So today we headed off for the big trip to MUSC at Charleston! We got in a little before 5pm and checked into our Residence Inn hotel. It's quite a snazzy hotel, we have a two bedroom suite with full amenities. It's even pet friendly, which was convenient since it was difficult to find a place to keep the dogs. Suey went to a friend's house for the week, but Rocky and Peanut are tagging along.
Full kitchen.
Nice Bedrooms.
Living room.
Rocky is VERY doubtful and anxious about this whole setup! The elevator blew this poor farm dog's mind!
Peanut, on the other hand, was meant to be an apartment dog.
Lilly was not a fan of the long car ride, but she tolerated it. She has been in a great mood all evening!
They even offer full massages here at the Residence Inn!!
Before we came down, Lilly's Tio Michael came over to help watch her while I packed. And this is what I got back.
Well tomorrow will be a big day. We will get to the hospital at 9 am and start all the pre-op workup. The nurse called me today to let me know they may sedate Lilly for the echocardiogram. The bad part of it all is she's not allowed milk after 3 am and only water/applejuice until 8am!! I fear she will be a grumpy little baby come morning. I hope they hurry up with whatever they have to do, so we can feed her!
Mari is getting freakishly good at archery these days. We went to an archery shoot on Saturday for one last hoorah before Lilly's surgery. She was shooting so good I was relieved I had a good excuse not to compete so she wouldn't beat me again. She had another personal best at this shoot of 264 and she started to go downhill towards the end. If she'd held it together she could have had another 6 points higher or more. It was kind of difficult to see the scoring rings on some of the targets. Binoculars came in handy.
This was our first trip to the Sandune Archery Club in Myrtle Beach. It was a really nice course. Mari decided to have a go at the SC Lower State Regional Championship this year. She has to shoot at least once at each of the three lower state clubs and her highest score from each of the clubs will be recorded. The person with the highest total will take first place, then second, and so on. As you can tell, Mari is taking it very seriously.
We would like to go to this club again but it's a 2.5 hour drive. Fortunately Mari did really well at this shoot so she shouldn't have to go back to try for a higher score. I don't think anyone will be able to give her any competition. Just look at that form even with the sun in her eyes.
We shot with three other guys with very hardcore target rigs, some of them costing three to four times more than Mari's. They were in a different class and shot from 10 to 20 yards farther back than Mari, but, she still had a higher score than all three if them.
I did a really excellent job of keeping score and holding the binoculars and soda for Mari. Sorry, no pictures of me this time. Mari is getting so confident she was actually considerring moving up to the unlimited class. Once she's got good scores from all three clubs for the championship I'm all for it.
Lilly was playing awesomely on the floor tonight. Since she was so content entertaining herself, I figured I'd entertain myself. I was surfing the Dr. Phil website (yes I do have an obsession with the show! And this is Mari if you can't figure that one out). Well, I was so intrigued by whatever I was looking at, I don't even remember what now.
But before I got so fascinated by whatever I was looking at this is what I saw -
Then when I looked up again, and this is what was there!!!
I didn't see any of it happen! But hey it happened, somehow she did a 180 AND rolled to her belly! Pretty darn cool.
We talk so much about our dear Lilly here at the Jones Farm. But I wanted to share with you one of Eric's greatest accomplishments. Apparantly Eric won the 2008 Mr South Carolina contest... Eric's broken clavicle may take him out of the running for 2011!
The other day I found a 3 month size sleeper. I was like, yay, this is really cute and it's even ralph lauren! Lilly is still wearing 3 month sized clothes. I put it on her that day and it was super precious. Well, apparantly the outfit didn't appreciate the dryer! I tried anyway, oh well, at least she got to wear it once. She really thought I was nuts to even attempt to put it on!
Eric seems to be feeling better these days. Still very sore, but at least in a better mood!! It was pulling teeth to get a picture of him, but I got it :)
Oh and Eric is still on his baking kick. I convinced him to make me homemade peanut butter cookies last night. Mmmmm.
So this post is in tribute to Eric. Yesterday he was walking from class to his car to go home. He went to cross the street and decided to run to avoid being hit by oncoming traffic. Bad idea. He tripped on a pot hole or something and did a ninja/samurai somersault. He hopped up and thought he was fine.
Oh but he was wrong! Within a few minutes the pain started in his shoulder. He then called me and told me he thought he needed to go to the emergency room. Which folks, for Eric to say he needs to see a doctor is extraordinary. The pain must of been excruciating. I asked him if he wanted me to drive down there and pick him up. No, he wanted me to just meet him at the urgent care.
So I get there and by now he's in so much pain he's about to throw up! As we waited I watched his shoulder start to swell. He couldn't even lift his arm an inch, it was pretty bad. They gave him some pretty good drugs to deal with the pain. Here are a few funny lines that came out of his mouth afterwards:
"I keep forgetting to breathe" "Whoa, I thought I was baking a cake just now" "I can see why people are drug addicts"
Well, a couple hours later we were heading home xrays in tote, shoulder immobilizer on, and an appointment to see the orthopedist the next day. Can you flippin believe it, but he broke his collar bone!!! The doctors at the urgent care couldn't believe he drove himself there in the first place.
Note the big chunk missing close to his shoulder....
We went to the orthopedist today. The plan is to wait one week with the shoulder immobilizer/sling and recheck him again. If everything is staying put he will just stay in his stylish sling for another 3 - 4 weeks, if not he will have surgery. The doctor is optomistic that he will not need surgery, so that will be good!
For now, I'm home being mom to two babies now :) Luckily, I am out of work right now, so I'll be able to drive Eric back and forth to USC and help him with whatever. I would post a picture of his cool shoulder fashion, but currently he is passed out in bed; I'll save it for another day!
So Lilly is recovering from her sickness. We took her to her the pediatrician today for her recheck. She is wheezing much less and her ears look better! Hurrah! She will be off the nebulizer and antibiotics by Saturday, we are so excited.
Also, we got a new date for her surgery. It will be Wednesday, February 2nd. So mark your calendars. We had to use a different surgeon in order to snag a date that soon (same hospital), but his credentials are definitely up to par!
Besides this, nothing else is new. Just chillin at the Jones Farm.
I recorded this video today right after I gave Lilly a bath. She was doing her blowing thing which is hilarious. She exhausts herself blowing so hard but she seems to enjoy doing it.
So I am trying to not have a meltdown here (Mari here). This past Sunday Lilly was not feeling right. By Tuesday she was an utter mess, was wheezing like a mad man, couldn't eat and couldn't sleep. So luckily the pediatrician's office opened up for the afternoon (in all this snow) and we got her looked at. She has a respiratory tract infection and was put on a nebulizer. She actually enjoys the nebulizer most of the time, it really makes her feel better.
How freaking cute is this - her holding it on her own!
So she slept much better for the one night. Then last night she was up EVERY hour! So between Sunday night and today, we only had one solid 5 hour stretch of sleep, quite agonizing! Luckily being snowed in has been convenient because school was canceled and I didn't work Monday or Tuesday so we could relax at home.
Today my mom took her to her recheck appointment. Well the reason for the horrible sleeping last night is that she now has an ear infection. So she was put on antibiotics. Whatever, kids get ear infections. BUT now this means her surgery that was scheduled for this Wednesday is cancelled! We were so ready to be done with it all. So now we have to wait longer. I don't know when the new date for surgery will be but hopefully soon.
We decided, and also our doctor recommended, that she stay out of daycare until after the surgery. So that means I will be out of work until then!
On a cool note, her physical therapy despite all this has been pretty good. She met with Lisa today and did pretty darn good. Last night while we were eating dinner she rolled from her back to her stomach! She was on her stomach only a second and quickly realized she didn't want to stay there! But it counts! She rolls to her side all the time now, she's a machine :) Now all we gotta work on is the sitting up and we are set.
I got the hankering for some chocolate cake a few weeks ago so I got a cake mix and made one(this is Eric by the way). We ate it after Christmas dinner at my mom's house. It was so freakin good I wanted to make some more. Here are a few of the things I've made recently.
Here's my second attempt at a chocolate cake. It looks weird because the bottom is round and the top is square. I don't exactly have proper pans for baking. But that didn't change how it tasted.
I made chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles with the extra batter. The close ones are made with regular chocolate frosting and the back three are made with whipped chocolate frosting that's why they look different.
Then I got a hankering for some donuts. So I looked up online how to make some and found a really, really easy way to make them. It's so easy you can find instructional videos on youtube. You basically make them out of the little rolls of pillsbury biscuits. Pop open the can, poke out the centers of the biscuits(which make great donut holes),
fry them up and add any toppings you want like sugar
or my favorite(seeing the theme yet?) chocolate frosting.
Since no one really got to see Mari's BIG Christmas present, here are some pictures of her new bow. She will be unstoppable at the range this year. She's already undefeated, imagine the fear her competition will have now. Her's is all black, mine is the camo one.
