Happy Thanksgiving!!

We woke up to our first official snowfall of the year. We hope you all enjoy Turkey Day!!

My men

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Originally uploaded by sillyschramm

Jonathon is finally home for good. Erich is enjoying getting to know his daddy better. We had some fun in the backyard, enjoying the end of fall.

Jonathon is glad to be home, but is still working hard to finish his writing. He hopes to defend sometime this late winter/ early spring.

And Katie is enjoying a little more sleep now that Jonathon is here to play with Erich. We're all thankful.

Just chillin'

Erich was able to get himself into his rocker without falling and bumping his head, which is a miracle in itself. Here he is doing one of his favorite things: simply reading his picture books. He entertains himself so easily.




Last night I spied Erich reading the paper with his grandpa. It was so cute to see the two of them. Another of Erich's favorites is the Target circular.

On another note, I received my new camera yesterday (a Canon Rebel XTi, 10.1 megapixel). As soon as I figure out how to use the darn thing, and download the software, I'll have some less-grainy pics to show you all. But beware; my work schedule is a little brutal right now, so it may be a while. I'm not even halfway through the user manual yet.

Trick-or-Treat!

Erich had a lot of fun trick-or-treating for the very first time. We were sad his daddy couldn't be there to join the festivities, but their are many more Halloweens to come.

We spent the evening with our friends in Grand Rapids. Robert and Kathryn traditionally have their nieces and nephew come over for a party and graciously invited us to join them.

I think I saw Dorothy and Toto

Okay, so this happened on Thursday night, but I've been only working and sleeping the last four days so you'll have to forgive me.

We had the most incredible line of storms starting at 7:30pm. I work the 7pm-7:30am shift and they called a tornado warning no less than 7 times throughout the night. So what do you do with the patients? You stick them in the hallway. Unfortunately, my patient was on a ventilator, so we had to cover him with blankets and move him as far away from the window as possible. That sucked too, since his fever was 104.6. It was pretty much chaos.

Jonathon's parents were watching Erich. His dad said he was watching the news and there was a funnel cloud spotted pretty much right over their house. So he ran up the stairs to collect a very sleepy Erich and raced to the basement. Yes, the house is thankfully still standing. After a few times of moving up and downstairs, they all finally set up camp in the basement and slept there all night. How crazy!!! When I drove home at 8am, the sun was shining and all you could see of the storm was some very black clouds far in the distance... God's awesome power!!!

Crane Festival

Yes, we went to a (Sandhill) Crane Festival today near Battle Creek. Jonathon has a way of finding out about these obscure things. It was actually a lot of fun. They had vendors there, hayrides, a nature hike, etc. The whole point was to watch the cranes flying and landing in the water (it was in a wetland area). This is their prime season. It was very crowded with bird watchers from everywhere.

The best part was Erich is feeling so much better and had a great time. The air was crisp, the leaves are turning; it was great fall weather. Then we went to Turkeyville, which is an interesting place. We had a turkey dinner and saw turkeys, goats, and a calf. Erich was a little freaked out by the goats who we were feeding weeds. We are just trying to soak up the precious moments we have with Jonathon before he leaves on Monday.

Yea!!!

Jonathon is finally here for his mid-fall visit. He arrived safely by train this morning. It's so good to have him here, even if it's only for 10 days.

In other good news, after only two doses of high-dose amoxicillin, Erich is a new man. I finally found a pediatrician who would see him yesterday. She was very nice and helpful. She said his ear infection is raging (no thanks to the Bactrim from two weeks ago) and she thinks he has a mild pneumonia. She didn't confirm it with a chest x-ray or blood cultures because she said it would cost over $200 for the work-up. But she was worried about him and said he was not yet sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, but was pretty close. Then, after learning that my tonsils had been really swollen yesterday morning, she had the nurse test me for strep (which, thankfully, was negative). The receptionist didn't even charge me for it and said, "we test ourselves all the time for strep and don't pay for it, so don't worry about it." Praise God!!! Now we just have to pray that all will be well, until, at least, November 1st when my health insurance kicks in.

Whew....