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!

Sneak Preview

Introducing Sophie Brown as Taylor Swift!

This Halloween, Sophie had her heart set on being Taylor Swift. I spent some time watching Taylor vieos and googling "Taylor Swift Fashion" for my ideas. I feel pretty good about this costume. I'm thinking that Sophie and Daddy will need to make a more sparkly guitar before Halloween. Just 10 minutes carrying this guitar around and she has banged it on more things than you could imagine! (It's our guitar for guitar hero.) I found the wig at a local Halloween shop. The bracelets and earings (not shown) are from the dollar rack at target. Her boots are part of her winter wardrobe. I actually found this dress on clearance at Macy's. Aiden and I shopped all afternoon for a "Taylor Swift Dress"!!! It's a size too big, but maybe by next summer she'll be able to wear it to church! Sophie gets to wear some big girl makeup this year for Halloween. She's super excited. We went ahead and tried on the makeup too and I caught a small glimpse of the future. I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet!

Pumpkin Patch

I took the kids for a quick trip to Wichita to see Gramma and Papa. Gramma and Papa were supposed to come and see us, but Gramma's back isn't doing so well and she didn't think she could make the trip, so I decided to take the kids up there. While we were there, Papa and I took the kids to Walter's Pumpkin Patch. It was a beautiful day and not pumpkin patch weather at all! We have been able to take the kids to Walter's Pumpkin Patch every year for the last 6 years expect for one. I'll have to post pics from every year so we can see how much they changed every year! The kids also got to go see Grammy. She took them to the Renaissance Fair where they got their faces painted and got plenty of goodies! It was a long drive alone with the kids, but I'd have to say it was worth it! We didn't get to see everyone we really would have liked to see, and for those of you we didn't get to see (especially Grandpa Charlie and Grandma Dana), we'll be back in town in December!

It's been a while since I have posted and there have even been some things before my last post that I wanted to share with you all.

Travis and Aiden put a model car together. Aiden had a fun time helping Daddy build the car and an even better time painting it. He doesn't really understand that model cars are not really to play with, so he has been playing with it, and of course, it's fallen apart a little!

Sophie used some of her allowance money to buy a miniature tea set that she got to paint. She's our artist and absolutely loved painting this tea set!

We took the kids bowling in August. They've been once before but they were too young to remember it. They had a lot of fun. We had the bumpers up and you wouldn't believe (or maybe you would) that Sophie, Aiden and I all got about the same score. Daddy did a little better than the rest of us. These are a couple pics of the kids bowling.

Aiden needed a little help to get the ball rolling!

Sophie bowled without any help.

A group effort!

Aiden had a little accident at daycare a few weeks ago, where some little kid threw a block at him and gave him a nice little gash under his eye and a pretty nice shiner. It also got him a trip to the ER to see if he needed stitches. We were both relieved to find out that he didn't need stitches. It has healed up pretty nicely, but there is still a small scar there. No he and Sissy have matching scars on their left cheeks!

School Pictures

This is Sophie's kindergarten picture. It's the first of many school pictures for us. She got to pick the purple background to go with her purple dress. School pictures... it makes her seem like such a big girl. I guess that's because she is!