May. 24, 2008 - HAPPY 14TH BIRTHDAY EMILY

 You are growing into such a strong, independant, lovely young girl.  We are very proud of you.

Happy 14th Birthday, Em !!

And WE LOVE YOU VERY MUCH !!!

 My sweet, Emily with Michelle blowing out her candles...

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May. 21, 2008 - Michelle's Speech Delay and hearing loss...

I posted already that we've noticed a speech delay with Michelle.  She was spoken to only in Chinese x 14 months of her life.  Our family doctor felt the need to repeat her hearing testing since the 2 go hand in hand.  She went for a hearing evaluation yesterday.  She did not pass the hearing test in the right ear.  Her left ear is fine.  She has some sort of loss and at this point they feel it is conductive.  Now Michelle has only had about 2 ear infections since she's been with us and no fluid or problems could be seen yesterday when they inspected her ears.  So now we are waiting to see what our family doctor wants us to do next.  ?? ENT specialist visit for possible more diagnosing or surgery for tubes.  I've also just learned that one of the little girls from China we traveled with also is going to speech therapy for a articulation problem for the last 6 months and is improving. Michelle has a preauricular sinus in front of her right ear and has fusion [or gemini teeth] of 2 of her lower incisiors in her mouth.  It was also suggested to me that it may be allergy related She takes Singular for frequent troubles w/ allergies. Anyone know any info they can give me from past experience??

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May. 17, 2008 - Vitamin D and Breast Cancer

This was interesting to me, so I thought I'd post it....

Excerpt taken from :

MSNBC News Services

updated 6:48 p.m. ET, Thurs., May. 11, 2006

Women who get lots of vitamin D are less likely to develop breast cancer, suggests a pair of studies that add to the already strong evidence that the “sunshine vitamin” helps prevent many types of cancer.

High levels of vitamin D translated to a 50 percent lower risk of breast cancer, one study found. Even modestly higher levels resulted in 10 percent less risk, which would translate to 20,000 fewer cases a year if it were true of all American women.

A second study, by Canadian researchers, found that women who spent time outdoors or got a lot of vitamin D from their diets or supplements — especially as teens — were 25 percent to 45 percent less likely to develop breast cancer than women with less of the nutrient.

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May. 16, 2008 - speech delay

Michelle had her 4 year old check up today.  I've been a bit concerned about her speech.  She is having trouble pronoucing the hard consonants.  Both of my parents, and my sister mentioned it which compounded my thoughts.  She is scheduled for another hearing screen this Monday and a speech evaluation. Any one have any experience with this?

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May. 15, 2008 - Michelle turns 4

I can't believe how fast time marches on. Michelle turned 4 today.  She had dinner w/ family and friends at Friendly's, opened her presents, and visited some kitties which we are contemplating adopting.  I wanted Michelle to hold them to see how allergies, etc react. She also had a dentist appointment in there too...

There will always be a part of Michelle's birthday that I think of Michelle's birth mother!  She did a very difficult & unselfish thing that eventually brought her to us and gave her up for a better life.  I'm sure that somewhere on the other side of the world, today was very difficult for her.  I think of her birth mother and how she must feel today. Michelle has a small cut mark on the back of her arm that her birth mother gave her before she left her so she'd always carry that mark with her. 

I posted some pictures of today's special memories...

Happy 4th Birthday, Michelle -Ting !!!

Our Fun Dinner at Friendly's with family and friends...

Michelle and Grammy

Our very capable waiter, cousins,  Aunt Amy and Aunt Geniene

Singing Happy Birthday to our little Michelle !!!

After dinner, we head to a friends and check out the kittie possiblities...

Michelle likes this little girl...

And better than one kittie, can only be 2 kitties...

Happy Birthday Baby !!

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May. 11, 2008 - Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day.  I spent my day [being placed on call from work, so I was off, YEAH!] enjoying the beautiful, but windy sunny day.  I heard my girls sing in church which is always a highlight of any day!  Later in the evening , after all the crowds were home, we went out to eat.  We had a very nice day.  My girls bought me lovely gifts. I'm wearing the necklace that Michelle made me!  I received practical things that were on my list;  Lauren got me color for my hair, thank you Lauren!  Emily got me one of my favorite things to eat, chips and salsa!  I posted a picture of Emily, Lauren and I.  Michelle is missing because she was having a temper tantrum and didn't want to be part of the picture, we do have the necklace she made in the picture though! 

These are my beautiful Iris flowers in full bloom

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May. 10, 2008 - Race for the Cure

My dear friend, Karen walks every year in Philadelphia for the cure for Breast Cancer. Karen is from Philadelphia, it is a walk she does to honor mothers.  Karen lost her mother this year unexpectantly.  I know she will do a great job. 

Remind any moms in your life to get a mammogram if they are 40 or older!!  Moms are very special.  I know my mom is...

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May. 8, 2008 - Happy Nurses Week

Happy Nurses Week  to all my friends that are nurses.  Last night the hospital I work for held their annual Nursing Banquet. It was very nice.  This year I was nominated and honored for a RN Clinical Excellence Award.  To receive a nomination for this award you had to be recognized by a peer for demonstrating clinical excellence in nursing practice. I enjoy my job, it gives me much of my self esteem. I also was honored for completing the RN Clinical Ladder Pathway.  I received a pin for this to wear on my ID badge at work.  Currently I am one of 5 nurses hospital wide that received this award. It was an evening to dress up, have dinner, and get a career boost from a good speaker.  Thank you to my sister, Amy,my mother and mother-in-law for remembering me this week.

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May. 7, 2008 - allergies

Not much new from this week [well that I want to post, anyway...]   I am suffering with seasonal allergies.  My daughter, Lauren really has then badly.  She saw the doctor on Tuesday and is now on 2 medications to control them. I will be happy when everything is finally in bloom. 

Also should note here the last day of school booklets I had my kids do turned out very nice.  Emily used all green construction paper and did a lot of drawings. Lauren mixed hers up a bit too.

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Apr. 29, 2008 - Last Day of School

Tomorrow will be our last day of this school year.  I'm proud of myself for attaining my goals. We were able to make many more field trips happen this year when comparing to last year.  My girls really enjoyed all of them!

  Now that our co-op has ended for the year, I had a brainstorm early this am. My girls took most of the core subjects at co-op.  This is due to me having to work part time and being involved in many additional things at work. So workloads have lightened. Finishing up Math and safety and those little things are what remain.

Anyway, I think for tomorrow's last day I will have my girls build a collage or booklet and include 1 or 2 things that they learned for each subject we covered this past year.  Maybe one they really enjoyed learning about.  I want to see them be creative in what they develop. This will help them review all we accomplished too.

I'll post how it goes. 

Anyone have any ideas for last day of school??  Please share them with me.

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Apr. 27, 2008 - Kaeleigh & Ezra

Today was a special day ..

 For my niece, "Kaeleigh Rose " & my nephew, "Ezra Thomas".

Kaeleigh made her First Holy Communion. & Team Ezra marched for the March of Dimes.  Ezra was born at 26 weeks gestation last year in Feb. and after 3 months in the hospital is a growing toddler today.  The March of Dimes is instrumental in developing and funding research for these tiny micro-preemies. We could not be with Ezra today for the walk, but I said a special prayer , +  for him while I was in church with Kaeleigh!   

         May God show both of you his love !!

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Apr. 24, 2008 - Take Your Child to Work Day!

Today I took Lauren on a days worth of touring the hospital I work in.  Lauren out of all my children, {well, must admit it is a bit early to judge Michelle} has the compassion to work in medicine.  She often helps me teach lamaze classes and loves anything to do with the babies I work with.  Today we toured several departments within the hospital and learned how each one works.  The theme was emergency preparedness and focused on disaster drills, etc. Her favorite thing we did was when she got to go into the "Smoke House" .  Here she got to try and get out of a house filled with smoke, it was more difficult than she expected.  The following day we learned our picture was in the local newspaper while learning about an ambulance that visits our ER. I will save the article for Lauren...

She made it through the smoke house.

Learning all about AED's... [Automated external Difibrilators}

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Apr. 23, 2008 - Spring Flowers Find Michelle!

We visited our local greenhouse this week.  Here we found some herbs, pansies, asparagus plants and geraniums.  Michelle couldn't wait to get her hands all dirty with helping Nanny plant her geraniums.  For my older girls, the novelty has worn off a bit.  Lauren did plant her "own " garden, we'll see if she keeps up with weeding.  And Emily helped fill pots with dirt for me...

  Both of these little flowers are beautiful gifts from God....

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Apr. 21, 2008 - The music adds the icing to my cake...

After returning from Gettysburg, Emily played in Church on Saturday night. One of my loves is to hear any or all of my girls sing, play or participate in church.  This evening I got to hear Emily play her violin for a few different songs and Kara [my niece] play her viola along with her. I love getting to hear them, it is peaceful to me, especially due to working every other weekend.  I miss some of these performances.

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Apr. 20, 2008 - Our Gettysburg Trip

We took a beautiful weekend full of sunshine and packed up our kiddos and headed to Gettysburg, PA. While we were there we visited Historic sites in Gettysburg, The Grotto of Lourdes, St Elizabeth Ann Seton's Shrine and then did some shopping in the downtown area of Gettysburg before heading for home.  I posted some pictures below..,

This is the new museum full of lots of interesting facts about the Civil War

This room in the museum you can hear a recording of Abe Lincoln giving the Gettysburg Address.  Emily and Lauren thought it was cool.

This stands many feet in the air and can be seen in Emmitsburg, MD where we stayed over night. Mary overlooks the college in the town and is thought to be erected for this reason. She is dressed in gold and with the sun shining on her, well it was quite a sight.

Below is the grotto where you can walk up to and pray in peaceful surroundings.  The whole area we walked through had many statues, [too many to post.] of beautiful scenery too!

All of the flowers around each statue were perfect!  This is Jesus , Mary and Joseph.

 The next day we went to Gettysburg battle field, {Culp's Hill} Michelle wasn't too interested in that , but she found many dandelions that she placed on rocks and gave to us along the way.

Emily, Lauren & Jim

Taking a rest from all the walking....

The Gettysburg National Cemetary was something Lauren really wanted to see. It was also very quiet and peaceful and had hundreds and hundreds of graves that we walked by.

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Apr. 17, 2008 - Heading on a field trip

Our family is planning on heading to the Gettysburg Weekend celebrations to discover some new things about the Civil War.  We are hoping to visit the new museum, battle field live encampment, and the Striver house. Please post a comment for me if you have any good information of things we MUST visit while we are there.

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Apr. 15, 2008 - My spring blooms

All our trees are blooming.  The weeping cherry tree my husband planted for me for mother's day a couple years back.  Our pear trees in the front yard are just coming out as well. I love spring!!

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Apr. 10, 2008 - Awesome sighting

Today on my way home from work I came across this sight along the road . I pulled over and watched this mama and baby for a few minutes and  took this picture.  It was something to see the pony following his mother trying to learn all he could.  At one point, he went beneath her to hide as he was wondering what I was up to. Beautiful !!

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Apr. 8, 2008 - My godchild, while waiting...

I have 3 godchildren.  Brianna is 11, Gabriella is 6 and Lucas is just 1 year old.  They are my sister Geniene's children.  Geniene gives Emily music lessons as well as german lessons.  She teaches at Lower Dauphin Middle School.

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Apr. 7, 2008 - Armadillos

Today at the co-op we attend, my daughter did an awesome job presenting her research paper on Armadillos to her writing composition class. Way to go Lauren !!  I am very proud of you...

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