The Beginning of Our New Normal

Friday was a stressful day for us. We went straight from the doctor's office to the Children's Hospital in Portland. In retrospect, I should have stopped to get lunch for Ms. Gail and me but I had tunnel vision - got to get to the hospital! Ms. Gail and I did a lot of sitting and waiting that afternoon in the emergency room until they admitted us to the ICU. HD *hated* getting his IVs in his arms. Honestly I don't blame him. 

I really didn't like seeing him hooked up with all his cords and wires every where. Because all he had to eat was a little bit of oatmeal that morning, come 3pm, when we were moved upstairs to ICU, he was getting hangry. He was already cranky enough having been prodded and poked at for the past several hours, and then to be hungry on top of it... Unfortunately his next meal wouldn't be until breakfast the next morning. I'm pretty sure he asked the nurse just about every time she came in if he could eat yet. I felt terrible for him! I did think ahead and grabbed Perry's iPad before we left home, so that kept his mind occupied, as well as the tv with all the new kids movies on it. Ms. Gail was also a trooper. They brought in a small bin of Pet Shop toys and she just sat and played with them in the window until Perry came to get her around 5:30.

I felt bombarded with doctors and nurses coming in to talk to me about the game plan for the next day and what's going on in HD's body. SO much information all at once. It was re-stated several times that Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disease where the pancreas doesn't make enough insulin (or make any at all) to allow the body to utilize the glucose found in the foods we eat. Also, *we did not do anything wrong* and *it isn't caused by the foods he currently eats*. Now that we know he has diabetes, we also know that JP and Ms. Gail each have a 1:20 chance of also developing diabetes. If they do, at least we'll know what to look for and already know how to help them.

I was under a great deal of stress Friday night because I was scheduled to work on Saturday. I never work on Saturdays, but I was scheduled for this one because there was no one else to work. They really needed me there because they were already short handed. I'm not the kind of person to just call off work. I don't know that I've ever called off work before. I already felt terrible about the thought of it, but I reluctantly agreed to at least work in the morning, even though Perry and I *really needed* to get started on our education and training. While I was at work stressing and panicking about my kid in the ICU, HD was moved out and down a floor to general care. When I arrived back to the hospital he was proudly holding his new dolphin balloon and SMILING! The night before I really had to work to get a smirk out him, so for him to be smiling...!!

I laid in bed with him for a little bit Friday night before settling down on the couch, but took full advantage of his bed the next day because he had one of his IVs out. I think he enjoyed his extra mom snuggles. Grandma Betty stayed for the training session too so she is able to take care of him when he goes to visit her in Montana this summer, without us. JP and Ms. Gail hung out at home with Grandma's sister and her husband. Thank goodness for helpful people! During our education, which was about 3 hours long, we learned how to check his blood sugar levels, dispense insulin, and correctly calculate dosages. I felt like there were numbers flying around the room!

 After the adult training session, I taught HD how to check his blood sugar and was able to walk him through the process of giving himself the insulin shot. He practiced on a foam star, and was very *I know, I know* about the whole thing. At dinner time, I walked him through the steps to check his blood sugar levels again, and he did really well with that portion. However, he was not about to have me give him his insulin shot. Until this point he was still getting his insulin via IV. I felt as if I was verbally wrestling a calf for branding. It was horrible. He was very firm on the idea that he was *not* getting another shot and *you can't make me* while his hands blocked me in every direction. The nurse just stood by and watched. It was pretty great...After about ten minutes of me insisting and him refusing, he finally gave in and let me put it in his leg. Talk about a great first shot for me...

His next dose came at bedtime, and knowing the nurse would be in soon, he got out his blood sugar meter and checked his levels all by himself. Obviously I was way proud of him, but I could also tell he was proud of himself. I made a big deal about it and wrote it on his dry erase board for everyone to see. His night nurse was so proud of him that he earned himself an extra cup of ice cream. (He didn't need to know he needed the extra carbs!) The kid was glowing! He followed his ice cream up with a double serving of sugar-free jello.

I would like to say the sugar got him going, but it was apparent he was feeling more like himself that evening. We had just finished watching "Princess + the Frog" (his choice, not mine!) and he had just consumed all his jello when he started pranking his nurse. Because he had one IV in, he was hooked up to one monitor still. When his arm was bent, his hose would kink and his alarm would go off. This would cause his nurse to come in and straighten his arm, turn the alarm off and leave. He caught on to this process pretty quickly. As soon as she would leave the room, he'd get that evil little smirk on his face and bend his arm so the alarm would go off. He was dying of laughter by the 5th time though I was trying to get him to stop by the third attempt, reminding him she had other kids to take care of too. Regardless, it made me happy to know he was feeling much better than the he had been in the past week!

I stayed the night at hospital with him again but this time he willingly shared his bed with me. Thank goodness because I was freezing in his new room. The nurse and I woke him up at 2 am to check his blood sugar level again, and I gave him a correction dosage before trying to fall back to sleep again. His doctor showed up around 9 to go over a few things, and then Perry and the rest of kids showed up just in time for the second three hour education session to start. HD was able to sleep in until about 9 when all the commotion began in his room. JP was very interested in all the pokes HD was getting.

Before we were able to leave the hospital, Perry had to show he was able to administer his insulin as well. He *hates* just the word needle so this a was a huge thing for him. His hands were incredibly shaky but he got it done! HD even asked for dad to do his lunch dose as well.

It's a lot to take in all at once! We left the hospital with lots of information and resources to utilize. The staff there was AMAZING! Right now my biggest concern is with HD's impulsiveness. He often comes home and just snacks at will so that's a concern for me. In the hospital he was in the mind set of "I'm sick now at the hospital but they are going to make me better so I only have diabetes for a little while." It was heartbreaking to him he say, "when I'm done having diabetes" when we were discussing Grandma caring for him this summer. It'll sink in. This is fine. We are fine. Everything is going to be fine.

We’re off to the Children’s Hospital

It has been quite the “Friday the 13th” for our household. As I sit in the emergency room with HD hooked up to an IV and Ms. Gail playing quietly nearby, I thought I’d take a moment to type out what’s been going on here.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we had friends come to visit us over spring break. I was surprised when HD slept in until 8:30 in the morning on the morning they were set to leave. I believe I may have even whispered, “Praise the Lord!” because this kid is usually up at 7:00a on the dot so I welcome the extra quiet time in the mornings when I get it. He knew we were going to go swimming in the morning, so it was unlike him to over-sleep when fun is to be had! However, by Sunday morning he was sleeping in until 9:30am. He didn’t seen quite like himself but Perry and I figured he was going through a growth spurt and just needed extra rest.

A couple nights later Perry and I were discussing him after the kids went to bed. He’s always been a small, skinny kid, but Perry thought he was looking extra thin lately. I hadn’t noticed because I hadn’t seen him without his shirt off in quite a while. He also prefers to snuggle with his aunt instead of his mom...because of that, I welcomed him to sleep with me when he woke me up late Monday night. I knew he had gone to the bathroom before he went to bed so I found it a little off for him to go pee again (a lot a lot) before crawling into bed with me. He woke up in the early morning to go again and then once more when he woke up in the morning.

 I had been in contact with his teacher, checking in on how he was doing academically so while I was at it, I asked him how he had been at school the past couple days. He also noticed HD seemed a little out of it. With his exhaustion increasing, I made an appointment with his doctor on Friday to be seen. The appointment couldn’t come soon enough. He took a two hour nap that afternoon and then still went to bed at his usual time. He wasn’t eating and was just overall moody. The day before he bawled at Costco when we didn’t buy more protein bars. Tears running down his face. It was horrible.

I had a good idea of what could possibly be going on with him by Wednesday night, thanks to Google. I searched for fatigue, excessive thirst (he has a water bottle from his aunt he had been drinking out of, but I had initially thought it was just because it was hers and he felt “cool” using his aunt’s things), excessive urination, moodiness... it all pointed me in one direction.

By the time his appointment came around this morning, he was hardly eating anything and was very fatigued. I was going to send him to school and then scoop him up later in the morning but I knew he wasn’t up for it when it came time to wake up that morning. I had let him sleep in the living room curled up in my chair, and he was not bothered in the least by people moving around. I managed to get him to eat *some* oatmeal before we left, but he wasn’t feeling it.

I was fortunate to have Robin come along with Ms. Gail, HD, and me to the doctor this morning. When listing out the symptoms, you could tell his nurse practitioner already knew what was up before we ran a few tests. Robin was good at helping me explain the changes we’ve seen. She’s been such a great resource to have this past eight months. Before we headed to Portland, it was confirmed with his blood sugar reading of 440 (normal is between 70-120 before eating) it was very likely he has Type 1 Diabetes but would need to be confirmed by the endocrinologist at the Children’s Hospital. Without my previous research, I would have been shocked to hear it, but I kept it together pretty well.

I’m feeling terrible about his weight loss though. Last fall when I was making weighted blankets, he hopped on the scale and clocked in at about 51 lbs. At the doctor today he weighed a measly 43 lbs. He did not have any weight to lose! Without his shirt on, you can see each one of his ribs. When looking at his legs, his knees are like balls in the middle of a rod. His wrists are incredibly small. I just wish I would have noticed sooner. Yes it’s the winter and he wears long sleeves and pants and sweaters but still. I’m trying to not be so hard on myself.

Right now the hardest part is seeing him so out of it. He’s not my bubbly little boy who has the tendency to drive me nuts on occasion. I want my prankster back. As much as I’m enjoying his willingness to let me snuggle with him, this is not the child I know. As his mom, it’s incredibly hard to see him in such a long state of fatigue, crankiness, and just  looking overly weak and pale. We’ve got a bit of a hospital stay ahead of us, but we’ll be leaving with a bunch of resources and so much new knowledge to retain.

A Recap for March and Spring Break

What a busy March it was! Seriously, where has this year gone?!

The kids are thoroughly enjoying their new bikes still. When it's raining or just too chilly out, Ms. Gail can often times be found biking around in the garage. The boys have been building ramps for a while to attempt to jump off of but they haven't quite figured out the right materials to use yet. They'll grab firewood and put cardboard on top to bike up. It's quite the fail. Other times they'll use some flimsy thin wood that usually breaks. Ms. Gail has been brave enough to attempt to bike up one of these bike ramps. We haven't had any too-terrible aches from them and they're having fun...

In the middle of March, Robin convinced me I needed to run in the Shamrock 5K with her in Portland down by the river. I knew I was going to die. I didn't immediately, but the following several days nearly did me in. I *could* *not* *move* and Perry enjoyed laughing me. But regardless, Robin and I had an entertaining morning together. It was also my first time using public transportation in Portland, so that was a little exciting.

During our run, I felt like Robin needed to leave me behind and finish without me. She is a 1000x more in shape than I am. (In fact she took 3rd overall in a dry-triathlon at her gym the day before!) She didn't leave me in the dust, instead she kept pushing me to keep going. She's pretty awesome like that. Around the 2 mile mark there were a few people handing out shots of beer, which we both happily accepted. That gave me just what I needed to finish the downhill portion of the race. As we were finishing up the last 50m or so the announcers were calling out the finishers who were crossing. I didn’t hear my name, but we both heard Robin’s loud and clear. I may or may not have sprinted through the finish line just so I could say I won. I was winded at the end but Robin was feeling good. Before heading back home, we turned in our tickets for a cup of potato soup and a beer. I always drink light beer so for whatever reason I decided to grab a darker beer. Regretted that decision immediately. It still quenched my thirst but I felt like I betrayed myself.

For spring break I had been thinking about taking the kids back to Montana because I had the week off work. As I mulled it over while resting at home after the race, I was having a hard time with the thought of taking my Honda Pilot on another road trip. It needs some work done, nothing too terrible, but I wasn’t feeling good about it. Perry and I had briefly discussed getting a vehicle for me this year, but we kept putting it off so this was a little push to go get it done. We stopped in to a couple places around town to see what they had but didn’t find much. We were looking for a van. It’s always been a pain for HD to climb over the seats to sit in the back, especially with car seats and booster seats. Ideally we were in the market for a vehicle with bucket seats in the middle. All three vans we saw had bucket seats as well as a DVD player in the back. The kids were thrilled but Perry and I were just meh about it.

After searching online, I was able to find a couple good options. The dealership was able to bring my favorite one over to the lot closest to us later that week. After everything was done and signed, I drove off with a 2017 Kia Sedona with about 10k miles on it. I left her parked in the driveway for the next few days though and instead took my Pilot to work in downtown Portland and because I wasn’t comfortable driving it yet.

We ended up staying home for spring break. We were planning to go back so we could see nanny and aunt Kim and Aunt Kile and cousins, as well as Grandma. The more I thought about going the more I couldn’t justify it. My sisters and mom had just come out a few weekends prior and then Grandma was planning a trip out for the weekend after we’d get back. Instead I had a friends and her kids and mom come out to visit during he middle of the week. It was so so nice to see her and her mom again! We took all 5 kids + the infant baby to OMSI on Wednesday. We spent most of day exploring the exhibits as well as checking out their featured exhibit, Robot Revolution. Before heading home we stopped at IKEA and did some shopping while the kids played in the kids area for an hour.

While in town, they stayed at a hotel, and we took full advantage of the pool there. My kids love swimming so much! I need to get a family pass to a swimming pool.

It was an enjoyable spring break, and a much welcomed break from work. It’s been frustrating for me. I was hired with the understanding I’d be working from 9-3 four days a week but during February and March  I was getting about 18 hours a week. It’s not a huge change but you do the math for the difference in hours. It adds up! I’m barely breaking even after paying for Ms. Gail to go to daycare and preschool. They say it’ll get better. I’m really hoping because I want to work!

We Got NEW Bikes!

Last weekend (March 10-11ish) the temperature hit 70 degrees on Sunday and it was AMAZING! Did I mention it was still the beginning of March? Seriously! Last year all it did was rain. I think this area set a record for consecutive days with rain. Not this year! 

The weekend before Perry and I spent the majority of our time finishing up the extra room which will now be our spare room / library. By library, I mean we have A bookcase in there, so that counts, right? I finished painting in the early afternoon, and then jumped in on painting in the main part of the basement. I wasn't planning on spending the whole day painting, but I'm not in the mood very often so I took advantage of my willingness and got a ton done.

In the meantime, Ms. Gail spent her afternoon trying to ride her bike without her training wheels on. It was a hand-me-down bike and one of the training wheels broke off this past fall, so I took them off and bought her new ones to put on, except I didn't put them on. I encouraged her to try to use the balance bike to scoot around on but she was having none of that idea. Before Perry and I knew it, she had gotten the hang of stopping and starting on her bike (without crashing!) all on her own. I was floored when she brought me out to see and she was biking up and down the road. Girl was determined!

With the weather being so perfect this past weekend, we took the kids to the store to pick out new bikes. HD and JP were both in need of bigger bikes (and new bikes because they left theirs in the rain a few too many times...) The kids were SO EXCITED!!

We ended up having to take JP's back to the store. Turns out using the hand brakes was a little challenging for him. He ended up with a green (duh) bike that only has petal brakes. 

Ms. Gail's new bike was one size up from the one she learned on and is still a little on the big side so we opted to keep her extra wheels on until she was more comfortable riding on this one.

After spending the whole afternoon biking around the driveway, the kids begged us to take them on a bike ride.

I willingly brought up the rear and happily let Perry take the lead. He and the boys were always way ahead, stopping occasionally to wait for us to catch up. Ms. Gail really struggled going up hills, but so did I so I gladly walked with her.

My bike was also in need of some serious work. It would shift gears without me actually shifting gears and was terrible to ride. Did I mention the left hand brake for the front tire didn't work? That was a problem that was hard to get used to! As soon as we arrived home, Perry brought both our bikes into the garage to see what he could do to fix them...

***Several weeks later....***

It's a gorgeous spring evening out and HD comes excited inside to tell me he can bike without hands. Of course I *have* to see this. When he says he can bike without hands, he actually means, he can quickly take them off and put them back on again. Robin and I reminisced about biking down our gravel road with no hands. I should have left it at that but I didn't. I went and got my bike to show HD how I could also ride with no hands. For the record, I would like to say I CAN DO IT! With that said, on my final run, I took my bike down the driveway and picked up speed. A LOT of speed. With no hands. Before I got to the garage I went to stop, not remembering Perry FIXED my front brake handle. Previously I had to squeeze it really hard for it to kind of work. Now I hardly have to touch it. So with that said, I instictively grabbed that brake, my bike immediately stopped. The back end came up over the front and I lay smashed on the pavement underneath my bike. Robin is now dying of laughter. HD has a look of embarrassing disgust on his face and Ms. Gail is screaming "MOOOOM!!!!" So yeah. No bruising though!!

About My New Job

January flew by and now February is long gone too. What the heck?! We're only two months into the new year and I am now THIRTY years old and recently just started on a new career path outside of the hotel world. Huge change for me! I love just knowing stuff and being valuable so starting work in a completely different industry has taken quite the toll on me.

For Christmas, I bought myself a new Bullet Journal and have been using it to track a variety of things, one being my mood. In my mood tracker for January, the entire first week was all purple, notating stress/anxiety/worry. I expected that with a new job, but oh my goodness! There is so much to learn and I feel I've only scratched the surface. My last day working the overnight shift at the hotel was on Christmas night. Honestly, I was surprised I lasted 5 months. They were kind of a blur as I was always tired. So I'm happy to report that now that I'm working during the day, I'm sleeping a lot better at night! (I had been struggling with sleep for about a year before I decided to work at night.) I'm happy my sleep patterns are much more normal now. Overall my mood tracker was mostly yellow, depicting happy/satisfied/okay for a good portion of the month so hooray for that! February was fairly similar, except for the bout of flu that hit our house during the middle of month...

Because I now work for the same company my husband does, we can't work in the same store, for HR reasons. With that said, he's worked in my store twice now since I've been there. (He's overseeing the store I work out of while the search for a new center manager continues.) The first time he was there, I had a little anxiety attack when he arrived. Watching him walk around the store and taking notes, all the while observing the staff, was a roll in which I had just envisioned him doing, and now that I was watching him do it (and observing me!) I found him to be intimidating. Yes. I found my husband to be intimidating.

A few days later, my store ran out of trash bags (how does that happen?!) so a team member had me call my husband's store to ask if they could send some over to us. I have talked to my husband an uncountable number of times on the phone, but when I had to call him at work about work, I again had a wave of anxiety wash over me. He answered the phone, and I panicked a bit, and said, "HI this is Sadie from the Cascade Park store..." I'm happy that my phone training and supply sharing rendezvous was with Perry, but at the end of the call, he added, "Now that you know how to use the phones, you can pound pound me any time you want to baby." It was a play on words because to dial store to store you simply hit ## and the store number, but I was immediately mortified that my husband said that to me at work. My heart was already racing and my palms were sweating so for him to end the call with that...My co-workers could easily see how frazzled I was!

I was working out of my store last week (I often work out of others stores in Portland to get the hours my store can't give me) and I took a step out of my comfort zone and answered the phone. It was Perry, except I thought he said Larry or Terry at Lloyd Center, so I didn't process that I was talking with MY HUSBAND until the end of the call when he said, "It was nice talking to you Sadie at Cascade Park." I felt like an idiot as I wandered off to retrieve the person he called for. He gets me so flustered!

I've had several anxiety filled days, but overall I'm mostly enjoying my new job. Primarily, I work in shipping and help out in our self-serve area when people need help running the copiers or the fax machines. The elderly customers really like me :) I do get a little anxious at the thought of working at other stores though because I'm not knowledgeable in printing. Most of the stores I fill in at make most of their revenue from their printing department and only do a handful of shipments each day. The store I work out of normally, typically, needs at least two people to man the shipping station during the day, so I'm getting very confident when it comes to shipping, but have only dabbled in the printing side of things. I feel really useless when I go to other stores not being able to help out over there.

In other news, Ms. Gail *finally* received her FedEx costume in the mail last week, and it was the BEST THING EVER! She was so so so cute! She also decided she doesn't want to have kids because she really wants to be a mailman when she grows up, and apparently having kids wouldn't allow her to do so! Hahaha!

Home for the Holidays

I kind of can't believe I haven't posted on my blog in over a month! I missed HD's NINTH birthday and Christmas fun. Who am I?! To my credit though, January had been a whirlwind of a month. 

We hadn't had Christmas at our own home since HD was one year old, which means JP and Ms. Gail hadn't celebrated Christmas in their own home, ever. My babies won't be babies much longer so it was important to me that we stay home and have a low holiday at our *new* home. 

HD would not stop bugging me about making cookies for Santa so I had him make them, under my direction. I was a little surprised his siblings didn't want to do any of the cookie cutter portion, but HD did great on his own. 

While Perry and I did some holiday baking in preparation of Christmas day. I was in charge of making eggnog and Kringler and Perry worked on getting a Strada together for breakfast. (This was my second attempt at eggnog and I was impatient during the cooling process, and inadvertently cooked the egg whites... It wouldn't be Christmas without me messing something up.) 

In the meantime, I had the kids work on making Strawberry Santas. It was hard to not micromanage them because I wanted them to look perfect, but they turned out cute anyway. I feel like there should have been more, but they must have been eaten out of excitement. 

We had a skiff of snow on 24th and HD was SO SO HAPPY about it. Literally a skiff and he was out making snow angels on the deck! He spent the rest of the morning collecting and eating it. 

Despite my exhaustion from working the overnight shift, we still managed to get the cookies frosted.

 

I really enjoyed watching Ms. Gail decorate hers. We ended up with several that had sprinkles overload. (That bottle was full...)

 

You know she had requested we bake her a few cat cookies to decorate...

 JP took a lot of time decorating his cookies. He did the snowman on the left and Ms Gail did the snowman on the right (obviously) but when Perry asked who did *this* snowman, JP let his sister take credit for his cookie while he sat back and smirked to himself. He's such a sweet brother.

I was a little surprised as to how long HD stuck with decorating cookies too as well as the time he spent on each one. 

I had to work the overnight shift on Christmas eve, which sucked, but ah well. Knowing the kids would wake up early, we had them sleep in our bathroom closet so they couldn't raid the presents without us. It sounds weird, but if you were to see our closet, it's HUGE and they love it! I made it home by 7:30am and crawled into bed after I realized *everyone* was still sound asleep. I managed to get a good 45 minutes of rest before I started to hear whispering and footsteps. 

Originally Santa was going to leave their presents upstairs by the fire place, but since the fire place was too hot from the fire the night before, he went through the other chimney and ended up in the basement. (Honestly, I just didn't want to be cooped up in the master bedroom while we had a livingroom we could spread out in to open our stockings.) After we made a mess of the livingroom, we raced to the basement to see what Santa left. HD was given his own toolbox, complete with tools, JP was excited to get a build-your-own car, and Ms. Gail received the bean bag she really really wanted. Knowing everyone was going to end up with a Nerf gun, Santa also left Nerf guns for mom and dad. Super high powered ones too! The boys didn't think that fair... Perry's nerf gun held 36 darts, and shot them three at a time. Mine had a reloadable cartridge that holds 12 darts. Before we started opening presents from under the tree, we had a nerf war. 

To determine who would get to open the first present, the kids had to find the glass pickle and Ms Gail was winner. Her brothers were not impressed. 

Perry helped her pick out the best one to start with. 

We had such a relaxing morning in our new Christmas jammies. All the kids were really good about taking turns. I loved watching their expressions as they opened all their gifts. HD had me open his present as one of the firsts to be opened. Earlier the week before he drew a really cool picture of a ship with a scuba diver and coral reef and shark. I loved it and loved all the little details he added. However that afternoon, he became upset with me and ripped it up. I expressed how hurt I was about that because he knew I was wanting to keep it. With out me knowing, he taped it back together, the best he could on his own, wrapped it up, and gave it to me for Christmas. I about started bawling. So this is one of the only pictures I'm in and I'm just starting to open it. 

JP even got in on the joy of giving when he wrapped up one of his hot wheels cars to give to his sister. She opened it and exclaimed, "Oh I love it! You're the best brother! This one is my favorite too!" To which he responded with, "Now we can play cars together." She then proceeded to hug him. He acted like it was killing him, but I know he was loving it. It was so sweet to watch!

I enjoyed all the snuggles throughout the morning. I was *so so* tired come 1:00 so I passed out on the couch for a while. When I woke up, we played with the nerf guns some more. To go along with their nerf guns, we gave the boys a 100 count bag of GI Joes to aim at. We had fun lining them up and shooting them down. JP has pretty good aim!

When we came out of church on Christmas eve, the ground was COVERED in snow and it was so nice to have snow on Christmas! I was not looking forward to driving to work in it though... 

On another note, it looks like Ms. Gail needs a new pair of snowpants! These were size 18 months but she insisted they would still work! 

Miss Gail's Christmas Concert + Fire Station Field Trip

Miss Gail had her first Christmas program a few weeks ago and it took an entire day to get it uploaded to share. She was so so sweet!

Just a few days before their program, her preschool class met up at Target and everyone purchased a toy to take over to the fire station to give to kids in need. I got the pleasure of corralling three of the four girls in the class. They were fun though!

While at the fire station, the kids were able to check out the fire trucks and see all the fire fighting gear. Such a treat for them!