Nate - Makenna's Senior Prom

Nathan and his "not my girlfriend", Makenna, went to her Senior Prom for Mountain Pointe High School. They were both very excited to get all dressed up, meet their friends for dinner at PF Chang's, jump in the limo, and head to the dance. They looked so beautiful and handsome and both of us mom's were clicking our cameras the whole time.

Marshel's 9th birthday party - Rained out!

Marshel wanted a pool party so bad, so since the pool is open, we thought this was a great idea. Of course, the morning of the party, it was raining and cold. So, we made a quick change and headed to McDonalds. The kids enjoyed a Happy Meal and a great cake. They played with each other and had a great time, while we parents supervised and visited with each other. He kept asking to open his presents and was so excited when he received a new baseball bat and ball, and a batting helmet. He also received a super soaker water gun, Zhu Zhu pet, and Legos. His favorite part was having his face smashed into the cake. It was a fun party.

This is video of Marshel blowing the blue frosting out of his nose after putting his face in the cake. We laughed so hard!

Rachel's Sweet 16 - Black and White Theme

We spent the day of Rachel's party cleaning the house up, rearranging furniture to create a dance floor, making a ton of food and decorating with black and white balloons all over the floor, black and white plates, cutlery, napkins and serving dishes. We also had a cute banner that had 16's all over it and tissue paper everywhere. We had meatballs, cheeseball and crackers, cheese cubes and pepperoni slices, oreos and chocolate chip cookies, and the drink was the hit of the night - orange sherbet with sprite in it. We asked everyone to dress in Black and White. Rachel's favorite person at the party was her awesome brother, Nate. Nathan planned for 2 weeks which cake to make for Rachel's party. He made the cake from scratch, made his own fondant, designed the cake, and then was so excited to deliver and present the cake to Rachel right in the middle of the party. It was a great moment.

The night was full of food, music and dancing. There were about 20 kids at the party (80% boys, of course) and they had a great time. Rachel got a cute zebra stuffed animal from Jack, the foreign exchange student from Italy. She got a pedicure and nail design from Mom with $25 cash. Michael sent Rachel a sweet note which made Rachel cry, since she misses him so much, as well as $25. We had a good time and she said it was the best party she ever had.

It's all about Michael

We haven't had much to tell about Mike for awhile. At the beginning of the year, he and his ship went underway, headed to Thailand, Singapore and the Phillipines. He was excited as they only get to Thailand once a year and he's never been to Singapore. He also was pretty excited to tell us that he has been moved from the boring pump room, where he was testing fuel, onto the flight deck where he actually fuels the birds. So far, he has fueled a harrier and 2 60s (helicopters). And just to make sure to keep mom a little nervous, he tells us he was behind a harrier as it was turning around and it was really hot and blowing strong winds. He says "it's not strong enough at that distance to blow you away, but its still very hot and it makes your clothes ripple in the wind."

In the next email, he jokingly (maybe) says, I'm going to let it blow me off the deck just so my suit can inflate and then they'll pick me up. I told him - unless the sharks get you first.

Moving on, while in Thailand, he bought himself a nice suit, had a Thai massage - he got offered the full massage, but turned it down thankfully. He rode an elephant, played with a monkey, bought some DVDs and video games. He also ate fried bugs - scorpions, grasshoppers, beetles, meal worms. He said there was no breading on them, they were just fried with garlic. He did pass on the large hissing beetles, since they just looked creepy.

What an adventure! Now that he's in Singapore, we'll have to see what he does there. More to come!

Kellee's bout with RSV

Kellee started out with what seemed like a cold - runny nose, low fever. In 2 days, that changed to high fever, coughing, headache, no energy. So, we took her to Urgent Care for some better meds. By this time, she had a temp of 105 and her pulse oxygen was down to 90. After a breathing treatment, it came up, but then went right back down. They took xrays of her chest, looking for pneumonia - nothing. They did a flu test - negative. They determined that she was not stable and sent her to the ER, not by car, by ambulance.

We were at Methodist Children's ER for about 9 hours, more xrays, blood tests, IV fluids because she was dehydrated, breathing treatments. The final diagnosis was RSV or Bronchiolitis. After some steroids, we finally got to bring her home. She has to take steroids for a month and we just have to watch and wait. She's out of school for the rest of the week. She is feeling much better now, but still coughing. It was a little scary for a bit there, but I'm just so glad the nurses and doctor at Urgent Care were paying attention and didn't just send her home with a prescription.

She wanted a picture of her glowing finger - this was the pulse Ox meter. ET - PHONE HOME!

This is Kellee in her fun little hospital bed at the ER. She had more wires hooked up to her than her dad's computer room. It was crazy!

The latest on Michael

Michael's got a girlfriend! And it seems pretty serious! Her name is Tomomi. She lives in Japan and Mike sees her quite a bit. He went home with her for Christmas and met the family. The family took him to an Onsen ( a public bath). Women and men are separated in the baths, but they are naked. Yep, Mike went traditional and said it was a little uncomfortable at first, but then he just went with the flow. He said the family is really nice and he got along really well with them.

Mike also stayed at one of the capsule hotels that are well-known in Japan. It's just a small capsule with a bed. There's a pull-down TV above the bed. The bathrooms are shared. Interesting!

Mike is heading out to sea for several months, so we won't hear too much from him until he gets back, but he wants everyone to know he's happy and healthy and in love. We miss him so much and hope to see him sometime in 2010.

Nate gets punked - or should we say "Pinked"!

Nate is so popular and has so many friends that love him that he was left with a wonderful gift this morning. During the night, someone was able to get the key to Nate's car and spent some time decorating it. To top it off, it rained early this morning, just a light drizzle. Nate's car was filled with pink balloons (one of them had his key inside), covered with oreos, had a Princess decoration hanging from the rear view mirror and also had some lovely sentiments written in pink on the windows: I love Jacob Black and I Heart Boys Who Sparkle! The others had washed off, but the point was taken. The best part is that Nate went to the drive through and it did nothing. So, now he's driving around in a polka dot car - it's so cute!

Although Nate was annoyed by the whole incident - he couldn't help but grin about it, b/c he knew it was funny. He'll laugh about it in the future.