Surviving the Summer 2011 Heatwave!!!

I didn't grow up in Texas.

"But I got here as fast as I could!!"

And ever since my husband brought me back to the "promised land"

where he grew up,

I've heard stories {of legendary proportions} of the summer of 1980.

It was the summer that went down in the record books as having the MOST

consecutive days 100+ temperatures {46}, plus the most days of 100+ days in one year {69}.

The #1 hottest summer on record in the state of Texas.

Well, this summer, we're giving that record a run for its money!!

So far, we've had 36 consecutive days of triple digits,

and there is no relief in sight.

In fact, as we get further into August,

the temperatures are only getting higher.

It's quite a novelty for this Yankee!!

I've never experienced a 110+ day yet, and I'm sure we'll see that later this month.

To make things worse, we haven't had any rain in a month-and-a-half or more.

For those of you who live in areas where it's rare to see drought conditions like this combined with temperatures like this, indulge me and allow me to share with you some of the things

that happen in conditions like this.

Our central air conditioning unit {along with so many others around us}

have trouble keeping up with such intense heat.

Our unit is old to begin with, but it's slightly smaller than what we need.

When the temperatures are in the 90's, our house is comfortable most of the day.

But for over a month now, our house is a sweltering 85 degrees with the A/C running.

Which only gets worse if you turn the oven on.

So, we've been enjoying meals that don't require an oven:

Hamburgers {on the large electric griddle}

Hotdogs {also on the griddle}

Chips

Fresh fruit {ice cold watermelon and strawberries}

Salads {with rotisserie chicken from Costco}

Crock-pots meals

Tuna-melts {warmed in the microwave oven}

Frosty cold SMOOTHIES!!

No-Bake Cookies

One day, we called an A/C guy to come look at our unit.

He wasn't going to be able to come for a couple days, so he suggested we spray off any

foilage/grass/dirt build-up on the outside unit.

So I tried that...

FABULOUS.

The house was noticeably cooler the next couple days.

When the house started getting warmer again,

I decided to try that trick again.

While spraying off the unit, I noticed large cracks in the ground and about a 1 inch space between

the ground and the foundation of our house.

So I thought it would be a good idea to "water" the foundation.

I let the water pour into that space all up and down that side of the house.

The next MORNING......

I open my closet door, which happens to be right off that outside wall that I had watered,

and there....

swarming 2 of my T-shirts hanging in that closet.......

were ANTS.

I must have drowned them out, and they came pouring into my closet to escape.

And the more I investigated......

the more I found......

they were on each and every piece of clothing I had hanging there.

So, I had an impromptu morning of fumigating, vacuuming, and laundering!!

Lots of people here are having problems with ants pouring into their homes to get cool and find some water.

Then there's the problem with so many people needing so much electricity to keep their homes cooled.

So we've been warned of possible rolling black-outs to give the power grids a break!!

We've been encouraged to turn out thermostats up, and reduce the number of appliances we use between the hours of 3 and 7 pm.

Because it's so dry and the "grass" looks more like hay, there are burn bans in place.

Many towns around us cancelled their 4th of July fireworks for fear of wildfires.

We haven't had to mow our lawn since May or June because it's basically dead.

Our 5 year old recently ran down the STREET {following his oldest sister} to the neighbors house....

barefooted.

By the time he ran back home, he kept complaining to me that "his feet hurt."

When I realized that he had run.....on the STREET.....bare footed....

I checked the bottom of his feet.

Just as I suspected.

Blisters!!

Covering the balls and heels of his feet.

HUGE blisters.

He couldn't walk on them that evening,

and in the morning he was so happy for me to drain the fluid out of them so he could run around again!

Another problem that we {and everyone else} have encountered during this heatwave is.....

CABIN FEVER!!

It's too hot to go outside to play....just too hot.

So my children are indoors all. day. long.

Thank goodness for VBS and church camp!!

Here are some other ways that we have kept cool and busy this hot, hot summer:

I didn't get 100% participation this year, but 4 of our 6 children completed their summer reading program 

at the library and received a free book, a certificate, and tons of free goodie coupons from local restaurants!

{I think it's significant to notice that neither of my AHDH children are in the above picture!!}

Our local public high school offered free breakfast and lunch to all children under the age of 18 during the months of June and July.

We took advantage of that as many days as we could.

Less mess in my kitchen, a money saver, and it got us out of the house every day!!

Enjoying the fruits of their reading labor!!!

Teen Camp!!

The week following Junior Camp in July was Teen Camp for our 13-year old.
This was her very first year to go with our church's youth group as a teenager.
And what an amazing week she had!!
They went on an 18 hour church bus ride to Mount Moriah Christian Camp in Powell, TN.
They started out 1 1/2 hours late because the bus wouldn't start after they got it all loaded.  Battery.
But they all had "the BEST" week of teen camp "EVER!"
Complete with one of the adult sponsors getting 13 stitches in his forehead/nose due to an injury in the pool,
and a tire blow-out on the ride home that resulted in a 3-hour layover at the local gas station!!

We prayed that the Word of God would speak to her heart during that week, and He answered our prayer!!

Lexi was part of the "Photography Club" during this week.

With her best friend and the "big ball" game!!

Lexi is on the left in the black shirt...with the red hair ;)

We were so blessed this year to see 3 of our children get to attend summer camp.

We feel it's such an important opportunity for them to get away from all the "noise" our culture covers them with on a daily basis,

to a place where they have to be away from TV, video games, computers, neighborhood influences.

They are using up tons of physical energy all day, so they can sit still better and hear the principles taught to them from the Word of God during morning chapel as well as evening service time.

Children are very tender to the Lord's voice, and this is a great place for them

to make some life-long decisions for Him.

We work together as family every spring and early summer to raise the money for them to go,

and it has always proved to be one of the best investments of the summer!!

Catching up!!

This has just been THE most amazing summer for our family.
We have had such a BLAST!!
The last couple of weeks were supposed to be slower, lazier, less busy weeks.....but we've managed to keep hoppin' most every day.

One of the big things here recently that has significantly impacted our days has been this tremendous heatwave.
We live in Central North Texas, and we are currently in our 36th consecutive day of triple digit temperatures.
On the 1st day of July it was a minty-fresh 98 degrees that broke already many triple digit days, so we've had many, many days of intense heat with it only getter hotter as we go farther into August!!
I'll be posting about how we've been surviving this record breaking heatwave next week!!

But let's get on to other more interesting things than the weather!!!
I've already posted about the "Adventures of Summer Camp", but I wanted to put up some pictures that our youth pastor's wife took during the week!!

Type 1 Diabetes never gets a vacation.  Checking BS with the camp nurse.

This was the day after her nightmare of falling off the top bunk and ending up with a fat lip 

and a visit from the paramedics.

She didn't quite feel like going boating with her friends.

Ashlyn is standing here with her back to the camera in the green shirt and dark shorts.

Summer camp and the diabetic child

Last week was a a busy week for us.
Our regular routines were put on the back burner while we tried to do what we could to comfort our dear friend and her family after the tragic and sudden loss of their son.
In the meantime, Grant and Ashlyn were at summer camp with a group of children from our church.
This was Grant's 2nd year to go to camp, and Ashlyn's 4th.
Old hat for us.
No big deal.
Right?
Well, when you live with Type 1 Diabetes.....it really IS a big deal.
Since she was diagnosed with diabetes just over 2 years ago, her daddy has been able to take the week off of work and go along as an adult "sponsor."
He would drive one of the church van's and help get all the kids settled in,
and just be around if anything happened with one of the kids.
It was very comforting for me because I knew he knew that this is not a condition that can be ignored
or even "let go" for the week.
If there were any questions, or if she got sick or if her blood sugars dropped low or went high....he was there.

But this year.....several months ago my husband announced to me that he had the opportunity to take a course for his job that would expand some of his skills.
He was excited about it.
When?
Out of the 52 weeks in the year, it fell on the exact same week as summer camp for Ashlyn.
Getting her packed for camp is a little bit more complicated than getting her non-diabetic brother ready.
I started the week before pulling all their outfits and labeling every sock and toothbrush and making lists of the items we needed to purchase for them.

When packing doubles of all her insulin supplies {I always pack doubles in case something gets lost or broken!},  I realized that she only had two humalog cartridges left as well as only 1 thyroid pill left.
That meant calling the pharmacy to get these prescriptions filled.
When I called, they claimed they didn't have any prescriptions for her.
So I had to make another phone call to the diabetic educator who told me 2 weeks before that she would call those in just in case I didn't get everything together for the mail order service in time {which I did not!}.
She was out of the office until next week, so I had to wait for someone else to call me back.
After I spoke with the 2nd diabetic educator, she told me she would call everything back in for me.
I called the pharmacy back and found out that the first diabetic educator had indeed phoned in the prescriptions 2 weeks ago, but the incompetent person I spoke to on the phone hadn't noticed the reason for the prescriptions being "cancelled" was because they were holding them until I called in for them!!
Then,  I was told they didn't usually stock insulin cartridges and that I could pick them up the following day.

EXACTLY why I have to start this ridiculous circus of a process DAYS in advance!!

In the meantime, I also called and spoke with the camp nurse just to refresh her memory about my daughter and the previous conversations I've had with her about my daughter coming without a parent.
She was extremely conscientious and knowledgeable, and my husband had only the highest praise for her since she has been the nurse at the camp for several years.
She agreed that it would help her to have a detailed instruction sheet with all of Ashlyn's current insulin-to-carb ratios, correction scales, and medication routines.
I emailed this to her and she emailed the menu and daily schedule they would follow.

I prayed with them as we dropped them off on Monday morning, and they waved a happy good-bye!

My first phone call from the camp came that night.
It was really just an update and to let us know that Ashlyn was doing fine and that she had a low during evening chapel which she recognized and they easily corrected.

We went on with the our week, and by Wednesday evening were pretty exhausted from the emotion of the funeral {see previous blog post for details!}

5:30 am Thursday morning
My cell phone rings.
It's the camp nurse.
They aren't sure why, but Ashlyn had fallen out of the top bunk in her cabin and seemed to land on her face on the cement floor.
She was unresponsive when her counselor reached her, so she assumed she needed to use the {emergency} cake gel in her diabetic bag to bring her blood sugar back up.
Obviously, she also tried to check her blood sugar but mistakenly put the test strip in the meter upside down,
so it wouldn't operate properly for her and gave her an error message.
She had called the nurse, and by the time she and the other nurse got to the cabin, Ashlyn was responding but was very agitated, disoriented, complaining of her head hurting, and crying loudly.
She had a swollen lip, the nurse said, and some blood in her mouth and a scrape by her nose.
She let me try to talk to her, but it sounded to me like she wasn't even fully awake.
She kept crying, "I want my Mom...."
The nurse told me that when they got to her, they tried to check her blood sugar but that the meter wouldn't work for them {referring back to the upside down test strip}, so she had to run back to her cabin for the extra one I had packed {SCORE one for Mom!!!}.
When they finally did get a reading, her blood sugar was 115.
This led us to believe that her blood sugar had gotten low since this was some time after the counselor had given her the cake gel.
Of course, by now the entire cabin full of girls was awake.
We mutually decided that they would monitor her and if she started throwing up {which she was saying she was going to do}, they would have to take her to the ER to get checked out.
I hung up the phone.

My husband and I laid in the bed staring at the ceiling.
We knew what they were dealing with.
We wished we were there.
At the beginning of this year, when we all got so sick, Ashlyn woke up a couple times walking through the house in what seemed like a panic.
She was crying uncontrollably and even when we got her to sit in the bathroom, it took her awhile to really wake up.
This is what she was doing for them.
I knew she wasn't sick, but figured she was just exhausted, had not gotten enough sleep, maybe subconsciously realized she was low, and when she tried to get up, fell out of bed knocking herself out.

About 45 minutes later, the nurse calls again.
She had started throwing up, and were going to take her to the ER.
They were trying to get her to check her ketones, but she was still groggy and had forgotten to do that.
I told them I trusted them, and had to let it go at that.

Several minutes later, another call.
It was a paramedic.
He said they were called to check her out, and that she looked fine except for the bruising on her lip.
Her head and stomach weren't hurting her as much and she was more coherent by then.
It was up to us if we wanted them to transport her to the ER.
We all mutually decided to to just keep her at the camp and let her rest that day.
The nurse told me then that some of the campers with Ashlyn had noticed that she was "flopping around" before she fell off the bunk, and the nurse said it sounded to her like she had been "convulsing."
I'm not sure it was that serious, since we here know she's a "mover and a shaker" anyway when she's in bed.
NO ONE likes to share a bed with Ashlyn!!

Anyway, as the morning went on, she threw up the 7-up I suggested they give her, but slept till lunch.
She was up by lunch, her blood sugar was 60,
 ate some food,
and was in the pool with her friends by 2:00pm.

I don't know that we would have done ONE thing differently if we had been there.
These wonderful nurses were on top of EVERYTHING, and had written down every number.
They were second-guessing themselves and regretting they hadn't given her a snack at bedtime when her blood sugar was 107, but then I don't think I would have either.

This is exactly why I want the Dexcom!!
It would've told them if she was heading up or down or if her blood sugar was stable.
It could have given them a reading when the counselor couldn't get the meter to work.

We are going to the endocrinologist for our quarterly review this morning.
I plan to fill him in on all these little details, and hopefully he will agree that this is something that we NEED!
Then we can get the paperwork going to see how much our insurance will cover on this puppy!!

Thankfully, she was fine the rest of that day and night and got home safely to us Friday afternoon.
I've already told Tommy that either he or I WILL be going to camp next year!
Oh, and Friday evening I got another call from the nurse.
They had forgotten to send home her Glucagon kit with her.
SCORE two for Mom!!!
We always have an extra on hand, so we're good until they can send it back to us!!

A time to die....a time to mourn

This time last week {Saturday morning} I was busy packing my children's things

for an awesome week of summer church camp.

The plan was to send off these two older children on Monday

and spend the remaining week just relaxing, 

enjoying the casual pace of summertime,

slathering a little more attention on the youngest members of our family.

I was also hoping to spend some leisurely time shopping with my oldest daughter

who has recently started bulging out of every piece of clothing she owns,

and is in desperate need of clothes that fit her properly 

so she would be prepared for her upcoming week at summer camp which is the following week!

"To every thing there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under the heaven:"

Late Saturday evening, after I had crawled into bed, exhausted...

from the laundry and the labeling and the running around for medication supplies.....

my oldest daughter came into our bedroom asking if she could call her friend.

Initially, I was annoyed that she would ask to call a friend....at 11 O'CLOCK at night.....

who she was going to see early the next morning at church.

She then told me that her friend had posted on facebook to pray for her brother.

THAT did not seem like a legitimate reason for a recreational phone call.

But her friend did call and told her that her brother {26 years old} had fallen 

out of a car

and was barely breathing.

"....a time to be born..."

It was such a random, out-of-the-blue statement.

It didn't register with me.

But as I lay in my bed,

I felt the Lord whisper to me,

"You better check this out with {the young man's mom}."

That was it....just a quiet nudging.....the fear in a Mama's heart.

"What if......."

So I texted her.

"Is he okay?"

She called me within moments.

Terror.

They had moved her into "a family room" at the hospital and she didn't know why.

Her other son, who had been with him, was still with the police.

We cried out to our Heavenly Father together there on the phone.

To save his life.

To bring "the peace that passeth all understanding."

To help her sense His presence right there....at that moment.

I asked her to call me, no matter the time, when she heard anything.

I hung up the phone....fear strangling.

My sweet friend is just 3 years older than me.

She has two older boys who she has adored and loved and prayed for.

She has prayed the Lord would bring them back to Him.

They have chosen to live their lives tasting everything this world has to offer,

racing through life trying to find happiness and joy in all the wrong places.

Never one time has she rejected them......always talking with great love for them.

She couldn't allow them to live at home because of their two younger sisters,

both the ages of and friends with my two oldest daughters.

She couldn't allow the alcohol and the drugs in her home.

And the boys knew that.

They loved their sisters, and their mom.

"....a time to die.."

She called me back, around midnight or so,

and choked back that he was gone.

He and his brother were with a group of friends, including his fiancee'.

Alcohol.

Sitting in the back of a pick-up.

Arguing.

Fooling around.

65 miles a hour.

Lost his balance.

Fell out on the highway.

A breath away from eternity.

"....a time to weep.."

I frantically prayed with her again as I watched her walk straight into the darkest, deepest valley

I have had nightmares about and fear I never have to face.

Our family prayed together in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

We brainstormed about what we should be doing, what we could do to help at that moment.

"But I trusted in thee, O LORD:

I said, Thou art my God.

My times are in thy hand:"

Psalm 31:14, 15

I wanted to go to her.

My oldest daughter and I did go, to her home,

early Sunday morning.

"......a time to mourn.."

We cried with their family.

We listened to the stories about her firstborn baby boy.

We sat with her as the tears flowed as she breathed in the scent of him off his clothes.

We arranged for our littlest ones to play with friends while we attended his viewing on Tuesday evening. 

We quietly slipped in to his funeral, Wednesday afternoon,

 and listened to a mother's cry as she said good-bye

to a child who was gone before she could hug him.

We hugged his sisters, his grandparents, the brother who watched him fall.

We heard an uncle sing a soulful tune through tears.

"....though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death....

I will fear no evil,

for thou art with me."

Psalm 23

We witnessed the grace of God this week.

His mercy in preventing this young man from a lengthy suffering after the accident.

The grace of a loving family surrounding those who are hurting.

His presence felt so clearly in the darkest places.

"My presence shall go with thee;

and I will give thee rest."

Exodus 33:14 

3rd and 4th weeks of summer fun!!

The last several weeks have been such a blur of activity that I've lacked significant slots of quiet time
to lay down some words describing our days.
The week following "Art Camp," my children attended not only a morning VBS, but an evening one as well.
Here's what our eventful days looked like:
8 am - Rise and shine, breakfast, get dressed
9 am- 12 pm - VBS for 4 or 5 of the children
                     - Cleaning time for mommy
12:00 pm - Pick up time and head to the local high school for free lunch with all our friends!!
1:00 pm - Home for quiet afternoon of reading, or playing video games or watching a movie
              - Some afternoons we went swimming
5:00 pm - Daddy gets home.  Dinner for him
6:00 pm - 3-5 children get dropped off at another evening VBS where they are served dinner
              - Mommy either goes shopping or for her 1 hour walk
8:30 pm - Pick-up time
9 - 10 pm - Bedtimes

During our 4th week of summer fun we traveled every morning to our home church 30 miles away to participate in VBS there!!
We even borrowed a 15 passenger van from our former church so we could take visitors.
Our high day was 11 visitors on Wednesday morning.
It even worked out that we could make it back to our local high school for lunch too!!

We also threw in a garage sale on the Saturday between those two weeks as part of our "summer camp fundraising."
But that day deserves a blog entry all on it's own!!

Nevertheless it has been really busy.
I have loved nearly every minute of it, but we're all ready for this 5th week of summer to just relax and be home more.
We hit the pool on Monday {the 4th of July} and got terribly sunburned {again which deserves it's own blog post!}.
Because of this, we've all been laying around trying to keep cool.

We've had an unusually warm  HOT summer this year with temperatures in the triple digits nearly every day
for several weeks now.
We don't usually see triple digits until July, MAYBE, August......not as early as June.
And to exacerbate things we've had little to no rain.
For some reason, this year, our A/C hasn't been able to keep up and it's getting up to 82 degrees in our house
every afternoon with the A/C running!!
Obviously we need to address this issue too, but we're afraid we won't be able to afford the fix.

And then there's Ashlyn's blood sugar numbers.
All summer we've done nothing but chase down highs.
Very high highs.
Sometimes accompanied by the dreaded ketones.
We have to get this figured out.
We have to do something different.
I got in touch with one of her diabetes educators at the hospital because our insurance changed at the beginning of June {again....which will get a blog post all it's own.....nightmare!!}.
During the conversation about needing her prescriptions rewritten for the new mail order supply company,
and the fact that I can't keep on top of charting her numbers, I asked about this amazing technology called:

Continuous Glucose Monitoring

Long story short, I got in touch with a representative for the Dexcom 7 CGM System.

We're waiting to hear what or if our new insurance will cover of this.

Next week???

SUMMER CHURCH CAMP!!

Second Week of Summer Fun 2011

This last week my girls enjoyed several days at our local "Creative Arts School" for art camp!!
Last summer, our oldest artistic daughter enjoyed a week of that, and I wanted to try to make that happen for all our children who wanted to participate.
My  9-year old son wasn't interested in the least, but our 2nd and 3rd daughters were.
I wasn't sure how we were going to be able to afford art camp along with church camp, but early in May I found that the "Creative Arts School" was offering scholarships to those who were the first to apply!!
I sent our application in the next day and we got three scholarships!!

These were only partial scholarships that covered about 2/3 the cost of the camp, so it wasn't entirely free, but very doable!!

We also were able to visit our local state park which has a lovely beach area.

My children are part fish, so we had a blast and they were in the water for hours!!

Sorry there aren't more interesting pictures of our afternoon at the beach, but these children were seriously too far out in the water...the whole time!!


We've also been having such a heat wave in our area that it has been too miserable hot in the house to cook.
So I had to whip out an old favorite {which isn't a favorite of most of my children I learned!}:

Homemade root beer floats {for a crowd!!}

First week of summer fun 2011 !!

Just a glimpse of some of the fun things were able to do together this week.

I don't have any pictures from VBS #1, but they all had a great time with their friends!!

We were invited to swim at a friend's HOA pool and the youngest were learning how to swim

while the older ones honed their swimming skills!!

The girls had their first sleepover of the summer to celebrate another school year completed!!