So, it's been a while... I know, sorry! Let's see where I left off...

So it snowed on Friday February 12th...about 4 1/2"...a blizzard to us! It was mostly gone by that Sunday...just the right amount of time for snow. Long enough for the girls to play in but not there long enough to hamper travel about town.

Emily was supposed to go for a CAT scan during the week of the 15th to determine if she needed to have her adenoids removed. Partly due to the realization that our insurance is only good if you don't need it and partly due to my fear of Emily being put under general anesthesia, I canceled the scan & called her ENT. A fabulous nutritionist I know (HI!) casually stated, after hearing Emily's symptoms, that it could be a milk allergy. What? A food allergy? No. She doesn't have one of those. Well, she is only sick during school and that is the only time she drinks mils daily. Milk allergies do cause excessive mucus... maybe I should ask the ENT what he thinks. Yes, that is what I will do. So then, while waiting to hear back from the ENT, I started researching this milk allergy thing on my own. Hey Miss Fab Nutritionist, I think you're on to something! Milk allergies in kids are the NUMBER ONE cause of ear & sinus infections! In addition to excessive mucus production, allergic kids have "bits" (for lack of a better word) of the allergy causing protein in the mucus (yuck!) which is a yummy meal for nasty bacteria! Couple that with the fact that Emily has NO good bacteria in her body any longer (12 different antibiotics in 1 year) and we have the perfect set up for chronic sinusitis & ear infections! I can't wait to to tell the ENT....well, that was more 15 days & 3 messages ago, I don't think I'll hear from the ENT anytime soon. I guess if I wasn't going to jump to the CAT scan & surgery, he has no use for me...oh well. Emily has been off of antibiotics for 21 days & (knock on wood) she's not sick! She hasn't been off medication this long since the summer! So let's see, her new daily regiment is Culturelle for Kids (10x the pro-biotics that are in yogurt), Kefir (fermented milk with billions of good bacteria, apparently the fermenting makes it tolerable), extra vitamin C with echinacea and a neti-pot rinse (sometimes plain saline sometimes with xylitol). The hardest part for Emily is the neti-pot, she's just not a fan & I don't blame her...but she does it with only a "ugh, really?" I remind her we are just trying to keep her from getting sick & she says okay! In April, we'll be start her on milk again (if I can) and see if she gets sick, if so, then we get to have a blood test, yipee!

What else has happened? Well, there were the Olympics! The first week, the girls were out of school & watched lots of figure skating and asked lots & lots of questions about the different countries. Two good comments were, Ella - "What is China's 'spangled-banner'?" (she thought that every country's national anthem was called a spangled-banner)...Emily -"Ella, we need to root for American because we are American, then we root for England because we are also English. If neither one of our country's are doing good, root for Canada because it's their Olympics." They were fascinated by all the different flags & the different number of people that each country sent to the games. They can't wait for the next Olympics. Emily already told me that we HAVE to go to visit Grandma & Grandpa in England in 2012 so that we can go to the London games...sorry Em, it probably won't happen.

One day, while the girls were home from school, it was almost 70! We headed to the park. I would show you pictures but I have NO IDEA how to get to them from the secret place that George has hidden them on the computer. Perhaps now that we are caught up I can show them to you at a later date :)