Moving Updates

I don't have a lot of time to sit and write but I wanted to give a quick update.
Jon and I flew to Denver last weekend and looked at several apartments. We found a really nice apt. complex that is brand new and had really good specials, so we are getting to live in an apt. that I might not ever want to leave :).
We also had an offer put on our house last weekend and after some negotiating we have a contract on our house!!!! There was only one couple who looked at it and they bought it. We feel extremely blessed and amazed that everything came together on the exact weekend that we needed it to...God is truly amazing!!!
We are closing on the house January 29th provided that everything goes as planned with appraisal and inspection. I am not worried about that though.
We will leave for Denver on Jan. 1st. This will be the most definitive new start to a new year I have ever had. We plan to arrive mid-day on the second and have the movers get everything put into our apt. and storage that afternoon.
Please keep all of our traveling and planning in your prayers!
Here are pics of our new apt.

The one with the garage open is ours.


built in desk area next to the kitchen


Patio/Deck area (if you stand on the far corner you can see the mountains.!!)


master bathroom


more shelving looking into hallway leading to laundry, bathroom, bedroom, and study.


living room


kitchen

The Big Move

I know I skipped a post on Disney World but it was not on purpose. I have been working on a very detailed review of our trip and when I posted it today it just disappeared, even the draft! I am just too frustrated to rewrite it!
So on to our big news. I think everyone knows now, but a few of you might not. We are moving to Denver, Co. in January!
About 6 weeks ago Jon's team lead put an application in front of him for this Denver position and told him that he should apply because it would be an awesome opportunity for him. Jon told me about it but we didn't feel the need to make any changes so he didn't apply. 2 weeks later it came up again and we both talked about it and for some reason felt really led to apply for it. We talked to some close friends of ours about the decision and they prayed with us about it and we all stayed in prayer over the whole thing. We found out there were 50 applicants and really figured Jon didn't have a shot. They interviewed him first because his boss and a former boss both contacted them as soon as they found out he had applied and apparently raved about him. Before we left for DW we were told that he was in the running and they would fly him out to Denver once we got back from vacation. The week we got back we found out the job was down to two applicants and it was between Jon and someone who lived in Denver already. We figured they would give it to the person already living there so they wouldn't have to mess with someone moving. But we were wrong! After he went to Denver his new boss called and talked to him for quite a while about how they felt from day one that he was perfect for the job and just stood out over everyone else they interviewed, and then offered Jon the job. He is going to be the lead wealth management banker for Merrill Lynch. He will cover 6 complexes which means some traveling throughout CO. and one in Wyoming. He becomes part of the Denver team December 1st but he doesn't officially start until January 4th. Right now we are planning to rent for the first few months until we know exactly where we want to live. The plan for now is to move the week between xmas and new years, but if our house sells we will probably move our stuff earlier than that and we would follow after new years.
It is hard to explain exactly how we feel. We are very happy here! We love our families, friends, church, and house but we felt an overwhelming peace about applying and everything is opening up for us to move. It doesn't feel forced it feels guided. I am so sad to leave everyone! I have cried several times when I think about all of the changes we are making and all of the family and friends we are leaving behind. But I am also really excited! I feel like a new chapter is starting in our life and I feel like God is in full control of it. I can't wait to see what he has in store for us.
This week everything has really sunk in and I have had a couple of freak out moments but when I sit down and pray about it and try to focus on each day I get that same feeling of peace back and I know we have made the right decision even though it is going to be really hard.
Please keep us in your prayers! We have lots of decisions ahead of us. And keep our families in your prayers too because this is going to be very hard on them.
I will keep everyone posted as we know more details!

So Excited!

We are just one day away from starting our trek to Disney World. I feel like I am 5 years old because I am just as excited as the kids. I can't wait to experience DW through their eyes!
David and Alex understand so much more than I thought they would. I just heard David talking to Alex, "Negis, are you ready to go to... (dramatic pause) DISNEY WORLD?!" They both started running around the living room yelling all the disney characters they were going to see. I really wasn't sure if Alex would get it or be excited but that is absolutely not a problem. The only thing they can't understand is why we are not there already!
I am a little nervous about the trip itself. We are driving, so it will be a long time for the kiddos to be strapped down but hopefully we have enough to keep them occupied for most of the trip.
We are driving to Houston tomorrow to pick up Grandpa, then leaving Saturday morning and driving to Talahasee to spend the night. Then Sunday we will only have about 4 hrs. to get to Orlando and then the kids can play the rest of the day at the resort. Saturday should be the only hard day.
Now if I can just get packed...

where we are staying

Birthdays

September is the month of birthdays around here! Not just my kiddos but half of their friends are also born in this great month so we are in the celebrating mode!
My sweet little Alexandria is now a two year old. I feel like time is playing tricks on me because it definitely feels like she has been around for more than a year but it doesn't feel like she should be two. This is also complicated by the fact that she keeps up with her older brother just fine. She talks in full sentences most of the time but often needs an interpreter to really understand it all. She has moved into a big girl bed and does great. The two things you can always count on with Alex, are when she is sleepy she wants to go to bed and when she is hungry she wants her food. Sleeping and eating are just things you don't mess around with! My favorite thing about her right now are all of the facial expressions she makes, coupled with her crazy curly hair. I laugh at her several times a day simply because of her looks; they say a thousand words! My least favorite thing right now is her screaming. When she is mad, she screams, when she gets in trouble she screams, when she is being chased down by her brother she screams and when they are having lots of fun, she still screams. We are working on using our words...
And if I couldn't believe my baby turning two, I think it is even harder to believe my little David is three! It is so fun to watch him play and interact right now. You can just see his little brain working. He loves puzzles and can do 48+ piece ones all by himself. He will work on one puzzle for 30 minutes and has had more potty accidents while concentrating on one than doing anything else. His vocabulary is really expanding. He is starting to use random words that he picks up from anywhere and they are not all good. "Shut up" is one of his favs right now and he gets in trouble every time so he has taken to whispering it most of the time now as if its volume will affect the punishment. He also tells Alex (whom he still calls Negis) how cute she is or how cute her outfit is. But then he asks her if she thinks he is cute too! It is so fun to listen to them when they are getting along. His favorite subject at the moment is Disney World. We are going there in less than two weeks and he can't stop talking about it. He says we are going to get in the car and go see Mickey Mouse and then he names off every single person in our family to see if they are coming too. We do this a couple of times a day, I guess he has to check and see if anyone has changed their plans and decided to come with us! His excitement makes me excited. I cannot wait to experience DW through his eyes! My least favorite thing right now is how much he pesters his sister just to make her scream and talking back to me when I ask him to do something (although this one is getting a lot better). But my favorite thing is how attached he is to me. When he was really little he was not a mommas boy at all. He never cried for me or cared when I left or wasn't around. But now he wants Mommy to do everything and loves to just sit in my lap and cuddle. I am savoring it because I know it won't last but I hope it lasts for a while! I will end with pics of their new bedrooms and their birthdays. Blessings!

Seed Spitting Contest Anyone?

We ate half of a watermelon during the Memorial Day weekend. We never finished the other half so I threw it over the side of our fence, next to the creek. Well, last week, I was outside with David and Alex and they were throwing rocks into the water. David kept walking over to this one area that has lots of little rocks and he would pick out the best rock and then come over to me and throw it. I wasn't paying attention at first but then realized he was walking through a lot of green vines that I had never noticed before. I got up to investigate and, you guessed it, watermelons!! We have a giant watermelon patch growing in the rocks next to our fence. There were 5 watermelons growing on it, so I went and got Jon, and we picked one. The kids think it is great and ask to go visit the watermelons every day. The first one we picked wasn't quite ripe enough so we haven't picked anymore. I love that I made this discovery!! It seems simple but it makes me laugh every time I think about it, which is a good thing :)! Plus, you might just see me hawking my goods on the side of the road ;) Here are the pictures from our picking expedition...
(make sure and see my previous post from this morning, it has our summer pictures on it)


This is the whole patch. I am standing at the creek looking up at our fence line.

Too Much

I know I will probably regret not going into more detail but I just can't get motivated to write in detail about our summer. Instead I have just uploaded a smattering of pictures over the past 3 months. I am also finding that I have taken significantly less pictures lately and I am kicking myself because there are several things from this summer that I don't have a single picture of! So I am dedicated to take more pictures and keep my blog a little more updated for the rest of the year. Here is the link to our summer pictures. pictures
Blessings!

Updates and pics coming soon

I realize I have been absent from blogging for a couple of months, but I am working on a catch up post. It might take me a few days to get it all in there and load pics but it is coming!

All about the kids (aka: long post)

I haven't posted in a while and I haven't posted about the kids in a really long while so here goes..
David
He is getting SO big! He is getting taller all the time and continues to get skinnier. It seems like the taller he gets the more picky he gets about his food. We are seriously down to a handful of foods for this kid! He is also talking in full out sentences now. It is really cute to hear him ask questions based on his observations of what I am doing. I never knew how proud I could really be over such a small thing. Right now he is very in to dinosaurs. He loves his dinosaur sheets, wants to watch dinosaurs on tv, loves to play with his plastic dinosaurs all over the house, and acts like trex is chasing him outside and he yells "Mom! Hide! The big one dinosaur is going to get you!"
Our biggest accomplishment though is potty training! About 3 weeks ago he started throwing fits and not wanting to put his diaper on. I thought this was a great step so I talked it over with Jon and we decided to just go cold turkey and get him potty trained. We started off talking to him about where our poopie and teetee goes and he would tell you it goes in the potty but we never actually got it there! Lots and lots of accidents every day and he didn't care about getting a treat. So I called my friend Laura who has potty trained two boys and her youngest is only a couple months older than David. She told me her secrets and really encouraged me to just keep at it. So we moved the potty into the living room as she suggested and the first day he pooped and peed in the potty!! Then for five days afterwards we had nothing but accidents and he fought us every time we asked him to go potty. I was truly about to give up again when something just clicked! One day I was putting laundry away and David started screaming "mommy, I went tt in the potty!" So I ran in there and sure enough he had. Then a few minutes later I was in the living room and he came running in from the play room saying he had to go tt again and he just ran to the potty himself and went. Since then we have only had once accident in 2 1/2 weeks! A couple of moms have asked me what I did so I will share the basics. We did not use pull ups for anything but sleeping. He hated going tt on himself and especially in his clothes so it was a huge incentive for him to use the potty. The pull ups just acted like a diaper. At home he just wears shirts and nothing else. He has a hard time getting his underwear down so he just runs around naked. When we go out I just bring extra shorts and undies in case he has an accident. He also gets a small treat each time he goes potty. The biggest thing is once we started the training we never put another diaper on him and when he wears a pull up to bed we put undies on first and then the training pants so he never had that feeling of a diaper on. I feel like the consistancy on this was the big key. Now that he has it all down he can wear the pull up to bed without the undies because he doesn't like to go tt in it either. I am so so proud of my big baby boy!!













Alex
Little Missy is quite the character! This time last year I thought she was going to be very passive and easy going because of the way she interacted with David. She is actually the opposite of those things. When she wants to do something she will not be persuaded otherwise. Any attempt at persuasion is met with screaming. Not outside fun screaming, I am talking blood curdling, I am mortally wounded type screaming. We are working on other ways to show our anger.
She is also talking up a storm. She uses 2 and 3 word sentences and amazes me with her vocabulary. She is amazingly observant! She will watch you do something one time and she can figure out by herself after that. She moves bigger toys all over the house to use them as stepstools to get to food, toys, and breakables. I have to watch her like a hawk!!
She also loves to eat! I have to make sure and keep her away from David's food because she doesn't waste time and gobbles her food up and then goes after his.
Alex is our drama queen and that also makes her very funny! When she has an audience she performs and it is so cute. She especially loves to twirl in her dresses, and I love this because it is so girlie and makes me want to dress her up even more. Her hair continues to be curly even as it gets longer. Those curls combined with her personality just make for quite the character these days.
Since she has been watching David go to the potty she also wants to go potty. She takes her diaper off if she can get to it so she has to have pants on at all times. She has gone in the potty a few times so I think we will start potty training with her pretty soon. We will also move her to a big girl bed in the next couple of months. She loves to get on David's bed and read books and asks to sleep there so I think she is ready. It will be weird not having a crib set up in my house.
We are leaving for Sea World tomorrow so I will have lots of pics to post of our trip when we get back. I will end now with pics of Alex.

heart to heart with myself

This is a long post and I have not proofed it but if you are a close friend or family please read to the end. I just sat down and started typing whatever I was thinking.

This whole year at church we have been focusing on putting God first. Not just saying it but truly putting Him in the #1 spot and making all decisions for our life based on that fact. Jim (our preacher) has taken us through several series on putting God first in our time, our finances, and other areas. The past three weeks have been on putting God first in our families and it really has my attention. The other series have hit home too, but this one is really speaking to me. For the past couple of months I have been praying about how to change my attitude about parenting. I have always been concerned about what other people think about me. I have tried very hard to diminish that part of me, and to only care about what God thinks. I go through times when I do really good with it and times when it is pretty bad. For about 6 months now, I have really been consumed with what I think other people are thinking about me, my kids, my parenting, etc. It has truly made me a pretty ineffective parent. So when Jim started preaching on families I was excited and then when I heard last weeks sermon it really felt like God was talking to me personally. He addressed so much of what I needed to hear to snap me out of the hole that Satan has had me in. Our class this morning also talked about being your child's primary spiritual "coach" so I am processing a lot right now.
Part of what really woke me up was when Jim asked us if we would be ok if our kids had the same kind of faith that we have, no more no less. Overwhelmingly I want my kids to have more! He then talked about how our kids will only put God first in their lives if they see us putting Him first in our own lives. Now this is not a new concept to me but I was amazed at how much I HAVEN'T thought about it. I majored in child development and I know how kids essentially mimic their parents on a lot of things, but I think that my major has helped make me very prideful and also judgemental (more to myself than others) It has given me all of these standards that I feel like I have to achieve with my kids and if I am not meeting them, but other parents around me are, then I really start attacking myself. (are you starting to get the picture of where I have been) When I started thinking about the question Jim asked it took me down a really long line of questions. It ultimately ended with How did I get to this point? When did I stop trusting God and using his standards of love as my reference instead of a twisted self pious view. I felt like I already had all of the answers, I didn't need help, I just needed to do more or be more on top of things... This thinking has actually taken me to a place of extreme lonliness and self hatred, becuase I am by far not perfect and I do need help but I even alienated most of my friends so I could just stay at home and focus on me and my kids. My thinking literally has been that I needed to get my kids to a place where their behavior and manners and potty training allowed me to take two "angels" into public. I never wanted anyone to think that my kids were being bad because to me that translated to "bad parent!"and as you can hear I have been very focused on ME.
So you can see that my parenting switched from "what is best for my kids and what can I do to foster their love for God" to "what can I do to make my kids at least appear to be well behaved at all times and never make mom look bad". Since that is truly impossible I have constantly felt like a terrible parent.
So I have prayed all week about how and where I can start over with my kids. I feel like God is telling me to start in the little things. Jim talked about having teachable moments in every day and our class today focused on the D6 ministry which is from Deutronomy 6 and they talk about using any of our everyday moments for God moments.
I don't have all the answers but Jon and I are working on a new parenting plan that we feel is much more worthy of our precious children that God has entrusted us to take care of. I already feel a huge weight as been lifted off of my shoulders. God has the reigns again.
To my friends: I am so sorry for pulling away. I have often disguised it as "being busy" or out of town but the truth is, I have been stuck in my own head and felt so much pressure to be perfect that I convinced myself that none of you really needed me. I also felt like you were all thinking that I really needed to do better because my kids were ...fill in the blank... I really don't know what I was comparing but I never added up so I just tried to avoid everyone as much as possible. That is changing!
To my family: I am so sorry for always talking like I know everything. I don't! I need your support to be the best mother for my children, so if I have made you feel like I didn't want to hear what you had to say, I am truly truly sorry. If I have made it sound like I am anything less than grateful for my precious babies I am sorry.
Please be in prayer with me that we can all be the parents that God has called us to be but especially for me that I can keep the lies that Satan has been feeding me completely out of my head.
Dear Father,
I am so sorry for the way I have acted. I love you and I want my children to know that! I want my children to learn to love you because it is what they saw in their mommy and daddy. Please continue to bless Jim and his family and to speak through him. Lord I pray that we can all keep You first. In Jesus Name, Amen

Overdose

Yesterday was the scariest day as a mother I have ever experienced.
David was running a fever still so I got the children's motrin and poured his medicine. He was standing next to me in the kitchen so I turned and told him to drink his medicine. He said "no medicine" and ran away from me down the hall. I chased after him, caught up, gave him the medicine, and came back down the hall. When I turned the corner to go to the kitchen, I see Alex. She has climbed up the back of the couch, onto the counter, scooted to the end, and is drinking the Motrin I had left sitting on the counter. I could not believe what I was seeing! I ran over and took the bottle away. She cried because she was very proud that she had been able to get to the "medsin" as she calls it. I knew the bottle had been half full since I just poured some for David. It was now almost empty. I frantically looked around for signs that she had spilled it on the floor, the counter, or her clothes. But there wasn't a drop anywhere else and I could smell the bumble gum flavor on her breath.
911!! That is all I could think. So I picked up the phone and called them. The operator answers I tell her what happened and she immediately dispatches MedStar to my house. Then she tells me not to put her down because she may start seizing or violently vomiting so she doesn't need to be where she could hit her head. That is when I lost it and started bawling.
15 minutes later a fire truck, ambulance, and policeman all arrive at my house. That made for 10 paramedics and 1 police officer piled into my living room checking Alex's vitals. David just stood there staring at them. While some of them were checking her, the other ones were examining the bottle and trying to determine how many ounces she ingested. We decided she drank about 1 1/2 oz. which is 13 times her actual dosage. All of the firemen left about this point so there were just 4 paramedics and the officer left. They called poison control and they were told that she would have to ingest 3 oz. or more for it to be toxic, she would probably just vomit and have diarrhea. The lady at Poison control told them to tell me to call PC first if this happens again instead of calling all the paramedics out. Thanks for making me feel even better about the situation woman! The paramedics left and told me to call my doctor and make sure she didn't need to be examined.
After everyone left Jon came in and then Peggy got there about 5 minutes later. I finally got my dr. and she said I needed to take her to the ER at Cook's immediately and get blood drawn to make sure she hadn't ingested enough to affect her organs. I explained what pc had said but she insisted I go anyway. Peggy and I loaded Alex into the car and took her downtown. They got us right in but I kept having to explain what had happened. I felt like everyone was thinking "why would you keep meds where your kids could reach them" and the last nurse who saw us and released us actually told me to try to keep those things up higher or something. I wanted to hit him!! Really? I already felt terrible that I didn't just screw the lid back on right after I poured David's medicine and now people are talking to me like I am an inept mother. Anyways, the ER dr. felt like blood work was not needed and that pc was exactly right. Alex could have ingested twice the amount she did before needing medical attention.
She never reacted to it at all. She hasn't thrown up or anything and only took a short nap yesterday so it didn't even make her drowsy.
So everything was ok, but I have never felt fear in the way I did yesterday before the paramedics got there.
Here are a couple of pics of her in the hospital gown.

A new nephew and more doctors

Last Tuesday (I can't believe it has been a week) Katie called and said she was having lots of contractions. She was timing them and they were consistently under 10 minutes apart for about 2 1/2 hours so we were SO excited and rushed up to the hospital. They checked her in and labor pretty much stopped but they kept her overnight and early Wed. morning started inducing her. She went through the whole day and finally around 7:30 pm she started pushing. She ended up pushing for two straight hours but Ayden Thomas finally made his appearance! Katie did AMAZING and she, Ayden, and Phillip are all home and fine. It was very exciting getting to watch the labor process from the perspective of not being in labor. I will forever feel a special bond with Ayden because of it.
We came home on Thursday and went to small group. Then friday morning Alex woke up very congested, with a cough and runny nose. She had been off of her second round of antibiotics for 3 days at this point. Then on Satruday she woke up from her nap running a fever again. So Jon and David went to church on Sunday morning and I stayed with Alex. By the time Jon came home David was starting to cough. He went to bed fine that night but woke up around 1:30am crying. When I went to check on him he was just sitting there shaking. So I went to check his temp and it was 102. We stayed up until the meds brought it down and went back to bed. Then Alex woke up screaming and I went in to check on her and her fever had gone up again as well. So we all went to the doctor yesterday. Peggy met me there and I am so thankful because they were a handful! They just have a fever virus and David has an ear infection as well. But we talked about why they continue getting sick so much. They are not in daycare so my doctor is a little concerned. We are going back in two weeks and if they are both well, she will order lab work. This is going to check their immuno globulin A and their white blood cell count and make sure that everything is normal. I know I shouldn't worry, but I am having a hard time not worrying about this. Since yesterday afternoon I have caught myself playing the "what if" game in my head. What if their white blood cell levels are too high and we have to check for leukemia or what if they have to have IV's hooked up to them to pump IGA in to their little bodies? I want to stop but I just keep going there. I know this will probably be nothing, and we just had a hard winter but being a mom just really amps up my worry meter! Please keep my David and Alex and their tests in your prayers. I will write an update about it all once we get the lab results in a few weeks.
I left my camera in Plano so I don't have very many pictures to share but I do have a couple of precious little Ayden. Blessings!

Sad Visit to the Doctor

Alex started running fever again on Friday following it up with lots of congested coughing. Since she just got over the flu and strep I called and they wanted me to bring her in. When we arrived they checked us in and then handed me a mask to put on Alex. I figured I would try it once but if she kept pulling it off I wasn't going to fight her. She didn't try to take it off at all. She just sat there with her bottom lip quivering and tears streaming down her face without making a single sound. It was really sad! I wanted to take it off of her but they said she HAD to keep it on the entire visit. She had a sinus infection so no swine flu, and as we were leaving I took the mask off and threw it away, then Alex said "Thank you mommy I wuv eww" I guess she thought she was being punished, which made me even more sad! David is now running a fever and has a very croop like cough so I get to take him and try to keep the mask on his face tomorrow. I have a feeling he will not just leave it on the way Alex did.
I took a couple of shots of her in the mask to share how pathetic it was with everyone.