Opening Day

Opening day for the township's t-ball/softball/baseball leagues, April 4 2009. It was really cold and windy that morning but we went anyway. Here are some pictures of Gabby with her team.

She was in good spirits and feeling pretty goofy even though it was freezing cold. Her friend Isabel (behind her in the white sweater) had the right idea though. Huddle for warmth!

The team had their picture taken with the Chick-Fil-a mascot and got a little cow to take home.

After standing around for a while, a really looong while, the parade finally got underway. The township had a middleschool marching band head it up. The poor trombonist kept losing his music. You can hear me calling Alan a nerd for memorizing all his marching band music. Haha. Sorry Alan. I remember times when we didn't have to and I didn't if it wasn't required.

And here they are passing us by in the parade.

It was so cold, we tried to find a place to stand that blocked the wind but we just couldn't. Alan ended up taking Samantha and Katherine to the car after Gabby passed by. They waited there while I retrieved Gabby at the end of the parade. I stayed for a little bit of the ceremony but because the ground was soaked from rain the previous day, they didn't have any microphones set up. You couldn't hear a single thing. They didn't even have a megaphone to use. So Gabby and I left before the ceremonies were through. I don't think we missed anything.

update

I wrote earlier about the blogger feature that lets you post through email. The jury was still out on whether that made it faster or not. I think I have decided that it is faster. I can email my posts to blogger with all the pictures I want to include instead of having to download them into the editor separately.

I just tried to do video this way too but my email rejected it so I had to download it from the blog editor. Maybe I need to format the video for email first and then try it again next time.



There is an option in settings that saves the emails as drafts so you can go back in later to move the pictures to where you want them and tweak the post before it gets published.



I think I'll be doing my posts this way from now on. Thanks blogger! Now you need to improve your editor...and while you're at it, add a feature that lets you print your post without all the sidebar stuff.



I am playing catch-up today so please scroll down for more posts! :)

Hail Storm

We had quite a hailstorm in March. I remember the wind was really bad and the sky was black when the storm first arrived and I was worried about tornadoes even though they are really rare here. Then came the hail and I was very close to sending my family to the basement! But I grabbed my camera, checked the weather station and took pictures instead. I'm glad I did! It was fun! I hadn't seen hail like this in a while.

It was still hailing when I opened the front door to try to get a picture. Some of it bounced in and Gabby grabbed a piece to show me.

The ground was white with little balls of pea sized ice.

The street also flooded quite a bit.

And some video from just after the storm passed. You can see how black the sky got.

Oreo

Gabby's Project Challenge classroom has two pets. A Rabbit called Brownie and a Guinea Pig called Oreo. We were able to take Oreo home for a few days early in March. We sure enjoyed having him.

Our cat had never seen the likes of such a creature and was quite interested. I think he was thinking of having him as a snack...

Gabby loved to hold Oreo on her lap. He wouldn't eat from our hands even though we tried to feed him some carrots. Instead he liked to try to eat our hands...

Nibble...ouch! - but not really, we're used to the cat doing worse.

Big Box Full of Little Girls

We ordered a compost bin for our garden this year. It came in a big box. I came downstairs a while after having taken the bin out of the box to find this:

Sledding

I am past due on this post given that we're well into Spring now but I wanted to include it anyway!

We had a good snowfall in early March and so I took Gabby and Samantha sledding on Moorestown's sledding hill. It was quite crowded and even had it's own resident self-proclaimed "official sledding hill police woman"! She was a little crazy trying to keep everyone else out of the way of her teenagers having fun. Like they couldn't take care of themselves or something. It was a bit irritating but we had fun anyway. I was quite proud of Samantha who, after going down a couple times with Gabby, got brave enough to go down all on her own. They each made several runs before we got too cold and headed home for hot chocolate.

Here they are going down together. Note their big grins:

And then Samantha going on her own:

Gabby had a grand time and made lots of runs!

Here they both are, waiting their turn to go:

Mom was a little sad to not be able to sled this year. I was playing it on the safe side since it's probably not a good idea if you're pregnant. Looking forward to next year though!

5th Disease

Gabby had a rash show up on her face yesterday morning. I thought it might have been a sunburn since we were out in the sun Saturday for her softball game. This morning her cheeks were redder and her arms had a touch of the rash too but she was feeling fine and not very itchy. So I sent her to school. Later in the morning I got a call from her school nurse. She suspected 5th disease. 5th disease? I had no idea what that was. By the time I got to the school I could see that her rash had spread quite a bit. Not only that, but Samantha had it on her arms too. Nothing on Katherine though...until we got to the doctor's office and then Katherine started presenting on her arms. Um... okay then.

Well, here is what I learned about 5th disease. This is from an email I sent out to Gabby and Samantha's swim coach, Gabby's softball coach and our primary presidency. I think my kids were all contagious this weekend and we were exposed to lots of other kids! Yikes! I'm just glad it's not meningitis or something scary like that!

5th disease is a viral infection and doesn't show up until the child is likely no longer contagious and a rash appears on their face, arms and torso. The rash looks like a slap on the face, sunburn on the arms and lacy appearance on the torso. The child might have had a headache or fever but might not have had any symptoms. Mine didn't.

My kids have all had the rash break out starting with Gabby yesterday (Sunday) and the other two today so they would likely have been contagious Friday and Saturday and probably Sunday.

Thankfully, I found out that 3rd trimester pregnancy is not affected. I hope we haven't been around anyone in their first trimester. They might need to be checked out.

It was a little scary to me, but knowing more about it and the fact that my kids are all feeling fine except for being a little bit itchy, it's okay. Here's a little more information on 5th disease from kidshealth.org:

What's Fifth Disease?

Especially common in kids between the ages of 5 and 15, fifth disease typically produces a distinctive red rash on the face that makes the child appear to have a "slapped cheek." The rash then spreads to the trunk, arms, and legs. Fifth disease is actually just a viral illness that most kids recover from quickly and without complications.

Fifth disease (also called erythema infectiosum) is caused by parvovirus B19. A human virus, parvovirus B19 is not the same parvovirus that veterinarians may be concerned about in pets, especially dogs, and it cannot be passed from humans to animals or vice versa.

Studies show that although 40% to 60% of adults worldwide have laboratory evidence of a past parvovirus B19 infection, most of these adults can't remember having had symptoms of fifth disease. This leads medical experts to believe that most people with a B19 infection have either very mild symptoms or no symptoms at all.

Signs and Symptoms

Fifth disease begins with a low-grade fever, headache, and mild cold-like symptoms (a stuffy or runny nose). These symptoms pass, and the illness seems to be gone until a rash appears a few days later. The bright red rash typically begins on the face. Several days later, the rash spreads and red blotches (usually lighter in color) extend down to the trunk, arms, and legs. The rash usually spares the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. As the centers of the blotches begin to clear, the rash takes on a lacy net-like appearance. Kids younger than 10 years old are most likely to get the rash.

Older kids and adults sometimes complain that the rash itches, but most children with a rash caused by fifth disease do not look sick and no longer have fever. It may take 1 to 3 weeks for the rash to completely clear, and during that time it may seem to worsen until it finally fades away entirely.

Certain stimuli (including sunlight, heat, exercise, and stress) may reactivate the rash until it completely fades. Other symptoms that sometimes occur with fifth disease include swollen glands, red eyes, sore throat, diarrhea, and rarely, rashes that look like blisters or bruises.

In some cases, especially in adults and older teens, an attack of fifth disease may be followed by joint swelling or pain, often in the hands, wrists, knees, or ankles.

Contagiousness

A person with parvovirus infection is most contagious before the rash appears — either during the incubation period (the time between infection and the onset of symptoms) or during the time when he or she has only mild respiratory symptoms. Because the rash of fifth disease is due to an immune reaction (a defense response launched by the body against foreign substances like viruses) that occurs after the infection has passed, a child is usually not contagious once the rash appears.

Parvovirus B19 spreads easily from person to person in fluids from the nose, mouth, and throat of someone with the infection, especially through large droplets from coughs and sneezes.

In households where a child has fifth disease, another family member who hasn't previously had parvovirus B19 has about a 50% chance of also getting the infection. Children with fifth disease may attend childcare or school, since they are no longer contagious. Once infected with parvovirus B19, a person develops immunity to it and won't usually become infected again.

Parvovirus B19 infection during pregnancy may cause problems for the fetus. Some fetuses may develop severe anemia if the mother is infected while pregnant — especially if the infection occurs during the first half of the pregnancy. In some cases, this anemia is so severe that the fetus doesn't survive. Fortunately, about half of all pregnant women are immune from having had a previous infection with parvovirus. Serious problems occur in less than 5% of women who become infected during pregnancy.

Prevention

There is no vaccine for fifth disease, and no real way to prevent spreading the virus. Isolating someone with a fifth disease rash won't prevent spread of the infection because the person usually isn't contagious by that time.

Practicing good hygiene, especially frequent hand washing, is always a good idea since it can help prevent the spread of many infections.

Samantha and Katherine's Birthdays

Here are some pictures from Samantha's and Katherine's birthday celebrations. We had a great time with family who came out to help us celebrate.

We had a beach theme for Samantha's birthday since she had been talking about the beach for some time. She really enjoys our beach weeks in the summer and had been asking if we could go again. So we made her a sandcastle cake and played beach themed games. We play with moon sand, hid shells around the living room for the kids to find and played Seashell Memory. For Seashell Memory, I glued pictures of us at the beach underneath seashells and they matched them up just like in Memory.

Here is Samantha telling us how old she is - holding up 4 fingers. Notice she's dressed all in purple - from head to toe. It's her most favorite color!

Opening presents and the chaos in the living room:

Katherine loves books! Here's grandma reading to her.

A devoured cake! (I'm wishing I had some right now!)

And Samantha and Mike playing her new Cranium Jr. game.

We celebrated Katherine's birthday too that day but on a smaller scale for her because our focus was mainly for Samantha, it being closer to Samantha's birthday. A couple weeks later we had a small family celebration for Katherine and made her a yummy chocolate cake and opened presents.

Puddle Jumping

A couple weeks ago we had a fast moving rainstorm come through that left lots of water on the road and sidewalks just in time for Gabby to come home from school. The weather was gorgeous afterwards so I had Samantha don her rainboots (Katherine was napping) and we picked up Gabby from the bus stop. On the way home we passed a really large puddle in the sidewalk so I retrieved my camera and we played in the puddles:

This enourmous cloud was looming over us at the end of the street. It was so white and fluffy and huge I couldn't resist taking its picture. It looked so cushy that I wanted to do a running leap and jump right into it!




Here is some video of the girls playing in the puddles. They were watching for cars which is why they would suddenly jump to the curb. In the second one, Samantha didn't seem to mind Gabby patting her head until Gabby stuck her hands in the puddle. "Hey!" is right!