Happy Birthday Jewell!

Happy 3rd Birthday Jewell!!

Last night we went to Jewell's circus themed birthday party, complete with a clown that did magic tricks, painted faces, and made balloon animals. I have been a little worried this week about how Parker and Eden were going to react to the clown, but they both did great. (Although Parker wanted nothing to do with the face painting,)

We had a great time celebrating with lots of our friends. It is still hard to believe that our kids are turning 3 this year...where has the time gone. It has been so fun to watch Parker and Jewell grow up together (they are almost exactly 2 months apart) and I am excited to see what the next year has in store for both of them. We hope you had a great day Jewell!

Getting a sticker from Dusti the Clown

A captive audience

Helping with a magic trick

Mommy and Eden

Getting a sword balloon from Dusti

Jewell blowing out her candles

Yummy!!!!!

Eden ate her first bowl of spaghetti tonight. She has shown an early interest in using a fork and is doing pretty well with it. I helped her with the first few bites and then I turned her loose.

FORTY-FIVE minutes later, she was still eating. (I am not exaggerating!) She finished the entire bowl all by herself.

And thanks to the awesome bib that Aunt MerMer gave her, the clean up was relatively easy. Luckily it was bath night and we went straight from the dinner table to the bathtub.

I definitely think there will be a lot more spaghetti in Eden's future.

A Road Trip, An Ear Infection, & A Busted Lip

This has been a crazy week!

It started last Sunday when I found out that one of my good college friend's father had passed away. My heart was absolutely broken for my friend. She lost her mom to breast cancer when she was in high school and now she has lost her dad to cancer.

The funeral was scheduled for Tuesday in Amarillo. Both of my sisters and my college roommate all decided that we were going to make the trip, but we all work and couldn't take off but one day.

We left Monday afternoon after work about 4:00 and drove the entire way that night. To make things more exciting, the last two hours of the trip involved lots of snow, some ice, and very poor visibility and we did not get to Amarillo until close to midnight.

Despite the nerve wracking drive, we had a lot of laughs on the way there, including "getting lost" in a very small town and my sister almost filling up my gas tank with diesel gasoline.

The funeral was such a wonderful celebration of my friend's dad's life. He was an amazing man and there are not enough good things that could be said about him. He will truly be missed by many people.

As soon as the funeral was over on Tuesday, we loaded up and started the long drive home. I made it home by 11:00 that night and was tired beyond explanation. It took several days to recoup from the trip but I am so glad I was able to go and support my friend during this extremely difficult time in her life.

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On Wednesday, Eden started acting very fussy. She wasn't eating and wanted to be held all the time. Her nose started running and she was coughing but she wasn't running any fever so I didn't know what to think about it...teething, upper respiratory infection, ear infection.

After two days of not getting any better, I decided to take her in to see our pediatrician this afternoon. Turns out she has another ear infection. Hopefully the new antibiotic will kick in soon and we will have our happy, easy going little girl back in no time.

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To top the week off, while we were waiting to be called at the doctor's office this afternoon, Parker fell off the slide they have in the waiting room and busted his lip. This is his first busted lip and it was a doozy! So instead of trying to comfort Eden at the doctor's office, I was now having to comfort a screaming, bloody Parker.

On a positive note, I am thankful that we don't have any family portraits coming up this weekend! And I'm hoping that the fat lip will hurt so much that Parker won't want to suck his thumb while it is so swollen!


I am not sure what the weekend will bring for our family but I am hoping that it will not include any more illness or injuries! Hope you have a great weekend!

Squirmish

A few days ago, Eden got into a little fight with this rock in our front yard.

As you can see from the following picture...the rock won!

(Just in case you were wondering, Eden was not this happy and smiley right after it happened!!).

Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day has never been a holiday that Cory and I have completely embraced. Cory says that it's a just a conspiracy between the card, flower, and candy companies to make a lot of money. I have to partially agree with him. I've never been a huge fan of receiving flowers. I hate spending that much money on something that is going to die in a few days.

I do, however, enjoy using Valentine's Day as an excuse to go out to a nice dinner (especially now that we have kids and date nights are not as frequent as they used to be!) So when Cory came home a few weeks ago and told me he had to work ALL of Valentine's Day weekend helping move and set up the new eye clinic in Midlothian, I was a little bummed. Or maybe I was a lot bummed. And angry. I couldn't understand why he couldn't get away for just a few hours and take me out to dinner. After several heated discussions and maybe a little bit of silent treatment finally coming to his senses, Cory realized how important it was to me and made reservations at a great steakhouse. We were able to go last night and enjoy spending some quality time together.

Parker and Eden are still a little bit too young to understand holidays and what they mean, but I wanted to do a few things to make this weekend fun. Yesterday, we started the day with pink Valentine pancakes. They were much more pink than I had expected, and I was a little worried about how they were going to taste, but they were actually quite good. Parker, of course, would not try them and Eden, as usual, ate every bite of hers (and maybe some of Parker's too!).


This morning, Cory did not have to be at work as early as he had originally thought, so he wanted to take the kids to McDonald's for a Valentine's Day breakfast. I had already volunteered to work in the nursery at church, so we decided to take them to lunch instead.
After the kids woke up from nap, we drove over to have Valentine's dinner with Emily, Addison and Aubrey. On our way, we stopped by the new eye clinic in Midlothian to see Cory. The new clinic opens tomorrow and it is absolutely incredible! I am so excited for all of the staff and hope they have a great first day tomorrow.

We tried to get a good picture of all 4 kids in their cute Valentine outfits but, as usual, it was impossible to get a decent picture of all of them. One of them is always either not looking, crying because they don't want to be in the picture, squirming, or just getting up and walking/crawling away. Ugh!! Please tell me that it will get easier to capture their sweet little smiles on camera as they get older!Here is Eden's cute shirt. I would totally kiss and hug her all day if she would let me!

What could have been a not-so-great Valentine's Day weekend actually turned out to be quite memorable. I got to spend time with lots of the people that I love and hopefully showed them how much I love them.

I am so blessed that God has given me a wonderful husband who loves me even when I'm being difficult and unlovable. I also have two incredible kids who have taught me how to love in a way that I never knew possible.

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you and those you love!!

Snow Day

When I woke up this morning I have to admit that I was a little disappointed. All of the areas north of us had already gotten a lot of snow and all we were getting was sleet and rain.

We went to school as usual but by 10 o'clock the snow had started falling hard. School was released early and because Parker's preschool follows the school district's bad weather policies, he also got out early.

By the time we got home, the snow was covering the ground enough that we were going to be able to go out and let the kids enjoy playing in the snow for the first time in their lives.

I made the horrible mistake of telling Parker that after he took a nap, we would go out and play in the snow. What was I thinking?!?! He spent his entire nap time playing in his crib- talking, singing, even doing somersaults.

After rest time, we bundled up the kids as best as we could. We have some family friends who had given us their son's old ski clothes, so Parker was dressed perfectly for the snow. We had to do a little improvising and layering for Eden, but in the end, she was the cutest little snow princess I've ever seen!

Parker and Eden reacted exactly as we thought they would to the snow. Eden was the first one out in the snow and showed no fear. Parker, on the other hand, was quite timid and took a while to even step out into the snow. In the end, he enjoyed it. His favorite things were eating the snow and throwing snowballs at his daddy. He also thought it was pretty funny to throw a huge snowball right in Eden's face. She, however, did not think that was so funny.

Our adventure only lasted 15 minutes, but we had so much fun. I am so glad that Cory was off today, because I don't think I would have been brave enough to take them both out in the snow on my own.

We came in, warmed up by the fire, ate yummy chicken tortilla soup for dinner, and ended the night with homemade chocolate chip cookies.

I know the kids won't remember today, but it will definitely go down in my book as one of the best. The snow was absolutely beautiful and it will probably be a long time before we see this amount of snow again.

"What are these things on my hands?"Our snow princess
Throwing snowballs
Mommy and Parker

Mommy and Eden

Parker, Mommy and Eden

Eden, Daddy and Parker

Body Parts and More Parkerisms

Eden has learned this week how to point to her ears and bellybutton. We are still trying to get her to point to her nose, eyes, and mouth, but each time we ask about those, she points to her ears again. She will hopefully master those soon, too. Otherwise playing with Mr. Potato Head is going to be quite confusing to her!!

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Over the last couple of months, Parker has started singing a lot. Several times a day, he will bust out into song. Some of his favorites are the ABC's and Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed. (This one he sings when he is, in fact, jumping on my bed.)

He usually gets most of the words correct, but there are a few songs that he changes every time he sings them. I've tried to correct him and let him know the right words, but he just gets upset with me.

One of them is "Pop! Hop! Goes the Weasel "and the other is "Head and Shoulders, Knees Sneeze and Toes".

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EVERY time we are riding in the car at night, Parker and I have this exact conversation. EVERY. TIME.

Parker: Hey Mom! Where'd the sun go?

Me: Where did the sun go?

Parker: The sun is sleeping.

Me: That's right. The sun goes to sleep at night. What comes out at night?

Parker: The moon moom.

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Cory's dad is having his first cataract surgery in the morning. Although it is a minor surgery, we know that no surgery is minor when it is happening to you. We hope that everything goes well and that he is feeling better in no time.

Aubrey's Baby Dedication

Last Sunday we had the privilege of attending my niece's baby dedication. Aubrey has been such a wonderful addition to our family and I am so glad that we were able to go and support my sister and brother-in-law as they dedicated her to the Lord.

All of my family was able to attend as well as most of Jon's family. There were 17 of us total and we had such a nice time at lunch getting to visit with each other. I am so thankful that we live so close to my nieces and get to share in all of these special days with them.

One Poopy, Two Poopies

I was standing in the kitchen when I heard Parker talking.

"One poopy. Two poopies. Three poopies,.......Ten poopies!"

I was almost scared to leave the kitchen and check this one out.

I leaned my head around the corner and there he was, standing at the back window, looking into the yard, and counting all of the piles of dog poop that he could see.

Is my child the only child that is completely obsessed with picking up the dog poop in the backyard?

It sounds to me like Cory is going to be quite busy when he gets home from work today!

Egghead Video

Here is a short video of Parker telling about his Granstan's egghead (headache).

It was just so sweet that I wanted to capture it on video so we will be able to show it to him when he is 16 and wonders why we still call a headache an "egghead".