Spring Break!

 The weather has been absolutely yucky!!! It has been cool, cloudy and rainy since the kids got out of school last Thursday! But we have been finding things for them to do! We have been doing Animal Yoga every morning!

Being elephants!

We made these twirly thing you throw in the air and they twirl around as they come down

Danny added some weight and it was binging off the ceiling!!

We made sugar cookies

We bought hula hoops and they have been practicing!

We bought "Tangled" and watched it - SO cute!!

We drove over to St Augustine yesterday just to do something! Too wet to get out on the beach :(
We had dinner at a really cute little italian restaurant.
Today we met nana for lunch, dropped off some donations and some consignments, did some shopping!!
Tomorrow will probably be a library day :)
Man! Monday can not come soon enough!!! Especially when it is raining!!!

Since we knew Danny would be off this week we started phasing in his new medication last week. We are weaning him off the narcotic medicine he was on and putting him on something is NOT a narcotic. This should also help with his appetite and his weight loss from the other medication. He has been much more emotional, which is expected, so we saved it for this week! Hopefully by Monday he will be in full swing with the new medicine.

I also snagged this picture off Carolyn's blog :)

Nancy, Gerri, Madeline, & Carolyn :)

This proves that I was there!! :) You can see Gerri and I were a bit tired! (and this was taken at 10:00 am!)

yes, we made it!

We are happy to report that we made it home at 7:30pm last night!!!
We were lucky enough to have a very full flight and right behind us was a VERY young couple that decided to try to get drunk before flying. The young woman NEVER stopped talking!! Luckily Gerri slept for part of the flight :)

This same woman talked to everyone that went by or said anything in her vicinity. Many times her response was not very nice.
I had to get up and carry Gerri to the bathroom and on our return this young lady said (very loudly) "omg! what is wrong with your child!" I promptly punched her out smiled and said "My daughter has a joint disease called arthrogryposis and we are working on her feet" The crass young lady then said (very loudly) "oh I know how that is, I have arthritis in both my knees" Since there was absolutely NO reasoning with her I just smiled and said "wow that is too bad" and under my breath I said MUCH more but continued to smile and turn my back to her. I felt really bad for their 11 month old that they had :(
We ate our lunch for dinner and put our Ipods on with our earphones!!
When we pulled up to the house Gerri was SO excited to see Danny and Victoria she was squealing!!
Even though we didn't get home till 7:30, all 3 kids were sound asleep by 8:00 and slept till 7:00 am!! :)
Now I just need to get rid of this darn cold, my ears are still blocked now.

This next week is spring break so we need to find some cool things to do, maybe the zoo, a couple of museums, ride the train in St Augustine, we shall see. It will be nice to not travel next week!

you see, we just thought we were leaving :)

We both slept SO well :) We woke up and showered (I went first then picked up Gerri with a towel wrapped around her casts and held her while she lay under the relaxing water :))

Gerri primping before heading home

 The hotel had a wonderful breakfast that was included with our room :)
We decided to take the 9:00 shuttle to make SURE we made it on our flight

Multi-tasking, playing the ipod and talking to her sister on the phone

watching a movie while I grab us lunch to take on the flight

So here is where the title of the post comes from:, cause I know you are NOT going to believe it!!
We get in line to preboard first, with a large line behind us. The attendant tries to scan our passes and they are INVALID!!! For some reason they were cancelled, and the seats were given to someone else. We are asked to stand aside and a supervisor called. The next thing we know we hear over the intercom, "our flight appears to be overbooked by 2 seats, is anyone willing to give up their seats and fly later today in exchange for a flight voucher" So obviously we are the 2 overbooked seats! Would you believe that 1 person was willing to give up their seat!! NO ONE ELSE!! By now the supervisor comes and he is just flabbergasted that our boarding passes are no good, HE asks the line "IS anyone else willing to give up a seat in exchange for a flight voucher, a confirmed seat on our later flight AND a food voucher!" Would you believe that NO ONE would do it!! He then went on the plane to ask if anyone would do it, NO takers!! I asked if WE agreed to go on the afternoon flight would WE get vouchers and he said YES!! SO, since we could NOT get on the flight anyway :( We got 2 flight vouchers (that will almost completely pay for our next flight to Philly) a wonderful free lunch and CONFIRMED seats on the 3:40 flight home. The attendant and the supervisor was just amazed that NO one would give up their seats when it was obvious that we were the ones without seats. But the supervisor and attendant were SO nice to us :)

We had lunch at a cool little bistro, we were watching the guys below

Silly girl dancing to the music while I try to explain to hubby why we are not on the flight home!!

She is blurry because she is rocking SO fast!!

We did some people watching!!

I had texted Tracey to ask if they were at the airport yet, so we walked to their terminal to talk and kill some time!! Tracey and her mom as SO SO cute!!
We are now at our new gate - I double checked to MAKE sure our boarding passes are good  and they are!!
Ps-Jenn, David took a picture of us girls together and once they post it I will steal borrow it and post it!

Woo Hoo!! It is Cast day!

Since we knew we would be leaving very early in the am, we let the kids start spring break by camping out in the living room:

I woke Gerri up at 4:30 am to load the car and head out to the airport

Sleeping on out 6:30 am flight :)

 Our flight was delayed leaving FL and then we circled Philly for 30 minutes, so needless to say we were late getting into Philly. Let me tell you how wonderful my head and ears felt from all the up and down and up and down!!!  Luckily we know how the schedule works and we knew there was no need to rush :)
Once we checked in we were told there was a family asking about us :) Woo hoo!!

Gerri and Ms Madeline meeting for the first time!!

2 sweet Ukrainian AMC beauties!!

Gerri had the Reiben boys at the word IPOD :)

The Reiben girls were playing around with their water :)

 The second bestest part of our day was finally meeting Tracey!!!! We have been emailing for over a year about Gerri and AMC!!!! She is a walking testament to Dr vB!!

The AMC grand poo bah herself! Tracey!

 After getting her old casts taken off and getting her x-rays done we headed on up to the cafeteria for a quick bite.  We have learned out lesson and run out for food when possible!!

Tracey loving on baby Monroe!!

They are looking SO good!

We waited a bit for Dr vB :) when he came in her took her measurements, manipulated her feet, then tried to check her x-rays. Unfortunately they were not loaded in the system. Someone went to call, no answer in x-ray, someone was sent over to check, told they were loaded, he checked, no x-rays. By now Dr vB was NOT happy, he asked the resident to go bang heads! He turned to me and said let's cast! I said all right!! So we casted! It just amazes me how much differently he does this whole process. He not only manipulates the ankle, but he also works on the knee and the leg alignment. Gerri could not bend her rt knee past 90 degrees and her left knee past about 60 degrees. Since his casting, she has a harder time straightening her knee and can bend both past 90 degrees!! It is crazy to think how much flexibility she gains from casting in 90 degrees. Dr vB is also able to over correct her feet, which out previous ortho could not do. That is why her feet are pointing out in her casts. The hope is that when we are done casting they will settle slowly into alignment.
Here she is in her new pink and purple casts!

Gerri talking to Victoria and Madeline playing bubblewrap

A friend for life!! Gerri and Tracey!

Momma - you are crazy!!!

Ok, kisses are all right!!

 We ended up being at Shr*ners all day today, getting out around 4:30! We sat with our friends while waiting for Ms Becky. Then hit ALL the rush hour traffic and red lights. Ran into the airport, through security, up to our gate, only to be told that we were not there "early" enough to board! WHAT?!?!? how crazy is that! It was not even time for our flight to leave!! So we went back out to the counter only to find there were no flights to anywhere near us with 2 seats on it tonight, so we are rebooked for tomorrow :(
But there were MAJOR blessings in this!!
1) we had no time to get any food for dinner and were both hungry
2) I was exhausted and still miserable sick and very worried about the hour drive home once we landed
3) We were able to call Tracey and find out what hotel she was staying at near the airport
4) And this wonderful hotel had a shuttle pick us up at the airport
5) They have a diner next door, with very good cheap food AND we got to sit with Tracey and her awesome mom!!! I think there were several times we had the other patrons looking at us cause we were laughing SO loudly!! :)

So Gerri is sound asleep and I am ready to hit the sack!! I still feel like my ears are blocked and all day long I had to keep saying "excuse me" cause I could not hear well :(

We have 2 weeks off till our next appt, hopefully at that time we will be able to see the bones in her feet! Dr vB is happy and that is the most important thing!

2 quick prayer requests!!

school picture day!!

I have 2 quick prayer requests!
#1 and the most important is that the xrays tomorrow show that the stubborn bones in Gerri's feet are moving so we can keep on casting, thus avoiding external fixators!!!!
#2 and much less important, is for my health, I have a nasty cold and dread flying :(

The most exciting part of tomorrow is I get to meet Tracey - the most awesome AMC'er around!! And I get to meet Ms Madeline!!! a cutie patootie that has been home for only a couple of months. I had the extreme pleasure of being their stateside helper for their paperwork chase and can not wait to meet them in person!!

We are trying to do a one day trip :) we leave the house around 4:30 am and get home around 10:00 pm.
We shall see how it goes :)

Really cool give-away!!

http://wronginalltherightways-travcat.blogspot.com/2011/03/give-it-away-now.html

Field Trip!!

chalk is awesome!!

 Danny's whole class at the Jacksonville Zoo today :)

Danny and his "buddy" Vaughan

Lunch :)

Nana - look at me!!

 The zoo had a great new exhibit about dinosaurs!!

As Danny walked by  the Dinosaur "roared" and scared the heck out of Danny!!!

 Danny and Nana had a GREAT time!!!!
The weather is beautiful!! Sunny and in the 80's!! We hung around outside all afternoon :

My own Girly pedicure :)

keeping himself busy with his St*r W*rs sticker book

Then the Dr kit came out :) I got LOTS of shots :)

Back home again!

Gerri "talking" to her barbie :)

Doing homework while the girl scouts cook breakfast

It is hard to write 2 sentences

Watching 2 boys play xbox :)

Danny played Dora, but was more interested in Indiana Jones

So they played Cars and raced each other!!

They got very comfortable!

Teacher Gerri had class after breakfast!!

They were talking up a blue streak :)

Gerri and Danny were singing like crazy, Danny stopped when he saw my camera :)
The loud noise is the plane


Here is a quick video of our welcome home! Since we got in at 5:30 I had hubby and Victoria meet us at a restaurant :) The kids were SO cute!

Welcome Home!!! (till Next Friday)