Lake James State Park

Our Trip to Lake James State Park May 27-30, 201. If you are headed to the Mountains of NC you have to check out this park. It was a lot of fun for everyone.

We ran into lots of bad weather on the way.

This is our set up.

Danica sings the Blues

As I was sitting and watching tv one night. I realized that Danica had been standing in the door way singing and playing the guitar. She had been singing for a while before I even realized she was singing. What makes this video funny to me is that she really does sound like she is singing the blues. There isn't much that can be understood but, at one part she say "do you hear me Michael, do you hear me Michael".  Which is really funny because she only knows two Michael's. One who is her dad'd friend. So it would sound like she is singing to an older man.LOL

My 3 yr old had to get her second set of tubes in her ears.

Dakota my 3 yr old has had numerous problems with ear infections and fluid being in her ears. Obviously her Eustachian tubes have not matured yet but she just can't resist her love for water. It really doesn't help that we live directly across the street from the neighborhood pool and she love taking long baths where I am always catching her putting her head under water.

July of last year her father went up to get her from her room and he mentioned how she didn't initially respond to him being there, but when she saw him she was very excited to see him. That is when it came to us that I had noticed the same thing happening when I would go to get her also. After speaking to her doctor about it he referred her to an Ear Nose and Throat doctor (ENT), where she got her hearing checked. It was then that we found out that shea had 30% hearing lost because of fluid in her ears. We were very shocked to learn that but it all made sense. If she couldn't hear well then she wouldn't be able to speak well. Therefore causing her speech to be delayed. At 2 her speech really wasn't a big deal because what 2 yr old do you know speaks clearly. Well I do know one. Ashley who is the little girl I keep, but I think she is an exception to the rule.lol

Now that she is 3 I started seeing the same symptoms that we saw before, so we took her to get her hearing checked again. I'm not sure the doctor thought much of it because he said her ears were kind of red but not that bad. After she saw the audiologist he came in and said "mom you were right" so she had about 30-35% hearing loss again. He tried giving her antibiotics which didn't work, and she had to get tubes put in her ears again.

Yesterday, was a very long day for my family. It started when we had to get up at 5am to take the 30 min drive to Blue Ridge Surgery Center. It was our second time there so we were familiar with it. She couldn't have anything to eat or drink after midnight so we had to avoid the juice cup and all her request for juice. Which I knew would be hard because she loves herself some apple juice. Most mornings we don't get a good morning we get a request for "duice".lol

Once we arrived the process went very quick. After checking in we only had to wait about 10min. Half of it was spent in the bathroom.lol I'm not sure why but every time she see a public bathroom she just has to go potty. I absolutely hate going to public bathrooms but I can't say no because she might have to go for real, but enough about that.lol Once we came out of the bathroom we got called back. There we had to change her into a hospital gown that she wasn't too happy about. For one it was green...yuck. Then it had elephants and weird looking clowns on it. I think she knew something was up or she may even remembered it for last year but she wasn't very happy to be there. Her dad and I tried to keep her entertained, because we knew at some point she would have to leave us and go with the nurse on her own. We read books and sang songs one of her favorites is row row row your boat.


It was about 8:09 when the nurses came to get her. They asked if she wanted a popsicle. She quickly agreed to go with and she was on her way. When we made it back to the lobby we both went to the concession for coffee and muffins. We hadn't eaten despite her fathers many attempts to go get coffee, but I wouldn't let him.lol It would have just made her start asking for juice again. After about 20min. the doctor came out and told us that everything went well and that she again had lots of fluid in her ears. About three to five minutes later the nurses came to get us. This is the part that we were dreading. Last year she had her adenoids done too and to say the least. It freaked both of us out when we saw her. This time it was nothing like that. (Thank God). She was a little out of it but she seemed to be okay. They finally gave her that Popsicle they promised and she gobbled it up quickly. We got her dressed and she was done.

It was 8:45 when we got in the car. On the way home we could hear her whispering and talking to herself, amazed at her own voice and her new found hearing.lol We stopped at Walgreen's to get her ear drops and then headed to pick up Darius and Danica my other two kids from our wonderful friends Crystal and Michael. By the time we left it was close to lunch time so we went to eat lunch and headed home.

Dakota is doing well and don't seem to be slowing down from her surgery.

Later