Clayton Is Home!!!

Thank the Lord Clayton is now home.....he is not to be "active" for 2 weeks and will go back in for a check up than.....Thankfully he did not have to have any
surgery and the swelling on his colon appears to be going down!

Poor little guy, he had so many blood tests done, iv for fluids since he couldn't

eat or drink -- wasn't allowed to walk around so he had

some legs wraps that would "massage" his legs every now and than...monitors stuck

all over him -- Ugh

he was a bit hooked up there for awhile. But I must say

I'm proud of him. He didn't complain or fuss, he just said he knew

it was for his own good.

The poor little guy hadn't eaten from Friday evening until this evening (Monday) -- he

had seen the commercial while in the hospital advertising the new

burger at Burger King -- He made sure we stopped on the way home to get one.

Says it tasted better than he exprected.

Thanks to all who have prayed, visited and sent good well wishes. Clayton

mentioned that getting those balloons and things really

helped him to feel cheerful

Clayton in Hospital

My little man

has made it to the age of 10 before he had a BIG boo boo!!!
Saturday, he was riding his bike on our stone driveway. Many
of you know that our driveway is very long and downhill!!!
On his way downhill his tire must have hit a rock. The front of his tire
turned sharply and as he flew over the handle bars one of those handlebars decided
to make contact with his side/stomach. Now these handlebars have
seen better days. The plastic/rubber coverings that are on the handlebars
were wearing off and he now has a perfect indention of that metal "pipe" that was
his handle bar right in his side. Kindda like he was "branded"

I was at work and received a call about the accident. Steve and Alyssa cleaned him up and
he was very quiet. About an hour later he started throwing up. Off to the ER we went in
Lewisburg. Thankfully, he was admitted asap. We were there for about 6 hours. They found that he had some internal swelling so transfered Clayton via ambulance to Geisinger.
Upon arriving to Geisinger, Clayton and I were taken into the trama unit!!!!
More tests, to discover that his colon is swollen....... that is when they had to determine if they

would perform surgery. It was decided that since he was young they would watch and make sure no leakage from the colon would occur.

Next stop -- Pediatric ICU
that is where he is at the moment. He has been a real trouper... All the blood work, iv's and

poking!!! Many of the doctors and nurses have complimented him on how well he has done!!

I would really appreciate your prayers through this....
the Lord can heal him!!!

3:30 Sunday afternoon

Clayton has been moved to a regualar room...still no food

or drinks.

Our New Addition

Okay, this is the stack or should I say mountain of laundry in her room.....Bella seems to enjoy making her bed here.

Her favorite place to be - under my desk.

Well, from the day we were married my hubby has made that statement that we would never have a dog in the house. We have had dogs, but never inside (well, the one lives in the garage) Bree - our cocker spaniel - had a litter of 6 girls...the one had a "cosmetic" problem with her eye, we brought her in the house because it seemed like when things were cold outside it would bother it.....well, now all is history ---- she is officially OUR dog....her name: Bella, we call her Bella Boo. Needless to say, she has brought us many laughs and well, I gotta be honest sometimes frustrations.

So, our new addition to the Stahl Household is Bella Boo - our cockapoo.

Cake Decorating - 2

Shalene and I survived our 2nd cake decorating class. That poor teacher seems to have a wonderful gift of patience!!!! (there are 4 other girls Shalenes age and 4 other ladies in the class)

We learned to transfer a pattern and some basics with that. Shalen and Ihad such a problem with our icing.....it was too thick!!! (LONG and I mean LONG story!!! Lets just say that the first batch Shalene made -- well she didn't read the directions correctly and added a "bit" too much water -- we tried to thicken it but it kindda ran off her cake. So we did another batch -- this batch worked but we didn't realize that we were to make some thinner icing as well for the decorating part -- we had a mess at class (we weren't the only ones, thankfully)

So, between the icing and a BAD package of "bags" that kept breaking!!! The teacher told us to contact the company because something was wrong -- I first thought it was the "person "--ummmmm ME -- that was filling the bags and cutting the tips who was messing up.........but when the bags started having stuff ooooozzzzzzzing out the sides of the bag in little squirts, I realized it wasn't me. SO we did get our cake accomplished.....and we started learning to create rose...NO, the ones above are NOT mine. I'm a beginner you must remember that. Mine DID NOT look like the ones above, but I can always dream.

Hopefully my brain will remember to take my camera next week and take some photos. 2 more classes in this beginners and than we get to move to the 2nd class.


I must say, I'm enjoying my time learning and spending it with my precious daughter Shalene. Its always nice to have one on one time with my kids.

Celebrating

Okay - so for Alyssas birthday (end of Feb.) she didn't want me to get her any gifts. She wanted me to take her to the thrift shops in Harrisburg. We have a cirlce we make and usually can hit 4 stores - however, we ended up having to skip one because we got a later start. We did eat lunch at Red Lobster and supper at Chuckie Cheese.....

The first thrift store we hit was the one that has bins that you dig through (forgot to take my camera with me!!!) anyway, everything is .75 cents. Lyssa found 31 things there at a total of 23.25....not a bad price for Aeropostale, Express, American Eagle and Gap stuff. We than had lunch and headed to the next two. She found skeetchers lights for $5.00 -- they look NEW.....as well as a shirt from Julicy Coutour and many other great brand names.

I found a few things for the rest of us but the main thing was to spend her birthday money. The picture with the garbage bag.....that is the bag she got at the bins!!!!! In all Alyssa ended up with 18 skirts, 21 shirts/tops, Skeetcher, Clarks shoes, books and some heart cake pans -- spending a little over $60....not bad!!! Not bad at all

Cake Decorating

Shalene and I have officially started our cake decorating class this evening!!!!! It was so much fun. We learned basics, some of which I did know but some that I didn't. I found it to be very interesting.

You see, when Alyssa was at Penn View for part of her home ec. class they did cake decorating....she LOVES to do this and Shalene and I decided that we wanted to as well. (Since we cyber school now, we don't have home ec...well, unless you call me making job lists!!!!)

So off to Michael's we went for cake decorating classes. We will go every Friday this month for Class 1......once we move on the Class 2 I think Alyssa plans on joining us. You will have to keep checking back - we will try to take pics of the things we do and you can see if we are learning and improving as we go or not!!!

So, next week we are to take a cake to class with us -- frosted the way we were taught today -- with different colors of icing ready to go. We will learn how to transfer an image. And we get to learn how to create ROSES!!!! But the best part -- taking it home to eat.....well, I don't know, I think I will enjoy the creative part as well.

Had a nice time with Shalene this evening and looking forward to learning.

I must confess -- this is NOT a cake that we created. We are on the very BASIC beginners class. Let me say that again.....VERY BASIC. But we can dream and hope that we will get that good.

Lots of Good Laughter

We went to the Ken Davis concert this evening......I must admit that we were in need of some laughter!!!! You can visit his site here. Seems like things here are taking us awhile to get adjusted and we just need some good, clean laughter to lighten the load!

Or visit here on you tube and watch some short clips of Ken Davis yourself.

YouTube !!!

Many of you know that I have an online scrapbook store.....well, one of my customers loved all of the stuff she had gotten and made a video for on you tube....be sure to check it out.

Field Trip

Our local homeschoolers group went on a field trip this past Monday....Clayton went along and Jennifer went along with us. We went to the Giant Grocery and than "The Daily Item" (our local newspaper). Afterwards we went for some lunch....I tried to talk em into going for Chinese but McDonald's won - playworld.