A Victory!!

Well after a full day of fretting and drinking tons of water, the shot lady shows up at my door. To make a not-quite-so-long story much shorter... she came, attempt #1 in the arm failed- dang-it! She spots an eager looking candidate in my right hand, lays me down, rubs, taps, and pokes... I emerge victorious! We have a successful blood withdrawl. And no fainting this time!!!
So everybody all together... inhale slowly and exhale... feel the relief! That is, until the next shots time comes around!

Carlie, the not-so-brave of heart...

Why does it seem like every time I even hear the words "blood drawn" does my heart go into convulsions and I dread the appointment with every fiber of my being? Hmmm.... it may be because every time I get my blood taken, whether it be a stupid finger prick or the full needle in the arm, I pass out! (well maybe not every time, I think I've made it through once without passing out!) Seriously! If I am not laying down, you can count on me to be slumped over in my chair or with my head in the trash can puking, cold sweat, dizzy... the works!
I am any nurses nightmare! I have these teeny tiny veins, which I adamantly warn them about beforehand. But they are bound and determined to "get their job done". After examining each arm and hand numerous times, at which point my arms are numb from all the tapping they do to try to find my veins, they not-so-confidently decide that they "think" they have found one that might work.
At this point, I brace myself for the worst, and remind myself to breathe!
Then comes the stick, and shortly following, is the cold sweat, and you can take it from there!

So after recovering, she asks me if I am ready to try it again! I look at her and think (to myself) that I'd rather just have her cut my whole arm off than try that again! But she is now convinced that it will work if I lay down. Then the process starts all over again, but I am spared the embarrassment of passing out- "A victory" I think to myself, but then the reality comes crashing down on me... yes, she finally pulled the needle out of my arm, but she never did find the vein!!

So what does the nurse do? She packs up her stuff and says, "maybe we'll have more luck on Thursday, I'll be here at noon".

Sigh... more dreaded anticipation, oh well, just keep breathing and for heaven's sake... let me lie down!!!
P.S. this blood work is for our Life Insurance.. nothing is wrong with me, other than I am retartded when it comes to having my blood drawn!

Cameron's Whale Watch

Mitch is stepping in as guest author this week. This week was filled with most of the regular things like school, work, cleaning house, my perpetual bathroom project... (Carlie finally convinced me that I needed to move the light fixture mounting point from the ceiling to the wall. I am letting some of my manhood go when I admit that her idea on my remodel project is actually better than what I was going to do.)

We won't bore you with most of the details of our daily rituals, so we will tell you a little thing that Cameron has been doing in school.

Cameron has really taken off on reading, so he was given accelerated reading assignments. In one of his books that he was reading, he became highly engrossed in the lives of humpback whales. To his excitement, he discovered, at the end of the book, that he could "adopt" a whale. He asked his teacher if their class could adopt a humpback whale. She passed this off as a phase that would soon pass.... needless to say, the persistant will prevail!!!
He began to get his class involved and excited about this project. The teacher soon realized she was outvoted, so she gave Cam the assignment of finding out all the information needed in order to adopt this whale.
Well Cameron decides that he needs to go about this with very thought out steps...
Step #1: To truly convert his class to loving humpback whales: He comes home and searches the online Encyclopedia (sadly, he is getting better at surfing than we are) and prints off a two page report on these ocean giants; he takes the report in and reads it to his class, and they take the bait!
Step #2: Find out how their class can "adopt" a whale: Upon more searching of the internet, he was able to find the New England Whale Center, and all about this adoption process- the names of whales, cost of "adopting", and all the freebies they give you when you adopt... Again, more printing!
Step #3: Come up with ideas for raising the money to "adopt" this whale: Cameron has always loved to sell baked goods whenever we have had a yard sale... so his first thought was, "hey, we can sell cookies and stuff in the hallway". Again, the class was unanimous. (So who do you suppose get's to bake most of the stuff for the bake sale? Yep, good 'ol mom... lucky she likes to do that kind of stuff!)
So, after all this hard work and effort on Cameron's part, his class will be having their fundraiser on October 1-3, to raise money in order to adopt a Humpback whale! He has had to warn the class though, "it has to stay in the ocean, it won't fit in our classroom!"

Love Is Spoken Here vs Queen

This was too funny not to share!!!

So there we were sitting nice and peaceful in Sacrament meeting (well... as peaceful as you get with a 7 1/2, 5 1/2, and almost 3 three year old). Cameron and Madeline has just gotten up to sing Love Is Spoken Here with a little group of Primary kids. They started singing and it was so sweet. Well I guess Collin wanted to sing too, but his choice of song was the complete opposite on the reverence scale!
So, in the middle of their song, Collin stands up on the bench and pipes up and sings (as loud as he can) "We Will, We Will Rock You"

Needless to say, we got a "few" chuckles out of that! I've never moved so fast as to grab him and pull him down with my hand clamped over his mouth!

AAh, kids, aren't they great? Life would be so dull without them!

The Lemming Joins the Chase!

Well here we are, making our first attempt at our very own "blog". Yes, we too have jumped on the bandwagon and joined this crazy technological world! I have always feared doing things like this because I am not as creative and clever as some in my family... but hopefully all those years of highschool journalism will help a little bit. So here goes...

We are the McClellan family. We consist of...

Mitch (the daddy); Carlie (the mommy):

Cameron (the brain), Madeline (the drama queen) and Collin (who has been lovingly dubbed "Osama-bin-Collin):

This summer our family took a little excursion to the Boise Zoo. We had a great time watching how the kids interacted with the animals. Let's just say... we are thankful for cages!

The kids love the animals, but I think they love the camera even more!

That's all for now. We'll write more later!