Katherine’s birthday with her BFF

From the ear infection in June through Daniel’s birthday, I had very low energy, on and off. I’d be fine for a few days, then back to feeling “almost” sick. Like I was just starting to catch a cold, but without any symptoms yet. Right before Daniel’s birthday, I got a major sore throat, went to the doctor, and tested positive for strep. That’s when it all made sense – the ear infection (with the blisters on the eardrum), the wicked sinus infection, and now the throat were all caused by strep, and it had just been lingering for about a month, waiting for a weak immune system to strike again. I couldn’t believe that I’d had 3 flare-ups, but nobody else in the family had been affected. How lucky was that!? Well, not as lucky as I’d thought. The strep was just biding its time…

While Chris and Daniel were out of town on their birthday camping trip, we made cinnamon biscuits and the girls got to shape them before cooking. These are pretty much a tribute to Aunt Alli’s picture from Cannes – of her with a plate of escargot. My kids found this picture fascinating (and, yes, horrifying, despite their adoration of Aunt Alli), and Caroline asks to see the picture of Aunt Alli with the snails all the time. “Did she really eat those?” Heh. So, they all wanted to make biscuits SHAPED like snails. The rest are slugs. Yum. Can you spot the ‘K’ ‘E’ ‘R’ and ‘C’ mixed in there too?

 

 

 

 

 

After breakfast, I took the girls by the Madison police department to register Katherine and Elizabeth for soccer this fall. When we left, Rachel was bummed that we “didn’t get to see the dungeons.” My thought was, “Holy wow! The Madison police station has dungeons!?” (Who knew? I wouldn’t put it past them!) I seriously need to slow down driving through Madison! I had to explain that seeing “the dungeons” was never going to be an option during soccer signups. And where did that even come from?

Meanwhile, we got the fantastic news that Emily Smith would be able to come for a visit over Katherine’s birthday, July 23rd, and then they would travel back to the Smiths’ house in Texas for a week! Best birthday present ever! Emily is Katherine’s BFF (best friend forever, of course!) who moved away last summer. Every fun thing we do, Katherine is wishing Emily could be there too, or at least commenting on her assessment of the potential enjoyment for Emily. Katherine has been dying to take Emily tubing with us down the Bogue Chitto River, so that seemed a perfect birthday activity.

We arranged to pick Emily up on Friday. Stepping back, on Monday of that week, Rachel wore a friend’s too-tight shoes and rubbed an open blister on her heel. Minor. We slapped some antibiotic ointment and a band-aid on it and forgot it. The next day we went swimming, twice (yeah, I deserve a medal), and the band-aid came off, but we stuck another band-aid on it and completely forgot about it. Wednesday night, Rachel starts complaining that her leg hurts and keeps rubbing her upper thigh, where it hurts. OK, you must’ve pulled a muscle sweetie, I’m sure it will be better tomorrow… Thursday night Rachel develops a scalding fever and is still saying her leg is sore. Tylenol barely kept the fever down overnight, but as I got her dressed to go see a doctor in the morning, with her still dragging that leg, I felt her foot and realized that her ankle was swollen and SO hot. I pulled the band-aid off her heel and gasped – it looked horrible! How did I not see that?!? I literally ran getting her to the doctor’s office and almost decided to take her straight to the ER. By the time we got settled in waiting to see the doctor, she was turning pink, flushed all over, with a sunburned look. I was truly scared. Three hours later, she had received her very first shot (ever!) and was on 2 antibiotics – one for strep and one for staph. The doctor thought the strep was more indicated, but the systemic reaction was so serious that he didn’t want to wait and evaluate before treating for possible staph, as well. The picture above was taken the next day, and doesn’t look nearly so ugly and angry, but it gives you an idea of how bad the ankle swelling was.

So I left Rachel, and the others, with Chris while Katherine and I went to pick up Emily in Tallulah, LA, about 2 hours away. Such a sweet reunion. Katherine and Emily are just peas in a pod, both of them just plain sweet on the inside, and they accentuate the good in each other’s personalities. Friends like that just don’t come along every day, and her moving away was really hard. Katherine is such a loyal little soul that it took her almost a year to let go a little bit and start looking for new friends. She actually has some new friends now (yay!), but last year was a little lonely for her because she just didn’t know how to make new friends without feeling disloyal to Emily. I’ve heard her meet new kids and immediately proceed to tell them all about her bff Emily, who moved away. (sigh) So believe me when I say that we were all thrilled to have Emily stay with us for the weekend (week, month, year, whatever – we’d take it!).

In typical fashion, Emily and Katherine had a list drawn up by the time they got to our house of the things they wanted to get done. Instead of things like “go to the Children’s Museum” and “go to the zoo” it was more like “go to the mall,” “shop at Renaissance,” “breakfast at Broad Street,” and “brunch at Pan Asia.” When did this happen? Pretty soon they’ll be getting in a car and driving themselves off to do these grown-up things. Crazy! They won’t even need Chris or me to roll our eyes and drag our feet out the door. Unfortunately we had to inform them that the most exciting item on the list, tubing, was not going to happen that weekend. We simply couldn’t take Rachel, with her massively-infected open sore on her heel, into river water. And, she’d been so sick on Friday that on Saturday, even if she felt great, we just couldn’t leave her with anyone for the day. If she took any turn for the worse, she would need to head straight for the ER, so we couldn’t leave that responsibility to someone else. As it turned out, the antibiotics were miraculous and she felt great, aside from a sore, discolored foot.

Katherine and Emily came back from a trip to the mall with little gifts for Elizabeth, Rachel, and Caroline – earrings, a bracelet, and a “baby” sock-monkey. Great choices!

 

 

These next pictures are a little embarrassing, but I promise I OFFERED to make Katherine cheesecake for her birthday, but like Daniel, she wanted the frozen stuff from Sam’s. Do they not know I can make cheesecake that throws rocks at the over-sweet stuff they chose? Hmmm. Maybe I’ll have to show them – that’s a good plan… We tried to take everyone to go see a movie late in the afternoon, but on a rainy Saturday, the theater parking lot was overflowing and the line at least half an hour long, so we just picked up a movie and had a movie night at home. Poor Katherine. It seemed every time we made a plan, we wound up changing it.

 

 

  The morning after her birthday, we took everybody to the Sunday brunch at Pan Asia restaurant. It’s just OK for Chris and me, but the kids adore it. It really helps that kids eat free, when you’re bringing 6 of them!

Rachel was cold, so she decided any scrap of fabric would help – even her napkin.

 

 

 

 

See, they could almost be sisters, right?

  Rachel was feeling put-out about having to leave her cozy nest to take a picture here.

 

 

 

 

I took Katherine and Emily to Academy Sports to pick up one of her gifts – a skateboard. Katherine had to “test” several out to see if they would steer well. I’m still ticked at Academy about the model they had on the floor for kids to try out – the $90 one. So naturally, the cheap model just didn’t feel nearly as good by comparison, right? Grrrr. (And no, of course she didn’t get the $90 one! But she did get one step up from the cheap one.) The picture I took of her “testing” boards out just encapsulates Katherine’s athletic/girly personality so well. Check it out:

The purse just “makes” that picture, hmm? It’s so silly, yet she rocks!

So anyway, my baby girl turned 9 on a great weekend of fun stuff and then had a whole week to look forward to at Emily’s house in Texarkana!