Happy Halloween!

We usually do the church carnival thing, but this year we decided to skip that madness all together and just trick or treat! The kids all got their costumes on and really wanted us to dress-up too, so James and I both put our costumes on and away we went! James chose a kid friendlier costume, than the night before and went as a Dr. instead.

Zach was a fighter pilot and thought the flotation devise on his chest was really cool!

Hoper was a ballerina and wanted to show everyone her ballet tricks, as we went from house to house! :)

Grady was a horse and his costume made him roast! He cried when we were in the car and when we took him out he was dripping with sweat (He is his father's child)

Gracie was a medival princess. When a lady asked what she was, she said "an evil princess" James & I both laughed at that one! :)

There's a new frozen yogurt shop in town that was offering free yogurt to kids that came dressed in their costumes, so before we pounded the pavement in search of candy, we headed for some free frozen yogurt. The kids thought it was great, as we were the only ones there and the staff doted on them! :)

After our brain freeze, we headed out to trick or treat! The beauty of it all, we trick or treated, stopped & visted some friends, sorted our candy, greated kids at our door and they were all in bed by 8:20 :)

Fall fun at Riley's Farm

It's Halloween day and Gracie's first grade class, along with all the other 7 1st grade classes headed up to Riley's Farm in Oak Glen. We got to school early, at 8:15, all the kids loaded on the buses and us moms(there were 2 for each class) followed the buses. Gracie was excited to ride the bus again, but said it was a little squishy!(there were 3 kids to each seat) The air in Oak Glen was fresh and crisp, quite different than the air last week :( You could deffinately tell it was fall, which is nice for California :)

The frontier days tour included a horse drawn hayride, tinsmithing, eating big carmel apples(Mmmm!), making apple cider, and learning about life in the frontier days. Another mom and I had 8 kids in our group and all the kids did awesome!

Gracie thought it was great that I got to go with her and it was just us (no Grady and Hope :))

There wasn't enough time to eat all of our carmel apples so we ate them on the way home from school :) We had a great fall day!

A Vampire is in the house!

We waited until the last minute to get our costumes for our small group party, so the vampire is all Wal-Mart had left the day before Halloween! It took us forever to put all James make-up on. We even painted him some hair :) haha!








The kids were a little skeptical of his costume at first, but then they thought it was lots of fun to pretend the vampire was sucking their blood! Even Nana got in on the blood sucking fun!

This picture makes me laugh! Everyone else is scared by the blood sucking, but for some reason I seem happy about it! haha!

After these pics James was more than ready to jump in the shower to wash off all the make-up and thankfully just warm water and soap did the trick!

Haunting Hallowii Party

Our small group eats together every Tuesday night so being the night before Halloween, we had our weekly dinner at the Odenbaughs for a "HalloWii" party. We all dressed up, ate together and the boys played Wii, which was quite fun to watch them do in their costumes. It was fun to dress-up and be a kid again for a night :)

Happy Halloween!

Home Again :)

Grady is home! Yeah! We were released today and the rest of the fam came to pick us up. Since the big kids were off of school we all went with Jamesy to do some appraisals and then came home to nap. Grady will have breathing treatments every 4 hours for the next 2 weeks at least and hope that his breathing will improve and his wheezing will decrease.

He is still wheezing and coughing, but I'm sure the coughing is largely because of the crappy air. So for now we are holding up inside the Oates family jail and trying not to go crazy, hehe! We are in hopes that as the smoke moves on that so will Grady's wheezing.

Now we move onto Zach wheezing and coughing, as his asthma is acting up to. Isn't life grand? :) No really life is good, it could be so much worse- at least we have each other and our home...We've been thinking so much about all of the displaced people and the loss of their homes and things, we have much to be thankful for. We will remember all of them in prayer.

Grady at the hospital

Here's Grady is his crib/cage looking through the bars :) In the 2nd one, obviously he is feeling better. Thank God!!!

We can't breath!

The smoke is bad enough, but then add in asthma and a cough from the big sisters and you end up with one sick Grady-bug :( He's been wheezing now for a few days and the cough has worsened. yesterday we saw the Dr. he took a listen and yes he is wheezing and though he'd probably be admitted. He was right. We made it through the day, but last night he was retracting, wheezing and coughing pretty bad so...I wnet to Loma Linda first the ER was PACKED! There must have been 25 people standing outside the waiting room and I couldn't even see inside through all the people, so I went back to Redlands Hospital hoping at worst they'd just transfer us to Loma Linda if he needed to be admitted.
RCH Emergency wasn't much better, but we only waited about 15 minutes before they brought him in to triage and they took us back immediately. They started an IV, took blood, took X-rays, did a breathing treatment, gave him steroids and an antibiotic. Still, not much luck his respitory rate was high, his pulse-oxygen level was low and his wheezing was horrible. About 2 hours in the Dr said we'd be transfered. 2 hours later and a sickening ambulance ride (can I say carsick?) we arrived at Riverside Regional Medical Center in Moreno Valley at about 2. By 2:30 Grady had worked his magic on all the nurses and our room was full, as everyone was checking out the cute baby.
A headache, a soda and an annoying beeping monitor later I was in the bed (I mean reclining chair) by 3:30. Grady did okay through the night and we woke up at about 7:30. We both ate and then the Dr. came by. His resp. rate had improved and his wheezing had decreased dramatically, so it seems the steroids and antibiotics had begun working.
James brought Hoper to visit us and Grady grinned from ear to ear. We did a shift changed and my parents came to be with Grady and Hoper stayed with. James brought me back to Redlands to pick up my truck at RCH and then he finished working. I got the kids early from school and came home for a brief moment to shower, check e-mail etc...I thought I'd post a moment also.
I took some pics of him in his cage, but forgot to my camera home, so I'll have James post the pics later. As for now, we are back to the hospital to change shifts again.
Keep us in prayer and hopefully we'll be home tomorrow or the next day:)