An Edenfield Christmas

The bad news - both kids had the flu over Christmas.
The good news - both adults stayed relatively healthy!

The bad news - trey's tamiflu prescription cost $130 (Cosi was not given it b/c she was almost through her bout with the flu).
The good news - just the day before, we had received an anonymously sent $100 bill in the mail. 

The bad news - at the end of the flu, Cosi got a sinus infection.
The good news - we were easily able to get a doctor appointment for her.

The bad news - Trey developed an ear infection at the end of his battle with the flu.
The good news - after hysterically crying (it's not hard to do when you're sleep deprived) to the busy nurse over the phone, April was able to get him a doctor appointment.

The bad news - Trey was so sick on Christmas morning that he dazedly walked out of his room, looked at his presents and cried.
The good news - Trey warmed up and after 5 hours of coaxing finally sat inside his new Cozy Coupe truck.

The bad news - Cosi's nose was running nonstop for 5 days of excess mucous.
The good news - we had a Chinese professor staying with us and she took it upon herself to constantly wipe Cosi's nose.

The bad news - we had to cancel our Christmas dinner plans, due to the kids being ill.
The good news - we let our Chinese professor house guest cook us dinner!

Seriously though, we had a great Christmas in Florida and we're thankful for our many blessings.  Here are some pictures :)

Our very serious Cosi working on her 2nd gingerbread house.  The first collapsed due to excess pressure by the decorator.  This was not a problem, as the supplier expected such difficulties might arise and had already prepared a back-up house. 
Below, you'll see our house guests over the holiday - Ping, a visiting professor from China who is at USC for the year, and her daughter, Jessie.  We're so thankful to report that they did NOT get the Flu.

 I was a bit desperate to provide activities for the children.  I grabbed the kitchen salt and poured it on paper plates, so the kids could play with it.  My kids both immediately dumped their plates, even after I modeled drawing with your finger in the salt.  Jessie took much better care of her salt.  I don't think Jessie's mom was very impressed with my salt games.  She thought it was wasteful.  I guess it is a pretty wasteful activity that ruins food.  I'm such an American sometimes.

 On Christmas Day, we took a girls trip to a local playground.  Rob stayed home with sick Trey.  Jessie started out a bit serious, but I coaxed some smiles out of her.  The weather was gorgeous.  I was so proud of Cosi for going down the big blue slide.

 We also decorated two giant sugar cookies.  I didn't feel up to the ordeal of rolling the dough and cutting out separate cookies, so I just shoved the dough into two pans that my aunt had given me.  The girls were happy.  Jessie is really smiling - quite an accomplishment for us!  Cosi makes the funniest faces.

Kids Videos- Fall 2012, part 3

         Merry Christmas!  The kids both have the flu, and it turns out Cosi has a sinus infection to boot.  But they are now well-medicated, and this morning Cosi even woke up and said with a surprised and happy voice, "I'm not sick anymore!"  She is still sick, just not as bad as before.
         Anyway, I (Rob) have one more video to post before the flu claims me as its next victim.  When your sick kids crawl into your bed at night and wake you up by coughing on your face, you kind of know how the next week is going to play out.  For more thoughts on dealing with sick kids, see my earlier post on that topic.
          As for the video, a few weeks ago Cosi found a few caterpillars in our yard and adopted one or two.  Sadly, the story doesn't end well for the caterpillars, but in this video we can really see Cosi's tender heart for living things.

Kids Videos- Fall 2012, part 2

Trey is sick, having picked up whatever it is that Cosi has been dealing with for the past week. At least she shared something with her brother, even if it was germs...
Anyway, sick kids means fewer videos. But here's one I finished yesterday. April mentioned in an earlier post how Trey loves his play grill.  Well, here's what that looks like.  It's three different scenes- one in which he shows off his spatula skills, one in which he got the idea to sprinkle (toy) mustard on his grilled food, and one in which he put actual food on his grill.  We haven't been able to get this on video yet, but Trey now likes to close the lid of his grill and say "Hot! Hot! Bloooow..."  For a little guy who hates warm weather, he sure does like to cook out!

Videos- Fall 2012, part 1

Time for a few more videos (it's amazing what Rob gets around to when he doesn't have homework!).  April says I shouldn't post them all at once- she gave me a "2 videos per day" limit.   Today's videos of choice are a delightful peek at Cosi and Trey's sleeping habits followed by a look at the conversation surrounding Cosi's efforts to kill a moth. You may notice that at one point,Cosi refers to herself as "Mary." She started  doing that after learning the Christmas story at school.  Trey is Joseph (or "Jophes," in Cosi's version),by the way, and her toy cat is Baby Jesus...

Cosi's Christmas Dance

This year at Christmas, it was finally time for us to experience that parental rite of passage- the Christmas Pageant.  In our case, the girls of the church rehearsed weekly to prepare a dance for this past Sunday night's Church Variety Show.  We really weren't sure what Cosi was going to do once she got on stage, we just knew we wanted it on video.

To motivate her to go to the rehearsals, at some point April suggested that, after she danced, her Daddy might give her flowers.  Wow, did that ever work well.  Cosi talked about it almost every day: "My Daddy's going to give me flowers!"  Here she is in her angel outfit, holding her flowers:

The really sweet thing is that during the rest of the evening, Cosi slowly gave away most of her flowers to the other kids.  She even tried running on stage to give them to a monkey puppet that was telling the story of Christmas (he politely refused).  The remaining flowers are in a vase on a shelf, and Cosi is allowed to smell them any time she wants to.

And here is the video of the dance.  Our favorite part is when she notices a microphone and tries to talk into it.  And no, she's not supposed to be in the front row- she's supposed to be in the middle row.  But no choreography can contain Cosi...

 

Late, but still thankful (our home)

I kept meaning to write about being thankful during the month of November. Here I am - only one month late, not bad! Today I will share with you a few pictures of our home.  We are very thankful for our home.  


Here's a picture of the living room, which has mainly functioned as a play room. You'll notice the lack of couches.  After 4 months without couches, we saved up enough $$$ to buy a couch and a loveseat.  These pics were taken before, so just picture the addition of 2 couches.

Rob is working hard at our table. I was probably looking at facebook. Speaking of which, I'm thankful for facebook!  It's a great way to keep in touch with people, especially if you live far away.  It's fun to look at for one minute or more than one minute.  And- I like the birthday messages.
 

It's official- the Edenfields own a piece of pottery barn furniture.  So, it was given to us for free, but it's ours!  I have never actually entered a pottery barn store, but I hear it's awesome.

Perhaps even better than pottery barn = our 2nd kitchen!  The kids love playing with this and we can thank the Nolls for passing it down to us :) 

This is Trey's favorite toy. I bought it at a yard sale.  He grills cookies everyday.  Sometimes he even sprinkles them with mustard or ketchup.

Here's a pic with a view of our front door and kitchen.  You might also notice our baby gate, which was our best purchase ever. It keeps the kids out of the kitchen, but I can still keep an eye on them through the door or cut out section of the wall. They're often crying/whining at the gate, so I don't have to look far.

Here's a close up of the baby gate and a glimpse into our kitchen.  Our landlord apologized for the small kitchen and I just laughed. It's the biggest kitchen I've used since we got married. Chinese homes are not known for having large kitchens.

Here's a better pic of the kitchen.  Look at my spider plant. It's still alive, which is more than I can say for the $25 worth of fresh herbs that I tried to grow.  

Now we jump to the day after Thanksgiving. We did a 5k on Thanksgiving, so we hosted a meal on Black Friday. We had already started to dish out the food when Rob decided to take a few pictures. On the menu  was a maple roasted turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, candied carrots, balsamic asparagus, maple bacon brussel sprouts (my favorite!), flax/wheat bread, roasted potatoes, etc.
 

I bought my plates at a yard sale.  The whole set was only $15.  They're square shaped and a variety of colors.  I love them.

If  I ever clean my house, I'll take pictures of the bedrooms.  But don't hold your breath- that will probably never happen. 

Eating Corn

My kids think corn is dessert. I'm willing to make corn everyday if it means I get to see this kind of cuteness.

Stationery card

Flourishes Of Joy Religious Christmas Card

Seasons greetings with personalized Christmas cards from Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Shingles- and why I'm thankful

I (Rob) found out this week that I have shingles.  It's almost exam week at seminary, term papers are due next week, I'm scheduled to speak at a Chinese church in Miami next week...great timing, body.

Shingles started with what I thought was a strained muscle in my back.  Then some tingling in my skin around that area and spreading to my armpit and chest.  Before we learned it was shingles, my thoughts for possible problems were:
*fast moving cancer (not unlikely, given my family history)
*heart disease (I always assume this is inevitable as I get older)
*kidney failure (because WebMD suggested it)
*spider bite (since moving to Florida, I've woken up TWICE in the middle of the night because a large roach crawled across me.  I killed both roaches.  If roaches are crawling on me at night, why not spiders?  And we have some BIG spiders in Florida.)

But then, very suddenly, the rash and bumps appeared, and I was able to rule out all of those except "spider bite," which then got ruled out by the doctor saying "you have a textbook case of shingles," which, for those of you that don't know about shingles, it's basically short for "What chicken pox does when it's been dormant in your body for decades and gets bored."

So compared to my fears, shingles isn't so bad, and I'm thankful for that.

Also, when researching shingles, I've realized that the only people who really write their personal medical experiences online are people who have horrible experiences.  Nobody writes "yeah, I had such-and-such illness and it was not as bad as I feared."  No, nobody with those experiences is motivated to write about it.  The stories you see online are: "I was in constant pain for 4 months." "I wanted to stab myself and cut off my skin."  "It was more painful than my broken tailbone."  And everyone who hears you have shingles shares the horror stories they've heard or experienced.   So I've been ready for the worst pain of my life.  Thankfully, that hasn't happened...yet.

But it is painful.  Very painful.  And itchy...burningly itchy.  And this will probably last several weeks.  I woke up today and the pain had risen to a new level.  It's hard to concentrate long enough to study, write papers, or work.  And the kids don't understand why I can't hold them or roughhouse with them, which makes things much harder for April, too.

So to sum up, I'm thankful that I don't have any of the things I feared at first, and I'm thankful that my case isn't as bad as it could be.  But I don't like having shingles.  And if anyone wants their kids to get chicken pox, send them over, I think I'm entering my contagious phase soon.

(Also, for the seriously twisted, I have pictures of the rash available upon request.)

Lizards

Florida has a lot of lizards.  My kids love lizards.

When Trey is upset, we'll call him over to the window to look at the lizards.  At any given time, we're likely to see 1 or 2 wandering around on the ledge.

Both of my kids like to catch the lizards.  Trey often succeeds only halfway (the tail half).  Funny how those little guys can detach their tail when presented with a dangerous situation.  Cosi fares a bit better.  Her problem is squeezing the lizards in excitement.   

Normally, I'm okay with all the lizard action.  Yesterday, I was not.

It all started when I (April) tried to get both the kids into the car.  As I was strapping Trey into his carseat, I saw Cosi dilly-dallying on the other side of the car.  I kept telling her to open the door of the car and get in.  Finally, she obeyed.  As she got in, I heard her saying "Oh - you're so cute.  I love you.  I'm so gentle."  I looked up to see her carefully cradling something in her hand, while stroking it (ever so softly) with the fingers of her opposite hand.

Yup - you guessed it.  She was holding a lizard, but this one was very dead.  It's body was partly dried out, enough that the guts sticking out the side of it's squished torso weren't all gooey.

After some minor freak-out on my part, lots of hand scrubbing, and a lesson on not picking up dead animals - we were back in the car and on our way!

More lizard stories to come...