**Update**

We went to the doctor today for a follow-up visit for Luke, and I just thought I would update everyone on how he is doing.  The doctor gave us a great report and said he obviously is looking much better, but his lungs sound much clearer as well.  The official radiology report came back about the xray of his lungs and it said he had pneumonia....glad we went ahead and started the antibiotics!  His body is clear of most of the hives except for a little on his legs.  We can actually go out in public without scaring people, yeah!!!  We talked some more about what might have made the hives appear and she said it could be a number of things with one of those things possibly being an allergic reaction to motrin.  The weekend before all of this happened he had a bad virus and high fever for 3 days so he got quite a bit of motrin.  The doctor said there is no way to tell for sure unless we give him motrin again and see how he responds (not my favorite idea) or we can run a test on him to see if he is allergic.  I plan on having them run the test when we go back for his 3 yr. well check.  Until then, we will just stay away from motrin!!  So....all and all....his body is doing great!!!  Now....his attitude....a different story!!!

I don't know if it is just the age or from being sick and getting away with a little more than usual, but he is giving me all kinds of grief!!  The second he doesn't get his way, about anything, he throws a HUGE fit.  One of many examples....he sat in time out yesterday screaming for an entire hour, before he would say "I'm sorry" to his brother for biting him.  We are back in a biting phase!   He is so strong willed and stubborn.  I have no idea where he got that from.....

I could go on and on with examples, but lets just say...please pray for my patience and pray for his attitude!!!!

Let's Go Jackets!

So this past weekend we spent the entire Saturday in Atlanta for the GT game.  Although it was a very long day with Luke not feeling good, GT won and that was a great end to the day!!  It was a very cold cloudy day, but we had lots of good food and friends to spend the day with!

Nana got the boys this cool Buzz hat, but Luke wasn't in the 

mood for it so only Cade wore it all day!  

A pretty good family pic minus the cold wind!!

The ladies warming up in the RV!

We finally found Buzz!!!  Cade thought about being scared, but he quickly got over it.  They were so excited to see him!!

GT has this crazy clown lady that paints the kids faces for free....Cade got a GT on his face.  Luke was not in the mood so he didn't want his face painted.  Cade was so proud of his GT!!

Luke was screaming for Buzz!

Coco finally got a good smile out of Luke...it was about the only smile we got all day.

What a Week!!

What started out like this....

A really bad cough and fever...

turned into this today!!!

So.....last weekend Luke started having a really bad cough and ran a fever all weekend.  We called the 24 hr nurse line and talked to them a couple times throughout the weekend to make sure we didn't need to take him in to be seen.  After talking through all of the symptoms, they said it sounded like he had croup and it would just kind of run its course and then be through....so that is what we thought it would do.....

By Monday he no longer had a fever, but still had a bad cough.  The nurse had said his barky, dry cough would eventually turn into a more congested cough and that is what happened so we thought he was getting better.

Throughout the week, Luke was still a little irritable but seemed to be getting better.  So we had a full weekend planned out and we had the boys running all weekend.  We spent the entire day in Atlanta Saturday for tailgating and then went to the Tech game that night. ( I will post pics of this later) Luke was ROUGH all day!! I was so frustrated because I didn't know why he was acting so irritable.  It got so bad that I had to leave the game early and take the boys back to the RV.  I just assumed Luke was tired and having a bad day.....

Sunday we woke up and decided just to take it easy since we had had such a long weekend.  By lunch time, Luke all of a sudden started breaking out into welps and hives all over his body. We again talked to the nurse and they said to give him benadryl and he would probably be fine....Well he wasn't.  He woke up this morning covered in hives....it was a VERY scary sight.  His face and hands were swollen and his whole body was red with welps.  Throughout my shaking and crying, I got an appt. and the Dr. saw him at 9:30 this morning.  2 hours later and I was told my baby had bronchitis or early pneumonia and the hives were a reaction to the viral infection he must have had the weekend before.  So they gave him a steroid shot and 2 medications...1 for the bronchitis and 1 for the hives rash.  Wow, I was not expecting all of that!! The Dr. said the rash could last for 2-4 weeks.....this is going to be a long month!!!  Hopefully all of this medicine kicks in soon and he will be looking and feeling better!!

(these pictures were a couple of hours after the steroid shot, he is already looking a little better!)

Isn't that pitiful!!

I was finally getting a little smile from him before naptime.....

Thank goodness Cade has not gotten sick through all of this and we will just pray that he doesn't!! For now, he is just being a very concerned brother. :)

Girlfriend!

Oh my goodness...Cade has a girlfriend and it is not me!! :(

So for the last week, I have constantly been hearing about someone named "Ally", but I had no idea who they were talking about.  Then this morning when I dropped the boys off for school, a little girl was walking in front of us and Luke pointed to her and said "It's Ally!!"  So I'm thinking okay I am going to have to ask their teachers about this Ally.  So as soon as I mentioned her name to the teachers, they immediately started chuckling and pointing to Cade.  Then they said "Oh yeah, that is Cade's girlfriend!!"  WHAT, he is only 2! Not yet!!  They said Cade always has to hold her hand when they walk to the playground and he won't hold anyone else's hand!  I couldn't believe it.  Part of me thought is was so cute and then part of me was sad because I thought mommy was suppose to be his "girlfriend" until at least kindergarten!!  I called and told Joe and of course he was proud of his boy!  Wow, they are growing up to fast!

Fair

On Saturday we headed to the fair with the rest of Cobb County to get free admission and free rides for an hour!!!  We got their at 9:45 and waited in a crazy line for them to open the park.  It was worth the wait though because the boys got to ride all of the kiddie rides for free!!

After riding several rides we came to the conclusion that Cade LOVES riding rides (just like his mother) and Luke just isn't that thrilled about it.  He hardly cracked a smile on any of the rides...just like his daddy!  It wasn't that he was scared, he just was not amused to go around and around in a circle on a dragon...or nemo...or a spacecraft...or anything!!  I can tell when they get older Cade and I will be heading to the fair or six flags while daddy and Luke head to the movies or something!!

I know you can't tell by looking at the picture, but the boys did love this slide! (click on the picture to enlarge and see their scared looking faces!)

They were very excited to be sitting on a big John Deere tractor!

Zoo

What beautiful weather we are having this week!! Yesterday was a perfect day to go to the zoo!

When we asked the boys what their favorite part of the day was, they said the elephants!  Luke kept saying "that elephant was dirty.  He got a bath!"

We got to watch them clean "Tara" the elephant and she did some tricks for us too.  Who knew elephants could do tricks!!

My favorite part of the day was the new Parakeet Exhibit they have.  They have an enclosed area with hundreds of parakeets flying around.

The boys were mesmerized watching all of the birds fly around!

You can buy a "stick of food" for $1 and the birds will land on the stick and peck off the food and peck your fingers a little too!

That poor zoo keeper was ready for us to leave this exhibit.  We had 3 2-year olds in there trying to chase a bunch of parakeets around while Corrie and I are chasing them around saying "BE GENTLE!!"

Of course no zoo visit is complete without riding the carousel and riding the train!

These boys have a great time together...and so do the moms!! :)

American Adventures

So my family from TN came down for a visit last weekend.  We had this trip planned for a few months and had the whole weekend planned out.  It just so happens that everything we had planned to do was outside.  Who knew that we would have a flood this very same weekend...

So when you have 5 children under the age of 5 in a house and it is pouring down rain outside....what do you do??  Of course you go on to American Adventures as planned and just cross your fingers that the rain will stop.  Well it didn't stop, but we spent last Saturday at American Adventures anyway.  We were not going to let a "little" rain ruin the plans we had for the day.  When we arrived, it was still pouring so we decided to start with the indoor activities first.  After about an hour, we looked outside and it was no longer pouring, just sprinkling.  So....we decided we would just go ride all of the rides in the rain.  The manger looked at us like we were crazy, but said ok.  He gave us our own personal guide who was awesome!!

His name was Shawn and he took us around to every ride and let us ride in the rain. (He even let Luke and Cade ride every ride even though they didn't come close to meeting the height requirements!!)  He became our buddy for the day and they kids were constantly screaming "hey shawn" from the rides!!  Yes we got soaked from head to toe and the poor kids were freezing by the end of it all...but we had a great time!!

Luke loved riding every ride!

My grandparents enjoyed watching us get soaked!

I love riding the scrambler and I thought for sure Cade would hate it and be scared, but he wasn't.  He loved it!!! The whole time he was screaming "we are going fast!!"

What love!

The adults enjoyed all of the rides as much....or more than the kids!

After all of the fun riding, we went back in and played for a while hoping we would sorta dry off.  Then it was time for lunch, but this was a problem.  We packed lunches and a cooler for everyone so we wouldn't have to eat there, but we had no where to go sit and eat our lunch.  We weren't allowed to bring it inside and it was still raining outside. So....after a few different ideas, Laressa spotted a gazebo across the parking lot. (It is actually the entrance to White Water)  It looked like the perfect dry place to eat our lunch.  So we backed the car up to the gazebo, pulled out the camp chairs and ate lunch!! 

So the moral of the story is to not let a little rain ruin your day!! We had a great time playing in the rain!