Brian's next painting...

This Painting Brian did for Brianna. She told him what colors to use and how she wanted it done. She was very opinionated about it. I think it is beautiful.

Enjoying summer days

The girls and their friends enjoyed a nice day outback in the sun on the trampoline with the waterhose and a small swimpool. It is amazing how long they can stay busy with such a simple activity.

Gmail....

Dear ALL,

I had no idea you could email me through my blog page using my gmail account. I just found so many wonderful messages... I am so sorry I haven't replied.

I'm working on them and now I know to check my Gmail.

XO Shawntel

losing roomrates

Today I got my 4th room mate. This one is an older lady. I am so glad to have a woman in the room with me.

The old guy Mn. Fork that shared a room with me told me today that he had Triple-bypass surgery and other stuff. He got to go home. -- He was a nice man though, he showed me a picture while he was waiting to be released of his family, when he was a kid. Taken in 1938. There were a bunch of children in the picture so I asked who they all were. He said they were all his brothers and sisters. In shock, I asked.. ALL. Then I asked how many Brothers and sisters he had... He said 23. I asked All 1 mother... and he told me know and he said this is my father and his first wife had this many kids she is there. My mom was the 2nd wife and she had 8 kids.. and so forth. I had never met anyone from a polygamist family over here before but I guess they are around.

Gangster guy came by today. He was moved to another floor earlier this week. He was walking and looking well. He was stabbed with a punctured lung and he gets to go home today. I thought it was really nice of him to come by and say good by though. He looked so happy to be getting out of here.

I think it is me and the old lady till Monday. I'm going to race her to see who gets to leave first!
Until then, it is me and my computer, my books and all the wonderful visits from friends. Thank you for everything you do.

Shawntel

Good look at my toe.... Not for those that faint

So I had a really good look at my toe this morning. Again wished I had a camera but I guess I will spare everyone. A lot of the swelling had gone down and what look like 3 wholes in my toe isn't. The pretty much scraped out all the infection and that included all the flesh under my toe nail and there are huge canal like gauges around the toe nail bed. I will NEVER have a big toenail again. I'm so sad. Besides it being totally gross I'm wondering how long it is going to take for my body to replace that much flesh. 1/2 my toe has no skin on it.

That was one nasty bacteria.

On the bright side some tubes were pulled out which makes me happy. Now only an IV in my arm. Which I am really looking forward to it going away.

They say maybe on Monday I can go home.... Monday! I don't want to wait till Monday but that is what they say. I know Brian was hoping for sooner. Being a stay at home DAD full time is getting to where I think he needs a break and needs to make his mind dig deep into work but the girls won't let him do that.

He says "I turn my back on Brooke and all of the sudden 3 things are destroyed."

I am so proud of how hard he is working and what a patient father he is. He takes so much time for his children and he is amazing. I just know that brain of his is so board.

He is tackling laundry today. I wish him luck. The girls have been a good help.

Can't wait to be home but I have to.

In the hospital.

Yep, I've been in the LUMC for almost 5 days now. How did I get here? What happened? How am I doing this post. I will answer that one first.

I made Brian bring me my computer for those times were I was board Dutch TV just isn't entertaining for me. I found out there was a Internet connection. As I slowly have the energy I get on a post a little bit more and write about my fun experience her.

A lot of people ask "Why am I in the hospital".... I say... "I stubbed my toe". Which is the truth. I stubbed my toe on Thursday night on the end of the table. It pulled up my toe nail, it bleed a bit and it immediately swelled and began throbbing. I went to bed with an ice pack rapped around my foot.

On Friday I went to the beach with my friend Erna to meet my friends, Amy, Angie, and Claire. Believe me with my sunburn there was no plan for any type of allowing the sun to see my body, I was just really looking forward to good conversation. Erna and I parked at a different part of the beach then they did and I couldn't find where they were at. My foot hurt so bad after searching I bit I gave up and sat down. I was so glad I didn't walk far away from where we had parked because about 2 hours later I started getting really cold and feeling really sick. I asked Erna if we could go and made the painful short trek back to the car.

By time I got home I lay down on the couch and just shivered. I felt so sick. I decided to try to take a shower to warm up and then I laid down on my bed for a while.

Around 5pm I started thinking about Susan. I promised to pick up Susan from the train station at 6:00 to make it to our ward temple night. Susan doesn't have a car so she rides down to my train station and I take her the rest of the way. I knew if I didn't pick her up know one else could. I didn't want to leave here. I began thinking about how busy this month was and how this really was my only chance to go to the Temple. So I began praying and asked Heavenly Father if I should go, make it so I could go. At 5:30, I got out of bed, got dressed went to the Temple had a nice session. Put my own name on the temple prayer roll (I hope that isn't to selfish of me.) Then I went home. I got lost driving home with my GPS but thank fully it worked its way out of what ever really bad turns I took. I love my GPS.

When I got home, I sat down on the couch and began shivering again. Heavenly Father really does bless you when you need to do his work.

Saturday morning I was throwing up and had a 104 fever. My foot was swollen past my ankle and there was a visible red line going from my toe up my foot. Brian, had to force me out of bed and get me dressed and take me to the weekend doctor. The wait (45 minutes) seemed like an eternity. The doctor saw me when she called me name and said "you are sick". I told her what was going on and she said I either had a blood infection or a bone infection and to go to the hospital.

Off to the hospital we went, the saw me asked 2 questions took my temperature and put me on a bed in a room. Brian left to go feed the girls because they hadn't had lunch yet and he needed to find a sitter for them. The Anger family in our ward had volunteered to take our kids so we could go on a date and we were taking there kids this Friday. Brian went and found there number got the girls cleaned up and feed and then asked if they could take our kids early. They were so sweet and offered to take them over night however visiting hours are only from 2:00-4:00 and 6:00-8:00. They let Brian stay through non-visiting hours to find out what was going on but they sent him home by 8:00 and I was on my own.

The first day they did a lot blood test and x-rays put me on antibiotics and such and finally moved me into my own room. My Room mate was a nice quite old lady. It was a nice room to be in. On Sunday she went home. I had the room all to myself, I didn't have to worry if I will wake up my roommate while I throw up or what ever in the middle of the night. They did more blood work. In fact every day they have done blood work and they haven't told me why until yesterday I'll explain it later. They examined my toe and found that the swelling in my foot had gone down but my toe was one really big blue lollipop looking thing but not so edible. (yuck!) They marked with a pin where the blue was and wanted to see if the antibiotics made it get less the next day. So we waited with lots of pain and flue symptoms I waited until the next day.

Monday morning came and at 8am everyone came to look at my toe (6 different doctors). My toe was now 2 times as blue as before, the infection was winning over the antibiotics. It was decided that they needed to take me into surgery to cut of my toe nail and examine what is making my toe so blue. This was a happy moment for me because maybe the sharp shooting throbbing pain in my toe might come to an end. There was hope.

I was taken into surgery and given a choice do you want local pain killers, do you want to be numbed from the legs down. I looked at the man and said.. "If you are cutting on any part of my body, I will be asleep for it and completely unaware of anything you are doing." Although putting me to sleep wasn't an option it became an option and off to sleep I went. Those were the happiest sleeping hours of my life.

But then I here "Mrs. Ashcroft, Mrs. Ashcroft wake up." I said "No, I don't want to." They said I had to, so I opened my eyes and looked at them hoping it would satisfy them so I could go back to sleep. But NO, that was just enough for me to realize how much pain my toe was it. In fact I started crying.

With painkillers the pain was less I was back in my room and I slept most of the rest of the day. I was in and out enough to realize that in the afternoon the took the bed out of the room. I knew they were going to get some one to bring them up but who? About 4 hours later came a man. Followed by a serious of people. Detectives police asking all sorts of questions. I really wished that my dutch was better. Why did my Dutch have to be so bad. If I'm going to be stuck with a MAN room mate, at least it is an interesting one.

Tuesday morning I woke up and all the doctors wanted to see my toe so it was un-bandaged. O man was it so gross. (Let me just say now that I asked Brian to bring me my camera many times but he forgot. This was one thing I wanted a picture of) My toe was missing more then its toe nail some flesh was gone and they had drilled 3 wholes down to the bone (yes I can see my toe bone). I am so glad I was asleep. I guess there was all sorts of infection in there they had to get out. Good thing is, I don't need pain killers now and although my toe hurts it really is healing well.

After all doctors clear away, my room mate and I get to talk. I asked what happened to him and he seems to have been jumped just before he got home and stabbed in the back and punctured his lung..... "over nothin" he said. He later in the day calls his friend Peter. My best translation of his dutch was "you were my life long friend, why did you do this to me." Peter hung up on him and he declared "f--- You" a few times more then I wanted to here. Police came in later with a photo and he said "yea that is Peter "sack him". I guess he had the wrong friend.

The rest of my stay is doing pretty boring since the surgery each day I'm feeling a lot better. My kidney's reacted to the medicine so they are switching things around trying to find a medicine that will fight the infection and not kill my kidneys.

My roommate got moved to a different floor today it is lonely being in a room all by yourself all day long. He was a chatty one too. Not always to me. He chatted on the phone a lot to his sister, his friends, his lawyers, the detectives. I kept trying to make my Brain work to translate the dutch but really honestly only the f---- you's were coming through loud and clear. Still miss all the noise.

It has taken me all day to right this post so I still get tired here and there but I am so happy Brian brought me my computer and the hospital has a wireless Internet for patient. It has made my life so much more pleasant. It gave me a project to do today. Hopefully I will be out as soon as my kidneys are normal again.

Thank you to everyone who is helping to take care of my children while Brian still has to run to work here and there. You don't know how wonderful you are.

Last If anyone has read this all the way through I need help on one thing. I need a XXL night shirt big and comfortable one to where while here in the hospital. They say I can have my own night shirt which would be great because they want me to get up and star walking but their hospital gone in front is a mini skirt and in back there isn't enough fabric to cover the bum. So women from the Netherlands. Where do I send Brian to get a nice big comfortable nightshirt?

white or red

I got to go to the Beach today with my little girls and some friends from church. It was a lot of fun and my girls thought it was wonderful. One friend of mine Amy laughed at me for having SPF 60 sunblock. She wanted something with a little less protection. I however need something with the most protection possible because I am truly a white person with no protection to my skin. Apparently my application of SPF 60 wasn't enough and when I could fill my skin itching I made my girls help me put on more but it was too late I had already burned.

One may argue that perhaps my SPF may have expired and gotten to old but my 3 little girls are all sunburn free and o.k. Except Brooke, I forgot to sunblock one little part of her back which has a sunburn on it, which tells me the sunblock work well on the the rest of her back. I am indeed a white person or maybe a red person. But anyway about it I think I need SPF 120 in order to stay out in the sun from 10 am till 2:30 with out harm to my skin.

I am so avoiding going to bed tonight.

Maro Kart

You know it seems like all my post are about Brooke but that child spends so much time in the corner I feel like I have to post all the little good times otherwise I will forget they ever exsisted. Kaitlyn and Brianna are truely my Angles and Brooke is my little devil but I love her all the same. (She will grow out of it right!)

Brooke watches as Kaitlyn and Brianna race each other on Mario Kart on the Wii. Finally she got the wheal and got the chance to try to race on the game. She was so excited that she was racing the car. It was really a cute moment. It had to be posted.

Paint left out

So Brian forgot to put the paint away and Brooke found it. When I found Brooke she was covered in it. We cleaned her up but her hands look like they are just going to be blue for a while. (You don't want to know what she did to her cloths or to the desk. Neither are recoverable).

Kaitlyn and Brianna's Painting

Kaitlyn and Brianna finished their abstract paintings that the did with Brian. They turned out fairly cool. I have never been a fan of abstract but I really like what Brian had the girls do. I am mostly amazed that my girls did these 100% by themselves.

Kaitlyn's Last day of school

On the Last day of school (Yes it was only 3 weeks ago for us) Kaitlyn had me come in and take pictures of her class. It was a really sad day for Kaitlyn as she is really good friends with her class mates and wont be in class with them next year.

We found out this year that Kaitlyn has severe dyslexia. When she started reading in Kindergarten in Arizona I knew something wasn't right when she couldn't read the word "ax" even

though she knew very well what the

letter "a" and "x" said. I tried talking to teachers about it then but since it is my first child and not knowing what it is like to have a child learn to read I was pretty unsure of myself.

All I knew was I struggled horribly in reading growing up. In fact in college I would stay up all night long trying to read 1 chapter in my accounting book. I didn't know why reading was so hard for me then but after I got married and I learned more about reading disorders I wondered if it was dyslexia. Sometimes I wondered how I ever graduated with my accounting degree.

I knew if any of my children had it I wanted to get what help I could for my child. I have continued to watch both Brianna and Kaitlyn closely. They are very different children when it comes to learning to read. Brianna so easily grabs the concepts and reads so quickly where Kaitlyn struggles at remembering the sounds the letters are suppose to make.

I talked to Kaitlyn's Teacher about it last year but they said they thought Kaitlyn just needed to learn the new language and she would be fine. That is where there was another difference. Brianna was completely fluent in Dutch and Kaitlyn was still struggling to learn.

This year Kaitlyn's teacher came to me and said, "We think there is something wrong and would like to test Kaitlyn for dyslexia" and asked if it was o.k. Can you imagine my answer.... YES test her. The test came back that she has "severe dyslexia" and had lots of suggestions of what was needed for her education. One of them being that she needed to repeat this grade and relearn her reading skills differently since she was so far behind in her reading.

Kaitlyn is incredibly sad not to be going to the next grade with her friend. I am hoping we made the right decision for her to help her improve, gain confidence.

My last struggle is dyslexia makes it very difficult to processes language and her we have my little girl in a foreign country and in school in a different language. Sometimes my heart just breaks thinking about how hard it has to be for her. I love this opportunity to live abroad and to have my children learn a new language. I just didn't expect it to be so hard on my oldest.

MILK MILK MILK

Brooke is not the best eater in the world but boy does she like to drink her milk. We decided that she needs more nutrition in her life then the many cups of soy milk will bring to her (Brooke has an intolerance to normal milk). So we have in a way taken away her milk. Meaning each time she ask for a cup of milk we say "no, but if you are hungry we can have such in such..." Brooke gets fairly mad at us when we say this but we are having a little bit more luck on having her eat things (not much but a little).

Brooke Obviously not happy with this arrangement has decided to go to other means to get what she wants. I think the picture describes it all!

Brian's Picture

So Brian has gotten into painting a lot lately and teaching the girls what he knows about painting. Which I am always amazed at since he has never taken an Art class in his life. I would really like to sign him up for a class I'm wondering if we can have a side income. I am willing to hang his painting on my wall.

So I thought I would just share his latest creation, which he is proud of. The original plan was to call it "Carmen" but now Brian calls it "Rock Lobster" (You cannot see the head from about 4 steps away). Anyway about it, It was a Ballerina he had painted for Kaitlyn using her favorite color... Orange. The head and hair are in white so it is hard to see in the photo but looks really cool.

The Efteling

We have had a very enjoyable summer full of fun family time. Brian got to go to Italy for a work Conference which I was very jealous of. But the girls and I enjoyed the first week of summer together going to the Library and excitedly finding they had added a children's English section to it. I can not tell you how I was jumping for joy at that. No more rummaging through other moving expat stuff trying to find used English books to read to my children for cheap. I can now get a few of them from the Library.

We have had many visits to the park and hanging out with friends going to the pool and the beach. I really do enjoy the unstructured life of the summer.

So on Monday we had a nice sunny day and so we spontaneously decided we were going to take the girls to the Efteling.

http://www.efteling.nl/

We hadn't been yet and I must say, I am such a fan. I really enjoyed it as far as an amusement park for kids go. The girls really enjoyed it. The lines were max 25 min wait on the big roller coasters and everything else was 5-10 minute wait.

The girls all have their own personalities. Kaitlyn is so much like me. AFRAID of everything! Every roller coaster we came to we did our best to talk her into riding it (although I'm not afraid of roller coasters there were a lot off other things when I was younger that I was scared of). Mostly with Kaitlyn unless she was sure she was safe, we would ride the ride and she would wait for us to get off. It was just to scary for her.

Brianna wanted to ride the ride but was a little scared but really wanted to try but wasn't sure... In the end Brianna would ride the ride and then come off deciding it was the best thing ever!

Brooke never questioned. She wanted to ride every ride and it was the best. After her first ride which was called the bobsledded she told me very excitedly on the ride "Momma - I'm Flying". She actually gets really upset when she dresses up and puts on her fairy wings and then gets on the trampoline and is unable to fly. It really makes her so mad. She loved the roller coaster rides because she finally felt like she was flying.

Brooke was very mad on the Python where she was to small to ride it that she didn't get to go on it. Kaitlyn said there was no way she was going to ride and Brianna was in indecision. We decided that after watching it that although Brianna just hit the height requirement it would be best not to have her on there. She was still small. So I went first and then Brian went. Brooke was really mad that I didn't let her go with Brian so I took her out to watch the roller coaster do it's two upside down turns and then it's 3 twist. Brooke watched it go around so fast as we stood under it and proclaimed "WOW! Momma I'm too small now but when I'm big I can go on that."

At the end of the day the girls thanked us for the best day of their lives. I knew it had been a success. Hopefully summer continues to be full of fun.

Here are some pictures.

Ashcroft Art

Brian and Kaitlyn have been doing some painting on Saturdays. It is an activity they both love to do. This is some of their most recent painting. The top is Kaitlyn's painting. On the top right is her sun and the back ground is her sunset and then the main image she says is a flower. I think it is a pretty cool picture to have been created by an 8 year old.

This is Brian's picture. It is on a 2ft by 3 ft canvas. It is his first time using oil paints. I am always amazed by what he can come up with to paint. I love his paintings. I want to get a frame for it and hang it on the wall. Sometimes I wish I had one once of his artistic talent. But I am lacking in this area so I just admire what my husband can accomplish.