The Hazard Chronicles

In last week's post I mentioned that our babies were getting sick. Well, on Monday we went to the doctor and here is what we found out:

• Evelyn has a double ear infection. The poor girl was miserable, but thanks to some antibiotics she is back to her normal happy self again.
• Adalie has bronchiolitis. She wheezes when she breaths and it is sometimes scary to watch her struggling for breath. The doctor gave us an inhaler to use in case of emergencies, and told us how to recognize signs of respiratory distress so we could get her into the ER if needed. So far we havn't had to resort to any of these measures, and we are hoping that she will recover soon.
• Jackson has a milk allergy. This explains why he has recently looked like a burn victim, sounded like an asthmatic, and acted as if he had head lice. It was actually great to finally figure out what was going on. Unfortunately, this also means that Rachel is on a strict no-cow diet for as long as she is nursing. No milk. No cheese. No beef. Our meal planning has just gotten a little trickier. It is worth it though (easy for me to say), since Jackson is looking so much better now that it is hard to imagine that he is the same sick little boy. Every time we meet his gaze his whole face lights up with the biggest smile and the brightest eyes that I can't help but feel like the luckiest guy in the world to be his dad.
  

So, to put it simply, all of our children were sick, and all are well on the road to recovery.

Other than that, it has been a really fun week. Evelyn, by the way, is still the cutest little toddler in the world. Just in case anyone was wondering. She has started to pick out her own clothes which has provided us with a constant source on entertainment. She is so sweet with the babies and will occasionally just stop in the middle of whatever she is doing to run over and give them hugs and kisses before resuming her normal activities.

Rachel and I went to see the movie Avatar in 3D. It is not often that we will spend full price for a movie, but I think that this one was well worth it. The movie was amazing, and it was fun to have a night with Rachel without having to take care of babies. We also were finally able to finnish our gingerbread house. This is one of our Thanksgiving traditions. This year it sort of extended out due to babies, vacations, and school. We are proud of the result though and are glad that we saw it through to completion.

We are looking forward to tomorrow. It is MLK day. We are so thankful that this great man was born to give us a holiday from school and a chance to get out and play. In Cleveland, all of the museums are free on this day, so we'll get out and see what we can do.

Here are our pictures of the week:

Evelyn is so good at interacting with the babies.




And she is so good at picking out her outfits.


Here's our gingerbread house- straight out of the movie Up!




Here's a video we took. It really isn't much, but we posted it here because, as I've said before, we use our blog sort of as a family journal. One thing it does go to show, however, is how busy our little Evelyn is.

And here is a video tour of our gingerbread house. Really, everything except for the roof and the balloons was done the week of Thanksgiving.