19th Day of Summer Vacation

This has been a busy week.  Monday was Burke's birthday.  He has been looking forward to his Buzz cake for a couple of months.  I'm so glad that he isn't as picky as the older kids.  He's just happy that the cake had  Buzz on it.  We had a pound cake filled with raspberry jam and vanilla pudding.  It was pretty good.

The next day, I had appointments for Burke and Amelia's well checks.  I brought Amy with me because it would relieve any kind of tension between the kids at home.  Well, the appointment started out great.  Burke was not scared of Dr Scharff (the best pediatrician in the whole world) this time.  I was so happy for him.  Amelia did great too.  Then came the talk of vaccines.  Amelia needed three, and Burke needed one.  Then he asked if all the kids had been tested for Celiac disease.  My answer was yes, but I thought Amy should be tested again.  He agreed and also thought that Burke should be tested too.  That's when the water works began.  Amy was listening the entire time and she was very worried about having her blood drawn.  She kept saying "I don't want to be tested" over and over again.  We said a prayer together and asked Heavenly Father to help her to be brave, and to help it not to hurt more than a little poke.  Burke was given his shot in the arm, and then Amelia in her legs.  Both of them cried a lot.  Then we walked down the hall to the lab, and Amy's cries were becoming louder and louder.  She started sweating and shaking a little.  I told her to be brave like Merida, and that if she could be brave, I'd buy her a Merida doll.  When the phlebotomist was about to poke her arm, I covered her eyes.  Poke.  She stopped crying and looked at her arm.  The butterfly needle was sticking out and she just stared at it.  "That didn't even hurt", she said.  Duh.  Then it was Burke's turn.  He did not have as good an experience.  I held him the same way, covering his eyes, but his vein was not as easy to find.  She had to kid of fish around for it.  I almost asked her to forget about it, and to stop.  I knew that Burke needed the test though.  It just made me so sad for him to have that fear and pain.  We left the office, and drove straight to Wal-Mart and bought Merida.  I should have bought a gift for Burke too, but he received so many fun toys for his birthday that I figured he could just play with them.  Amelia slept for about 5 hours once we were home.

This afternoon, we were loading up in the car to go to the Apple store, and I picked something up off  the garage floor.  I felt something on my arm (like a fly) and brushed it off.  When I saw what it was I screamed. There was a huge wolf spider crawling away.  Ugh.  I felt so gross. I could feel it on me all the way to the mall.  Yuck.  We went to the Apple store because Tommy messes with his iPod so much that it became disabled when he tried to change the password.  It was a quick fix.

Last night we read from "A Little Princess" again.  The kids are really enjoying it and so am I.

we were making yogurt pops, he was so happy to help

i told him to smile, he looks like he's in pain