The Chicken Most Def Came Second...

Happy Halloween from the Burke house!

Izzy decided early on this year that she would be Sleeping Beauty and Cambri would be a bunny rabbit. But I already had this amazingly cute chicken costume. I make such cute chickens.

 Not the actual costume, I'm not that crafty. I leave the hard part up to Old Navy. I just help mold the people inside.

Aren't they cute?

This year, the Golicova girls invited us to their church Halloween carnival.

Where we had our hair dyed...

 And our faces painted!

There is more to this story though. We won a goldfish. When I say "we" I mean Izzy. And she blatantly cheated but the church officials deemed it appropriate enough to still let her "win." In her defense, she really didn't understand that she cheated. She was told the objective of said carnival game was to get the ping pong ball in the bowl. And it wasn't clear to the 4 year old who was hopping around on a high fructose corn syrup high that she couldn't just walk over and drop the ball in from a few inches away.

Now I have a fish to take care. And a four year old who is in love with the fish that she lovingly named "Ryan" after her uncle. If I hadn't just quit my job, this fish would put me over the edge. I feel such an obligation to this thing, I mean it is a living creature of God, right?

This is more commitment than I can stand.

Alive & Aware THANKFULLY

The Burke house was put under a little stress this last weekend. Due to some faulty work performed on our furnace/air conditioner, carbon monoxide was being pumped into our home. It started out like a normal weekend. If you consider normal running around like mini demons with lots of estrogen. Normal for us anyway. Saturday evening I turned on our heater for the first time this season. I noticed an odor but thought that maybe it was just the unit burning off dust. I went to bed with a bad headache but managed to fall asleep. The next morning, I could barely open my eyes. Izzy was complaining of a headache as well. Then the nausea started in and she and I were sharing the throw up bowl. When Cam Cam finally got up, she started throwing up as well. It was odd that all of us were sick at the same time but I had had dinner with Paula the night before, so I texted her to see if her kids were sick because I thought food poisoning might be the culprit. She was fine except for a headache left over from my house the night before. Odd? Yes! I finally got to the point where I just wanted to lay down and go to sleep. But the girls were sick too, so I couldn't. We were all in so much pain that none of us could move. Cam Cam would fall asleep mid crawl and not move until I would wake her up. She would then resume crawling and again fall asleep mid crawl. Being that I really am an orphan, I called my Grandma out of church. And she made it to Idaho Falls from Ashton in 45 minutes. When she arrived, she had to knock on the door because it was still locked. I have a 5lbs chihuahua with a bladder the size of a peanut. I couldn't figure out why I hadn't let him out for the morning. Then everything started to click. Gordy wasn't even moving. The girls and I threw up together, every time the furnace kicked on. I grabbed my kids and Bev drove us to the doctor. Even being out in the fresh air for 10 minutes made Izzy and Cam perk up. My headache started going away. The doctor examined us and determined that we were being poisoned by carbon monoxide. When the gas company came to check out the house, they found 25,000 ppm of carbon monoxide in our house and that was after the doors and window had been opened for over an hour and the furnace was off. The gas man kept saying over and over again. "Thank goodness you called. Thank goodness you got out of the house. This is so dangerous." It turned out that the return air vent had been removed and not replaced. So when the furnace kicked on, it was venting carbon monoxide right into our house. Cam Cam had to go on supplemental oxyagen for a little bit but other than that, we are back to normal.

First Call Jewel, you were worth the $483 to fix our furnance properly. Thank you.

Slap With Me The Bad Mom Stick

Someone hit me. It just occurred to me that in this forum, the place where I love to talk about my kids most, I never mentioned that Cam Cam learned to walk.

And it happened two months ago.

I know that all of you in blogworld would get a kick out of her little tottle. I do! It's so cute. Sometimes she gets really excited and tries to run.

It doesn't go well. And she usually falls down.

And Izzy and I laugh and laugh.

It may sound cruel but it's not. I am not a coordinated person so I know that she gets it from me. She looks like a crippled monkey trying to move quickly. I should get it on tape and bore all of you by posting it here. It's really that cute.

So next time you see little Cam Cam, grab a treat and encourage her to run to you. I am giving you permission to laugh when she falls down.

 She's used to it.

My Road to Orphanhoodness

Well peeps, October is historically a good blogging month for me. Not this year. I'm a tad overwhelmed with wrapping up my entire holiday plan for both malls in time to turn it over to the new person. I can't wait. I CAN'T WAIT. It's going to be this huge weight off my shoulders and hopefully my personal situation.

My person situation. I have decided that I have become completely alone in this world. But it wasn't always this way. Here is my ophanhoodness timeline.

May 2008- My sister and brother-in-law move to South Dakota. Yes, this is pretty much the middle of nowhere. And I was very sad.

August 2008- Chasey switches companies. New company keeps him on the road three weeks out of the month and me without my bestie three weeks out of the month. Very sad!

October 2008- My grandpa died. Sad is not enough of a word. Devastating.

December 2009- My aunt Carol died. She used to bring me lunch and have me over for dinner. Overall the world is just not as bright without her.

March 4, 2010- Nope still can't even type the words without crying. It's safe to say the best part of me went to live in heaven that night.

October 2010- My dad leaves for AZ (albeit for two weeks but still!) and my grandma goes to New York to take a tour exploring fall colors. Graciously my best friend Paula commits to helping me watch my girls for extra hours just so I can keep up with a the bare minimum of expectations in my life.

And this is why when I tripped and slammed by head into the corner of a table during Biology that I had no one to call. Yes, Paula would have come but she would have had to pack 4 kids with her. I would have rather walked home than put her through that.

It only bled for a few minutes. I recovered. Honestly I was more sad that I had no one to call because that is just a depressing thought.

Wow, I need a vacation. I just depressed myself again.

I probably should look at the positive things in my life. Cam Cam was born in 2009. She's awesome. My babysitting situation is so nice. Paula loves my girls the second most after Chasey and I. My friends Kelly and Sherri each take a night watching them for FREE so I can go to school. Chuck & Bev do a lot for me, for which I will be eternally grateful. There is a silver lining, right?

Fish Hook 2010

Hey peeps! In case you didn't notice, I gave myself a little blogging break. Mainly because I was the victim of a senseless tragedy. Trust me when I say, if you want to get a drama queen all worked up, put a fishhook through her finger.

When I reached my hand into the back of the car and came out with a fishhook attached to my finger, I went into shock. I was hopping around, threatening to throw up and pass out and screaming like a baby. Chase was extremely pale. And guess what? No medial establishment in Island Park is open over the weekend. So I had to go to Rexburg. Where I BEGGED for an epidural. They didn't give me one. But I did get a nice numbing shot and was sent home with a finger that was mainly in tact, wrapped in a Scooby Doo band aid.

Now you know.