Bippus Bunch: May 2011

Friday, May 6, 2011

Pre-K Spa Day

Today was Mother's Spa Day at Olivia's Pre-K program. I got a formal invitation a few weeks ago and Olivia was so excited to for this day to come. Every day she would ask me, "is today Mother's day?"

I arrived at school and was greeted with a huge smile and a hug. My first stop was the massage table, then on to get my nails painted, then I got my hair done complete with lots of barrettes and bobby pins. Next I moved onto the tea and cookies table and my last stop was to get my new piece of bling, a noodle necklace.

Next all the moms gathered around the they sang us some very sweet songs and gave us an adorable necklace with their picture on it for our present. I was very impressed with the whole set up! The kids and teachers worked very hard and it was a day I will cherish forever.

I just didn't want our girls day to end so we went for ice cream afterwards. It was our little secret from the boys!

The poster she filled out about me. Apparently cleaning is my favorite thing to do.

The necklace she gave me.

What did I ever do without this sweet girl?!

She was very polite and helped me to my seat at each station.

Check out those nails!

Monday, May 2, 2011

Girls just want to have fun!

Once we got back from our Washington trip, Olivia started asking to get her ears pierced. Since she is the girliest of girly girls, I wasn't surprised at all. Everyone morning while I get ready she stands in the bathroom and asks to use all my makeup and then climbs up on the counter to look through my jewelry box. As I finish she makes her way into my closet and tries to help me pick out what I should wear that day. No matter what the occasion, she always says I should wear a pretty dress. And she wants to do the same. Every day, she wants to wear a pretty dress. Last week she took the liberty of rearranging her closed and moved all of her clothes down to the bottom rack so that they were within her reach. When she proudly showed me what she'd done, I noticed 3 pairs of jeans were the only thing left on the top rack. I asked her why she didn't move those down and she said, "because I hate jeans and I'm not ever going to wear them again!". Well alright.

I warned her that the ear piercing would hurt, but she said she would be brave. Apparently the thrill of and endless selection of earrings to choose from was worth a little pain in her mind. As we walked into the store, she was so excited to browse through all of the earrings.

So excited!

Wait a minute!

That really hurt!

It's all good again!

And she loves them! She can't wait to change them out and is going to be disappointed when I don't let her wear huge dangling earrings! Love my girly girl!

Addie is ONE!

In March the kids and I headed to Tacoma for a week to celebrate Adeline's birthday. We had a blast as always! We spend the beginning of the week preparing for the party, shopping and just hanging out, then Dado and Nonna arrived(bless their hearts, after 24 hours of traveling) on Friday morning. Friday night we went to eat Southern Kitchen, an adorable little hole in the wall restuarant in Tacoma and then Saturday we had celebrated Adeline's first birthday with a bang. I was going over all the details with Michael over the phone and he said "You know, she's not going to remember this right?" "Yes honey," I replied "but she only turns one once!"

On Sunday we enjoyed church and hearing Jesse speak and then on Monday we made a last minute trip to the Tacoma Zoo on our way out of town. It was another awesome trip with my family and I wish we could do it more than a handful of times per year.

It would take me forever to upload all the adorable party pictures so instead, here's a link to my Sis's blog about the event.

Also my kids are rockstars in the airports and airplanes and I'm so proud of them! For any of you moms with young children that have travel plans, traveling in the evening is the way to go! They sleep through the last flight and go right to bed when they get home. I've found that is the best way to keep them in a routine.

Blizzard of 2011

Snow this deep is not fun!

We were running out of places to put the snow!

Below zero wind chills prompted mommy to bring the snow inside.

4 foot drift on our back patio

Luci said forget this, I'm peeing on the porch! At one point we looked in the pack hard and could see nothing but her bottom sticking out of the snow. Her head was completely buried in 2 foot snow for a couple of minutes and then out she came with bone in her mouth. It was pretty comical! There is no match for a basset hounds sniffer.

It was pretty.

All bundled up!

I remember the first time it snowed after moving to Oklahoma in high school. You see, in the south if there was any sign of snow flurries, school was cancelled. Southerners just don't know how to handle the snow because it doesn't happen much and when it does it's usually minimal. So upon waking up to my first snow in Oklahoma, I thought "Wahoo, snow day!" There were 3-4 inches of snow on top of about an inch of ice so I thought I could go back to bed and now have to return to school for at least a week. But oh no, much to my dismay we went right on to school that morning. I remember being angry and asking, "how could they do this to us?, what if we die? We should sue!"

After moving back to Tennessee I had a greater appreciation for the milder climate, not too hot in the summer, not too cold in the winter and the rare (maybe once per year) 1-2 inches of snow that shuts down the whole city until all signs of the white stuff have disappeared.

Then after following the love of my life back to Oklahoma, I once again had to endure the shock of snowy weather during our first year of marriage. I remember waking up to snow and being shocked when Michael would still go into work. Pretty sure he thought he'd married an overprotective, basketcase there for a while.

Anyway...I say all that to say this, now this wintery weather is old news to me. It becomes more of an annoyance than a stressor and instead of worrying about if my hubby will get buried in an avalanche on his way to the office, I usually just go on about my normal routine but just take it a little slower while driving.

But this snow storm was different! It started snowing in the evening and we went to bed as usual (9PM, we go to bed like old people) and the next morning we woke up to about 10-12 inches and it was still falling. Michael already had an e-mail from his boss telling him to stay home (Thank God!) and we watched the snow continue to fall throughout the day. When it finally stopped, we had a total 21 inches. It was definately the most snow either of us had ever seen. We took the kids out to play but the snow was so deep it was too hard for them to walk in!

We took it all in stride and enjoyed our little minivacation at home. It wasn't all fun though, Michael spent HOURS shoveling our driveway and helping neighbors get thiers cleared off as well.

It kinda made me feel like I was back home in the south as the entire city was shut down a for a couple of days. Except instead of 2 inches of snow there was nearly 2 feet.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Owee on my bewwy

When Gray was about a year old we noticed a knot on his stomach. At his 18 month check up our pediatrician looked at it and said it was an epigastric hernia and said hopefully he will grow out of it by the time he started kindergarten. At his 2 year check up, she noticed it had changed and decided to send us for a consult with a pediatric surgeon. The pediatric surgeon checked it out and explained that this type of hernia would not go away and he would need to have surgery before he started school. He explained it would not repair itself and he would need to have it fixed before he started school or he would not pass a sports physical. He also recommended doing it sooner rather than later so that he would not remember it.

Since it wasn't a huge hurry, we decided to wait until after the holidays to have the surgery done. Although it is considered a minor surgery, it wasn't comforting for me to hear the doctor explain what he was going to do to my baby :"we make an incision, remove the fat that is poking through and then stitch the muscles back together and close him back up." Oh that's all, really?

The surgery itself took about an hour and this was probably one of the longest hours of my life! Thankfully our pastor and awesome friend, Bobby Reed, was there to talk to us and distract us the whole time. We've been through a total of 3 ear tube surgeries (2 for Liv and 1 for Gray) and to tonsilectemy for Olivia so the whole hospital/anesthesia thing is nothing new to us. But this time was a lot different! Grayson had a horrible time waking up from the anesthesia and he was in a lot of pain. He screamed and cried for about an hour, slept for about 30 minutes and then woke up screaming and crying and pulling at his incision. It was traumatizing for Michael and I to see our baby in so much pain. Finally about 3.5 hours after the surgery, the extra pain meds had kicked in and he had calmed down enough to go home.

Once home, I knew our biggest challenge would be keeping our rough and tumble little boy from moving around too much. He was still in a lot of pain when we first got home and nothing seemed to help (not even ice cream delivered by Grammy!). He slept for about 3 hours that afternoon and by that evening, he was good as new and you'd never even know he'd had surgery that morning! I followed him around the house trying to make sure he didn't hurt himself and rip his incision open. By the end of the next day, I took my eyes off him long enough to hear him superman himself off the futon in the playroom. He was just fine but it took several days for me to finally get comfortable with him "resuming normal activity". Now he's doing great and has a manly scar to show off!

A little pre-op entertaiment

Sweet baby boy

Christmas 2010

We had such a good Christmas again this year. We had the tradional Christmas Eve and day celebrations with Michael's side of the family. The kids recieved 2 HUGE boxes from Dado and Nonna a couple of weeks before Christmas and after lots of begging, we gave in and let them open a few presents early. Guess I'm turning out to be a softy like my dad always was!

I got the best present ever! Michael surprised me with a new Canon T2i camera and I love it!

Here are some pics of their loot: