St. John's Auction Night

I teach at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic School which is connected to the Parrish, St. John the Baptist, Catholic Church.....anyway, the parrish has an annual auction that benefits the school. It's our major fundraiser for the year. I didn't get to go last year so this was my first year. It was so fun!!! There was dinner, silent auction, live auction and dancing! I ACTUALLY DANCED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 3 YEARS!!! It was so liberating!!! I'm finally getting better!!! Anyway, at this auction, dinner with the priests went for around $10,000. One set of parents bought their child the honor of principal for the day for around $1500.00. No expense is spared at this place! It was a fun time for Travis and I to get dressed up and go out by ourselves and be with friends. We also had fun bidding on some silent auction stuff too. Each class creates something to put in the silent auction. Carter's 'Extended Day Pre-K' class put their hand prints on this huge serving plate. It was sooo cute, I just had to have it! Travis had his eye on the OSU football signed by Mike Gundy. There were a couple other things but these were the ones we won! I don't have a pic of the Ft. ball 'cause it went straight to the office to be on display. But below is a pic of my wonderful plate! I'm not sure when we'll be able to use it and I have no where to display it...it's huge and heavy, so right now it sits in the middle of the dining room table where we get to see it everyday! Carter's handprint is the blue one on the left-hand side. I'm so glad to have this neat memory and be able to help out the school at the same time!

The Singin' Machine!!!

Carter has such a great music teacher this year! Don't know where she came from, but he sure likes her! And he's singing more and more! I'm so excited!!! Finally!!! I asked him which 'specials' teacher he liked the best, he said his PE teacher. I'm a little hurt, but that's okay. He LOVES his mommy and I love having him in class...though I wasn't too sure in the beginning! Here are a few songs that Carter learned in music class and the last one, he learned in his Pre-K class. He loves to sing!!! Yea!!!

"What A Mighty God We Serve"

"Alleluia" (Gotta LOVE the facial expressions!!!)

"Ants In My Pants"

"The Ants Go Marching"

I was so excited to see that he remembered all the dancing for "Ants In My Pants". It goes fast and slow and then we all put our hands up in the air during the high part...then we all sit when "the red one's bite cha". What a proud Momma and teacher!!!

Band-Aid Picture Day

I feel like I've been out of the loop a bit. We moved 3 weeks ago and since before then, I haven't posted anything. Here's a little something to laugh at. The night before Carter's big picture day, he slipped and fell...scraping his temple on a Transformer...just our luck!!! I was asleep when he came to me with 3 scratches on the side of his face. The middle one actually took some skin off. Anyway, through all the drama, I put on medicine, and found that a regular band-aid was too small. All I had was this huge thing to put on the side of his face. I stuck it to his hair and everything...Truthfully...I just wanted to get back to sleep.

I had forgotten about picture day the next day and when we woke up and realized it, I tried to take off the monstrosity. You would think that I was killing him. I decided to get him dressed anyway and thought that maybe I'd have the opportunity to take it off at school before the pic. For pictures, they have to wear their dress uniforms. He looked soooo precious, I just had to take a pic of my own. I found him 2 times at school and tried to rip it off...no such luck. Miss Nan, his teacher, tried too. He ended up not getting to take a picture because I wasn't going to pay for a band-aid picture. We got home that night and Travis and I decided to wait until he was asleep and then yank it off...well...that didn't work either. He immediately woke up and started screaming. I ended up wrapping my arms and legs around him to hold him down and Travis ripped the band-aid off.

The moral of the story is...sometimes band-aids may make your kid feel better in the moment...but, not the next day when you have to rip hair out to get it off...

Anyway, he is by far scarred for life and I swear that the scratch was bigger when I put the giant band-aid on. After we took it off, 2 of the 3 scratches had vanished and the big one...wasn't that big after all..............my life..............thank goodness for picture make-up day!!!

Singing and Playing the Harmonica

Carter has been really excited about singing lately. I'm not talking about the singing he did earlier for school. This time he sings his own things and has just started putting this vibrata in that makes me laugh!!! I had to get it on video to share! He also LOVES to play the harmonica. We can only stand a few minutes a day but that's enough for him to do pretty well. I love that he plays a bit and makes sure to resolve it to the tonic...sorry, music teacher talk...he ends it well. Maybe he'll be my little performer!!! On a side note...Carter and I were driving home from school a few days ago and he says, "Mommy, sing for me." I said, "Okay, what do you want me to sing?" He sang 'la' up really high with vibrato. I mimicked him. He said, "Wow, you're pretty good at that!" I said, "Really? Well, thank you." He said, "You need to teach that on TV on channel 6." I just said thank you and died laughing! What a sweet boy!!!

Surgeries leave scars

WARNING!!! GRAPHIC PICS...

This picture is of my right side where they took the bone graft from my upper hip bone. I didn't realize it would be so high up on my side. My pants hit me right in that spot so it's been 'fun' trying to adjust my pants so that it doesn't hurt. I'm hoping this scar tightens up a bit...it's pretty ugly looking!

My first scar from my 2nd surgery (scar #1) was 9 in. long down the side of my leg. For my latest surgery my Doc used what he could of the old scar and then veered off to the left to make this scar 12 in. (scar #2)
I couldn't really get it all in one pic so here's the rest of the pic above...
This pic shows the bottom of the long scar and a little one down by my knee. After taking out the plate and screws that didn't adhere to my bone, he put a long rod thru the center of my femur from my hip to my knee. There is a screw to hold it in place down by my knee (pic below) and a huge (it looked huge on the xray) thru the top of my femur and into the ball of my joint.l
Taking pictures is the best way I know how to explain what I've been thru the past few years. This time I had 38 staples to be removed. Hopefully this is the last one! I feel better and have less pain now than I did all year last year. Thank you to everyone who said prayers and remembered me in their thoughts. I have a long road of rehab ahead but I know that I will make it thru this!!!