Last night, Rylee brought me her favorite pair of glasses with a slight issue.



At first I thought it was just a screw missing. No need to panic, we can adjust the screw. Upon further examination, I found a very different situation.



If you look careful at the lens, there is super glue on it. Apparently in February, the screw on her glasses came loose. She was afraid she was going to get in trouble for breaking her glasses so she didn't tell us. Addyson helped her "fix" her glasses by gluing them back together. (Amazingly enough, the screw is actually still there, just super glued in place.) They had to come clean with the story after the gluing came apart and her second pair of glasses turned up with a missing lens. How can a kid break two pair of glasses in one day??????

Let's just say I didn't win the "Mom of the Year" award last night. I definitely chose to be upset about the situation. I really wasn't mad about the glasses being broken. I understand that screws loosen and things happen. What I was upset about was the lies. I was upset that the girls had made a mistake and tried to cover it up for 2 months.

After a thorough searching of her bedroom, we found the missing lens of the back up pair. A quick trip to Dollar General for replacement screws (boy am I glad they had them. I really didn't want to go to Wal-Mart after the long day I'd had) she had a pair of glasses to wear to school today.

During the heat of the moment, I grounded both Rylee and Addyson for a week. No TV, no computer, no friends for a week. I don't know that our girls have ever really been grounded at all. A WEEK'S A LONG TIME!!!

All night last night I was feeling terrible about losing my patience, raising my voice, and making my girls cry. They cried themselves to sleep, but so did I.

Marty and I decided that we would make a list of chores that girls could do to work off the punishment and not have to be grounded. We gave the girls the option to either keep their grounding or work it off. We didn't give them the list until after they agreed to the terms. They both agreed to work of the grounding.

So the list:

Rylee:
Clean the family room (dust, vacuum, wipe down leather sofas, etc)
Clean her bathroom
Clean half the baseboards in the house

Addyson:
Clean the kitchen (clean out refrigerator, wipe cabinet doors, etc
Clean the second bathroom
Clean half the baseboards

As soon as their chores are done, the grounding will be done. We figured there was an hour or two of work that they could do either Friday night or Saturday morning.

You would have thought that we had beat the Rylee. She was crying harder tonight doing chores than she did last night. Jessica wanted her to come outside and play but she can't until her chores are done. As Rylee was dusting and sobbing, Jessica came to me and asked if she could help with the tasks so that they would be done sooner and they could all go out and play.

I promptly agreed.


Jessica did as much or more work than Rylee in the end.

How often in our lives do we make mistakes, have great sorrow for what we've done and feel like the burden is too great to bare. Do we allow the Savior to ease our burden? The Savior already paid the price for us. He's already done the chores for us. We need to allow him to ease our pain.

At the end of the night, I have a really clean house, and three happy girls playing outside with their friends.

About three weeks ago, Marty got a lot of pain in his left hip. After running a few days on it, he went and saw our family doctor. He x-rayed the hip and didn't find anything. He advised Marty that it was probably an infection and he should lay off it while he took antibiotics. Five days into the antibiotics (full course) Marty was feeling better and ran again. This lead to more pain. Back to the doctor and more antibiotics. The pain then spread through his entire body. Every part of his body ached. He was referred to a specialist. Marty went to see the specialist last week. Turns out it wasn't an infection, but a broken hip. To make matters worse, all the antibiotics had started to deteriorate Marty's muscles which is what lead to the full body aches. We figure Marty has run over 40 miles on his broken hip.

We had a family reunion this past weekend in Denver. Marty really wanted to go. The doctor cleared him to travel as long as he stayed immobile. So, off to Denver we went. We had a very enjoyable weekend. We even pushed Marty around a mall in a wheel chair.

We got home last night to a house full of silly issues. Our home got struck by lightening while we were gone (our neighbor has confirmed this. His story is quite amazing). Some of you may remember that we were struck last summer as well. I've got to figure out is the attraction to our home. We only had power in about 25% of the house. We also had no phone, cable, internet or heat. I called my boss this morning and told him I needed to take another day to get our home back in line. We have been able to repair everything but the phone and heat.

Marty had a bone scan this afternoon. He meets with the orthopedic surgeon on Monday to determine if he needs surgery and to what extent.

I have a feeling it will be a long road ahead for our family. We had a family council last night and divided up the responsibilities that dad normally does. This will be a great opportunity for us to show dad how much we love him and how much we appreciate all the work he has done for us.

Addyson has decided that she would like to try out for cheerleading this year. Marty and I are supporting her in this decision. There will be some things that she will have to give up in order to cheer, but we are open to the idea.







She was feeling a little sick today and wanted to go to the doctor to rule out an ear infection and strep. While there we decided to go ahead and get her physical done for cheerleading. The ruling:



1. No ear infection (hooray)

2. No strep (double hooray)

3. Definately has bronchitis (aren't Arkansas allergies the best)

4. She needs glasses (with a dad that's blind, there's no doubt)

5. She has scoliosis.



When Marty told me that, I was floored. Scoliosis??? I remember when I was about her age, our gym teacher would have us strip down to our bra's and bend over so they could check our spines. That was about all I knew about it. So I came home and researched.



"Scoliosis is not a disease—it is a descriptive term. All spines have curves. Some curvature in the neck, upper trunk and lower trunk is normal. Humans need these spinal curves to help the upper body maintain proper balance and alignment over the pelvis. However, when there are abnormal side-to-side (lateral) curves in the spinal column, we refer to this as scoliosis.


Who is at risk?Scoliosis affects 2% of women and 0.5% of men in the general population.



Idiopathic scoliosis is broken down into four categories based on age: (1) infantile: children ages 3 and under, (2) juvenile: 3-9 years old, (3) adolescent: 10-18 years old, and (4) adult: after skeletal maturity. The most common form of scoliosis, representing approximately 80% of idiopathic scoliosis cases, is Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS), which develops in young adults around the onset of puberty." http://www.iscoliosis.com/causes.html



So this is what I've learned. Dr. Conover said that her's has been detected early and for right now we will just monitor her. We will have to have a spinal x-ray done every year and compare to the last year. As long as things don't appear to be worsening, we don't need to do anything right now. If there seems to be a change in her spine, there are other options, both surgical and non-surgical.



I am so relieved that we were open to the idea of her cheering. Otherwise we may have not found out that she has this condition. Without monitoring, it can become so sever as to interfer with pregnancy and child birth (it's hard to think that my 14 year old will be a mother someday), walking, sitting, and every day function.



But the best news for Addyson, she's been cleared to cheer. Nothing can stop this young lady!