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Family

We got to Spend Thanksgiving with Travis' family in Springfield this year. While we were there, we got to take some family pics (minus Steve who had to stay home and work.) I got to use my new tripod I got for my birthday for the first time!

Signs

Sophie is into making signs. These are a few of the signs I have found around the house lately.

This is on her bedroom door... her Christmas decoration!!!

"Do not come in if you put little stuff in your mouth."
Also on her bedroom door. Apparently, she is worried that someone will choke on one of the 10,000 beads that she got for her birthday.

"I love Aiden a lot."
This was hanging on the front door so Aiden would see it when she got home.

"Do not flush toylit."
This note was written on a piece of toilet paper. Our shower is leaking, so Daddy put a note on the shower not to use it. Apparently she thought we shouldn't use the toilet either! She is such a goofball! Oh, well. I love my goofball, and we learned the correct way to spell toilet!

Happy Birthday

November is Birthday month for our family. This year we made last minute plans to go home to Wichita to celebrate the kids' birthdays, and then at the very last minute, had to cancel our last-minute plans because we all ended up with the flu. Everyone was so disappointed that we didn't get to go home and see our family. For some of you, it's been a very long time since we've seen you! Aiden turned 4 this year and is very excited that he is four. When people ask him how old he is he holds up his fingers and says, "I'm one- two- three- four!" Sophie is super excited to be six and when she realized that she would be seven next year, she nearly cried from excitement. We continually have to remind her not to wish away her childhood. We all know you'll never be able to go back!

Sophie and I had the flu on Aiden's birthday, so I had to purchase Aiden's cake this year. He was fine with it because he got blue icing!

The cake wasn't very good, but it looks like Aiden liked it!

Aiden wore his halloween costume all day on his birthday. Here he is showing us how old he is!

Aiden got a super fast race track with a "loopy loop"!

I made an angel food cake with pink icing for Sophie's birthday. She enjoyed it!

Six candles is a lot to blow out! Sophie got a pet fish for her birthday, that I failed to take a picture of. She named it Purple and surprisingly, it is still alive!

I wanted to thank everyone who mailed birthday gifts and cards to the kids. The continual packages that showed up at our house were so much fun for them. We were all so disappointed not to be able to have a party and to get to see our family our their birthdays. It sometiems feels like the party is more for me than them! Even though we didn't get to party with our friends and family, you still managed to make their birthdays special! Thanks!

The Brown Family Swine Flu Halloween Extravaganza!!!

As you all know, we have had our wonderful bout with the Swine flu this week. Sophie seemed to be recovering and without a fever for almost 2 days, but tonight is was back up to 100.7. I'm feeling just ok, I haven't been plagued with a high fever, just tightness in my chest, a little bit of a cough and terrible body aches and fatigue. So far, the boys haven't shown any symptoms. We know that there's still time for them to come down with the flu, but are certain that your prayers are totally working!!!

We decided that we should have our Halloween at home this year. Even though the guys don't have the flu (yet) and Sophie had been fever-free for nearly 48 hours, we didn't want to risk exposing our friends at the Fall Festival at church where we usually go on Halloween. I have read that this flu is contagious starting about 24 hours before you get symptoms. We just didn't want to risk infecting our friends!

With that said, this is how our evening went:

Aiden was a very proud Lightning McQueen. He has been looking forward to this for quite some time. I'm certain he'll be wearing this costume as much as possible!
(You already saw the pics of Sophie as Taylor Swift.)

We trick-or-treated indoors with a candy hunt. Daddy and I hid candy. They found the candy pretty quickly, because there's just not that many places to hid candy in my living room. Daddy thought my slippers were a dangerous place to hide candy!

Next we had a "Mummy Wrap." The above picture is the kids playing "Rock-Paper-Scissors" to see who got to go first.

Sophie decided that she didn't want to be a mummy, so we decided that Daddy would make a great mummy!

Aiden got piled up in the extra toilet paper. This really was an inexpensive game. It took only 1 4-roll package of toilet paper, which was less than $1 at Aldi.

Next, we bobbed for apples. This was Aiden's favorite part of the evening. We let him go first, since he was healthy. Sophie and I were last. We also got a really cheap bag of apples at Aldi and made sure they were small enough for the kids to be able to grab. The water was super shallow, but we still got all wet!

Aiden got an apple on the first try, which surprised us all because the kid has no front teeth! He wanted several turns. He thought this game was great!

Sophie tried and tried, but didn't want to get her face in the water. Eventually, she went and got her swimming goggles. They didn't help.

Aiden made sure that Daddy did it right!

Even with as bad as my TMJ is, I was still able to get a small bite out of this apple!

We ended up the evening with a family game of Sorry! Aiden quit after about 10 minutes. I think the game was a little too slow-paced for him. We didn't finish the game, but called Sophie the winner. I have to say, this is a Halloween we will not soon forget!

It's here....

That's right! H1N1 has made it's way to our home. Sophie came down with a high fever and a cough on Tuesday evening. She was still running a high temp on Wednesday morning when she got up and just looked awful, so we took her in to the doctor. They swabbed her, and sure enough, it's the flu. Up until this morning, I have only been able to get her temp down to 101.4 with Motrin and Tylenol on board! Wow! That's a stubborn fever! This morning, however, she got up and said she was feeling a little better, her temp is right around 100, so I'm hoping that she'll be completely fever free by tomorrow morning so she can get dressed up for Halloween! (Don't worry, church friends, we won't bring our flu to share!)

Now we just have to worry about Aiden (and of course Travis and I). She's contagious until the fever's gone and the incubation period is 1-4 days with this thing, so I'm hoping we'll know if he's going to get it hopefully by Tuesday. We tested Sophie just so we could know and I would be able to call for a prescription for Tamiflu for Aiden if he starts getting sick. I have stocked up on all of his asthma meds... we are ready!

I spent yesterday evening planning how we could "Trick or Treat" at home. As some of you know, Halloween doesn't have a very good track record in our family! We've been sick twice and one of the Halloweens I was in labor with Aiden! Let's not go for a third! If we have to "Trick or Treat" at home this year, I'll post a bunch of pics!

This whole thing might just ruin our b-day party plans. We were planning on going to see family next weekend, but they of course don't want us to bring the flu with us! Be praying that none of us get the flu so we can see our family and the kids can have a b-day this year!

Please be praying for our family. It looks like Sophie is going to make it through quickly, but if Aiden gets it, it could be a lot worse. His asthma and the pneumonia he had in April, make him at risk for more serious complications.

Book It

I don't know if you remember doing "Book It," but I do. Well, now it's Sophie's turn. She easily reads 7 books a month because she reads a book to Aiden nearly every night before she goes to bed, so this will be easy pizza! Tonight, as I was going over her "Bee Book" (her binder for school that holds all her important stuff), I came across a little addition that she had made to her Book It list. Apparently, she thought I had missed her most important reading! I hope you find this as funny as Travis and I did!