SNOW, SNOW AND MORE SNOW!!!

Everyone says it doesn’t snow in Arizona or at least in southern Arizona but in the
7 1/2 years we’ve been here, it has snowed almost every year. Usually it’s only 1 time and not very much but this year we got A LOT for Tucson standards.
The first time it snowed was Feb. 9 and the boys were so sad they couldn’t play in it! They were all sick, actually we all were. You can see that in my previous post SICKOS!!
A few days later on the 12th it snowed again. It wasn’t quite as much snow as before but it was good enough for the boys! They LOVED it! Bacon not as much as the older two. He came in with wet, cold hands crying. Poor guy! We don’t really have much snow gear for the kids. We don’t need it!
Then on the evening of the 19th, I got a text message warning me of a blizzard coming to our region. We were on blizzard warning until 11 pm on Thursday, according to the message. I laughed so hard when it really was for here! I have a Washington number so I was sure the warning was for up there! Nope!!
Wednesday came and it was really nice outside for most of the morning. A little cloudy and cold but nothing like the blizzard conditions I was warned about. Around noon the weather changed. I looked outside and it was windy and cloudy. I turned around, did 2 things in the checkbook, turned back around and it was full on snowing. Not just flurries or a little falling, full on snowing. The backyard was almost covered in just a few minutes! Still not what I would call a blizzard but way more than anyone here is used too! So I loaded up the kids and friend, got bread from Walgreens and realized it was starting to stick to the road. It was slushy and limited vision of about 40 feet. So I headed to pick Pach up from school. Best decision ever!
We got home and the 3 boys and I played outside in the snow for over an hour. We made 3 baby snowmen. Bacon climbed up the slide and accidentally slid down. Looked freaked out for about 2 seconds, started smiling and laughing and next thing I knew all the boys were flying down the little slide giggling! We threw snowballs and ran around. Bacon’s favorite thing was to grab a bit of snow, eat it and move to a new spot, eat some snow and move on. Over and over. I did get a picture of all 3 boys with the snowmen and then said we’d go out front. I put something inside and heard screaming and crying. I turned around and Bacon was destroying the snowmen! Pounding on them, hitting them and the other boys were upset. They weren’t going to last too long anyway, right?
We walked around the front yard and the block. They LOVED making footprints in the snow and at one point, Bacon was drinking the water off the road! Crazy boy! It stopped snowing for a bit and then started up again. I decided to make a quick run to the grocery store before it got worse. It didn’t, it stopped snowing instead. That night when Tim and I went to bed, it was snowing again. The little car had 2 inches of snow on it. That may not really be that much but for here, it is. It was beautiful! Of course by the time we woke up Thursday morning, a lot of it was gone but it was fun while it lasted!
From the 9th:

Our little flower plants.

Backyard and all the toys.

From the 12th:

Pach's first snowball. He was so excited!

The boys ready to play. I couldn't get Pickle to smile for me.

Outside ready to go!

His hands got a little cold with no gloves.

Throwing a snowball or a handfull of snow anyway.

 

The follow through.

From the 20th:

Scraping the snow off the basketball hoop.

The basketball hoop was a popular place to gather snow.

Again with the basketball hoop. It just gathered
snow so well.

His glove got caught in the wheelbarrow's wheel.

Yes, those are grocery sacks on his hands. We don't have any waterproof
gloves his size, so he got gloves with plastic sacks over them.

The three baby snowmen we made. Right after this Bacon demolished them all.

Our neighbor's tree.

The backyard.

Our miniature orange tree. If that thing survives these cold winters
down here I'll be impressed.

SICKOS!!!

 No one likes being sick and we got hit hard!!! Feb.2 around 11:30 pm, Pach came into our room and said, “Mom, there’s bugs coming out my eyes!” Not quite awake but aware of that probably meant, I growled and took him to the bathroom. Sure enough, PINK EYE!!! He had a ton of gunk coming out his eyes! Luckily we still had drops from when he, myself and Bacon had pink eye in December, so he got drops right away.
Sunday morning I got up with all the boys. I plopped Bacon on the couch, got chocolate milk for everyone and when I handed it to Bacon noticed one of his eye’s was all crusty and gunky. Great! Another case of pink eye! I call it the gift that keeps on giving! It just won’t go away! Bacon also had a very runny nose.
On the night of the 4th Pach was having a hard time breathing due to croupe. I had him in a steamy bathroom and in the cold outdoors. He finally started getting better but I knew I had to do something so on the 5th, I took all 3 boys to the doctor’s.  Bacon wasn’t sleeping very well and his runny nose was almost constant and Pickle I just had checked to make sure he didn’t have anything other than a slight cough.
We left a very chaotic 30 minutes later with a prescription for steroids and amoxicillian. Since Pach had difficulty breathing, he was on steroids for a couple nights. Bacon, it turned out, had a double ear infection. In fact, when the doctor walked into the room and saw him, she said, “He looks like a good candidate for an ear infection.” The tip off was the runny nose. Wish I had known that sooner!
After a few days things seemed to get better. Bacon’s nose dried up and he slept all night again, Pickle never really got sick and Pach got a little better or so we thought. Thursday (after 2 nights of steroids), he started sounding congested. Well, by Friday night I was sleeping sitting up all night in bed with Pach and Pickle, helping them stay elevated so they would quit coughing. Didn’t quite work too well. Tim was in another room, sick, trying to get some sleep and not get me sick. I woke up on the 9th, after having not really slept at all, sick. It took a week but I finally was down.
Monday the 11th, I took Pach to the doctor pleading for something to make him stop coughing at night so we could all sleep! I was desperate and had tried everything! The boys room had a mister in it and a Vick’s Vapor Rub plug in it. I had given them 2 different kinds of cough medicine, put Vick’s Vapor Rub on them, on their feet with socks on and kept them elevated. Nothing worked! I told the doctor all that and she looked at me and said, ‘None of it worked did it? That’s why I never recommend any of that stuff. It doesn’t work.'” Then she prescribed some cough medicine with codine in it. That stuff worked! Finally after over a week of sickos, they were sleeping through the night!!
Tim started getting better, Bacon was fine and Pach and Pickle were finally cough free at night! But I got sick. I ended up going to the urgent care on the 14th and found out I had an ear infection! That explained why my ear and throat and everything on the right side of my head hurt! I am still taking my medicine and we are all actually better! We even made it to church finally!
Honestly, I am so tired of people being sick! In December we had a broken leg, 3 cases of pink eye, 2 bouts of the flu and my sister, my mom and my dad all got sick while they were visiting for Christmas! It’s just time for all this to be OVER!!!!