Barking seals and rocking unicorns

It has been a somewhat eventful weekend - but that is not always a good thing. Friday we drove down to Oceanside (south of Pendleton) because Joe's immediate supervisor had a BBQ for his training team. I could not believe how nervous I was to meet his "coworkers". I have met his immediate supervisor before but this event included his big boss, and his boss's boss, not to mention all the trainers who mostly work together every day down at Pendleton while Joe is all by his lonesome up here. Except for drive (3 hours in the rain) we had a really good time. All of his coworkers and bosses are super nice (and all former Marines themselves) and the kids had a blast with their kids. Of course, our kids were the youngest and at one point when I went to go check on Jake who was watching about 5 other kids (all between 5-8) play video games, I found he had been banished from the bed for jumping on it and messing up the covers. The kids asked me if Jake was my child and how old he was. I replied that he was only 3 and they said he had told them he was 5. I guess he wanted to fit in. LOL!

On the way home we made a few stops (as we usually do when in civilization) including Toys R Us because I needed to return something. Well it turns out, you really cannot go in a toy store with a dad and two kids and come out empty handed. Jadyn found this adorable plush rocking unicorn and I sat her on it to see how she liked it. After playing and rocking on it for SEVERAL minutes, I told her it was time to go find Joe and Jake (who were looking at race cars, of course) and she proceeded to drag the unicorn along with her. So, we ended up getting that for her, a new hot wheel track for Jake and we even managed to sneek in a small easter gift and one of Jake's birthday presents too. Quite the shopping exerpience!


Saturday was uneventful enough until Jake woke up after only being in bed for an hour with the tell-tale cough of a barking seal. Sure enough, out of nowhere it seems, Jake has croup. We had a VERY rough night. The stridor alone was enough to make me cry and I came very close to throwing him in the car and taking him to the ER. But, we have a rescue inhaler that his doc has prescribed last spring when we were trying to determine if he had asthma or not so Joe helped calm him down and adminster that, as well as fetching both humidifiers from the garage and a dose of Tylenol as he was burning up. He was able to sleep okay after that but of course I did not sleep so well, constantly waking to check on him. He woke this morning bright eyed and bushy tailed but hoarse as ever and exclaimed, "Mamma it's morning. I am sick - I so hot and it is is hard to talk". Jadyn, who was sound asleep in her crib through all of this, never heard Jake coughing so when he woke from his nap this afternoon he started with the barking cough again. I was in the other room folding laundry, but I could hear that every time he coughed, Jadyn would laugh. We are not talking giggle but full blown laughing. Seems she thought he sounded funny and was doing it intentionally, which was pretty cute. She soon seemed to realize however, that he was sick and started asking him if he was okay. Luckily, the cough seems to subside once he has been up for a little while. Now it is just a matter of whether Jadyn will get sick too.


In the meantime, here is a picture of Jadyn on her new "horsey". We have not tried to explain to her yet that it is actually a unicorn:




I also had to share this picture of the kids that Joe took while I was out getting my license renewed on my birthday. I came home and found them sitting like this on the couch together watching an episode of Go Diego Go and eating their afternoon snack:
I had a really nice quiet birthday by the way. We ordered pizza from a great New York style place in town and Joe got me a bouquet of stargazer lillies and my favorite ice cream (Ben and Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk) instead of the requiste cake. I have not splurged on such decadent fare since going on the South Beach diet last October (from which I have lost 15 pounds, pat myself on the back). I guess now that I have finally admitted my victory, I am going to be held accountable to keep the weight off. LOL!