I should’ve known something was up last night when Elena crawled up into my lap with a blanket and fell asleep while we were watching a made-for-tv holiday movie. (Gotta love the Hallmark channel!) I mean, it was only 4:30 and she NEVER naps! But it wasn’t until the kids were eating at 6:30 that Jacob noticed the huge welt on Elena’s back. I am still not sure how he saw it (she was wearing a long sleeved shirt and long jeans!) but he sent her to show me and then I discovered a rash of welts all over her lower torso and up her sides and a huge red patch on her left shoulderblade! Of course Josh was out of town and I had a little panic attack because Jacob went right to “poisonous spider bite” etc. But I called my friend Melissa who assured me that it sounded just like hives with which she has had much experience. So I gave Elena some children’s Benedryl and she went to bed early. This morning however, when I tried to get her up for school, she looked like this:
She had it all over her arms and legs too (but those pictures aren’t as interesting 
) so I took her to Urgent Care this morning and learned that it is in fact just hives, but they’ve prescribed some stronger medicine to help her be rid of them quickly. We have no idea what she may have come into contact with that caused them, but here’s hoping it doesn’t happen again!
My internet connection was not working yesterday so I could not post this then. We had a pretty busy week leading up to Halloween. The kids (and Josh) got to wear their costumes to dance all week, and we went to the trunk-or-treat/chili cook-off at Josh’s church on Thursday. It was the last week for soccer (which was supposed to end the previous week but they decided to make up for the week the games got rained out). Jacob went camping with the scouts Friday night, and then we had soccer games, grocery shopping, a Halloween party, trick-or-treating, and a baby shower! This year, for the first time, our little family chose one theme for all of our costumes. Since we really enjoyed watching the Avatar: the Last Airbender cartoon together as a family, we each chose a main character. Here are a couple photos from the cartoon so you can see some of the characters we were based on.
I didn’t get to take pictures the first few times we were dressed up, so some costume elements are a bit less impressive in these photos than they might have originally looked, but we had fun and I think overall they worked out great.
Uncle Iroh, Sokka, Katara, Aang, Prince Zuko, & Toph Thrap
Uncle Iroh, Aang, Sokka & Katara, Prince Zuko, Toph
in character
The bridge to the spirit world
“Sokka” holding little “Dinah”
Katara in Wonderland
The Haul
The Sort
Trying to capture “the Avatar State”
(the arrows glowed in the dark, but I couldn’t get it in a picture, still thought he looked cute in this shot)
The Crash
