Georgia Game and an Alli Update

A couple of Saturdays ago we went to Georgia's homecoming game. Andy actually has 4 season tickets for all the home games at the 40 yard line on row 38, so we have great seats. And, since he's gone to so many games the past couple of years he's made friends with the other season ticket holders that sit around him, so he can get extra tickets from them when they don't use all of theirs. So, we got 2 extra tickets from the guy in front of us and took all the kids and my dad with us. We had a good time, and it was a good game for Georgia, thank goodness! Georgia had a rough start this year.Here's Andy with Drew and Evan. No, Andy and Evan weren't drunk, although they look a little out of it! Here I am with my daddy! Here are the kids near the concession stands. We had to go cool off for a little bit - it gets SO hot in the stadium with almost no air flow! Here are me and Andy taking our own picture. I actually got sunburned only on the left side of my face where that tattoo is, so for 3 or 4 days I had a white G on my cheek!

And here are me and the girls. Today, Georgia is playing Florida, and any true Georgia fan HATES Gators. In fact, Gators get ranked with murderers and child molesters and any other detestable beings on Earth. I am so not kidding - I have had Georgia so drilled into my head for the 10 (almost 11!) years I've been married to Andy that when I see someone with a Gator sticker on their car, I have to make a conscious decision not to run them off the road. So, Andy already has a very serious attitude and has revolved his day around this game!

Changing the subject to a more serious matter, I took Alli down to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite yesterday to have a couple of tests run on her kidneys and figure out what's going on with her. They discovered that she has grade 4 kidney reflux (grade 5 is the worst). This means that the tube from her kidneys to her bladder doesn't close all the way, so urine travels back up to her kidneys, which is what has caused her to get all these infections lately. They said she was born with it and we're super lucky she hasn't had problems before this and that her kidneys are still perfectly healthy with no scarring or permanent damage. But, since it's grade 4, she has to have surgery to fix it. The good thing is that at Children's, the surgeon is world renowned and has other surgeons come observe him every time he does the surgery. It's an outpatient surgery and there's no cutting - they go in through the bladder endoscopically and insert what they called a "blob" of protein to close off the tube enough that it won't travel back up. They said they'll have to put her to sleep, but it only takes about 10 minutes, and she should be fine to go to school the next day! So, I'm thankful now that we know what's going on and that it can be fixed and that it's not a difficult procedure. The surgery is scheduled for November 8, so it'll be soon and we can get all this mess behind us! Keep us in your prayers!

The Ultimate Battle

Yes, here it comes...I am about to make what I feel is my biggest personal struggle public to the world, or at least the 7 people that read my blog. I have gained 35 pounds and weigh about 10 pounds more than I did when I walked into the hospital to give birth, and 45 pounds more than I did at my skinniest when I was breastfeeding twins (I knew I should've become a wet nurse) and am completely discouraged with my personal appearance and feel overwhelmed with the idea of weight loss. It is consuming my life right now - the battle between good and evil food. I'm ready to take diet pills or have liposuction or fly to Mexico or somewhere where they will perform gastric bypass on anyone who requests it. I do so well for about a week and make good choices, and then it all falls apart after that because I had an extra long day and dinner comes out of a drive through, or we have a potluck at church, or we're invited to a party or something. I think what discourages me more is that the people I know who have managed to lose weight still have to maintain the weight loss. It's the total life change that really overwhelms me. I'm just frustrated by the whole thing. Who was the idiot that decided food processing was a good idea, or who decided that deep frying something would be a good experiment? And why does unhealthy food taste so good immediately and healthy stuff is an acquired taste? No, it's not that we train ourselves over time to like junk food. Give a baby the option between broccoli and a chicken nugget - the chicken nugget WILL win. I'm just frustrated with the whole thing right now. I've never been good at self-discipline. I procrastinate a lot and clean my house when I can't stand it any more instead of just steadily taking care of business. Maybe I need a psychiatrist, or a hypnotist, or a personality transplant. So, that's my issue right now, and, please, feel free to just give me a little "me, too" so I don't feel alone. I'm the person who will pick the one skinny girl out of a crowd of 5o people who struggle with weight and will think, "She can do it - what's wrong with me?" instead of, "Obviously it's hard for a lot of people - I'm not alone." (Sniff, sniff - a tear just rolled down my cheek...and then dripped onto my fat belly.)

Anyone Still Out There???

Ok, so it's been entirely too long since my last post, and I must apologize to Evan for leaving his bad hair up way to long! As much as I hate to say this, because I always say this, I have just been so darn busy, it's ridiculous. As usual, the school system is all about change and improvement, which means tons of extra work. Plus our grade chair is going on maternity leave, so the principal asked me to act as grade chair in her place, which made me feel great, but has been a good bit of extra work. Also, the school governance council asked me to be secretary, so I'm doing that, too, all while being a mom and a wife and juggling knives.
The school year started out with a bang for sure. Of course, there was the Justin Beiber concert, which was a lot of fun. He's a pretty good performer -- no crazy amounts of nasally, whiney singing, but actual talent. Here's Drew with her friend that she took waiting in line to go into the arena. Check out Drew's awesome outfit, bought special for the concert. Here they are before the concert started, stopping the random squealing and screaming to smile for a picture. And here's Evan. He concluded during this event that girls are weird, and popcorn is just as good as Justin Beiber, although I did catch him singing along a few times.

So, at the beginning of the concert, Alli started complaining that she had a headache. I mean, it was super loud in there, but for a little girl to complain of a headache during Justin Beiber is a little strange. Eventually she started running a fever, so she spent most of the evening in Andy's lap half asleep. When he finally started sweating too much to take her fever anymore, I took her down to the medic station to get her some Tylenol, and went on out to the car to let her sleep. Still, though, I didn't think much of it. I mean, kids randomly run fevers, so, since the next day was only the 2nd day of school, I texted mom to see if she could keep her for me, rather than me trying to get a sub and deal with all that. The next day around lunch time I sent a text to mom asking how Alli was doing, and mom said her fever was going up and she wouldn't keep any tylenol or anything down. By 1:00, mom was starting to really worry, and at 2:00 mom called me and said she just took her temperature and it was 105.2 and Alli was delirious, and she was calling 911. My school is almost right across the street from the hospital, so I rushed out of the school and was there before the ambulance got there. By the time Alli got there, they had her on a cold IV and her temperature was 105.9! Alli had no idea who we were and was making no sense - she even smiled for the x-ray machine because the lady told her she was going to take a picture of her chest. In all the times I've been to the emergency room I've done an annoying amount of sitting and waiting with few people appearing to be in any kind of hurry to help. This time there were tons of nurses and doctors all around her, and even whispering behind the curtain and everything. It was AWFUL! I am not one to worry, but I was flipping out a little. When they got her fever down to 103, we were excited. They made us stay until her fever got down to around 99, and then they told us to wake her up every 3 hours to keep Tylenol and Motrin in her system. They concluded that she had a severe kidney infection, and now, after 3 rounds of antibiotics, countless doctor visits (Alli is now a pro at peeing in a cup), and an ultrasound of her kidneys and bladder, just this past Friday we got the word that it's all cleared up and that now they want us to go to a pediatric urologist in Atlanta to check everything just to be sure there aren't any serious problems, so that's coming up next Friday. Here's a picture of her that mom snapped with her phone as she was getting in the ambulance. She was so out of it that she didn't mind going with them at all - they wouldn't let mom ride along for insurance reasons. She doesn't really remember any of it now.
On a lighter note, Evan and Alli had a field trip today, so I took the day off to go with them. We went to a gold mine in Dahlonega, and it was pretty neat. The kids got to pan for gold, which was really just a bunch of rocks and gems, but the kids thought it was great. After that we got to take a tour of the gold mine and it was really neat. They showed us holes in the walls of the mines that were chiseled out for dynamite, and lots of places where there were still tiny flakes of gold, and different types of granite. Here are a couple of pictures of Alli and Evan, and a tiny little bat, which had me pretty freaked out:

After the panning and the mine tour the kids sat around with their gems and compared and traded them. Then a friend of mine and I checked the kids out early and took them to Chick-Fil-A for lunch, which was much nicer than sitting with 80 other kids having school sack lunches!