Discovery Fair

Well, Tuesday was the Discovery Fair at Solace's school. It is like a science fair, but no winners and losers, and nobody is required to do it. Nonetheless, lots of kids do. Solace's project was project #88. I think there were over 100. She wanted to know if you could x-ray things other than bodies. She and Wes picked out some things around the house to try and x-ray. When they were done, they looked at them and Solace asked Wes why some parts were so white. She learned that the more dense and object is, the brighter it looks on an x-ray. Here is her project and some of the x-rays. See if you can guess what she x-rayed. Leave your guesses as a comment!

X-ray 1

X-ray 2

X-ray 3

X-ray 4

X-ray 5

X-ray 6 (there are actually 7 things X-rayed on this one, but you cannot see all 4 things on the bottom left part. Just guess as many as you can)

X-ray 7

X-ray 8

X-ray 9

How many can you guess?

Happy Birthday Theodor Seuss Geisel!

If you have young children in school, you are likely already aware that last week, on March 2 was Dr Seuss's birthday. As with many other schools, Solace's school celebrated that all last week. Each day had a theme. Monday they all brought in their favorite Dr Seuss book, Wednesday Was Cat in the Hat day, Friday was Fox is Socks crazy socks day. This is what Solace looked like last Wednesday when she came home from Cat in the Hat day:

Armour ran out in the slush to see this Solace-cat...he crashed.

Ender ran out too...

Here is the damage...just a wet bum. So, this week, yesterday in fact, the library had the Cat in the Hat come to story time. Unfortunately, they have 2 story times, and he only came to the first (which they neglected to mention would happen). So we went to the second one and there was no cat. Ender had made a card for the Cat and he went and asked the librarian where the Cat was to give it to. She said he left to take a nap, but that she would give the card to him. Ender was pleased with that, but the librarian asked if she could hang it up and display it for a week or so before she gave it to the Cat. This pleased Ender even more! So, here is his picture/note for the Cat in the Hat on display in the library:

Sketch

Aren't we cute?

Allergies suck!

So, I cannot believe I haven't even posted about this yet! So, on Valentines day, Wes and I took the kids with us to lunch for a secret shop. I brought Gerber baby peaches to feed Kindle. I was feeding them to her and she broke out in hives and got all swollen. So, we stopped feeding her peaches got some benedryl ASAP, and she was fine, but seemingly allergic to peaches. Here are pictures taken of her at the restaurant. It is hard to tell the hives and swelling, but trust me, they are there:

So, Monday the 16th Kindle had a well baby check up, at which we decided she needed to see an allergist to verify said allergy. Especially since kids will be staying with my parents and Wes's parents while we are in Canada on our anniversary. So, we go to the allergist later that week. I thought they were going to do the skin testing (ew), but instead, given her age and allergy type, he thought a blood draw test would be better to verify this allergy and to rule out other common kid allergies. He told me if the peach test was negative, we would then do the peach skin test to verify allergy as it can sometimes have a negative blood test, but still be an allergy that is caught with the skin test. Also, she is now needing to have an epi-pen with her at all times in case she has an allergy that causes such swelling that she cannot breath. So, I tote Kindle off to the Children's hospital lab where the blood draw needs to happen, after which I will go to the pharmacy to get said epi-pen (actually it is a "twin-ject" but same thing as an epi-pen essentially).

So, we get to the hospital where there is no wait at the lab, but by the time they process us in the check-in, there is quite a wait there. So, we wait and wait, pass the time I told my wonderful relief society sister who is watching the boys that I would be home, then they call us back. They
look at her arms-poor Kindle as it turns out has crappy veins like her mommy, and they have trouble finding one in her right arm. so they don't try and start to look in her left arm. Bingo-they find one they think will work...WRONG! They dig around in her arm for a good 5 minutes, get the vein, get about 1 ml of blood (they need 6), and the vein collapses. So they toss the blood they got, and start over on the other arm. (mom is losing it by now and about to faint and cry and run out of the room screaming, but trying to remain calm for baby girl).

On to arm right (again) they again dig and dig for another 5 minutes or so. They get a vein, It seems to be working, they cannot get any more than 3 ml from it. They NEED 6. At this point, both her arm are unusable-they are bruised and sore and veins have collapsed. The phlebotomists do not know what to do and ask if I can sit and wait for another hour for her to calm down and recover so they can try again. I ask if there is another option, they say they will ask the Pathologist if they can draw the rest of the blood another way while I wait.

I call my friend at home to make sure we are OK still. She says she can stay until she needs to go pick up her kids from school (great still another 2 hours!). I wait another 20 minutes or so. They call us back again and say that they can try to get the rest of the blood through a finger poke. They poke her finger and spend 15 minutes squeezing blood out of her finger. They get 2 ml. At this point we are up to 5 ml (6 had they not thrown out the first one), and they need 6...they ask the pathologist if that is enough. He says he has to wait for it to coagulate to see and asks me to wait another 20 minutes to see if it is enough. It was!!!

So, like hours later and who know how much money later, we head home.

The results came back last week-negative to all tested foods. Their next step is to test her by A)a skin test, then B) giving her a peach and watching to see what happens. Wes is a doctor, and he already did test B-what happens is that she swells up and breaks into hives. So, allergy doctor and Wes are both fairly certain that in spite of test result, she is allergic to peaches. We are opting not to subject her to further testing at this point, and are calling it a peach allergy.

Poor baby-a life without peaches-so sad! In case you were unaware, if you are breastfeeding a baby and they have an allergy, you cannot eat that food either. My month without peaches has been torture, and I feel so sad for her!

Skating

About a month ago, I took the boys and Kindle to Skatedaze to try to roller skate. It was crazy, and not too successful. Ender got pissed trying on the actual rink cause it "made him fall." He would only do it on the carpet. Armour tried and was actually fairly good, adn did not give up. Here are a few pics:

Armyfall
"I dood it!"

On the carpet

Who is your Role Model?

Don't look at the answers!!!!!!!!


1) First, pick your favorite number between 1-9
2) Multiply by 3 then
3) Add 3, then again Multiply by 3 (I'll wait while you get the calculator....)
4) You'll get a 2 or 3 digit number....
5) Add the digits together

Now Scroll down ..............











Now with that number see who your "ROLE MODEL" is from the list below :

1-Donald Trump
2-Barack Obama
3- Hilary Clinton
4- The Pope
5- Michael Jordan
6- Barry Bonds
7- Serena Williams
8- Arnold Schwarzenegger
9-Beckee Johnson
10- Brad Pitt

I know....I just have that effect on people....one day you too can be like me.... :-) Believe it!

Who likes gifts?! You know I do...

I went to my sisters blog and she had a cool tag there.

Basically, the tag involves having the first five people who respond to my post getting something from me! I cannot promise that it will be homemade, but I will buy or make you something cool!

Here are the rules:
1. I will make or buy or make you something but you will have no idea what it is and I will do my best to tailor it to fit just you!
2. I will do it by the end of the summer, likely before then!
3. I make no guarantee that you will like the gift :)

The catch is that you must repost this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog. The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did win a fantastic gift from me! Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!!!

Let the fun begin!

Johnsons at the zoo

Here we are...

Zoo animals

On Friday Feb 13th, Wes took a vacation day so we could all spend time together as a family. We went to the zoo to try to show Armour the elephants as they are his favorite animals and he has never actually seen one in person. Sadly, the elephants were off display because it was too cold. We did not let that deter us! We saw a lot of fun animals, and this is a blog to show some of those to you. I will do another post with pics of the Johnsons at the zoo. Check out these animals:

A recently deceased butterfly in the butterfly house.

Tapir momma and baby...
Ender and Armour's closest relative...

Little Einstein

A couple funky dudes

One guy

Training the funky dudes

Getting trained

What are these animals looking at?

They are looking at this funky bird...

Solace's favorite animal. (Actually she likes the way bigger snake best)

Boo!

Whoo Whoo...(Actually this is not an owl, I cannot remember what he is though.)

Pumba, not in front of the kids!

Vulture

Coatimundi

This picture freaked me out...

There are alligators in this dark area that scared the oldest 2 Johnson kids poopless...

Beavers in the dark

Icy

Love this statue and this is a great pic of it!

These little orangutans were looking at and interacting with the kids through the glass.

Here they are...(the kids, not the monkeys)