To Stay in Good Standing

I was informed last night I would lose my place on Ashley's Friend's Blogs if I let my blog go 6 months without updating. Here you go.

They are growing up!

Yesterday was Sebastian's 4th birthday. We are blessed to have another year with him. I always need to keep in mind he will never be this age again and I need to cherish it. I love him immensely.
The thing that makes me realize Sebastian and Siennah are growing up is how they act in the morning. In the past the kids would wake up between 5:45 - 6:30am and crawl into bed with me. Then the wiggling would begin until I took them to watch TV or eat breakfast. The past few days I heard Siennah making noise, so I figured she wasn't able to get to something. To my surprise, she was in Sebastian's room and they were playing.........nicely! Then I heard Siennah say, "Quiet Bastian, don't wake up daddy!" I owe her some extra chocolate chips in her pancakes.

My Friend Ashley

This is in response to the comment on Amber's blog about my strep throat.

The answers to your retorts.

1 - Yes, I am feeling better.

2. It only took me 2 minutes to do.

I wouldn't do this if I didn't love you and weren't comfortable with you.

Jesus

We tried to go to mass tonight, but at 30 minutes early they were turning people away because the two services were full! So we knew they were having another one at Charlotte Catholic and decided to try there. The entry was full of cars, so I pulled into the shopping center next door. We were easily able to get past the line of cars and get into the gymnasium. We had to sit in the bleachers, but were were there.

Sorry to say we haven't been to mass lately. When were got in there Siennah kept asking where was Jesus. Stupidly I tried explaining about the Eucharist and Tabernacle. Then I said Jesus is everywhere and she kept looking around and saying, "Where!!!". Then Amber said, "Jesus is in your heart". Siennah looking at her puzzled and Sebastian said, "He's not in my heart, because I'm being bad". Great, he does understand.

Merry Christmas

Muckush

From experience I know parents are sometimes the only ones able to understand their children. Every once in awhile it takes time for Amber and I to figure out what they are saying. About a year ago Sebastian kept running around saying "Patonna, patonna, patonna". We had no clue for the longest time what he was saying. Then we were getting a pinata for his birthday party and he said he liked the patonna. Mystery solved.

Now we have a new word we can't figure out. Both Siennah and Sebastian use it, Muckush". They cook it for us and when I take a bite from the spoon, Siennah says, "No, pretend". I believe it is a soup, but I am not sure. Does anyone have any ideas?

Milky Houses

I was taking the kids to my mother's house this morning so I could go back to the hospital. Siennah looks out of the window and says, "Daddy there's milk on that house!" I look around trying to figure out what the heck she is talking about. Then I realize it is the frost on the roof. I told her is was frozen water and it was also all over the ground. She said, "No, it's milk." Okay, I know when I will not win an argument, so I agreed it was milk.

The Importance of Health Insurance

Now is the time of year when most employers have benefits enrollment. If you ever considered not getting insurance, don't. If you don't have the option of getting employer based insurance, I would suggest finding an individual plan. If you can't afford a full plan, I would strongly suggest just getting an insurance plan for cancer/heart attack/stroke.

I have always enrolled in insurance and for so many years paid into it more than I got out. As many of you know, this year we needed the insurance. Our billed medical expenses this year were over $157k. The insurance plan negotiated this value down to about $92k. We still ended up paying almost $7k, but could you imagine if we didn't have insurance? I am not writing this for sympathy, but I want this to be an example to the people I know who don't have insurance.

Two points I want to make; first - hospitals jack up the payment for the services and the insurance companies put a cap on the service rate, second - from my example, the insurance company pays a great deal of the cost.

Even with this, I am not advocating socialized medicine, even if I had to pay double for my insurance. My experience of living in the UK for 6 months showed me socialized medicine is only good if you are always healthy.