5 million little drawers. All they had was metallic blue so I just got through painting it gloss black. Then I went to Tractor Supply and bought a bunch of weird little hardware things. Then I went to WalMart grocery shopping (more on that in a min) and got him some Snickers bars and a Bag of chicken nuggets jerky (though that won’t fit…). Everything will be stuck in one of the drawers. I’ll probably throw some things in from around here, too. Mom’s getting him a peg board. How cool is that?!

Matt was going to go shopping with me tonight. On the way out, he spotted a kitty on our porch. I stepped out and it started coming towards us. It came right up to me and rubbed and asked to be petted. She was soooo skinny. =(   No collar of course. She had to be starved, but we’d been out of cat food for 3 days! =( Go figure! The twins ate up a big ol’ can of pink salmon until I could get to the store (tonight) but now there was nothing. She was sooo pretty and sooo loving and sooo hungry, I begged Mike to let me keep her.

He said yes!! =) She’s  gray and white. She has a white face, chest, belly, and both her front legs and the most of her back legs are white. She has the the gray back end and a little on the top of the back legs, back, tail, and the top of her head and ears. She has a very light pink nose and the prettiest pale green eyes ever. Also, she has like a thin line of black outlining her eyes so she looks like she’s wearing make-up! LOL We brought her in and the kids fed her some lunch meat until I could get back from the store with kitty num-nums.

She’s in my room for now. I got her a small litter box and a pink collar when we went shopping. We put food and water in there and the poor thing keeps eating. She’s still a kitten, old enough to be weaned, but not grown yet. I’d guess probably about 3-4mo old. She’s in my room for now because Lilah was hissing at her. Not Samson so much. I figure we’ll introduce them all slowly and so she is locked IN my room and the twins are locked OUT. I’m not overly worried about Lilah. She hissed at Samson for a couple of days after he got back from the vets. Of course this is a new kitty altogether, but I think they’ll all get along great.

At Wal-Mart I shopped and shopped. I’d worked hard at planning this trip (about 3hr worth)  because I was going to get some GREAT deals. Here’s my break down…

*Savings due to price matching with other stores – approx. $28.60 (I don’t remember the original price on a couple of things, so I estimated them)
*Savings due to coupons – $36.55

Total savings – $65.15 !!

Here are a few of my favorites…

• Ziploc container packs – on sale at IGA for $1. I had 5 cpns for $1.50/2 and 2 cpns for 55c/1.  So I paid 25 cents ea. for 10 packs, and 45 cents ea. for 2 of them.
• 1 subject spiral notebooks – on sale for 1 cent (limit 3) at either Office Max or Depot. So I got 3 for a total of 3 cents.
• Candy bars (Snickers, Twix, Dove, 3 Musketeers) – on sale for 2/$1 at CVS. I had 4 cpns for $1/2 and 1 cpn for BIGI. That gave me 8 free, and I paid 25 cents ea. for 2 of them.
• Luzianne Tea – on sale for $1 at Diamonds and I had 2 cpns for 60c/1. I paid 40 cents ea. for 2.

Talk about GREAT deals! Woohoo! I was so excited. I did got over the groc budget for this week by $19, but I’m going to take it out of next weeks. I could NOT pass up deals like this! lol

Anti-Procrastination Day

I was right. I slept until 1pm today. Didn’t even get up in the am to get my pills!

When I did finally get up, I decided to accomplish SOMETHING today, so I snuggled under the covers with some mending I had been putting off for MONTHS.

Why do I do that? I mean seriously. It might have taken me 45min to get all that mending done. Three pairs of culottes (one with a nasty L shaped tear), a pair of pj pants, and replacing a button on an uniform shirt. Maybe 45min, and that’s including hunting up the thread, needle, and scissors. All that stuff sat on top of my dryer or buried in a ‘mending drawer’ for about 3mo. *sigh*

Well, it’s done now. I also filed our taxes tonight after church. Hopefully we’ll be getting a nice-sized deposit soon. Most of which will go to pay for the house taxes for the year, but still. =)

Mike also took the kitties in for their 2nd round of shots (due about 2wk ago!) and took the kids to the library (books due yesterday!). So both of those were “anti-procrastination tasks”, too.

Another one was the kitties’ flea medicine. It was only 2 days late, but it counts too. They were both such good little kitties! Samson did try to get the mean vet-lady back for poking him, but on the whole they did really well. They purred the whole time Mike and I were giving them the Frontline!

Just think what we could have accomplished if I had been awake for more than a few hours. LOL

It’s midnight so I’m off to bed for some bible-reading and SLEEP. I did get my B12 shot tonight, so hopefully tomorrow I’ll be a little more alert. haha

Christmas Kittens

Oh my, my, my! Have we ever been busy! So much to catch up on and so much left to do before Christmas! Yikes!

Ok I guess the bad news first. Our precious little Chloe is gone. She got out the day after Thanksgiving and we haven’t seen her since. I seriously think somebody saw our sweet kitty with her brand new Christmas collar and picked her up as a gift for the holidays. I just hope they take good care of her and love her as much as we did. We still miss her. A lot. That sweet little thing was such a good little kitty. Wanted to be held all the time and was never mean.

We have lots of good news, though! We got the front hall painted to match the living room (pics soon, I promise!), and I’m now working on finding pieces to add to it for decoration as well as utility. I found a little mirror at a resale shop about a week ago that I’m going to repaint and hang in there for a start.

The kids have competed in tennis, cross country, quotation of bible verses, bowling, and several other things I’m forgetting and have done well in them all. Matthew placed first in memory verses and Meagan took 5th. Matthew also placed first in boys tennis doubles, and 2nd in singles. There were some 4th and 5th place ribbons and a 3rd mixed in there somewhere too. I just can’t remember who did what.

I have most of my Christmas shopping done now, so once I get the house put back together I can get started on making fudge and cookies and pies! It’s more than a little messy right now. =(

Matthew meds have been switched all around over and over again. Right now he’s taking one of the same antibiotics I am, and I think it’s starting to kick his booty. I had to pick him up from school today because he was hurting and felt like throwing up.

We go back to the doctor Thursday, so we’ll see what she says then. I see my doc Thursday, too. AND… Meagan sees the orthodontist Thursday morning to pick up her retainers. She got her braces off last week and was sooo excited! She got a baggy of previously forbidden candy and a gift card to Blockbuster.

I took Meagan and had her pictures made just before getting the braces off. I’ll have to post that pic, too. It turned out really nice. She looks so much like her grandma (my mom)!!

Then this afternoon Mike and I brought home twins! Yes twins! One boy kitty and one girl kitty. Eight weeks old. They are so adorable, and the kids were SO surprised there were TWO of them! AHAHA

They explored a bit, drank a little milk, and now they’re snuggled together inside a straw wreath under the Christmas tree. So sweet!

I hope to get pics of the kitties and the new hall up tomorrow. I know, I know… I always say that and never do, but I AM going to try. I still need to get a pic of Matt in his western shirt I made him, too.

Better go get the big two kids to bed. I’ll try to do better at posting. It’s just been SOOO hectic around here the last 3-4wks what with the painting, the holidays, and then Dad being in and out of the hospital again. He’s back out now and doing good so maybe we have all that behind us now. =)