kevin and jenna [dot] com

Polka-dotted Colby

Colby broke out in a rash on Monday night.  (He’s allergic to penicillin.)  This is him on Thursday…  looking so much better, if you can even believe it.

When he looked in the mirror, he thought it was pretty funny that he had polka dots (his term).  But in the car he told us, “I am not enjoying this itching.”

1 comment February 19th, 2011

Eatin’ Lunch.

One of the best things about Colby going to the KOR school is that he is finished at 12:30 every day and we get to eat lunch together every day.  (I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I still love it.)  So, this is just an ordinary day for us, before we clean up the kitchen and go take a nap.

Add comment February 18th, 2011

Some much needed encouragement

If you’re expecting me to give encouragement today, I probably won’t.  But I will send you to our friends Dee & Greg’s blog.  They are serving God in Estonia right now, and with 2 little ones (age 3 & less than 1!), it’s safe to say that Dee is Supermom.  She touched my heart the other day with this post – From the Mouths of Children and Infants.  I needed to “hear” all those Scriptures she quotes.

It seems like our family is in the midst of weekly medical drama.  I haven’t been posting as much because of it.  On the other hand, maybe I should write this up and sell it to Hollywood as a script for a tv show.  Here goes -

1.  My grandmother is in a nursing home now.  She is having trouble feeding herself, much less walking.  We are not sure how much of her symptoms result from depression (from losing her husband of 58 years last September) or from just getting older.  Please pray for my dad and his siblings to know the best care for her, and for my grandmother to know God’s peace and comfort right now.

2.  My dad is doing fantastic.  Each day he is stronger and happier and can do a little bit more.  He’s been working every other day for a few weeks.. now I think he’s working 3.5 days, with his cousin from out of town working for him the other full day.  Thank you for his prayers for him and continue to lift him up – recovery is slow and steady, but still not fun.

3.  Colby has been sick for the past 3 weeks now.  I think he had a mild form of the flu I had, which turned into a double ear infection.  He went to the doctor and was prescribed amoxicillin.  This week he broke out in a horrible itching rash from head to toe and I worried beyond all worry that he had the measles.  We took him to the doctor, and the bad news is, it turns out he has a pretty bad allergy of penicillin.  The good news?  He does NOT have the measles.  So, now he’s on another med to try and get rid of the (ever-loving, ever-living, compound, complex) ear infection, and a steroid to get rid of the itching and rash.  One of these days we’ll figure out how to be rid of sickness.

4.  Kevin’s grandpa is in the hospital.  This is fairly recent, and this comes after Kevin’s mom was in the hospital for a very complicated bladder infection.  We are so glad she is doing [MUCH] better; now Kevin’s poor dad is taking up residence in the hospital rooms, looking after one and then the other.  Please pray that our family will find some much-needed relief – emotionally, spiritually, physically.

I’m so glad the Groundhog Phil told us winter was over.  My kids have really enjoyed playing outside and I have loved being outside as well.  I am so thankful for all of you – family and friends who lift us up in prayer.  Thank you for remembering us and for your encouraging words to us.

Add comment February 17th, 2011

Organization: Gift Wrap

Some of you have given me a pat on the back for how organized I am, but I’d say there’s always room for improvement, especially when younger children are underfoot.  For Christmas I asked Kevin to clean out the garage and our master closet, and he immediately cleaned out the garage.  The closet will take a little longer to do.

Our closet houses the gift wrapping supplies.  Why?  I really have no idea, other than the fact that the wrapping was stored in a bedroom closet [Colby's] in our old house, so I just moved it into our closet, which is the size of a college dorm room, no joke.

Here is a picture of the gift wrappings I’ve accumulated in 8.5 years of marriage.

A big mess.  There’s an extra-large Ziploc bag full of wrapping paper and bows and boxes, 1 underbed storage box full of baby gift bags, 1 box full of tissue paper, and 2 hanging organizers full of birthday/gift bags.  Too many containers.  And, I haven’t touched some of the stuff in the Ziploc bag since we moved 18 months ago.   I was inspired by my favorite new blog – iheartorganizing – and I realized I didn’t want all those containers to take up valuable real estate in our closet.  Yes, we have room in that closet, but the space wasn’t being used efficiently.

So, I combined and threw away some things (just a few, but remember when you want to organize, you must always purge some).  I definitely got rid of any tissue paper that was torn or bags/bows that were smushed.  Here’s a picture of my [ever faithful, ever "present" - ha!] helper, Kennedy.

And, here’s my finished product.  Ta-da!

I condensed 5 containers into 3 small ones and OH LOOK – I found a red bucket in that XL Ziploc bag – I totally forgot I had that bucket and now it holds the kids’ bath soaps.

Here’s an up-close picture of my success.

What I did:

1.  I chose a longer box that would hold the wrapping paper rolls and the tissue paper.
2.  I put the gift bags in the hanging boxes (not pictured in the close-up).  Baby bags in one, birthday in the other.
3.  I separated all the tissue paper  into gallon-sized Ziploc bags, according to color.  ROYGBIV worked for me!
4.  I only spent 45 minutes, start to finish, and ZERO dollars to complete this project.

I’m proud of my accomplishment – even though it might not be life-changing, it feels good to be organized.  I can’t wait to show pics of some other projects I’m taking on.

1 comment February 1st, 2011