Ants and Lice

I still don't have any pictures of our new fab. house yet because I am not sure where the camera-computer cord is. Oops. I'm sure I'll find it hidden under some dirty socks in a box with an old unused diaper and some pens. That's what happens at the witching hour of packing/moving! BUT,
we love our house. We want to send it a card and give it flowers and never say bad things to it. My only character flaws for Les Home are that the sink is shallow(a pain to wash pots and pans in!!!) and we had a case of ants. Now, for those of you who have never lived in Portland before, let me just forewarn you-this is a city built on a damn ant hill! It seems no matter where I have lived, what part of the city, no matter how clean I kept my kitchen, the ants would show up! My children began recognizing them at an early age, stomping on them(as their crazy mommy does!), saying, 'bad ant, we don't want you in our kitchen!'. Sooo, we are in the battle #1 of 2010 for our kitchen and my sanity! I bought some little ant hotels and am going to stock up on some mint and spray vinegar, especially since being pregnant and having two kids around I do not want to be spraying anything toxic in the house! This is day 2 of the battle. I'll keep y'all posted...

Now on to.....drum roll please.....lice!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(I figure it needed it's own set of exclamation marks for gross cootie points)

Took my 5 1/2 year old to the doctor because she was having some tummy pain. Tums and tylenol weren't doing the trick, neither were any of the other remedies we tried. The doc took a listen and a look and said she might be having some poop issues. Ah yes, poop. A word only a mom or dad could truly love! So now my and my daughter's duty is to keep track of when she goes, what it's like, how often, etc. Having gone through similar issues as a kiddo I totally sympathize with her and definitely DO NOT want to resort to chemical ANYTHING!!! I had to take some horrible tasting, military doctor prescribed liquid shit as a child, and it has traumatized me for life!
That's not really the big news, though. The BIG news was as we were leaving the doc leaned over girlie #1's head and said, have you looked at your daughter's head lately? I laughed and said I had and thought she might have some stubborn dandruff. NOPE!! That's not dandruff sport's fans-that's a raging case of LICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why us?!!??? My husband and I never ever had lice as kids, and the girls never came home with it, even after being in the YMCA childcare system for a couple years. So, needless to say, I was mortified. That was actually exactly what I said. I. Am. Mortified!
With the joy of having two adorable little ones come the added joy of the both of them getting it. Hooray for Nix!
Tomorrow will begin our great leap of faith that these little buggers can be gotten rid of. Wish us luck...and pray that neither of the big kids(Zakk and I) have it.
All I know is, #1 could not have gotten this anywhere other than school, which means there is either a kiddo with lice who doesn't know it, or a parent didn't alert the class. Although I don't want to go through the embarrassing task of telling Class 101 that one of their classmates has licey lice, I will do it, and hopefully save a couple of heads!

Phew,
all for now.