Has totally been what our day has been like today.  Just enough time to grab a shower, feed and dress Miss Erica before heading out the door for the entire day.

We had to go pick up a couple things from Walgreen’s first, swing past the airport to see Eric’s Mom and then off to the Doctor’s office to get her to fill out Erica’s form to have an Epi Pen at school.  If we didn’t have to go to the nurse’s office, we would have just barely made it to preschool on time.  But we braved the front entrance to Staley High, through the front office, then to the nurse’s office and back downstairs to the preschool.  Erica ended up being about 10 minutes late. 

The nurse happened to not be in her office (her assistant was), but she was down in the preschool class.  Which was great as we were not going to leave Erica in class without checking with her to make sure we had everything in order.  The nurse had her end of the Emergency plan in place, we had Erica’s Epi Pen and her signed note from the Doctor’s office.  Everything was in order, so it looks like we shouldn’t have anymore issues from here out.  Talk about a frustrating rushed emotional roller coaster.

I understand they are trying to protect her, but this was something we’ve been very open about and we didn’t know we had to have any of these things.  I think a ball just happened to be dropped somewhere and there was a gap in communication.  And it wasn’t handled in the most tactful way.  But I’m putting it behind me and I hope there is never a need for her to have her emergency plan in place with her EpiPen locked up in the classroom just in case.

After we dropped little Miss off at school and had everything straightened out.  Eric and I flew over to Meyer Music to pick up some things that Ally needed to have for Orchestra in the morning and check the mail over at the other house.  Then it was time to come back over this direction, check our mail, grab the older two as they got off the bus, go pick up Erica and head for the bank. 

We had exactly 1 1/2 hours to run to the bank, Staples (for MORE school supplies!) and to Walmart before having to get Ally to her horse riding lessons.  We didn’t have enough time to drop Jackie, Erica and I off at home so we went out there with her.  After arriving and quickly remembering all the dogs and seeing a couple of cats hanging around all the horses, I realized I had absolutely no Benadryl in my purse for Erica and didn’t want to risk anything (last time she was around a dog, her face swelled up), so she watched a movie in the car while I half took a nap.

After lessons were over we found our way back into Liberty and ate Corner Cafe for dinner.  I was shocked it wasn’t more crowded tonight.  Had my favoritest – Chicken Fried Chicken, and lots of good family laughter was shared over dinner.  I laughed so hard I thought I was going to bust a rib.

They almost had to wheel us out though by the time we were done eating.  They give you way too much yummy food.  But I still had to go to Walgreen’s to try and find Children’s Benadryl in chewable pills for the preschool to have on hand for Erica.  I had looked at Walmart and thought for sure they would have them at Walgreen’s.  No such luck.  Did they stop making them.  So I had to settle for the pre measured liquid.  Hoping that if she has to take it at school, she will just be brave and take it.  She hates the liquid medicines.

And of course we were out of breakfast foods and Shatto milks for the girls, and Erica was in charge of snack for tomorrow, so I had to stop at Sunfresh and make a run through there.  So of course the back of the car was full of stuff that had to be put away when we got home.  And as the girls hadn’t had a chance to even walk in the front door, they had homework to do, and I needed to make sure Ally had everything she needed for Orchestra together.

So Eric helped Ally a little bit with her math, I helped Jackie a little bit with her science, Erica and I found Ally’s shoulder rest and now I finally get to sit down and relax!  Thank goodness I have nothing planned for tomorrow!  I probably should hit the grocery store again tomorrow.  I need to get snacks and drinks, we are feeding the missionaries dinner Friday evening, and I have some other basic grocery stuff that I need to get that I didn’t have time to even think about while I was there tonight.

Boy am I ever beat right now though.  It’s days like these though that make me never want to walk out my front door for a good couple of days.  And did I mention my tooth is still bothering me from my procedure last Friday?  I wonder if I should be concerned about that?

My good friend, the talented Vickie Durington is holding a workshop in November!  It is an awesome deal.  You do 12 2-page layouts for $120!  That breaks down to just $10 a layout!  Unbelievable!  And the layouts that I’ve seen so far are just out of this world!  And I happen to know most of the pieces will be precut for you!

You have to go check out her blog to see what she has already designed for it!

So Eric took Erica to school today and the teacher casually hands him a form and tells him that we need to have the Doctor fill it out and fax it to the nurse in the near future.  It has to do with her nut allergy and need to have an Epi Pen on hand for just in case.  So he goes back to school to pick her up as scheduled and the Staley High School nurse comes out and says to Eric, “She shouldn’t have been her today OR yesterday.” 

Are you serious?  The first words out of her mouth.  From Eric’s perspective the conversation just continued to go down hill from there.  Almost accusatory like we were trying to sneak her into school and hide her allergies from them.  Seriously?  Like I didn’t point it out on every single flipping form that I filled out.  Like I didn’t talk about it when I was considering it when I was considering their Preschool program!  But apparently we are not allowed to bring her back to school which we are paying for monthly until she is able to make an emergency plan for her.  And she will be contacting us within the next couple of days with some questions.

So Eric comes home furious.  I’m totally confused and frustrated.  So after a couple of phone calls, I find out that this is a substitute nurse and she was told that the preschool wasn’t starting for another week.  And hopefully after we take Erica to the doctor in the morning and get her form filled out we SHOULD be able to return it to the school nurse and Erica will be allowed to come back to school.  I understand they are just trying to cover themselves and protect Erica, but come on.  It was a difficult enough decision as it was to decide to allow her to go to preschool.  And then this!  This should have all been addressed when we enrolled her.  Or last week when we went for Orientation. 

Thankfully Jackie, Ally and Erica had Enrichment to go to tonight.  It was a Hawaiian Luau theme.  Good food, great people, fun and a service project too.  This is the one that I posted about awhile back about the bags of necessities for the foster children.  With my experience I was asked if I would talk about it.  I agreed forgetting that I am definitely not a public speaker, but hoped that maybe it might help in some way.  I got up in front of everyone and the nerves and the emotions got the best of me.  I told Eric later that I felt like I was babbling incoherently.  I really hope it didn’t come across that way to everyone else.

Alas, I am home and we are again in front of the Olympics.  I have mixed feeling about how we watch them.  We of course have it all DVR’d.  So we really just sit here while Eric fast forwards through everything until it’s USA and it’s almost the end of a game.  It’s kind of frustrating in some way.  If I’m going to watch them, I want to watch them.  But then think of how much time he’s saving me.  Right? 

I was totally unprepared for the tears this morning when Jackie and Ally got on the school bus.  I figured if there were going to be any with those two it was going to be this last Friday when Ally started school.  But as the bus pulled away with both my oldest daughters I wanted to drive after it and bring them back home.  But instead I drove back home from the bus stop in tears.

I shared a pic of Ally on Friday, so it is only fair to share one of Jackie from this morning:

And baby Erica started preschool today.  I guess I really can’t call her a baby anymore.  It was a really hard decision to decide to let her go this year, but I guess we are going to have to send her out in the world at some point for school and will have to trust that she will just remember to say “no” to all food containing nuts or manufactured in an unfriendly facility. 

I told her this morning that when we dropped her off at preschool that I was probably going to cry and to not be scared about it.  That it was going to be because I was going to miss her, but she wouldn’t be at school for very long at all.  She assured me that she was going to miss me too, but she wanted to be at school for a long time.

So we took her to school, walked her into her classroom, settled her in, gave her a hug and kiss and told her we were going home and would be back in awhile.  She said okay.  So we started walking away and she got up.  I braced myself for some tears.  But then she turned back around and told the little boy at her table about the picture she was drawing.  We came back to pick her up after school was over and she hopped into the car and quickly and enthusiastically informed us that she didn’t miss us at all.  I didn’t know whether to be relieved or a little bit sad that I wasn’t as needed as much as before.

Here are some of my favorite Erica pics from this afternoon:

It was such an awesome day today.  I got up early, like earlier than a normal human being should be up for a Saturday morning.  But I had a productive morning.  I got some more laundry done, put away Erica’s Gymboree school clothes that came in the mail, and straightened up my scraproom.

Then Eric’s Mom came and picked up Erica and they got to spend the day together.  Jackie and Ally were picked up and taken for a trip to the Temple with the Young Women.  And I went to crop with a big group of friends at Archiver’s.  So, Eric had the whole house to himself, and I imagine he got quite a bit of work done today.

I got two whole layouts done and part of another one started.  And they all surprised Vickie, Tracey and myself with a birthday celebration as all our birthdays are in August.  Gosh, I guess that means I’m going to be another year older in awhile.  I’ve always wanted a surprise birthday deal.  I just love all those girls!  It was a very, very good day.

Even if I didn’t have my dental appointment this morning, I still would have been the one to get Ally up and off to the bus for her first day of school.  I’m the family’s official photographer, so I have to make sure I get some good pictures to scrap. 

It was a pretty busy morning though.  Which turned out to probably be a good thing.  It made me less of an emotional mess when seeing my Ally out.  I had to get myself ready and make sure we got out the door on time for her to catch the bus and me to then head off for the dentist.  She tolerated my obsessive picture taking well enough.  I think I crossed the line taking pictures of her at the bus stop.  But she was the only one there, and I was taking them from far away in the car (love that big long lens).  But looking back on the pictures, she looked a little less than enthused.

Of course when she got home I had to quiz her on her first day.  How she liked her teachers, did she get lost, when does she need to start bringing her violin, did any of the teachers actually give homework today, did they start learning anything today, did she get her locker open, were any of her friends from last year on her team, did she make any new friends today, etc, etc.  Poor thing!  She was so eager to hide downstairs once I was done with the Spanish inqusition. 

My dental appointment went well.  It wasn’t exactly something I was looking forward to, and truth be known, I was actually hoping that the dentist might still have the flu.  Of course it turned out to not be as bad as I had made it out in my mind, but in spite of the shots in the gums, it was actually a little more uncomfortable than the root canal was.  I think today was the crown buildup and he had to put a post in.  Next is a visit to the periodontist for crown lengthening, doesn’t sound like that will be fun at all.  Then 5 weeks to heal.  Go in for my impression for my crown, and then three weeks after that, my tooth should be good to go. 

Of course I sit there stressed out beyond belief while they worked on me for almost 2 hours.  So I was wiped out by the time I got home.  Took some ibuprofen and took a 4 1/2 hour nap!  I couldn’t believe it when I woke up, that I had slept that long.  Eric and Jackie were so good to me.  Jackie for the most part watched Erica downstairs while I slept, so it was really a nice and quiet place for me to sleep up in our room.

From about dinner on, we’ve been watching the Olympics.  My favorite things to watch are of course the swimming (how about Phelps?!) and gymnastics.  I was so irritated with our DVD though.  It didn’t record the routines that the two American girls did that won gold and silver.  Urg!  I hope they show them again.

Off to bed.  Tomorrow will be an early morning.  Good night!

Who said my girls could keep getting older?  Sigh. 

I took Ally and Jackie to have their hair done by Sister Harrison and their hair turned out fabulous.  Like seriously way fab!  Ally has been asking for highlights the last couple of months, so I figured back to school would be a good opportunity for that.  Shari did such a wonderful job.  They were very tastefully done.  Just enough to notice, but way not over the top.  And she trimmed up her hair to where it is looking so nice again.

Jackie wasn’t real hip on getting her hair cut.  She is so not about her appearance, which I do respect that in some ways.  But I did convince her that I wanted the hair out of her eyes, so she let Shari cut her hair.  It was so stinkin’ cute!  Jackie has such thick, thick hair so it’s always been really hard for people to work with.  But Shari did such a great job with it.  And the best part is it is still a wash and wear style for Jackie.  Because she is so not into standing in front of the mirror and doing anything with it.

Needless to say, they looked a little bit older by the time we left.  It’s so hard to believe that Jackie has only this year before she goes on to high school and my Ally is now a middle schooler!  Yikes!  Like Sheila said on her blog the other day, they are newborn babies in your arms one day, you blink and their teens and you’ll blink again and you’ll be seeing them off to college. 

But I just have to trust that we are doing the best we can to encourage them to become the wonderful young ladies that we know they are.  They have a surprisingly firm testimony in the church in spite of the few times we’ve been to “busy” to go to church.  They are so kind, smart and very ambitious.   And those are the things I have to focus on so I don’t get too emotional.

I’m a little nervous for Ally for tomorrow.  She goes to school a day earlier than Jackie.  NKCSD is doing a transitional day where the Kindergartners, 6th graders and Freshman all go to school a day earlier.  But tonight we went to Back To School tonight for 6th graders.  And we attended all of her classes.  Of course we weren’t at all familiar with the school, and Eric and I had a rough time figuring out where all her classes were.  I can’t even begin to count how many times we got lost and then they print out the whole schedule for the year, so you have to pay really close attention to what is for the 1st quarter, what is daily and what is for an “A” day, and “B” day.  Although she had a week just a few weeks ago where hopefully she got to know the building a little bit better, then tonight, and tomorrow.

So tomorrow morning before I go for part 2 of my root canal/crown dental appointment the camera and I will go see her off at the bus stop.  Where my little girl takes her first steps on her own as a middle schooler.

I keep going back and forth if whether or not I should even continue keeping a blog.  I’ve gotten so terrible at keeping it updated.  I’ve always been bad about it, but it seems like since we’ve been back from vacation it has gotten even worse.

So, I’ve gotten the girls Back To School shopping all done.  All three of them.  We have decided to put Erica in preschool.  I am just not consistent enough for what she needs.  So this will be good for her.  It was hard trying to figure out where to enroll her.  It finally came down to deciding between the Pre-K program at the new Staley High School or a preschool that someone from church is starting this year out of her home.  It ended up boiling down to the one at Staley had an afternoon program, so Erica will still be able to continue taking her Wednesday AM dance class.

Clothes shopping for the older girls was definitely an experience this year!  We thought we would give Hollister and Abercrombie a shot this year.  I ended up with hearing loss and a giant hole in the pocketbook.  And then we ended up at Aeropostale, where we got all of Jackie’s clothes and one more outfit for Ally for less than the one outfit we bought Ally at Abercrombie.  Aero had some really awesome deals going on.  I think everything we bought there was on sale.

I did get to do some really fun shopping today.  I got to go to Babies R ‘Us!  Relief Society is doing a service project where we are putting together bags for foster children.  This was a service project very close to my heart.  I was pretty much in and out of foster care from the time I was 4 until I graduated high school.  And you have don’t have time to gather any comforts of home (that’s if you have any) before being taken to your foster home.  This month we are focusing on infants 0-12 months and teenagers.  I came up with a hefty budget, which Eric was very good about agreeing to and went shopping.

I went with Ally today to her horse riding lessons.  It was really alot more fun that I thought.  Although she spends half her time brushing her horse.  Silly girl.  Oh well she takes great pride in her work I suppose.  They had the funniest dogs, and such sweet horses.  I even got to pet a couple of them.  There really is something so peaceful about horses.  I didn’t realize there was so much effort to riding horses.  I heard her instructor ask her at one point if her legs were burning yet. 

Then we finished off our night by going to Preschool Orientation with Erica.  We found there is another little boy in her pm class that has nut allergies, and a little girl in the am class that does as well.  It was kind of of cool having other parents there who shared similar concerns and helped me feel that they would be extra cautious.  Although their approved “safe” snack list was a little unsettling.  There were many things on there that were definitely not quite safe.  So I think we’ll probably end up just packing her own snack except for the days where we are in charge of snack.  My other concern is they will keep her Epi Pen in the nurse’s office, but it scares me that it is fairly far away from the classroom and it could be too late by the time they get her there once they figure out she’s having a reaction.  But if we are packing her, her own snack there shouldn’t be anything for us to worry about right? 

Okay, I’ve got to get off this computer.  I’m really trying to get to bed earlier than I’ve been averaging so far this summer.  I really want to go check out all I’ve been missing out on everyone else’s blogs.  But I know there is much to catch up on, and I might have to just wait until tomorrow.