Jed & Lori + 4

It's been a crazy week.  Jed and William are in the high Uintah's for scout camp.  That leaves me and Jens and Baden home to hold down the fort.  Baden of course doesn't understand where dad has gone.  He keeps going over to Jed's desk and looking around and then just playing there for  awhile as if waiting for dad to show up.  Jens has been a big help with the boy and I have been able to refresh my cooking skills.  Since Jed does so much of the cooking, I haven't really cooked for a while.  My lack of practice is showing in the lack of seasoning and just some fine touches in the cooking of good food.  But I have managed to churn out some pretty decent meals this week.  We had leftover steak from Jed's birthday on Sunday, so on Monday I made skillet potatoes with cheese and cubed up the steak and made a gravy of sorts with a bunch of things we had on hand.  Add in some fresh steamed broccoli and it turned out pretty good.  Tuesday we had Thai Peanut Curry.  Also pretty good.  I used up the remaining broccoli, carrots and celery we had on  hand.  That always feels good to use up food before it goes to waste.  We are getting a lot more experience with that as we have tried to really be smart about our grocery shopping since Jed has been laid off.  Tonight I made baked Zucchini boats.  They were stuffed with onions, tomatoes, ground pork, mushrooms, and red and green peppers and then topped with mozzarella cheese.  They were pretty tasty as well.  We planted two zucchini plants this summer and we have them coming out our ears.  I need to find more recipes to try out because I would hate to see them go to waste.  I guess if all else fails we can grate them up and freeze them for later use in zucchini breads and other baked goods.

Poor Baden has had a hard week in that he keeps having some crazy falls and the result is a few new bruises here and there.  He fell right into the steamer trunk we have set up as a table and now has a nice purple bruise on the apple of his cheek.  He has had a runny nose for a few days, but since he had no other symptoms I thought it must have been allergies.  Last night the runny nose turned into a torrent of snot and he began coughing like crazy.  Throughout the night the cough got worse and he sounded awful.  If I didn't know better I would have thought it was croup, but since I've seen my share of croup while working in the ER, I knew that wasn't it.  It just sounds more like a pretty bad case of bronchitis.  Needless to say, neither of us got much sleep last night.  When Baden did wake up this morning, he had a pretty bad case of runny eyes.  With the constant tearing up, and the constant runny nose along with the horrible cough made me decide to call the Dr. office. They suggested he come in and be seen in case it was croup. Like I already figured, it's not croup.  They are treating him as if he has bronchitis with an antibiotic and steroid.  Problem is they taste so awful, he won't take them.  When he finally did get some of the steroid down, he spit for 10 minutes trying to get the taste out and then he finally started to dry heave.  So, I guess I'll have to find another way to administer the meds.  Hiding them in juice didn't work because he wouldn't drink the juice because it tasted so bad.  So frustrating!