Road Trip Part 2: Rockford, Illinois

We had a great time in Rockford. It was so good to see my cousins and my aunt and uncle. The drive up there from Omaha was about 7 hrs. Much better than 12! Allie of course was great in the car. All of the pictures I took were at the wedding reception. The reception was at a country club right on a beautiful golf course. We were able to snap some good shots before the rain came in.
Luke and Jill's wedding and reception were both beautiful. Karlie and Greer were both in the wedding and did such a nice job standing on the stage. Allie loved seeing Jill look like a princess. She thinks everyone in a fancy white dress is a princess and she called Luke her prince. Allie could not wait until it was time to dance. She did not eat her dinner very well and I asked her why and she said because she was ready to dance! My kind of girl. It was hard trying to get her to understand why she couldn't dance on the first dances (Luke/Jill's, mother/son, dad/daughter). Once the fast music came on she was out there! We had a few minor meltdowns anytime she needed to leave the dance floor. I tried to get her dancing on video, but it was too dark in there to see anything. She literally danced until it was time to leave. I'm not sure how she managed to dance so long! She loved dancing with me, her cousins, my cousins and perfect strangers!
There was lots of fun had by all and I'm so glad we made the trip up there. On our way back we split the trip up. We stayed in Springfield, Missouri on Sunday night and then got back home by Monday late afternoon. I think we were in the car traveling around 33 hrs.!
(Sorry for all of the pictures. I tried to put them into a slide show and couldn't get it to work and I had a hard time choosing!)

Princess Jill and Prince Luke Tenery (welcome to the family Jill)

The Tenery family: Josh, Kaitlin, Aunt Allene, Jill, Luke, Uncle Dennis, Katie Tenery Lipscomb, and Justin

The Siblings: Josh, Luke and Katie

The other Tenery Family

Kelly and Scott (they will be married 10 yrs. on July 17th!)

Poppy and Mimi with their grand kids

Me with my cousin Katie

I just love this picture of Annie!

My sweet girl dancing!

This was after breakfast on Sunday. All of the kids were exhausted!

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July everyone! I hope everyone has a safe and fun 4th. We started our 4th of July with some fun crafts. We made hand print American flags, a cake (not shown) and stamped stars in paint. Allie also just had fun painting and decided to add a little color to her face. I found lots of wonderful ideas from the blog The Crafty Crow. I would have liked to have done more fun activities with Allie, but she has been sick most of the week. Now I have some good ideas for next year. Later this afternoon we are heading to over to our friends Anna and Karl for some yummy food and swimming!

Road Trip Part 1

A little over a week ago, my parents, Allie and I drove to Omaha, Nebraska. We left early on a Tuesday morning and made great time. It took us just under 12 hrs. to get there. Allie was a great traveler. That was her longest trip in the car and she was fantastic. She watched movies (thank you Kristen) and played with her toys. Of course she didn't fall asleep until the last 45 min. of the trip. For those of you who do not know, I grew up in Omaha. I lived there from the time I was 2 until I was 14. Going back brought back so many wonderful memories. It had been 8 years since I had been there. I loved taking Allie to see the house I grew up in and the school I went to. The only thing missing on this trip was Jarod. It was really hard being away from him for so long. While we were there we stayed with my parents best friends. On Wednesday, we met my brother and his family at the zoo in Omaha. If you ever make it to the midwest, make sure you check out the zoo in Omaha. It is fabulous! I wish that I could mix the San Diego zoo with the Omaha zoo. They are both wonderful and I love them for different reasons. Allie loved being with her cousins. It was so much fun having a vacation with my brother and his family.

The reason we were in Omaha was because my cousin Luke was getting married up in Rockford, Illinois so we all decided it would be fun to drive to Omaha first, spend a couple of days and then drive up to Rockford. Scott and Kelly got there before us and actually ended up leaving after we did b/c their car had broken down. What horrible timing for them. We headed up to Rockford on Thursday and I will post about that part of the trip later.

Annie just goes with the flow!

Sweet Cousins

This is a picture of us in the Rain Forest exhibit

The happy family: Scott, Karlie, Greer, Kelly and Annie

Allie loves Karlie so much and I was able to get several pictures of them together. So many good memories created on this trip!

My parents with their 4 grandchildren

This is a picture of Allie and I at a park in the neighborhood where I grew up. My elementary school is on the top of the hill.

My Little Betty Crocker

I've been a little MIA with the blog world lately. For some reason I've had a hard time making my way to the computer. We've been pretty busy since I've been done with work. Too keep ourselves entertained, Allie and I have enjoyed baking! She really enjoys helping me in the kitchen. We have made muffins, cinnamon rolls, Jell-O, chocolate chip cookies and fruit pizza (thanks Kristen for the suggestion). One of her favorite things to do is help me use the mixer. She also enjoys filling the muffin pans. I think her favorite part about making chocolate chip cookies was the chocolate chips. She loved those but she isn't the biggest fan of the cookie. I think she was deprived too long on some of the good stuff with her food allergy. The fruit pizza was yummy and she loved putting the fruit on by herself. It's probably not the prettiest fruit pizza you've ever seen, but it sure was yummy. I love making sweet memories with my girl!

My fruit pizza isn't round, but still tastes the same.

Look at my masterpiece!

Mixing the dry ingredients for the chocolate chip cookies.


The chocolate chips are the best part!

We attempted to make Jello-O Jigglers with her alphabet cookie cutters. They did not turn out but she had fun anyway.


LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, START YOUR ENGINES!!!

Jarod and I got tickets to the Indy Car races at the beginning of June. I have never been to the car races before. Texas Motor Speedway is HUGE! I've driven by it a few times, but once you are inside you realize how big it really is. Jarod and I went with a co-worker of his and her husband. I'm really not into racing, but it was pretty cool. They are driving so fast. I've included a clip down below. It was a lot of fun for the first hour or so, then I was ready to leave. In the 2nd picture, if you click on it to enlarge it, you will see Shaq. He told everyone to start their engines. Pretty cool. (sorry this has nothing to do with the title of my post!)

Shaq is in the center of the stage

A Timeline of the Last 2 Weeks

I feel like I lost almost 2 weeks of May. I honestly cannot believe it is already the middle of May. It has been a little hectic at the Varner household. Some of you already know and some of you don't know that I was in the hospital. Don't worry, nothing is seriously wrong with me. Actually, we don't know what is wrong, which is the frustrating part of the last couple of weeks. I decided that I would make a timeline of events. This info may not interest you but I'm doing it to help me remember. I loose pieces of paper!

Starting around the week of April 20th, I started having pain in the lower part of the right side of my abdomen. I just chalked it up to the fact that I was about to start. No big deal. The pain continued off and on for a couple of weeks. I decided that I would make an appt. with my OBGYN and make sure that there wasn't anything going on. I wasn't sure if it could be a cyst or something related to the miscarriage I had last August. *Oh I should mention that during this time frame we had a busted pipe in Allie's bathroom and have been dealing with water damage and trying to get that fixed. Jarod also left on May 2 for Seattle.

May 5th: Went to OBGYN; had blood work done and an ultra sound. He thought everything looked great. He saw to "cysts" but said that isn't what they really are. I guess that word can be used interchangeably. He said if pain continues to see a GI specialist or go to regular doctor.

May 6th: Went to my general doctor. More blood work and had an x-ray. Scheduled a sono gram for Friday of that week.

May 7th: Woke up in extreme pain. Pain had gotten worse the entire week. I had an upset stomach. Made sub plans; didn't go to work. Called doctor to see if results were in and they said if I was in that much pain to go to ER. Jarod had just gotten back from Seattle night before. He was in meetings all day and couldn't reach him. Called mom and she came and got me.

Got to ER around 2:45. Not very crowded. I had not had anything to eat or drink since Wed. dinner. In lots of pain and very dehydrated. Finally get back to a room. Jarod, my dad and mom are with me. They hook me up to an I.V. I get pain meds and nausea meds. They want to do a cat scan to see if it's my appendix. I have to drink contrast before I can take the scan. Can't keep it down and do the test anyway. The dumb ER doctor tells me he can't see anything, told me he can send me home with 3 types of medicine and if pain continues I can come back to the ER tomorrow or be admitted to hospital and can see a GI Specialist. After long discussion, I am admitted.

May 8th: Still in pain can't keep anything down. We wait all day for a GI Specialist. I'm switched rooms and finally we see a doctor at 9:00 pm. After an hour long visit he orders a sonogram b/c the CT scan didn't show anything b/c there wasn't any contrast in my system. Have a sonogram at 11:00 that night.

May 9th: Get results of sonogram; they are negative. He orders another CT Scan with contrast and said if that didn't show anything I would need to have a colonoscopy. Fun! Managed to keep down contrast (b/c I refused pain meds that is what was making me get sick). Take scan. Only think they could see is spots on my liver that they thought were normal. I would need an MRI to prove that. Ordered colonoscopy.

Before you can have a colonoscopy your system has to be "cleaned out". My daytime nurse did not think that would be a problem based on "evidence". To get that way, I had to mix Miralax with water and drink it. I had to use the entire bottle of Miralax. I got a late start on drinking the water b/c I had a horrible headache and that made me sick. The miralax wouldn't work if I couldn't keep it down. I had to have it finished by midnight. I threw up all 3 jugs of the water/mix by 1:15am. Couldn't keep any down.

May 10th: 3 am; doctor ordered a enema (sp?). Still didn't do the job. Had another one at 8 am. Still didn't work. Then around 10 am. my doctor ordered a water enema. If you don't know what those are I bet your parents do. I will not tell you. It's awful! Still didn't work. Doc came in and said that they would leave me alone and wouldn't put my body through anything else. Happy Mother's Day to me!!!
Did have to drink another Miralax/water mix later in the evening, but on my own time and as diluted as I wanted it to be.

May 11th: Had colonoscopy in the morning, MRI and two ultra sounds in the afternoon. Had to have a new IV; so dehydrated that it took four nurses to finally get one in. On the third try I sreamed so loudly that I'm sure the entire hall heard me. That was the first time I cried and well worth it!

May 12th: Doctor came in and said that everything looked normal. They do not know what the cause of my pain is. They saw the same cysts that my OBGYN saw and do not think that would cause my pain but could. They also thought I may of had something viral plus some type of blockage. It should not have taken two days for my system to be clear.

Went home in the late afternoon. Slept all week long. I don't think I've ever slept that much in my life! I slept till 9-10 in the morning and would take a long afternoon nap.

May 18th: Back at work after missing 7 days. If you are a teacher, have been a teacher or know someone who is a teacher, missing that much at the end of the year is not a good thing! I have my work cut out for me! Thankfully I only have 11 more days with kids. Yay!

If the pain continues I will need to go back to my OBGYN. We are praying that it just goes away and that it will always be a little mystery.

Party at the Park Pictures ... Finally

I hate that it has taken me two weeks to post pictures from Allie's 3rd b-day party. I did add a lot of pictures, so I won't say much. Allie loved her party. I am so glad that the weather cooperated with us. I was a little stressed about it, but everything turned out great. Allie loved having all of her friends together and playing with them at the park. She had a Cinderella cake and cupcakes. All of her friends at cupcakes and she opted for cake. This was the first year that she has been able to eat real birthday cake and she enjoyed every bit of it! She was the last one to finish eating. We had also had a pinata for the kids to open. Thanks to everyone that came and wished Allie a happy birthday. Allie is so lucky to have such great friends.

3 year old stats:
weight: 35lbs. 80th percentile
height: 38 1/2 in. 80th percentile

I never got a good picture of her by herself with her cake. I think she was feeling a little overwhelmed in this picture.

Thanks Carmen for the wonderful cakes and cupcakes!

Uncle Scott, Uncle Chad and Poppy

Allie, Cade and Gabby are all about 6 weeks apart. Allie and Gabby are 11 days.

Allie riding her new scooter that we gave her. She's a little slow on it, but loves it!