A visit from some piggies

Wow! Two blog posts in 1 day! Not bad eh? Anyway, the season of sickness has started very early here in the Hahn house. We have had a visit from piggies. Yep, several of us had the swine flu last month. The girls and I were sick for about a week. David was sick for only a couple days. I'm not convinced it was the flu, although I don't know for sure. We were all healthy very briefly but now poor Rose has pneumonia. Poor kid - she seems to get sick so easily. She has missed quite a bit of school already this year and it's only November. The only good thing about having Rose home is that we can watch girl movies together. As I type this, we are watching The Sound of Music. She loves musicals just like her mom. Yay!!

So what are the other kids up to? David loves to play with legos. He makes action figures out of them and plays Star Wars. He is a huge Star Wars fan! He also likes to cook and wants to be a chef when he grows up. He and I made homemade applesauce last night. His teacher brought in homemade applesauce to school to celebrate Johnny Appleseed's birthday and he came home wanting to try it too. It turned out more like baked apples than actual sauce but he loved it. He is also developing quite a sense of humor and makes up jokes to tell us at the dinnertable.

Matthew has a never-ending supply of energy. He loves to play pretend and has stuffed animals and action figures he plays with. He loves zebras and giraffes, mainly because he likes the movie Madagascar. Have you seen it? His favorite characters are Melman, the giraffe and Marty, the zebra. He has a stuffed zebra that he carries everywhere and has named Marty. That and his lamb's wool blankie (which he calls "woolie scrap") are his two favorite possessions that he never goes anywhere without. He is still sleeping on the couch in the living room. He started that back when we had a tv in the living room and would watch a video as he was falling asleep. Well we've given away that tv but he still likes sleeping there. He is good about not wandering the house so we've let him sleep there rather than fighting with him to move back into the bedroom with David (who loves having a room all to himself). Matthew is also into playing with tools and doing magic tricks. He'll hold up an action figure, say "Abracadabra make this diappear. Poof!" and toss it over his shoulder onto the floor. Look - it disappeared! And if you don't clap, he looks at you, wrinkles his brow and says very sternly "You didn't clap!"

Rachel? Well I haven't spent as much time with her lately. She is in school full-time so I don't see as much of her as I did last year when she only went to school half a day. She is full of energy and loves to hug people. She loves to play with makeup, wear dresses and look pretty. She loves drawing and coloring and is always coloring a picture for someone. Her favorite possession is her pillow with its Ariel the Little Mermaid pillowcase. She calls her "Pilly" (pilly is a girl) and takes her everywhere. She is a sweet, energetic, caring little girl who wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up. She loves our 3 cats and has been very responsible about keeping their food dish full.

So has Phil found a job yet? Nope. He is currently studying for his CCNA and plans to take the certification test next week. Having this will give him more (and higher-paying) job possibilities. CCNA stands for Certified Cisco Network Administrator I think. All I know is that having this will give him some much-needed confidence and make him more valuable/marketable.

The only other big news is that due to a lack of money, we have given up cable tv. So now we have no tv channels at all. Surprisingly the kids haven't protested much at all. We have dvds to watch if they want. But they have adapted really well and spend more time playing and reading books. Yahoo! One unexpected benefit of having no money!

Well it is time for the bigger kids to get home so I'm gonna sign off and hopefully not take quite so long to blog again!