Photos Galore!!

.wow. On the way home from work tonight gas was $2.09...yes $2.09!! Almost makes me excited to fill up the tank....almost....

Today was the Halloween Party for Carolina's playgroup. Haley and I were the hostesses (pretty much meaning we did the goodie bags and sweet stuff) Everyone brought a dish of some sort. The kids had a lot of fun, although I'm not sure they ate a lot of food, but us moms enjoyed it! They all got their dose of sugar though! Unfortunately, we didn't get many pics of the kids during the party, we were at a different playground than usual so they were all about exploring. I had quite a few cupcakes left, and didn't want them tempting me at the house, so I dropped them by Rendon's work, and by then he was off, so we went back to the park to get some pictures. The horse stables are across from the park, and we thought they might be useful in getting some smiles out of Carolina--since she wasn't much in the mood, she was 'ALL DONE!' with her tutu at that point. She's never seen horses up close and personal, but she wasn't scared at all! The two horses in the corral closest to the road were very friendly, and didn't run away when we came up. Exactly the opposite! They kept leaning under the bars to get grass and Carolina quickly figured out to pick the grass and feed it to them!! She's like a little mini horse whisperer! We've never been around horses with her (seeing that I'm crazy allergic) so that impressed us that she almost immediately figured it out. We were a little worried that she might have a reaction to them as well, but she didn't seem to. Her eyes got a little red, but not sure if that was because she was so tired or what. But she didn't get any asthmatic symptoms. One of the handlers told us that this Saturday they're having a special day for kids to come and take rides on the horses etc. I obviously can't participate in that, but Rendon might take Carolina back since today she could only see them through the bars.


On a different note, we saw the Pediatric Pulmanologist on Monday *finally*, and things went well. They gave us a rescue inhaler similar to ones older kids and adults use, almost like a cross between the nebulizer and regular inhaler. But it doesn't have to be plugged in or anything, so it's much easier to take with us rather than lugging the nebulizer everywhere and hoping there will be a plug available if we need it. Eventually we'll also be able to give her nightly treatment through it as well, but the doctor doesn't want to change too many things on her at once, so we go back in a month so he can see how she's doing, and then we can make the switch. We're also adding a powdered medication into her nightly pulmicort; It dissolves and she inhales it along with the pulmicort. We're really hoping to avoid any more courses of oral or injected steroids, seeing that she's had so many in the past year. In addition to stunted bone growth, they can also contribute to osteoporosis, high blood pressure, and diabetes. It seems to have affected Carolina's height, she has fallen off on her percentage curve quite a bit. She is now 32 inches tall, 24th percentile (in comparison to 70th to 85th percentile she was following up till feb. or so) and 21.5 to 22 lbs (it seems to depend on which scale she is weighed on), 4th percentile (same). The doctors say that is normal, and though current studies don't pan out into adulthood, they do show kids seem to catch back up to their curve and/or peers during their second year (as in second year of receiving steroids, not age). But I guess you never can really tell if it affects their 'ending' height since there's no real way to know how tall they *should* be....I'm rambling....


SO enjoy the MANY photos!! I couldn't help myself :-)



Haley and I made the cupcakes-we're not professionals so no one is allowed to send these to Cake Wrecks ;-) haha Poor things, they started melting in the the 'lovely' San Antonio sun right away.

Haley did the spiders...

I did the ghosts...

And we both contributed to the bats...I take responsibility for the oddly cut outs...bats are a difficult thing to freehand in fondant with a knife....
We had quite a bit of fondant left over...and the guys were slightly annoyed we just made all the cupcakes, but wouldn't let them eat one. So we made a cake, and tried our hands at draping fondant over the entire thing. We also tried to make the fondant 'marbled'. This was the result...




Some of the bees that crashed the party. This cup got left unattended for a few minutes and about 10 bees decided to die happy in the punch. Here you see one contemplating whether it would be worth it or not...

Little LadyBug! I made the Tutu, antenna hair bows, and the wings. Target made the shoes and shirt, Neiman's made the leggings. I say this because all day people were asking where her costume came from.



A LadyBug and a Quarterback went up the hill....

One of my favorites!

Off in her own lil world

On the seesaw with Daddy

First look at the horses! (Manual focus can be tricky with a fast toddler...)

Checking to see if we see the 'Horrrrse, horrrse, horrrrse?!?!'

'Here-ya-go'

This was taken three minutes after she first saw the horses (camera's clock doesn't lie!)

They loved her....kept following her....and she loved that!



The one and only time she actually pet one. The white horse was close enough for her to pet a lot, but she wouldn't. This was the only time the brown one really got low enough, and she reached right out and pet his nose. I was amazed she seemed to know what to do!

Offering them some grass.

The brown horse took the grass...The white horse settled for an antennae.....She let go quickly though, no antennea were harmed in the making of this photo.

Thought this was cute.

She wanted to go IN with them.

The tutu doesn't stand up well to all the running around. It got more and more bunched as the afternoon went on. Luckily, I just have to brush my fingers through it to fix it before Friday.

Curious Horse





The horses needed some more grass.

Time to go home!