A beautiful day here!

IT's been a rough few weeks at the Van Dreel House. Last week, we had the FLU! It started with Kaelyn waking up having puked in her crib. It was a rough night! Every half hour she was awake (or as awake as she could be being sicker than a dog and her body waking her up to be ill) and it broke my heart! By about 8am, this mommy was tired and daddy woke up to take over. He took the day off of work so that we could take care of her. She kept down pedialyte and napped a little with daddy while I crashed for a few hours. They played a little and then we ALL crashed for a nap! The rest of the day was uneventful. We were pushing the fluids and so happy to see her smiles coming back! The next day, MOMMY got sick, and then Saturday, DADDY got sick. Thankfully he was sick on a Saturday so he didn't have to miss more work! Sunday was a lazy family day until I went to work ( i missed 3 days taking care of Kaelyn, myself and Jeremy.) I love my family, but I needed to get out of the house. I needed adult interaction and a non-lysol environment!

We've spent the last week just recovering. The laundry was piling up. I washed and dryed but didn't fold laundry while everyone was sick so I had a HUGE PILE of laundry to fold. Ugh.

Kaelyn had her optometrist appointment last monday. It went awesome! She had her eyes dilated. They used the drops and we went in at 8am and she got 1 drop in each eye every 5 minutes. Between her drops and our appointment, she took a little nap and cuddled me, but the down side was that I had to wake her up for her appointment! No way was she happy! But she did awesome, her eyes look good. Nothing to be concerned about. She is a little farsighted, but most children her age are farsighted so it's nothing to worry about. (Although with so much of our family wearing glasses I am guessing it is just a matter of when and not if she will need glasses of some sort.)

We've been working on her walking and she's getting so much stronger and more confident every day! We are still using her Juppy baby walker. She LOVES to cruise the furniture still so I am so very much hoping that we have a walker on our hands soon! I have got to say that I LOVE using the Juppy because it means I can walk with her and my back isn't KILLING me after 5 feet!

We had a pretty good scare on Friday though. I logged onto facebook and saw a post from one of the local tv stations back home. They mentioned an explosion at the paper mill where my dad and my father-in-law work. It was pretty scary. Luckily, both of our dads, both of Kaelyn's Papas, were safe and had the day off! Phew! 3 people were injured, 2 were released right away and 1 was taken by helicopter to Madison with burns! It was very lucky for us that our dads were okay and we said a prayer for the families of the 3 men who weren't so lucky.

For now, I am off to make lunch and bake some banana bread. WOOP! We are teething like crazy. getting in 2 or 3 teeth right now and we are MISERABLE. Kaelyn is waking up 2 or 3 times a night! Hopefully we can bake some bread, eat lunch, I can shower and we'll take a good nap!

Tomorrow we get to shampoo the upstairs and downstairs living rooms. Our roommate moved out and we have less furniture downstairs and the carpet could use a good cleaning. I'm not 100% sure that the carpet was all that clean before we moved in! Add a year of furniture and high traffic and it's in need of some TLC! I'm Super excited. All the basement needs after the carpet cleaning is a couch and maybe a nicer tv, but for now, it makes a great big open room (baby proofed) for Kaelyn to romp around in! With the way the weather has been, though? Not sure we'll get to use it.

Have a great day! ( I know we will!)

Lara and Kaelyn