Ready or not, it is AUGUST!

Yes, August has arrived. The time of year where I have some sad feelings of summer ending... but dare I say I will enjoy some 'me' time when kids go to school? ;)

Brock continues to keep me on my toes and most recently he decided to educate me with the field of Ophthalmology. It is nothing new for Brock to poke and rub his eyes. It is likely a lack of vision/self-stim kinda thing for him. However, I didn't notice that his malformed nail on his left hand had become extremely sharp! He chews on that thumbnail and created a forked, snake-tongue like point. That kind of nail doesn't do well in the eyeball, let me tell you. I didn't actually see him scratch his eye, but saw him rubbing it and upon inspection I saw a scratch! Gross! He didn't really seem bothered by it, but I put Visine drops in. Then later found antibiotic eye drops to give him. Days later his eye became very red, irritated and even swollen and matted shut one morning. Ewwww. I know! I took him to the pediatrician and she diagnosed a corneal abrasion and prescribed Erythromycin gel to place in Brock's eye. More Ewwwwwww! Would you like Vaseline in your eye? Brock certainly did NOT enjoy it and became very angry when I applied it 4-5 times a day. By the end of that week, Brock's eye was still so red and the lids were puffy. I couldn't go into the weekend like that. I called 3 different Ophthalmologists before I could get Brock in, but finally found a great Dr. up in Galesburg who took a lot of time thoroughly examining Brock's eye. The good news is that the corneal abrasion was healing nicely. All the redness wasn't infection, but rather irritation. The Dr. actually thought the Erythromycin gel was causing more harm than good! So...... stop the gel, go back to antibiotic eye drops.
Ok.
The update on the eyes is good. However, Brock must be dealing with allergies or something because BOTH of his eyes seem to be itchy and irritated. He keeps rubbing them. You can rest assure that all fingernails are short and filed smooth! I may need to get some allergy drops??
So, moving on to a lighter note..... We took a quick, very spontaneous vacation! Jason spent most of last week in St. Louis for meetings, but came home and suggested we "go somewhere." We tossed around some ideas, then I came up with Grizzly Jack's Grand Bear Resort in Utica, IL. It was great! The kids had a ball!!! We drove up Friday, late afternoon and had some fun. Then stayed overnight and had ALL day Saturday to play more. The resort had fireworks that night, so we stayed for that then drove home. The girls fell asleep as soon as we hit the road. Less than 2.5 hrs later, as we pulled into our garage, I said, "We're HOME!" In a sleepy voice, Avery said, "man, that was quick!" HA! Kids.......
I'm trying to embed a slide show to this blog post so that you can see all the fun stuff we got to do on our trip. There was an indoor water park, an indoor carnival place, miniature golf, some bouncy/climbing things, AND a HUMONGOUS inflatable wet slide! Avery went first. It was like climbing Mt. Everest for my short-legged gals! Then, she sat on an inner tube and slid down, down, down, oops---she tipped over! I gasped, but she was fine and crawled to the end and exited. The bystanders clapped for her! My thought was that she would be traumatized, but nope---she asked if she could try it again?!?!! When it was Cora's turn, she climbed and climbed, all the way to the top. However, when she peered down at me she chickened out! LOL! She had to walk down the steps..... The next day, she was determined to try it again. She made the climb and actually went down----the look of fear all over her face....until she hit the bottom. When it was over, she was all smiles. But---she didn't think she wanted to try it a second time. Avery, went 2 more times that second day and would have done more if the line wasn't so long. :)
I think I may have this slide show thing working, but I've run out of time and the pics are still all out of order. Sorry!