Bippus Bunch

First Riding Lesson

2012-01-18T14:21:00.000-08:00

Olivia had her first horse back riding lesson this week. She has been wanting to do this for months and she was so excited. She kept asking what day it was because she knew her lesson was on Monday. Once we got there, she was looking at all of the horses and asking what their names were.

This is her with Prince, the horse she's learning to ride on.

She asked a lot of questions. This is her with the trainer, Ms. Janel. They were looking at the pregnant horse. It will be so fun to see this horse baby after it's born!

First they learned about safety of a horse and then she got to lead him around in circles a few times.

Next she got to get right on. I thought once she realized how big the horse was and how high up she was that she would be scared but she wasn't at all!

She learned how to hold the reins, make the horse go forward, turn and stop.

Gray just played in the dirt the whole time. On the way there he kept asking if he could take tractor lessons. I'm not sure there is such a thing.

Olivia literally never stopped smiling the whole time. It was so sweet to see her so happy and she looked like such a natural on the horse. I think this might be her "thing" for a while. She keeps talking about the barn cats and the horses. She's quite the animal lover, I wish I knew where she got that from:)

Christmas 2011

2012-01-03T14:51:00.000-08:00

We had a wonderful Christmas this year! We did so much throughout the holidays it's hard to write it all into one blog and it was hard to narrow down all the pictures.

We made our annual gingerbread house. This gets more fun each year!

Here are the kids making cookies for Santa:

On Christmas eve morning we let the kids open their presents from Mimi. Olivia was thrilled to get an American Girl doll and Grayson got a farm set.

Then we headed to Grammy and Pappy's for Christmas Eve brunch and present opening. Grammy has a sign that says "Who needs Santa when you've got Grandma?" and that is so true! Olivia just loves playing with Alyssa and they both love hanging out at Grammy and Pappy's house. A couple of weeks before Christmas she started telling everyone she wanted Santa to bring her a DS. Santa had already done his shopping but Grammy and Pappy surprised her with one! She was soooo excited! When you asked Grayson what he wanted every single time he would say "a remote control car, a remote control lightning, and a remote control motorbicycle." They got him a remote conrtol monster truck which he LOVES but somehow I didn't get pictures of it!

Steven and Michael had some fun with Gray's new nerf guns...

Michael got a cool remote control helicopter which he promptly flew into the neighbors yard. After staring at the problem for 30 minutes, they finally sent Steven over the barbed wire fence to get it!

Christmas eve night we headed over to the Cantrell's house. Liv got some accessories for her doll and lots of art projects and Gray got more nerf guns and lots of building toys.

Christmas morning is so fun when they are this age! It's so fun to see them anticipate what Santa will bring and they are so excited to wake up that morning. This year he brought Grayson a remote control Lightning McQueen and Olivia a Pop the Pig game.

She also got this wheelchair for her doll. She wanted it so bad. I haven't quite figured out why but she loves it.

Every year I buy them Christmas PJs because one of my favorite things is for them to wake up on Christmas morning in their Christmas PJs so we can take pictures in front of the tree. Of course Grayson peed on his Christmas PJ's so that didn't work out so well. If I could have had one thing for Christmas, it would have been for that child to be potty trained!

After they opened gifts we got them ready and headed off to church. They were in service with us and they did really well! Then we headed to Kenny and Tricia's house for the Bippus Christmas. We did our gift exchange with them and they opened presents from Pops and Grandma. Olivia was especially excited about getting a jewelry box and Grayson was thrilled to get a motorbicycle, The food was yummy as usual and by the time lunch was over we were all exhausted! We all came home and took a nap. It was a wonderful Christmas weekend!

Christmas Parties

2012-01-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

One of my duties as the classroom mom was to plan Olivia's Christmas party. We had 4 stations: coloring, eating, ornament making and reindeer craft. I didn't get to take many pictures because I was too busy helping the kids with their oranments but Olivia and her classmates seemed to have a great time!

We've made a birthday cake for Jesus the last couple of years but this year we kicked off the Christmas break by having a birthday party for Jesus complete with decorations and balloons. I read the Christmas story to the kids and then they all got to blow out a candle on a cupcake as we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. It was so fun and I think we'll make it an annual tradition!

This is what he did when I was trying to get him to smile.

Christmas Train

2012-01-03T13:27:00.000-08:00

We had a great time at the Christmas Train! Grayson was the most excited and he still makes references to the Christmas Train.

Horses, they all loved to ride the horses!

She is one happy girl when she gets to ride a horse!

Grayson got sad at first when he didn't get to ride in the front of this little train. He wanted to be the conductor and ride in the front!

Tree Farm

2012-01-03T13:03:00.000-08:00

The day after Thanksgiving we headed to the tree farm to get our live tree. The kids always love going and I love to take picture of them out with the trees!

Gray's Thanksgiving Program

2012-01-03T12:38:00.000-08:00

Gray hasn't been much of a performer at the preschool events. The pictures pretty much sum up how his Thanksgiving program went.

After he laid down for a while he ran over and sat in my lap the rest of the program. That's our son!

Thanksgiving 2011

2012-01-03T12:28:00.000-08:00

I was sooooo excited to get to host Thanksgiving this year. It was the first time we had ever hosted it for my family. Sis, Jesse and Adeline got to stay for 8 days and Dado and Nonna were here for a couple of days. We got very sad news a few days before everyone was scheduled to arrive. My sweet, fun, loving Uncle Don passed away. None of us wanted to miss the funeral so the original plan was for everyone to fly into Tulsa and then me, sis, Dad and Susie would head to Illinois for the funeral. That was until Sis started having major contractions the night before they arrived and the entire plane ride here. We were worried she would go into early labor in the middle of nowhere Illinois so we decided to stay back.

While they were at the funeral we got all the yummy cooking done. Michael did the turkey in the electric smoker and it was SO GOOD! We just love a good southern Thanksgiving meal. The kids loved spending time with Dado and Nonna and even though they didn't get to stay as long as we originally planned, it was so nice to spend some time with them. I tear up watching the kids play with them! It's always so hard when they have to leave.

Clark got the lights on the house before they got here.

Cousins enjoying licking the batter

Addie put her own bow on:)

Michael and his turkey.

Yummy spread

Dado and Nonna have been taking dance lessons..They were showing off their moves!

Don't they look good? They've both lost weight and Dad has lost over 50 pounds!

This girl has the funniest looks

We tried to get a cute picture

Addie tried out Gray's tractor.

They have so much fun when they are together!

Staci's Wedding

2012-01-03T11:41:00.000-08:00

I was so excited when several months back Staci asked me to be the matron of honor in her wedding. It was so sweet because she said as we were growing up she always pictured me standing beside her on her wedding day and even though we've been miles away for the last several years, she still wanted me by her side. She also asked Olivia to be the flower girl and of course Olivia was THRILLED!

I'll start by bragging on the dress bargain. A couple of days after Staci asked her, I happened to be at the mall looking for some other things. I thought I would just do a quick check in the girls section of a store that I was right by. I walked in and there was a cute dress, in the color we wanted and Olivia's size. It was on clearance for $14.99 (which was already a steal compared to the David's bridal flower girl dresses for $125+) but when we got up to check out it rang up $8.99! I must admit, I get quite the high from bargains like that!

Anyway, we left Thursday around lunch afternoon and with some traffic and one wrong turn we pulled into the hotel at 4AM Atlanta time. It was a long, tiring trip but I still couldn't sleep much! Friday afternoon we visited with Staci and her family and then the girls all went to get pedicures. Olivia had such a blast hanging out with all the women for pedicures and it was great to get to know Joe's family and catch up with Staci and her family. We had the rehearsal dinner Friday night and then wedding activities all day Saturday. Olivia did pretty well but towards the end of the wedding she started getting wiggly standing up there. At one point I could see out of the corner of my eye her twirling her flower basket on her wrist. The mom in me wanted to snap my fingers and give her a look but I didn't want to be even more of a distraction. Staci was such an easy going bride and it made me feel a lot less stressed that she was so carefree about everything. The kids LOVED the reception and they were definitely party animals! Staci was a beautiful bride and it was so fun to catch up with so many people I hadn't seen in a while. Michael was such a trooper and so helpful the whole weekend. We got up at 4AM Sunday morning and made the journey back home. It was a quick visit but so fun and we made so many good memories!

She bonded with Staci so quickly!

This was another friend she made..She hung out with her quite a bit!

Old friends! Katie is next..can't wait to go to her wedding in NYC this fall!

The long trip finally caught up with her at the rehearsal dinner.

Wasn't she adorable?

I just loved catching up with Kate some more.

Getting her hair done.

Snooki hair!

We had so much fun!

Getting Stace ready..She was so elegant!

I love this picture..

Enjoying the candy bar at the reception

Gray was a wild man on the dance floor!

party animals!

Getting his picture drawn by the characterurist.

My hot date:)

Hands on ya knees, hands on ya knees!

They were exhausting just to watch!

It looks like he's break dancing..he was actually doing a flip. It was priceless!

Homecoming

2011-12-27T08:29:00.000-08:00

Olivia was asked to be the crown bearer for the band homecoming. She was thrilled! She got to ride with the queen and king in the homecoming parade. Then she got to go with the queen and attendants to the dress store and try on dresses with all the big girls. It cracks me up how she just interacts with teenagers and adults so well. She just strikes up a conversation with them and sounds so grown up.

The night of homcoming she had a constant smile on her face. She was so happy to be all dressed up and get to go out on the field. She even got a pretty crosage to wear. She did woderful, never got shy or tried to back out. Her favorite part was hanging out with the queen!

Talking with the teenagers

Brady calls her his wife now! He was so shy around her and said she looked so pretty all dressed up!

Liv's First Cheerleading Season

2011-12-27T08:19:00.000-08:00

Olivia just finished up her first Cheerleading season. She loved it! I initally signed up to help with the team but at the first meeting, they had no parent coaches so another mom and I ended up co-coaching. Since neither one of us knew much about cheerleading, we called in Alex to help. It was so nice of her to volunteer her time and the team would not have been as good without her! She made up a dance for their halftime routine and it was cute to watch them perform. Olivia would get tired after a few cheers and she was always asking for a water break. Despite her easily tiring out, she still loved and it was so much better than soccer! We will definitely let her cheer again next year. She made lots of new friends. Sometimes Michael wouldn't get to her game until after it started so Grayson would have to be down on the field with me. Grayson would do some of the cheers with Olivia but as soon as Michael would get there he would promptly have to go into the stands!

Halloween 2011

2011-12-27T07:45:00.000-08:00

Halloween was fun as always! The kids get to wear their costumes so many times before halloween that by the time the 31st roles around, it's old news. This year we did lots of fun fall things. We went to the harvest festival by our house and the kids got to ride ponies, jump on the inflatables, and visit all the vendor booths. There was also a chilli cook off contest so Michael and I sampled all different kinds of chilli. Some were really good, some were really bad but by the time we had sampled almost 20 different kinds of chilli, I felt so sick I didn't want to ever eat chilli again! Next year we decided we'll only try a few different kinds. We also visited a pumpkin patch in Claremore to get our pumpkins. While the kids were out of school on fall break, we had the 1st annual Bippus Boo Bash at our house. It was so fun and the kids enjoyed having their friends over. We played pin the tooth on the pumpkin and had lots of scary, yummy food! The kids both had fun events at school. Grayson and I tagged along on the pumpkin patch field trip with Olivia's class and it was neat to meet some of her friends. I helped out with Gray's trunk or treat at preschool and that was fun too.

I love this picture..you can see the joy written all over Luci's face!

All the kids at the party, they all looked so cute!

Mommy and Olivia enjoying the hay ride at the Harvest Festival.

She is one happy girl when she gets to ride a pony!

Getting her face painted..a pony of course!

At the pumpkin patch

We love family days!

We brought our own clothes and got to stuff a scarecrow at the pumpkin patch.

All done!

Not happy that I'm trying to make him take a picture.

Olivia's pumpkin patch field trip at school. Grayson and I were happy to come along!

Trunk or Treat at Grand Central Preschool.

Seriously, could they be any cuter?

And finally, Halloween night. Our old neighbor Tripp came and went trick or treating with us. Luci came along too. It was so funny, at one point Grayson didn't make it up to the house with the other kids to ring the doorbell so he just decided to stick his hand in some random child's bucket as he as leaving the house. Needlesss to say, the kid was did not like that idea!

New Adventures

2011-09-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

We've had a few new happenings lately. Olivia asked Michael to take the training wheels off of her bike. They've been practicing a lot and she's doing really well! Gray is learning to ride his bike too.

We've been talking about going camping for a long time. I really want to wait and get a camping trailer as sleeping on the ground is not my idea of fun, but Michael decided to take the kids camp in the back yard this past Saturday. He set up the tent that morning and they played in it all day. Here's a timeline of this adventure:

About 8:15 they grabbed their sleeping bags and headed out to the back yard.

8:30: They are all snuggled in and ready for bed.

9:07: They head back in and go to bed. Olivia said camping was terrible and Grayson said sleeping outside was weird. Haha!

First Golf Outing

This past weekend, our great friends Alex and Jeff invited us out to the Patriot to play a few holes of golf and eat dinner at the club. It was so much fun! The course is BEAUTIFUL and the kids loved watching the boys golf and putting into the hole. They also loved riding and driving in the golf cart. Olivia was hanging out with Alex and Jeff amost of the time so I didn't get as many pictures of her but here's a few pictures I took that day:

Wearing a glove like Daddy

Teeing off at the first hole

So sweet

Driving the golf cart

As sad as I've been about how fast the kids have grown up, these new adventures have made Michael and I both realize that there are so many fun new things we can do now that the kids are getting a little older. Golf is surely going to be one of those things we plan to do together as a family. Camping too, but just not in a tent!

Grayson is 3!

2011-09-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

We had a blast celebrating Gray's 3rd birthday. He's really into firetrucks (and just trucks, tractors, cars, etc) so I picked a firetruck theme this year. The city of Owasso will so graciously bring a firetruck to your house anytime you ask so that was the plan. After I scheduled the party, I then learned it was the same day as the city wide block party so if we made his party into a block party, we could have other city vehicles visit as well. In addition to the firetruck visiting, we had a trash truck, ambulance, digger, and pipe robot camera van (for the sewer lines). All of the vehicles were such a hit with the kids! Grayson was in heaven playing inside all of the vehicles but he was NOT a fan of the robot arm that picks up the trash cans.

He had such a good day and I would say it was one of my favorite birthday parties we've done so far. He of course got lots of new presents including the fireman suit he's wearing in the picture (from Dado and Nonna), a new power wheels John Deer tractor (from Mimi), and a new bike from Grammy and Pappy. He is soo blessed by lots of friends and family!

Candy bar for favors

Our little fireman

He LOVED his cake..Everyone's teeth were red from the icing!

Checking out the ambulance

He was so scared of the robot arm!

Lots of action on our street!

Liv operating the digger

His best friend Brady Reed

Riding his new bike from Grammy and Pappy

Just a few things we adore about our little 3 year old:

He loves his big sister

He's rough and tumble

He's super smart

He's all boy

He can't pronounce his "Ls" and it's really cute

He asks lots of questions

He points out every truck he see's while we're in the car.."there's a cement mixer, there's a digger, etc"

He could play in the sandbox all day.

He's always dirty or muddy or colored on.

First day of school

2011-09-26T12:35:00.000-07:00

My big girl started school on August 18, 2011. She was sooo excited! We picked out her first day of school outfit months in advance and had many conversations throughout the summer about what school would be like. That morning, we got her and got ready, had breakfast and a quick photo session and headed off to school. Grayson and I both walked her in and helped her put her backpack in her locker and find her seat. We wished her a happy first day of school and I was holding myself together until Gray and I left the classroom and he started crying and screaming " I want e-ya, I want e-ya!" He was so sad and this made me so sad so we both cried all the way out the door. I took him to the tractor store to distract him and that helped. The day seemed to drag on forever and Grayson asked about her all day.

Finally, 3:15 rolled around and we couldn't wait to go pick her up and hear all about her day.

She got in the car and was sooooo tired! She said she was so hungry and needed a snack. Then she said she didn't want to take her lunch anymore because eating in the cafeteria is "way much better." I asked her if she made new friends and she said yes and but she would wait until the next tomorrow to ask them their names. All in all, it was a great first day and she's still enjoying school. Gray still has a hard time without her some days but for the most part we are staying busy enough that he doesn't miss his playmate too much.

Walking into school together. Grayson wanted to take his backpack too.

Sitting in her spot at school, admiring all the new scenery.

Isn't she grown up?They are so sweet!

Fabulous at 5!

2011-08-05T13:49:00.000-07:00

Olivia turned 5! I've decided to hold back the tears and embrace her growing up. I will not cry when she starts kindergarten (or is it kindergarden? I googled it..you can spell it either way) but instead will be excited for all of the new things she will learn and the all of the new friends she will make.

We had 2 birthday parties for her this year. We had a family party at Grammy and Pappy's house and a friends party at Soiree "French for Party" in Collinsville. They were both so much fun and she is soooo blessed to be surrounded by so many people who love her.

Here are just a few of the things we LOVE about our little 5 year old:

She knows what she wants and she's not afraid to tell you.

She is an AWESOME big sister. It seems like she had just matured so much lately and is so helpful and motherly to Gray. There's been several times lately that she's wiped his face for him or helped him clean up a mess just because she saw that it needed to be done.

She is girly as ever. She changes her earrings daily (sometimes 3-4 times) to match her outfit and even has designated "sleeping earrings." Pedicures, shoes, sunglasses, bows, jewelry, make-up..all of those are right up her alley.

She loves to cook and bake. And eat. She get it from her mama.

She likes to be on the "go" and doesn't want to stay home much.

She is a social butterfly. She loves people and parties and talks to everyone anywhere we go.

Most of all, she is a joy to have in our lives.

There were too many pictures to post so I made a slide show instead:

http://www.photosnack.com/slideshows/155cb296b2247870ab1fd19da1333293

Summer is here!

2011-06-17T07:08:00.000-07:00

I've been home from work for 2 weeks now. We are having a blast! I haven't quite figured out the "staying home" part of being a stay at home mom. I still feel like I'm on an extended vacation and will go back to work next week. I was a little worried that I would be bored at home but that has not been the case at all. I've been trying new recipes, couponing, volunteering more for the church, crafting and organizing. We've done an activity (very cheap or free) every day and we've already made some great memories. Someone recently pointed out that you only have 18 summers with your kids and if that's the case I only have 14 left with Olivia and 16 left with Grayson so we've got to make the best of them.

Here are some things we've done so far:

Yesterday we had craft day at home:

We went to the Blue Bell Plant in BA with our Friday Fun Day play group:

We also went to the Zoo with our Friday Fun Day playgroup

We've spent several days at the pool:

Michael Phelps? Oh, that's just Gray.

Swim Lessons: Grayson is a fish. Olivia's not so sure about it! Gray got mad at the teacher when she didn't dunk him under.

Many trips to the library for the summer reading program and weekly story time. Last week we had a huge visitor at story time!

One day Olivia wanted to make puppy shaped biscuits. One of her favorite books is about a puppy named biscuit. I love to foster her creativity!

Everyday I've just been sooooooo thankful for the time with my kids. I really am appreciating every minute of it and I'm so thankful for a husband who works so hard for us so that I can be home with them. God is soooo good!

Career Changes

2011-06-17T06:03:00.000-07:00

Almost a year ago I started feeling the call to come back home to be with my kids. I wrestled and wrestled with the decision. I kept waiting on things at work to slow down so my part-time job could truly be part-time again. I kept waiting and waiting on God to give me an answer. Because the work PRCO does is so good, I didn't want to let God down by stepping back.. I have LOVED, LOVED, LOVED my job and everything the PRCO stands for, but I was no longer able to manage the hours without having to consider full-time day care for the kids. That was not something either of us were willing to do, nor did it make sense financially. My stress level was way higher than it should be and I broke out in hives a few times after a stressful day. Finally, Michael and I did a 5 day Daniel Fast to seek guidance on what we should do. The answer was very clear to both of us, but it was still a scary thing. The PRC had been my baby, my 3rd child for 4 years and I had watched it grow from a small little ministry with 2 staff (less than 200 visits my first year) to a fully functioning medical clinic with 6 employees with and estimated 2000 client visits this year. It was HARD to imagine passing that on to someone else. Would they keep it going? Would they let it fail and all those women wouldn't have a place to go? Finally, it was as if God knocked me on the head and said "Hey Lindsay, it's My ministry, not yours!" Oh yeah...

Although my salary certainly didn't make me the breadwinner, we really depended on it so in order for me to stop working we had to make some major financial adjustments to our family budget. At first neither of us thought it was possible but when after reading Crazy Love by Frances Chan, we realized that a lot of the "extras" really don't matter. What matters is that our children are loved and that we raise them to love God and love others.

We made some cuts from the budget and immediately started living on the new budget even though I wouldn't stop work for several months. I'll admit, although I was 100% sure we were making the right decision, there were days when I wondered if we could truly do it. One afternoon, I "mourned" some of the things we may not be able to do such as rent a jupiter jump at the kids birthday parties or go on vacation but in the end, if I get to be home with them everyday and know that they are taken care of, none of that will matter.

And it's true, with all of the fun we've been having so far we haven't missed the extras so far. I was blown away by the applicants for my job and even got to be involved in the interview process. The woman who took my was MORE qualified than I ever way and I'm confident she will do a wonderful job.

During the process someone said to me: "You can always go back to work but you can never get this time with your kids back."

Soccer Girl

2011-06-17T03:32:00.000-07:00

Olivia wrapped up her first season of soccer a few weeks ago. She was so excited to get started but at her first game, it was pretty obvious soccer wouldn't be her thing! She would fall down on purpose so she didn't have to run after the ball. She would just sit down in the middle of the field and the coach would have to come get her up. If the ball came by her, she would just look at it. We would say "Olivia, run and kick the ball" and she would say "they are running too fast."

She would run over to us and sit down in the chair during water breaks as if she was just sooo exhausted from all the running. They always got to get snocones at the end of the games so that was her favorite part.

We never figured it out... she wouldn't really do much during the games but on the ride home we would ask her how she liked soccer and she would reply "I loved it! It's great!" So we went back week after week.

Look, I can still see with my jersey on my head!

Towards the end of the the seaons, she figured out if she could stay in front of the goal she wouldn't have to run down the field as much!

Pre-K Spa Day

2011-05-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

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!

Girls just want to have fun!

2011-05-02T18:39:00.001-07:00

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!

2011-05-02T17:58:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-02T11:57:00.000-07:00

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.

Owee on my bewwy

2011-05-01T19:10:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-01T17:51:00.001-07:00

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:

Handsome Boy

Christmas day with Grammy and Pappy

Can we open presents now?

She used her new lipstick!

Christmas Morning

New Sleeping bag

Make Up

Remote Control Car

4-wheeler

"the puppy that walks with a handle"

"Doctor Kitty" (aka vet kit)

Remote control "motor bicycle"

Shoes!

Cars!

More shoes! She loves shoes. And dresses. And all clothes/jewelry/anything girl really. Except jeans.

trains

Pom Poms

"Booty" and the Beast (as Gray calls it)

He is not a fan of posed pictures!

Baby Alive

Feeding her baby alive. We had to stop at Target to buy this thing diapers on the way to Christmas dinner!

Chuck the dump truck

Christmas Traditions

2011-04-29T06:26:00.001-07:00

We've established a couple of Christmas traditions for our little family. We make a gingerbread house and make a birthday cake for Jesus.

This year we made chicken and dumplings the week of Christmas as well and they really enjoyed rolling out the dough.

ll of these projects make huge messes in the kitchen but it it worth all the mess to see them happy and knowing we're creating those warm memories they'll always have!

Long Time No Blog

2011-04-29T05:38:00.001-07:00

Once again, I'm behind on my blogging. I do have a list of all the things I need to blog about starting with Christmas and running through Gray's hernia surgery followed by massive blizzard in OK and now through the tragic tornado that struck my little hometown of Ringgold and demolished Susie's daugther's house. Since I want to make this blog into a book as a digital scrapbook of my our lives, I'm planning to play catch up and blog about our recent happenings in order.

We've just been a little busy! I've been working tons of hours getting the medical clinic opened at work and Michael has been studying non-stop. He has passed the first 3 parts of the CPA exam and he will take the last section on May 14th. Because this is the hardest section, he has set a goal to study at least 200 hours for it. He wakes up around 4:00 AM to study 1-2 hours before work, studies through his lunch break and then another 1-2 hours per night. The weekends are packed with Church events, Olivia's soccer games and trying to keep up with the house. I've been training hard for my first half marathon on May 21st so running is also filling the schedule as well.

In just a month or so, things will hopefully slow down and I will become a regular blogger again! Michael will be (hopefully) done studying, I'll cut back on running and dance and soccer will be over. So for those of you who have asked, I promise to update soon!

Christmas Time is Here

2010-11-27T19:09:00.000-08:00

We LOVE Christmas around here! I started putting up the Christmas decorations the day after Halloween and the cutest thing happened. Olivia was helping me put up the tree in the dining room and Grayson woke up from his nap. When she saw him she said with such excitement "Grayson, Santa is coming tonight!" It was so sweet and so funny but through my laughter I had to explain to her the Christmas was still 2 months away. I told her that her Mommy was just crazy and loves the holidays so much that we just start a little earlier than everyone else.

My hubby, AKA Clark Griswald is at it again and put up the house decorations the same weekend. He has added to them each weekend and they are finally complete. This year there is a neighborhood decorating contest so this has made his desire to decorate go from "we love the outdoor Christmas lights" to.."no those neighbors didn't try to out-do me, I'm going back to home depot!"

The day after thanksgiving we went back to to the tree farm as always to pick out our real tree. The kids had a blast and we have the prettiest tree ever!

Olivia was so cute at the tree farm. She picked out a tree that was about a foot tall and said "I choose this baby tree." Grayson would have been just fine if we would have just rode the tractor and went home.

Halloween 2010

2010-11-27T18:59:00.000-08:00

Olivia is really into Tinkerbell this year so there was no convincing her to be anything but Tinkerbell for Halloween. Since I like to coordinate them and Grayson is not arguing with me yet, I decided to let him be her Peter Pan. They were adorable! We had a lot of fun going to the fall festival in town and trick or treating with friends!

I also got to go with Olivia on her field trip to the pumpkin patch and that was so much fun. They got a go through the maze, do games, and crafts and pick out a pumpkin. On Friday I helped with her party at school and that was a so entertaining seeing her interact with her friends and teachers at school I am so thankful to be in such a good school system and her teachers are absolutely wonderful!

First Trip To DC

2010-11-27T18:43:00.001-08:00

Dado and Nonna moved to Washington, DC about a year ago and we finally made it for a trip! It just so happened that I needed training for work that was in Fredericksburg, VA, only about an hour away from Dad and Susie's apartment. Back in the spring, we came up with the plan that Dado and Nonna could watch the kids while I was in training for 3 days and then Michael could fly over and join us to sight see in D.C. for a week. Then, the plan got even better when Aunt Sissy and Uncle Jesse decided to join us and I got to spend time with the sweetest niece in the world!

While we were there we did A TON including:

Dado and Nonna took the kids to the National Zoo

The boys went to a Redskins game

We did all the monuments..Washington, Lincoln Memorials, Korean War Memorial, Vietnam Wall

Spent a day at Arlington Cemetery

Went to a Nationals Game

White House

National History Museum

American History Museum

Ate cupcakes from DC Cupcakes, totally over priced but WAYYYY good!

Ate lunch at Mt. Vernon

And of course, lots of shopping at markets and the Potomac Mills shopping mall.

We had this really cool apartment to stay in was in the same building as Dad and Susie's apartment so we didn't have to stay in a hotel. It was very nice and homey and we got lots of quality family time in. This trip was a very busy one but we created priceless memories. The funniest thing that happened was Olivia busted out with her "flag of America" song on the way to the Lincoln memorial. We had never heard this song before but she had heard it at school and I guess all of the American History prompted her to sing it! She also said the pledge of allegiance.

We also had 3 strollers which was pretty funny considering we rode the subway pretty much everywhere we went. We were definitely a caravan of strollers and children all over DC!

Choo Choo, Grayson's turning 2!

2010-11-27T18:29:00.000-08:00

Grayson doesn't really watch much TV but one show that will hold his attention is Thomas the Train so it was easy to decide on a theme for his party this year. His big present from Mom and Dad was train table which he absolutely LOVES. We had a great party complete with a "jump jump" in the back yard for a full 8 hours. He had so much fun with the inflatable that we couldn't get him to come in a open his presents so Olivia opened them for him!

Things we love about our sweet 2 year old:

He is rough and tumble.

He speaks really well for his age

He is already darn good at hitting a baseball or golf ball, those are just good genes!

He is HILARIOUS!!! 2 is my favorite age I've decided

He has no idea that playing dress up or barbies is not a "boy" thing so he just does whatever his big sister tells him. It is so cute!

He's a Momma's boy.

First Day Of School

2010-11-27T18:18:00.000-08:00

Olivia is starting the Public School Pre-K program this year. She is also doing enrichment at the same Pre-school Grayson will be attending to days per week. She will be in school 3 half days and 2 full days and Grayson will be in 2 full days. Olivia was so looking forwarding to starting school but Grayson was having a hard time being away from Mom. Grayson had a really hard time when I took him to school. He cried so hard and really wanted me to put him back in the car. I cried for at least 2 hours after dropping him off. I called Michael and asked him if preschool was really necessary and seriously contemplated going back to get him. He's doing much better now but still cries when I drop him off.

Vacation with Friends

2010-11-27T18:08:00.000-08:00

This year we took the first annual Bippeed vacation. We have gotten to know the Reeds through church and have had a blast working with them on the Stone Canyon Church plant. They are truly a blessing to our family and I know they will be lifelong friends. It's also great that our kids are all stairstepped in age so they play (and fight) really well together.

We went to the Lake of The Ozarks in Missouri and rented a condo for a few days. While there we went fishing (Brady was not a fan of the live worms!), the boys played golf while the girls had a spa day, we laid by the pool and shopped at the outlet malls. We took a babysitter (Haley's the best!) so that we could have some outings without the kids. We had great evenings out on the back deck listening the lake and just talking about life. We had a wonderful date night with just the adults at nice restuarant that overlooked the lake. We hope to do this every summer!

She's FOUR!

2010-11-27T17:53:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm going to skip over the sobbing about my children growing up so fast and just gush about all the goodness there is about them!

Olivia was sooo excited about her birthday this year. I gave her several choices on where she could have her birthday party and she chose the neighborhood pool. She was so excited and talked about it for weeks and weeks leading up to it. She was really wanted goggles and a swim-to-me puppy and she was happy to receive both. They both love the pool as you have seen in my previous posts and we try to go as much as possible during the summer.

Things I love about Olivia being 4:

She models her dress up clothes daily, literally changes 20 times a day sometimes.

She knows it all..She's 4 going on 16

She is a Daddy's girl all the way, I don't think that will ever change!

She is such a momma, she "mommas" everyone and everything, including her little brother.

Major Changes!

2010-07-20T19:26:00.000-07:00

The Situation

I have worked out on an on and off, good for 2 weeks, not so good for a month then good for 2 days type situation since Olivia was about a year old. While pregnant with Grayson I did pretty good about not over eating and did my pregnancy workout videos pretty consistently. It only took me about 6 months or so to get my pregnancy weight off after having Grayson, but I still had those last 10-15 pounds hanging around from college!

On January 1st of this year I started doing Jillian Michael's 30 day shred video. I worked out 6 days a week for 3 months straight. I really started to tone up but had not lost 1 pound. I told myself, it's probably just all this muscle I'm gaining...

Then, when Michael and I were on our weekend getaway in March we watched a seminar on TV given by Jillian Michaels. She was teaching about processed foods and most of the food we eat is so far away from it's natural state that our body doesn't really know what to do with it so it slows down our metabolism. The same goes for additives, preservatives and pesticides.

Now let me back up.. we already ate pretty healthy anyway. I outlawed white bread and white pasta when Olivia was an infant. I rarely fried anything and thought we did pretty good. I told Michael, let's try to eat this way for a month and see how we feel. So we did. And let me tell you, we are NEVER going back!

The Plan

At least 80% of the time we eat only lean, unprocessed meat with fresh veggies and fruits on the side. We eat lots of fish such as Tiliapia, shrimp and salmon. ABSOLUTELY NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP will be found in my pantry. If you want to know why, just a do a little research. The same goes for added hormones to meat. We avoid preservatives as much as possible, they just aren't natural. We've had our first garden this year which has produced tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, bell peppers, cantalopes and now okra. We hope to do an even bigger garden next year. I eat whenever I'm hungry but instead of snacking on a bag of chips, I eat a bowl of sliced cumbers or fresh strawberries instead.

The Results

I dropped 15lbs in 6 weeks. Still kept my work out routine. In May, I decided I had been doing cardio for a while so I thought I'd try my hand at running and see how far I could go. I used to LOATHE running and running a 5K has always been on my bucket list. I just wanted to accomplish this because I knew it would be challenging for me. The first time I ran in May I was able to run almost 2 miles with only stopping for a few short breaks. I decided to sign up for a 5k and trained 3 days a week. 2 days before my race I got sick with a cold but decided I was going to try it anyway. My goal was to finish in 34 minutes and I finished in 32! I learned a huge lesson, no more running 5Ks in the Oklahoma summer. It was wayyy to hot and I was sick to my stomach most of the day. I feel great and now actually enjoy getting up at 5:00 AM to run. Weird!

Michael, the meat and potatoes and anything fried type-of-guy, has done great and hasn't complained about missing his comfort food too much. We try and keep the menu fresh and exciting (can be challenging) so that we don't get bored with our food. I say that we do this 80% of the time because sometimes, you just have to grab chick-fil-a for dinner because we only have 15 minutes and I'm not a miracle worker. We also want to indulge in birthday cake or party food when presented to us.

With all that said, I think we've made a change that is here to stay. I love feeling great about what my family is putting into their bodies and feel good setting an example of an active lifestyle for my kids. I'm contemplating a 10K this fall but not making any commitments just yet.

This is my great friend Liz. I asked her to run with me a week before the race. She did amazing for only running a few times before the race. I may have quit without her! And that's us promoting our new Campus at our church. More to come about this later...BIG THINGS ARE HAPPENING!

Halfway through summer...

2010-07-05T12:16:00.000-07:00

Pool Time!

Baltz Family Reunion

Early Birthday Parties!

Blue Bell Tour

Love, Love, Love this little girl!

4th of July

Whew! What a busy summer it has been so far. Michael has been busy playing softball and studying for the CPA and we have stayed busy with our work schedules, the kids activities and our vegetable garden. Our first veggie garden has produced tomatoes, LOTs of cucumbers and Zucchinni, bell peppers. We now have one tiny little cantlope appearing and the okra should be sprouting up soon. Our first garden has been pretty successful but we've learned a lot and plan to do an much better job next year.

My Sister, Jesse and Adeline came into Tulsa a couple of weeks ago so that we could all head to the Baltz Family Reunion together in Branson. Since Jesse had a mission trip in New Orleans the week following the reunion, my sister and Adeline decided to stay with us that week and then fly back to Seattle in time for Jesse to get home. Our mom also paid us a visit.

My neice has grown so much since I last saw her when she was 2 weeks old! She laughs and smiles and loves to play and look around. I'm convinced she's going to be like her cousin Olivia, she has to be "IN THE KNOW" at all times. She is happiest when she's sitting in someone's lap looking around or playing on the floor or riding right on the front of her mommy in the Bjorn. Olivia and Grayson love to talk to her and play with her. Grayson doesn't quite understand the term "be gentle" and we had a few mishaps including him rolling over her head with an empty suitcase, a little tough poking her in the face while saying "baby, baby" and even a little acting out and swatting her bouncy seat when we told him not to touch. All this "constant checking to make sure Grayson isn't hurting the baby" confirmed one thing for me...I am not ready for a third child!

It was a great visit with the Baltz family in Branson. We always look forward to these reunions and catching up with our extended family. Dado and Nonna met us there as well. It was great to see Dad spend time with all 3 of the kids. We ate LOTS of good food the whole time and had a mini early birthday party for Olivia in the hotel room. Our visits just always seem to fly by.

Once back in Owasso we had a pretty low key week. I had to work some but we still managed to make it to the pool a couple of times, tour the blue bell creamery in BA and of course a little shopping. Sis had yet to put a bow on Miss Addie's head so I was able to take care of that!

Mom left on Saturday and I dropped Addie and Sis off at the airport early Sunday morning on the 4th. We had time to get home, make it to church and then head off to a party with Michael's family's. All in all we have a had a great summer so far. This week we are headed off to the Lake of the Ozarks with some of our dear friends. Once we return we will have one week to prepare for Olivia's 4th birthday party! Big sigh.................

Toddler For Sale...

2010-05-30T12:18:00.001-07:00

Ok, I'm totally kidding! I love my little boy to pieces!

Raising a boy has presented many new challenges that we haven't faced with Olivia. Olivia has always been a very busy child but Grayson is busy + fearless + adventurous + a little destructive. I learned a couple of lessons this week. Don't ever take your eyes off of him, not even to brush your teeth!

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Yes, that's sharpie. No, I haven't figured out a way to get it out.

Lesson number 2. Never give the kids a bath by yourself again. Michael had softball practice and I decided to bathe the kids while he was gone. After getting Gray washed up, I was washing washing Liv's hair and Grayson decides to hike his leg over the bathtub and take off streaking down the hallway. "That's strange" I thought, "I guess he's done." Nope, 2 seconds later he comes running back into the bathroom, slips on the tile and falls his his bottom, laughs then gets up and dives back into the bathtub. I'm still wondering why he did that but continue to wash Olivia. Once again, he streaks out of the bathroom and this incient repeats (including the fall followed by the "eh-huh" laugh and my subsequent rise in blood pressure all over again) as the "dives" back into the tub and then tries to repeat this incident for a third time, I hold him by his arm so that he cannot get out but this renders me incapable of rinsing Olivia's hair so then I had to get him out, dress him and cage him in his crib so he cannot make the running streak into the bathroom again. I survived this bathing and was incredibly confused by his antics until the next day when we let them swim in their little pool. The following video explains the bathtub incident completely. He now thinks this is how he should react in any body of water!

Note that the pool only has a couple of inches of water in it. That's because earlier in the week Michael let them swim with the pool filled almost to the top. Grayson dove into the pool repeatedly and his face would go completely underwater. Michael would pull him out, he would spit out the water he'd inhaled, laugh and repeat his diving routine. Michael said this stressed him out so much that he finally just ended the swim time and dumped out the pool.

He's fearless. I'm scared.

First Dance Recital

2010-05-05T19:44:00.001-07:00

Olivia has been dancing for a year now and last weekend was her first dance recital. Dado came to town and we had a great weekend with him. Olivia did a great job at her recital! She's not the least bit shy and really shook her stuff!

Baby Adeline

2010-05-05T19:17:00.000-07:00

We recently got to go visit our newest niece Miss Adeline Grace Skiffington in Tacoma, WA. She is the prettiest baby girl I have ever seen!

We had a wonderful time. On Sunday we visited Aunt Sissy Uncle Jesse's church. I sure do love my church but it is pretty cool to sit in service with a full view of the water on one side of the sanctuary! After church it was a warm (Seattle warm anyway) day and we decided to make a trip down to the beach. Olivia was a little hesitant to get her hands dirty and she did not like the seaweed washing up to shore. Grayson, on the other hand, literally ran into the water and started splashing. There was no turning back for him and he got completely filthy but had the best time!

2010-03-15T17:10:00.001-07:00

Today was a gorgeous day and we stayed outside for a couple of hours. After such a cold and snowy winter, I love to soak up every bit of sunshine we can. After being outside with the kids for a while, I decided to come in and get started on our (super healthy of course) dinner. Since our back yard is fully fenced and I have a view of it from the kitchen, we often let the kids play out in the back yard as long as we can see them. Until today! I'm standing in the kitchen chopping potatoes and Olivia comes running in the house screaming "Mommy, Grayson is in my treehouse!" "What, he can't climb up there!" I said. "How did he get up there?"

"He used the ladder!" she said. And sure enough, I ran outside to find him at the top of the slide! He came flying down the slide and was so proud of himself as he crashed to the bottom. And then of course, he ran right back around to the ladder.

I knew he would eventually learn how to do this, I just thought it would be next summer! Needless to say, he will not be playing in the back yard by himself anymore. The tree house is really high so we have to watch him closely as he plays on there. I shot a couple of videos...

Celebrity Encounter and Healthy Changes

2010-03-15T06:01:00.001-07:00

After the horrible winter we've had, Michael and I decided to get away this past weekend for an anniversary trip. Other than one night away for a church marriage conference in Tulsa, we had not been away from the kids since Grayson was born. It was time! We stayed in a great hotel and got lots of rest. Saturday night we ate at a nice restaurant a couple of blocks from our hotel. As we were finishing up dinner, a group of people came in and sat down at the table next to us. At first I glanced at one of the girls and realized she looked familiar. I told Michael, " I think maybe I went to college with her." Then I said, "no, maybe she was on a reality show" And he looked at her and figured it out, "she was the girl from that show Friday Night Lights!" But this time she was a brunette instead of a blonde. I knew the guy she was sitting next to was also famous but couldn't quite figure it out. Then we realized that he was the Dad from National Treasure (Jon Voight) who also happens to be Angelina Jolie's Dad. I'm not big on celebrities but I couldn't help but stare! We kept our cool and quietly left the restaurant but it was definitely neat to see them. Of course as soon as we got back to the hotel we googled them and realized that they are filming a pilot for a show called Midland, which is set in Texas. I can't believe I've lived in the same town as Garth Brooks and Tricia Yearwood for 4 years now and still haven't seen them yet I go out of town and have a celebrity encounter!

For whatever reason, the hotel had a scale in the bathroom. Michael weighed himself and realized he's gained 10 pounds since last fall. Later that night, we watched a lecture from Jillian Michael's on healthy eating. Starting January 1st, I did Jillian's 30 day shred workout 4-5 days a week and had not lost a pound, but had really toned up my muscles. Then we we all got sick and I completely fell off the wagon towards the end of February. Michael and I decided that for 30 days, we would eat nothing but completely unprocessed food and work out at least 4 days a week and see how we feel at the end of the month. We are journaling our food and workouts and tonight (this is Day 1) we will take pictures and do measurements. We worked out at 5 this morning so we are off to a good start! We all eat pretty healthy anyway ( I cut out white bread and pasta a long time ago and I rarely fry anything) so I'm hoping it will be pretty easy on us. The hardest part is late night cravings and being so busy that we just grab whatever is convenient, not necessarily what is good for our bodies. I'm hoping these 30 days will help us get to a lifestyle where we feel good have lots of energy as well as set a great example for our children.

I'll keep you updated on our progress!

Whew! What a week!

2010-02-19T07:49:00.000-08:00

The last 8-10 days have been absolutely miserable for us! Early of last week Olivia started coughing at night and she would cry when she coughed. We looked in her throat and her tonsils were MASSIVE with white puss pockets all over them. I'm not even sure how she could swallow because they were engulfing her entire throat. So I took her to the doctor last Thursday and they confirmed her for strep. The doc peeked in Gray's ears (this seems like a weekly occurrence) and he had a double ear infection. Again. Time for tubes! We have an appointment with the ENT on March 1.

So, they both started on antibiotics on Thursday and by Saturday, Olivia took a turn for the worse and started running a high fever. Sunday Grayson also started running a fever. At 3:30 Monday morning, Olivia's fever spiked to 106.2! I've never seen a fever that high. I took her in first thing Monday morning and the doc said her throat looked worse, even after being on the antibiotic for 4 days. So she tested her for mono which came back negative. She gave her a shot of antibiotic and sent us home with another one.

On Monday we realized that a lot of the kids we are normally around have had RSV and Grayson's symptoms were matching up perfectly. Since RSV is viral, I wasn't going to take him in, I was just going to let it run its course. Then yesterday his hands started turning blue and he was still running fever so a rushed him back to the doctor. She said his body was shunting blood and taking the blood away from his hands to his chest. Poor guy is very ill. She confirmed the RSV and did a chest x-ray to check for Pneumonia which was normal. Then she said the wanted to check him for strep (which should have been killed by the other antibiotic he had just finished) but of course it was positive! Because they are both allergic to penicillin and he had recently taken the other 2 they normally prescribe, she put him on a REALLY strong one that causes horrible diarrhea. Time to fight the diaper rash!

4 doctors appointments and a grand total of 5 antibiotics later, we are hopefully on the road to recovery!

Oh the drama! After getting her shot on Monday, Olivia would not walk all day. All we would hear is "can you carry me to the couch?" "can you carry me to the potty?" "can you carry me to the playroom?"
Tuesday morning she woke up and called from her bed "mommy, come get me!"
I told her I was not carrying her around anymore and she was going to have to learn to walk again. Eventually she came out of her room dragging her foot behind her walking at a very slow pace. Michael and I laughed so hard at how dramatic she was being. By the end of the day, she decided she could walk normally again. For whatever reason, she is calling the scab where her shot was a nipple!

Which brings me to my next list....

Things My 3 year has said lately:

"Mommy, you are wearing me out!"

"What in the world?"

"Daddy, what's your favorite animal?" M: a turkey. "That's not an animal, that's food!"

"When I'm 5, I'm going to college" (In a very sassy voice)

And lately her thing is..EVERY DAY she comes out of her room wearing a summer dress and flip flops and tried to convince us that she is wearing that today. When I tell her it too cold for that attire, she throws a huge fit and cries all the way back to her room.

With all of this said, I have never been more ready for summer! Not only because my kids are never sick in the summer, but also because we can have drama free mornings when it's time to get dressed!

I'm a big girl!

2010-02-06T17:52:00.000-08:00

Olivia has sucked her thumb since she was 3 months old. I have never known how I was going to break this terrible habit, but for whatever reason I thought I would wait until she turned 4 to buckle down and get her to stop. Luckily, we didn't have to wait that long!

Last week we had dental hygiene students at my work, educating our clients on the importance of oral health. I got the kids from preschool and took them back to work with me for a couple of hours. The sweet students talked with Olivia and gave her a new toothbrush. I explained to them that Olivia was going to have bad teeth from sucking her thumb. They then began to talk to her about why she shouldn't suck her thumb. They showed her a picture of a little boy with mal-formed gums and teeth from extensive thumb sucking.

On the way home our coversation went something like this:

O: "Mommy, I'm not going to have ugly teeth if I suck my thumb"

Me: "yes you will, princesses don't have ugly teeth."

O: " I don't want to have ugly teeth!"

Me: "Then don't suck your thumb"

We get home and she runs to Michael and tries to get him to get on her side. He didn't and he explained to her again about the ugly teeth.

That night when she got her Night Nights (her blankets that trigger the thumb sucking) she cried and and said " I want to suck my thumb!" but she wouldn't do it.

Since then, she hasn't sucked her thumb! I really didn't think that would break her of it but it scared her bad enough for her to stop. And it was pretty easy!

I told the dental students that if none of our clients learned a thing from them all week, it was still a success in my book because they broke my child of her awful habit!

Grayson's First Haircut

2010-02-06T17:48:00.000-08:00

We had to get Grayson spiffed up before Christmas so we took him for his first haircut. He did great! He was really still and didn't get upset until she turned the hairdryer on at the very end.

Christmas 2009

2010-02-06T16:50:00.000-08:00

Christmas 2009 was eventful..To say the least! On Christmas Eve, it started snowing pretty hard while we were having our Christmas at Michael's parents. We then traveled to his Aunt Robyn's to celebrate with his Mom's side of the family. Travel was starting to get treacherous on the way to her house, but we really didn't think much of it. After staying at her house for a couple of hours, we realized it was starting to get pretty bad outside so we decided to make our 3.5 mile journey home. IT WAS NOT EASY! We literally had to be pushed 1/2 mile up a hill to get out of the neighborhood. The blizzard (it was officially a blizzard) was so bad that it took us 45 minutes to get home. By the time we got home, there were 8 inches of snow covering the roads. The kids woke up Christmas morning and were delighted to see their Santa presents.

After opening presents, we headed to Broken Arrow for the Bippus Family Christmas. The roads were in such bad shape that it took us 2 hours to get there and there were cars running of the road left and right. I do not do well emotionally in bad driving conditions, so I was a nervous wreck the whole way and emotionally exhausted by the time we arrived. We opened presents and then say down for our always wonderful steak and shrimp dinner. As we were eating Grayson started acting pretty lethargic and started feeling warm. Within 1-2 hours, he was burning up and not even able to hold his head up. We tried to take his temperature but the thermomoter just kept saying "high" and we new it was at least 104.5. We knew no urgent care or doctor office would be open, so we decided to head back to Owasso to the ER, thinking we would get in to see a doctor fast there. It took us an hour to get back to Owasso and once we arrived, we waited and waited and waited some more. After 4 hours of waiting, poking and proding on my baby, the finally diagnosed him with Pnuemonia. We then waited another 2 hours for them to give him antibiotics through an IV. The poor baby was so sick! He ended up bouncing back a couple of days later, thank Goodness. Between the blizzard and ER visit, this was certainly a Christmas we won't forget!

Making a gingerbread house, this is a tradition I've started.

Happy Birthday Jesus! Also a tradition for us!

In the ER, he was so sad:(

Santa Came!

Playing in the snow!

Chirstmas Morning

Look at that hair!

He loves his firetruck!

Thanksgiving in Seattle

2010-02-06T16:25:00.000-08:00

Yes, I'm playing blog catch-up today. I've missed blogging the last couple of months but since I intend to get this blog printed into a scrapbook one day, I'm going to write about all of our recent happenings.

Starting with our first trip to Seattle. We went to Seattle (actually Tacoma) to visit Aunt Sissy and Uncle Jesse. Dado and Susie were able to meet us there as well. We had a wonderful week of family time, sight seeing and a lots of good food.

It was the first time for us to fly with Grayson and Olivia both and they did pretty good. Olivia loved the take off and landing of the airplane. She watched movies on the laptop while we were in the air. Grayson slept most of our first flight and then stay awake the entire second flight. By the end (6 hours of traveling) they were both ready to be off the plane and running around. Olivia started to get a little defiant towards the end and she started acting out using "preschool profanity." She started shouting things like "poopie doodie" and "booty dooty" much to our embarrasment. We were trying to be stern with her but it was really hard for us not to laugh under our breath, because everyone that could hear her was also cracking up at her outburts.

Once there, we got to see Aunt Sissy's pregnant belly for the first time. She was so adorable and I am as excited about her baby's arrival as I have been for my own children. We got to see their new house. We went to IKEA (one of my favorite stores that we do not have here), we visited Pike Place Market a couple of times and stopped at the very first Starbucks for coffee. We made a mixture of southern and northwestern Thanksgiving dinner and Jesse's family joined us for a great meal. In our down time, we pretty much just shopped and looked for Mt Renier from their upstairs window. It was certainly a visit we won't forget and we can't wait to go back when the weather is warmer. And just like Seattle does, it rained every day we were there. On the last night of our visit we had authentic Dungess crab bought straight from Pike Place market. It was AMAZING!

Ear Surgery

2009-11-15T17:50:00.000-08:00

After having 8 ear infections this year, the doctors opted to get Olivia another set of ear tubes and remove her adenoids as well. Michael and I were pretty apprehensive about the procedure. Even though it is a minor surgery, the last time she had it done she was miserable. She cried (screamed) for at least an hour when she woke up from the anesthesia and then she was horribly fussy for 2 days straight. Plus, it is never fun to see your baby get put to sleep.

So we were prepared for the worst. But, we got the best! She did so much better and the hospital staff did a great job of taking care of her. They let her pick out a toy if she took her "happy" medicine and they joked and played with her. The surgery went great. The doctor said her adenoids were blocking 80% of her nasal passage and that her ears were so covered in fluid that she was hearing worse than if she were under water.

We already knew that she wasn't hearing well. For the last few weeks she has been yelling everything she said. We'd ask her a question and she say "what! "what did you say?" or "say it louder mommy." It was really sad but we had to laugh about it. We kept telling her she was a 90 year old woman.

But now she is talking at a normal tone and feeling great. Just a few hours after the surgery she was playing as if nothing ever happened. She never seemed to be in any pain and thankfully we didn't have to give her the Loritab they prescribed. Loritab?!! For a 3 year old? I couldn't believe it but thankfully we were able to avoid that.

Man, these kids are funny!

2009-11-08T14:47:00.000-08:00

Eating his first oreo. Notice it is in his ear!

This was so sweet. Michael does not approve of this picture!

They are building a house next door and they have a prime view from the playroom window. Fascinating!

Olivia has to get a better look.

I never knew I could love something so much.

Halloween Fun

2009-11-08T14:28:00.000-08:00

We had a great Halloween this year. Olivia was a cowgirl and Grayson was a cowboy. On Saturday we went to a fall festival in town and Olivia got to ride a pony for the first time. We came home and got them dressed and made our rounds to the grandparents then headed back to our neighborhood to go trick or treating. But oops, we wore the poor little one during the day that he fell asleep on the way home!! We put him in the stroller and took Olivia to a few houses then came home and everyone crashed. I didn't get very cute pictures because Grayson is so busy right now that we can't get him to sit still long enough to take a picture.

Last week was daylight savings. Grayson normally gets up at 6:30 but now his body clock is telling him to get up at 5:30. Let's just say this last week has been tiring! I will say getting up an hour earlier has made me have incredibly productive mornings.

On Sunday we put the Halloween decorations up and got the Christmas decor down out of the attic. We will be in Seattle for Thanksgiving so I wanted to start early so it was all decorated when we got home. One of my dreams has always been to have a Christmas tree in everyone room of the house and I'm getting close to it. Michael has offically transformed into Clark Griswald again and the house is lit up! I found a Christmas radio station that is blaring throughout the house most of day. I love this time of year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fall Festivities and Life Lessons

2009-10-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we carved pumpkins and made halloween cookies. We let Olivia pick what she wanted her pumpkin to look like and she wanted an "O" so we decided to give Grayson a "G" on his. As we were making cookies, I gave her the sprinkles and let her have at it. I was distracted pulling another batch of cookies out of the oven and as you can see, she made sure every square inch of the cookie was covered.

Olivia got to learn a little bit of money management skills yesterday. Dado sent her a gift card to Target so I took her to let her spend on it on whatever she wanted. On they way there, I explained to her that she only had $10 to spend and she could buy whatever she wanted. She says "I want to eat at Target first." So we get there and get her a hotdog and icee combo. "now you only have $8 left on your card, so lets go look around" I told her. We found a few items at the dollar stop then looked at the movies. She found a movie she wanted and I told her she would have to put her other things back if she wanted the movie. "I don't want that movie anymore!" she said. Then we went to the toy section and it was very interesting to see her learn a lesson as we shopped and I explained to her that she could only have a toy that she could get with the money she had left. Finally, we settled on a Littliest Pet Shop puppy. She has been asking for a real puppy lately so I'm hoping this will satisfy her for now. It was a great experience to see her get a little taste of money management and realizing that you can't always have everything you want.

Grayson is just getting more comical everyday. He's saying a new word almost everyday. His latest game is to put a blanket on his head and walk around the house. He thinks it is so funny but he runs into everything! I got a quick video of it yesterday:

Boys will be boys!

2009-10-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

Grayson was playing outside yesterday. He loves to walk around the back yard and explore. Michael was tending to some trees we had just planted and Grayson was crawling around in the dirt and mud. All of a sudden he picked up a huge clunk of mud and took a big bite! I had to take pictures.

I am so thankful for these precious moments!

Disney On Ice

2009-10-04T13:27:00.000-07:00

Last Friday we took Olivia to see Disney on Ice at the state fair. She LOVED it! She fixed her eyes on the show and was in a trance the whole time. We went with other families in our life group from church so she enjoyed spending time with her friends as well. We went to her favorite restaurant "Chick Da Flay" beforehand. During the intermission, she said she was thirsty and Michael thought the popcorn was smelling good so I went to the concession stand and cringed as I paid $10 for a lemonade and $7 for a box of popcorn! We only get to go to Disney on ice once a year right? That's what I told myself! We somehow made it of there without a spinny light thing as she didn't even ask for one. As we were leaving it was way past her bedtime and she was getting tired. She saw the ferris wheel at the fairgrounds and cried all the way to the car and part of the way home because we wouldn't take her to the ride the ferris wheel! Now when anyone asks her how disney on ice was she says " I didn't get to ride the ferris wheel." 3 year olds, what can you do?!

Grayson got to spend the night with Grammy and Pappy and I think they enjoyed some one on one time with him as much as we enjoyed having Olivia just by herself.

Grayson has been in Mom's Day Out for over a month now and he is still having a hard time adjusting. We are going to give him a couple more week sand see if he adjusts a little better. If not, I think we'll pull him out and I'll continue to take him to work with me.

In other news, Michael's division of his company was sold this week. As of right now everyone in the Tulsa office is laid off unless they are hired by the new company. We should know in the next couple of months whether or not he gets an interview or if he will need to start applying for other jobs. He has updated his resume and has it ready to start sending out as soon as we hear something. We have truly been worry-free because we know that this situation is all in God's hands and we are seeing as a new opportunity rather than a setback. The hardest part is just the unknown and waiting to hear what our next move should be.

Halloween Shirts

Red cowboy boots

In her trance at the show

He thinks ringing this doorbell is the funniest thing ever!

Playing in the playhouse on a great fall day

2009-09-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

Grayson's 1st birthday was yesterday. We had a great weekend and a great party.

They party was a ball theme. We dumped the ball pit balls all over the house as well as had several other round decorations. We had sausage balls, cheese balls and cake balls to snack on and also served frito chilli pie. Dado and Aunt Sissy came to town and Michael's entire family was at the party as well. It was a great time!

One of my favorite things of the party was his month by month picture montage. It was really cool to see how quickly and how much he's grown in his first year of life. Thanks Amy for the idea!

He wasn't much into opening the presents. After the first couple of presents he crawled away and laid on the floor while everyone laughed at him. Olivia and I ended up opening all of the presents without him. Olivia is having a hard time understanding that these are not all her new toys.

He loved his cake and wasted no time digging right in. He was a total mess!

I probably should have blogged about this a while ago but he started walking about a month ago. He also has some new words like Debbie, Up, Stop, That.

It was a great party and a great weekend with family. We are so blessed be to surrounded by so many that love us.

Grayson's First Birthday

2009-09-13T14:48:00.000-07:00

Kiddie Park Pictures

2009-08-22T19:54:00.001-07:00

Last weekend we declared it family day and took the kids to the kiddle park carnival in Bartlesville. Olivia had the best time and was so brave riding all of the rides. We rode rides, enjoyed popcorn and a snow cone and then stopped for a happy meal on the way home. What could be better?

More pictures

2009-08-22T19:43:00.001-07:00

Riding the carousal at the kiddie park

He climbed out of his high chair onto the table.

Monkey see, monkey do!

Hanging out in the dishwasher

Good Summer...

2009-08-22T18:44:00.000-07:00

Well, things have finally slowed down for us! Hopefully now I can be more consistent with the blogging. This summer our weekly schedule has gone something like this..

Monday- various activies such as me at a meeting or Michael giving hitting lessons
Tuesday- life group at our house
Wednesday-Dineer at Pops and Grrs and then me off to work on Little Tree (a blog about this to come later)
Thursday- Michael playing in the church softball league
Friday and Saturday- every single weekend this summer we have had birthday parties, graduation parties, get togethers, etc to go to.
Sunday- Church then family dinner at Michael's parents

Don't get me wrong it has been great, but I am excited for a slower pace (hopefully!) with fall coming.

For the fall I think all we have on tap is Dinner/Life Group on Wednesday and Olivia's dance class on Mondays. Both kids will also start Moms Day Out soon and they will be in "school" Tuesday and Thursday while I work. I'll still work Wednesdays and every other Monday as well.

I'm still loving my job at the PRC although some days absolutely wear me out emotionally. I am so thankful to have a job that I can help people every single day. I told Michael the other day that if he ever got transferred and we had to move away that I don't think I could work because it would be hard for me to find a job to top this one! Michael started grad school this week. He's taking 2 classes for his MBA which are online so hopefully it won't be as time consuming as it was when he was in school full time. He will still have to watch his lectures but at least he'll be home!

Now for the updates on the kids:

Olivia is still cracking us up constantly! She says some of the funniest things in the world and since I never take the time to write them down, I'm just going to try and remember them for this blog.

Last night we sat down to eat dinner and she interrupted Michael as he started to pray and said she wanted to pray. She folded her hands and closed her eyes and said "Dear Jesus..." She paused and looked up at Michael and said "what was the last part?" It was quite funny!

She has been telling everyone the last couple of days that "my daddy pulled my tooth out." We couldn't figure out where in the world she came up with this because she doesn't even have a loose tooth. We figured out yesterday that her best friend from church told her last week that her daddy pulled her tooth out so I guess she thought that was a cool story and wanted to tell everyone.

She is still the friendliest child. Every time we are standing in line at a store she turns to the person behind us and says "hi, I'm olivia!" It's kinda scary sometimes how friendly she is!

Ok, so I've always heard the saying "he's all boy" but now I understand the meaning of it! Grayson is absolutely wearing us out these days! He is constantly crawling into, on top of or over something. He plays so differently than Olivia did at this age. He wants to bang everything together and smoosh all of his food into a million pieces. When he's in the stroller he leans over and plays with the wheel. We can't unload the diswasher around him, nor can we have any lamp cords, blinds, curtains, etc in his reach. We got locks for all of the cabinets but he still pulls everything out of the drawers. He's learned how to turn on the water in the bathtub and can also climb (more like free fall) into the tub.

He will be one in just a couple of weeks. Dado and Aunt Sissy will be here for his birthday so I can't wait for it to get here! He says "mama, dada and bye bye" so far. He took his first steps last week and just got tooth #9 yesterday. He is eating only big person food (no baby food or formula) but we are still working on getting him off the bottle. He just hasn't quite got the sippy cup thing down yet. He sleeps through the night about 50% of the time.

That's all I have for now. We are still just realizing how quickly time flies and trying to enjoy every minute even through the chaos.

Romans 8:28 "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

Pictures from our evening stroll to the nieghborhood park. Hopefully we will get to do a lot more of this now. Olivia calls this "carrying Luci"

2009-07-20T07:08:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Olivia!

2009-07-20T05:57:00.000-07:00

Our little baby is 3 years old! This past Saturday we celebrated Olivia's birthday and she was royalty for just one day at her Princess Party. She was really into her birthday this year and talked about it a lot before hand. I let her pick out her princess dress and we pampered her like a princess by letting her get a pedicure the day before. Aunt Sissy came in out Thursday night and she will be staying for 10 days. We are so excited to have her here and she was a huge help getting ready for the party.

We made her a royal breakfast with crown shaped pancakes. Olivia's friends showed up dressed up in Princess clothes. They all looked adorable and seemed had a really good time. They came through the castle entrance that Michael made. We played a game called "kiss the prince" which was where the girls put red lipstick on and tried to kiss a picture of Prince Grayson with a blindfold on. The kids spent most of the time playing out on the swing set, so that birthday present was certainly a hit. We had over 40 people at her party and she got a lot of great presents, including a bike and several dresses. I'm especially thankful for the new dresses considering she wears a dress everyday now and has been for several months. She has worn her other dresses so much they they were all becoming faded and worn. She's such a girly girl!

We are still in awe at how fast the time has flown by. So far she has turned out to be a really sweet little girl. She certainly has some first born characteristics. For instance, I was headed into the grocery store last week and she says, "Mommy, do you have your list?"

Now that her birthday is over, its time to start planning Grayson's...

Sleepy Boy...

2009-06-17T06:44:00.000-07:00

At work last week Grayson was happily playing in his play pen. I left my office to go do something else and Jenny comes to me and says "have you seen your son?"

I walked back in to find him sound asleep....

9 months old!!

2009-06-17T06:01:00.000-07:00

This week we took Grayson for his 9 month check up. He was fighting a virus and broke out in a rash but is much better now. He is 90% for his height and 50% for his weight. Looks like we might have a first baseman after all! He continues to put everything in his mouth. I caught him with a live spider in his hand (on the way to his mouth) last week. He is pulling up and crawling really fast. It won't be long before he's walking!

Olivia is doing great. She did start a strange thing about a week ago. I noticed that she was stuttering to get her words out at the beginning of every sentence. I was really concerned because she has never stuttered before but after talking with my speech pathologist friend Alex, she assured me that it was normal and would quickly pass. It has been better the last couple of days so I think she is getting over it already.

She was so funny this week when we went to the doctor for Grayson. She needed to go too to get her ears checked to verify that her last ear infection was gone. She insisted she take Rarr (her stuffed tiger) to the doctor to get his ears checked and we agreed. As the nurse weighed, measured and took Grayson's temperature, Olivia made sure Rarr got the full examination as well. As I was telling the Doctor Grayson's symptoms from his virus, Olivia was chiming in right after me: "and Rarr has a rash too!...And he has been really fussy!....and he has a temperature!"
It was so cute! She is quite the little Momma!

We are having lots of fun this summer. On Friday we had Michael's company picnic at the air and space mueseum. Olivia really enjoyed watching the airplane fly by. On Fridays we are having "Friday Fun Days." The kids and I get together with 5 or 6 other moms and thier kids and go to fun places like the zoo, splash park, etc. It is a great time for the kids to interact with each other and great time for the Moms too!

All of the grandparents went in with us to buy Grayson and Olivia a swingset for their birthdays. Michael started the assembly process last Saturday. We knew it would take a while so we started early to have it up in time for Olivia's birthday. He has already put in over 25 hours (with lots of help) of assembly time and the set is about 70% done. We'll post more pictures as it gets finished.

Long Time No Blog...

2009-06-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

Ok, so we have been so busy with the move, church activities, fence building and other projects that I have totally neglected the blog! I'm going to try and get back in the swing of things now that summer is here.

Wahoo, summer is here! This means lots of pool time, playing outside, softball for Michael and family vacation.

We moved into the new house about 3 weeks ago. We are so happy to be in our new home. We had lots of projects to do right away. We (I mean Michael) installed blinds, installed a garage door opener, put together the dining room table the first week we moved in. We have also been hanging curtains and pictures and I think we've got everything unpacked by now. On memorial day weekend, Michael (with the help of friends and family) took advantage of the long weekend and installed a privacy fence. I was quite proud of my husband for all of the handy work he can do. Even if he has never done a project before, he learns how to do it. By doing the fence ourselves, we were able to put it in for 1/4 of what we were quoted by a fence company. We still have lots of little projects to complete but most of the big projects are out of the way.

Now for the good stuff...updates on the two cutest kids I know!

Olivia

Favorite things to do lately: Play outside, go to the park, play with friends, take baths, take toys away from brother, be the boss of anyone and everything, dress up like a princess, sing real and made-up songs everywhere we go, use words out of context because she doesn't know what they mean.

Favorite Game: Dora Memory Game. She is really good at it too!

Last week we were in Target and she asked me what I was doing. I told her I was buying these plates for a party and she said "a fiesta?" We only let her watch 1 or 2 episodes of Dora per day but she has picked up on some spanish. I guess that's a good thing?

We can really have grown up conversations with her these days. She'll tell us all about her day and what she did and she always gives her opinion.

Things to look forward to: Her 3rd birthday is quickly approaching and party planning is underway. This will be the first year she invites friends other than family. It should be exciting! We are also putting her in dance camp and swim lessons this summer.

And for Grayson....

Favorite things to do: Put everything in his mouth! Toys, paper, books, carpet fuzz, hairbows, pens, anything!

He also likes to chatter and say "mamamma" and "daddadada." He belly crawls and can crawl on his knees but thinks its much faster to army crawl to get whereever he is going. He started pulling up onto the couch and ottoman a couple of weeks ago and can cruise around the ottoman. He loves to play with Olivia's toys which doesn't make Olivia very happy. He loves to bounce and jump.

Anyone who has ever held him can back us up on this one: HE IS THE HARDEST BABY TO HOLD! He does not just sit still in your lap. He stiffens up, turns around and tries to jump out your arms. He's always trying to get something out of his reach or just be on the move.

He stiffens up like a board anytime he doesn't want to sit where we want him to. Try putting a 2x4 into a carseat!

He still doesn't sleep well but overall he is a great baby and a joy to have around. Our house is still constant chaos and there are days when I'm in such a fog that I don't know whether I'm going or coming but Michael and I count our many blessings everyday.

More Easter Pictures...

2009-04-12T17:07:00.001-07:00

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

Holidays get more and more fun as the kids get older. Michael was off on Good Friday and we had a great day filled with a big breakfast, followed by shopping for a new table and Grayson's Easter outfit then to incredible pizza! Olivia loved playing games in the toddler arcade. We then came home and packed up several boxes because........our house sold! Yay! We are so excited. It seems to be for real this time. We close on our old and new house May 15. We are so excited but have a very busy month ahead of us!

On Saturday our church sponsored an Easter egg hunt in our neighborhood and that was a blast too. We did lots of egg dyeing and hunting on Saturday because we knew it was going to rain on Sunday. We dyed Easter eggs in the morning then had a few practice hunts in the backyard before the big hunt at the neighborhood park. After the egg dyeing was complete, Liv and I came inside to hide our eyes while Michael hid the eggs. Once it was time to hunt them, he noticed a couple he hid weren't there anymore and Olivia didn't have them. Luci found the eggs and was eating them whole, shells and all. Shortly after Olivia learned that she could bang the eggs together and they would break so all of our hard work was very short lived. The eggs only lasted about 15 minutes. Thank goodness for plastic eggs!

Easter service was amazing followed by a fish fry and Grandma and Pops. What a great weekend!

P.S. Grayson turned 7 months old on Saturday. He now has 4 teeth and is almost crawling! He is really a happy boy but quite rotten as he somehow ends up in our bed EVERY night. This is coming from the Mom who has always said "I will never have kids in the bed." Sometimes you just do what you can to survive!

Snow Day!

2009-03-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

I don't think I will ever get used to this crazy Oklahoma weather! Last week it was warm enough that Michael mowed the yard. Today, we've already had about 6 inches of snow and it is still coming down. Olivia got to go play outside and they built a snowman. She loved it! We finally made her come in and all had hot chocolate to warm up. What a great day!

Old man Grayson

2009-03-23T05:24:00.000-07:00

I just had to post this video of our sweet baby boy. Often, we'll just be holding him sitting up in our lap and all of a sudden you look down and he's sound asleep. It's so funny because it just happens so fast and last week I got it on video.

Everyone may not think the videos of my kids are as funny as I do, but I guess that's just my job as a mom to think they they are the greatest things in the world!

Grayson Falling Asleep Video

Arkansas Trip, Family time and House Selling Drama!

2009-03-23T04:53:00.000-07:00

Ok, I've been neglecting the blog, AGAIN! So much to report that this might just have to take up two blogs!

Last weekend Aunt Sissy and Uncle Jesse came to town. How exciting! It had been almost 6 months since we had seen them. They hadn't seen Grayson since he was a week old (except on skype) so he had definitely changed a lot. They flew in Wednesday afternoon and we loaded up early Thursday morning to drive to Arkansas to see our family there that we hadn't see in almost 3 years. Our Grandmother there was turning 88 so we got to celebrate her birthday. It was a lot of driving to only stay 24 hours but it was worth it. Grayson developed an ear infection during the trip but thankfully Aunt Sissy can write prescriptions and just called something in. Ear infections- I hate them! It seems that any time either of my kids get a runny nose, they have an ear infection. This was Grayson's 4th one and he's only 6 months old so if he gets one more before May, he's getting tubes. Olivia work up Sunday night complaining of an ear ache so we took her to the doctor and apparently one of her tubes fell out and she already has an infection in that ear. So frustrating but I guess that's just part of it. We've had many sleepless nights due to those pesky little infections.

It was really funny to take our "city boy" husbands to the chicken farm where our family lives in Arkansas. They certainly got to learn some new things. They got a turkey calling lesson from one of our cousins and they both ate fried frog legs for dinner!

Dad met us in Little Rock on our way back from Arkansas and that was wonderful because we all got to be together for the first time in 1 1/2 years. We had a great time hanging out together and Olivia kept us all entertained with her singing, bossing us around and just all of her funny antics! All in all, it was a great weekend and I can't wait until we can do it all again!

Now on to the selling of our house. What an emotional roller coaster it has been! I had both kids at the doctor last Monday morning and my phone was ringing off the hook. It was Ginger, our hardworking and wonderful realtor. I called her back, she was so excited to tell us that we had an offer coming in. It was single guy who was wanting our house but didn't like Olivia's pink bedroom. We had been thinking about painting that room back to a neutral color anyway so Dad and I go get paint and get to work thinking if we get this room painted, this guy will certainly give us an offer. Monday afternoon, we're in the middle of painting and Ginger calls again. 2 offers on their way! Wahoo! What a wonderful position for us to be in as sellers. We got the room painted and 2 others looked at the house Wednesday night. One couple made an official offer, and then by Thursday we had another offer come in. We find out that then that the pink room guy changed his mind and went with another house. That's fine with us, we still have these other two couples to work with. So we choose the better offer and come to an agreement. Thursday night, Ginger shows us several houses and we fell in love with one and decided to write an offer on it. Thursday night, we are on top of the world! We are so excited to sell our house and get a new one. I imagine taking a picture of the sold sign and putting it on the blog.

Then Friday morning hits. We find out that someone else is putting an offer in on the house we want to buy. That's ok, I say, if it doesn't work out then that's just not the house for us. At lease our house is sold, right? Wrong. Friday evening we get another call from Ginger. She is devastated. The people buying our house backed out and renewed the lease on their apartment. We were extremely disappointed but are just trying to keep our heads up and put everything into perspective. In the end, we are still blessed beyond belief and have nothing to complain about.

So it looks like we are back to square one. Back to the constant cleaning and getting kicked out so it can be shown. Michael and I are spending lots of time in prayer making sure we are doing the right thing. Jer 29:11 is keeping me going! In the end, a house is just a thing and if we end up staying in ours, that will be just fine because He has provided all of our needs.

The next American Idol?

2009-02-27T07:06:00.000-08:00

For your entertainment, enjoy Olivia's version of Tinkle, Tinkle, Wittle Tar with a little bit of Itsy Bitsy Spider mixed in!

Whew, what a week it has been. Olivia had the virus a couple of weeks ago and then Grayson and I started getting it last week. Grayson was really fussy last week so we took him to the doctor Friday night with a suspected ear infection. Turns out it was just teething. Friday-Tuesdays nights were miserable. The only way he would sleep was on our chests with us sitting up and he would only sleep for 30-45 minutes at a time. By Wednesday, I'm so exhausted from the lack of sleep that I can't think straight, but I take him back to the doctor. By then he had an ear infection so he started the antibiotic that night. Still screamed and screamed and couldn't sleep and by Thursday morning I knew there was no way I could take him to work with me like that. Michael opted to stay home with him and it was the same story, screaming fits that last for 30 minutes at a time, followed by 20-30 minutes of sleep. It has been almost impossible to put him down, he just wants to be held. Last night (Thursday night) he was a little better, didn't scream as much but still wanted to be held so I slept on the couch (sitting up) with him on my chest most of the night. Now I'm wondering if he's feeling better but is just spoiled and won't sleep without us! We are hoping by tomorrow he will be better and not in anymore pain. Looks like it won't be long before he gets tubes in just like big sister!

Speaking of big sister..She has been really great lately about talking and singing to Grayson to keep him busy. This morning, (pre-performance seen above but not yet 7:30 AM) she wanted to peek at Grayson laying in his bed. She gets her vanity chair from her room and brings it over to his crib, climbs up so she can see over and starts talking to him and tickling to him. I thought it was so sweet so I took a picture and then went to get another cup of coffee. (Coffee is my best friend these days). As I walk back in, I see Olivia dumping an entire container of toys into the crib! Ahh, I was waiting on the wails from Grayson but instead he just laughed! Luckily none of the toys fell on his head and I took a quick picture and then started my lecture to Olivia about how Grayson is a baby and he can't play with big girl toys.

Sweet Big Sister

2009-02-18T07:22:00.000-08:00

The other morning Olivia crawled into our bed with Grayson and started "reading" him a book. She just made up words to go along with the pictures but it was so sweet! I know moments like these won't last forever and it won't be too long before the are arguing .

Precious, precious memories!

Radio Disney Live

2009-02-16T07:41:00.000-08:00

About a month ago, I won tickets to Playhouse Disney Live. Spirit 102.3, the local Christian radio station, has a contest each day called the "family name game". Grayson was the name for that day and I was the first caller! I was so excited! I also won a copy of the movie Fireproof and the book The Love Dare. Everyone should see the movie (bad acting, great plot) and the book is a great marriage tool. On a side note, we also won a GPS at our neighborhood Christmas party and last week won a prize at a church event. It's making me wonder if we should play the lottery to continue our winning streak? Doubt it. Michael is an accountant and has calculated the odds....

Anyway, we went to the show yesterday. We were a little worried as to how it would be because Grayson has been teething and Olivia was starting to get sick so they were both a little cranky. We got there early and asked Olivia if she wanted a souvenier. She kept saying "no, I want to go to the show." Then we asked her if she wanted popcorn (popcorn is her fave and she can down a whole bag by herself) and she said "no, I want to see the show." It was so cute because she thought if she got a snack or souvenier she would miss the show! We were ok with not getting a souvenier because everything was so expsensive, typical Disney products. We did end up with a Handy Manny flag that didn't totally kill the budget.

It was a great show and she enjoyed it. She clapped and screamed and sang along. Grayson really like all of the bright lights and watched intensively during the first half and slept through the second half. All in all , it was a wonderful day of family time. Thank you Spirit 102.3!

Today Olivia is full blown sick and has been up since 3:30 AM coughing her head off. Poor thing. The one thing she likes about being sick is she gets to lay in Mommy and Daddy's bed and watch cartoons all day!

Happy Valentines Day!

2009-02-13T07:37:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to add a few more pictures...

5 months old!

2009-02-12T14:57:00.001-08:00

Happy 5 month birthday Grayson! AHHH! I will say this every month and I say it every day, he is growing up too fast. If I could describe him in one word it would be HAPPY. All you have to do is look at him and his face lights up. He really does smile with his whole face and it is the sweetest thing! His two teeth are really shining and a third is just about to poke through. He's loving the baby food (all homemade of course) and so far he's tried carrots, broccoli, squash and sweet potatoes. I think sweet potatoes were his favorite. He's finally started to sleep better. In the last week we've had several nights of him sleeping from 8 PM to 4 AM. It's nice to get more than 4 hours of sleep per night but the problem is I usually don't get to go back to sleep after the 4 AM waking due to big sister waking up at 5 every morning!

On to Olivia. Now really, she is up sometime between 4:30 and 5:30 almost every morning! Although we fall asleep before 9:00 almost every night, I must say I get a lot done in the mornings before we have to leave. Since we have all of this extra waking time, she has a lot of time to make us laugh. This past weekend she was not wanting to take a nap and was playing in her room after we put her down for a nap. She started digging in her closet (she's learned how to open doors now so its a whole new ball game) and found some play dough she got for Christmas but we hadn't given to her yet. She came running out of her room and said, "I want to play with this" and we said "after you wake up from your nap you can, now go back to bed!" She comes back out of her room 2 minutes later with a different pair of pants on and says "I wake up! Now I want to play with that." We laughed and told her to go back to bed and she came out again 2 minutes later with a different pair of pants on and again says "I wake up!" This went on 2 more times before we were finally laughing so hard that we gave in. It was such a pretty day that we wanted to go outside anyway. We had the best weekend because the weather was in the 70s so we stayed outside a lot. We took the kids (and Luci) to the park and I just kept telling Michael "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else." It just doesn't get any better than playing with your family on a pretty day outside!

I bought some decorations for her birthday party last week (I know, her birthday isn't until July but I LOVE birthday parties... besides the stuff was on sale). Olivia asked me what that stuff was I was buying and I told her it was for her princess party. Now every night before she goes to bed she tells us that she wants to go to her princess party. She's going to be waiting for a long time!

I've been neglecting the blog lately just because we stay busy all the time. Daddy-O came for my birthday a couple of weeks ago and we had a great time. There was an ice storm which kinda worked out nicely because I didn't have to go into work so I got to hang out with him and he got to stay an extra day because the roads were too icy for him to travel. Olivia LOVES playing with her Dado. It always makes it so hard when he leaves because she doesn't stop asking about him for several days. We have web cams now so we talk on the computer a lot which is nice because she gets to see him. That makes living so far way a little easier. Aunt Sissy and Uncle Jesse are coming in March and we can't wait to see them!

No offers on the house yet. We've now accepted that if it doesn't sell, it just wasn't meant to be and that is fine because God has provided everything (and more) for us and we'll be just fine here for another year or so. We're going to keep it on the market for a while longer and see what happens.

I must run to pick up the house and get ready for our Chick-fil-a play date!

4 Months old...

2009-01-18T12:41:00.000-08:00

Our little man is 4 months old! Ahhh it just keeps going by so fast. As you can see, he no longer fits in the bassinet. We finally put it in the attic last weekend and I cried. It just makes me so sad knowing that we may never have another little one in there!

We got the exersaucer out and he loves to play in it. Olivia was quite intrigued by it and I walked into the room to find her in it. I quickly took a picture and then scolded her. Ooops! Now she goes over to it and says, I want to get in. I say, "No that is Grayson's"and she says: "here, take my picture!"

Grayson went to the doctor for his 4 month check up and he is in the 80th percentile for his weight and 70th for his height. He is growing normally and is healthy as can be. His first tooth started poking through this weekend. It looks like he is going to be an early teether. He still does not sleep very well. He goes to bed in his crib but after getting up with him 3 or 4 times I usually just put him in bed with us just so I can get some sleep. Olivia usually makes her way to our bed around 4 in the morning so our bed can get quite crowded.

Strange thing happened this week..I was cleaning house (its what I do constantly with our house on the market) and I unplugged Grayson's video baby monitor so the wires wouldn't show if the house was shown that day. So I'm just cleaning away and walk back into our bedroom where the monitor screen is and to my shock there is another baby on the screen! I screamed and checked to make sure both of my kids were in the living room. I then realized that since I had unplugged the camera part of the monitor, the receiver picked up another signal thus causing a neighbor's baby to appear in my bedroom! Pretty scary stuff. I then realized that if I can pick up someone else's curly headed child on my monitor, then who can pick up my child on their monitor?

Other than that, not much else going on except the sell of our house. It is getting shown quite a bit so we are hoping to get an offer soon. On Friday I had a realtor call and wanted to show it in 15 minutes. I told her I would get the kids out as fast as I could and when I went to get Olivia, I realized she had just pooped her pull-up. I quickly changed her and rushed us out the door. When I came back after the house was shown I realized the entire front of the house smelled like poop! I had thrown the diaper away outside but I guess the smell lingered a while. Oops, I don't think we'll be getting an offer from those people!

Happy Holidays

2009-01-02T05:39:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since my last post. We stay busy around here, especially through the holidays. We had a wonderful Christmas and Olivia is starting to understand more about Christmas. I was teaching her about the real meaning of Christmas and we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus a lot. Sometimes she would get a little confused and say "Happy Birthday Christmas!" As I was finishing up the Christmas decorating I had our stockings laying on the desk ready to hang. I walked out of the room and when I came back in she was wearing two of them on her feet! Priceless. She got a Dora tricyle and more toys than we know what do with. On holidays and birthdays we are always reminded of how many people love our children. Her new word is "awful." On Christmas day she had a beatiful dress that Aunt Sissy sent. She comes up to me and says "Mommy, this dress is so awful." Then the next day she woke up with wild hair as she does most mornings. I took her to look at it in the mirror and she says "My hair is so awful." She also loves to get on her pink stool and sing into her Magic Wand (she means microphone). One thing is for sure, whatever this child does in life she's going to be in charge.

Grayson enjoyed his first Christmas. He is almost 4 months old! AHHHH! It is going by way too fast and I just want him to stay my little baby forever. He still does not sleep through the night. I started giving him rice cereal hoping that would keep him full through the night but he still wakes up after only 4 hours. He is also a little spoiled and prefers sleeping next to Mommy rather than in his bassinet. He is currently battling his 2nd ear infection. At last check he weighed 15 1/2 pounds. It is amazing to us how different Grayson is compared to how Olivia was as a baby. She slept through the night at 6 weeks old and she would not sleep in our bed. After his colic and horrible sleeping patterns, Michael has ruled out the possibility of another child for us. I say we'll talk about it again in a few years :). Right now man-to-man defense is working out pretty well.

Exciting things are happening at the PRC. We are beginning construction on the new space. For the last 10 years or so, we have been operating out of 1000 sq ft and over the last few years it has been difficult to walk through due to the clutter. With the new space, we will go from 1000 to 3000 sqaure feet. PRC will go from having 2 counseling rooms, a baby boutique and an office to having 4 counseling rooms, 3 bathrooms, 3 offices and a huge boutique. This will allow us to accomodate our current and future growth. What a blessing! Pictures to come soon...

We haven't had any offers on our house yet but didn't really expect much activity through the holidays. We've found a house that we love but will just have to see what happens. It's all in God's timing, not ours.

Just a few reasons why I love my husband....

2008-12-10T06:43:00.001-08:00

1. He gets into Christmas as much as I do.

2. Not only does he play dress up with Olivia, he lets me take a picture of him doing it! Olivia even refers to one particular crown as "Daddy's crown."

3. He tolerates all of the girly things, just like my Dad did!

4. He's such a good helper around the house.

He could win a hubby of the year award! I am so thankful to have him.

In other news, we had a trip to the ER this week. Grayson started running a fever late Monday night. Babies under 3 months aren't supposed to have a fever of higher than 100.4 and his was 101.5. I called the on-call nurse and she said to take him to the ER so I did. Well 2.5 hours later, the doctor said it was just an upper respiratory infection and sent us home.

I called my ivy-league-graduate-pediatric-nurse-practitioner sister and she said that I needed to take him into my pediatrician. Something did not sound right to her and she is a firm believer (me too now) that adult doctors aren't as good as diagnosing babies and kids. So I took him to the pediatrician's office (where I'm sure we caught another vicious virus in the waiting room) and it turns out he has an ear infection and that's what caused his fever. She gave him some antibiotics.

So needless to say, were not happy that we have to pay a $100 ER co-pay for a misdiagnosis. At least we found the real cause and got him some medicine so he wasn't in pain anymore.

So much to blog about...

2008-12-06T13:44:00.000-08:00

At the Tree Farm

Twins!

So I've been meaning to blog for like 2 weeks now but I'm just now getting around to it.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend last week with Dad and Susie here. Olivia LOVES spending time with them. We went shopping, let her build a bear, got a Christmas Tree and decorated it, and best of all they got to see Grayson get dedicated on Sunday. Grayson looks so much like Dad!

Olivia had a blast decorating the tree. 75% of the ornaments are on the bottom 2 feet of the tree because that was all she could reach. It will be so fun to see her really get into Christmas this year.

The day before Thanksgiving I decided to try to potty train Olivia, again. She did great the first day, not so great the 2nd day but since then she has been doing so well and has had very few accidents. I'm proud to report that we haven't used diapers for her in a week and a half! It is wonderful to only have one in diapers! I was shocked at how easy it was once she finally decided she was ready.

As you can see from the pictures, we got the house all decorated for Christmas. Michael spent a long time on the lights and they turned out great. Christmas is my favorite time of year. I keep calling him Clark Griswald because he put up as many lights as he he could and even borrowed some that his Dad wasn't going to use. I just hope cousin Eddy doesn't pull up in the RV....

And......We've decided to sell our house! We have absolutely loved this house and could not have picked a better first house for us to live in but we have been feeling so crowded lately (mainly since Grayson was born) and would love to have an extra room for our guests to sleep (besides the couch) when they come to stay. We are still staying on the debt plan and have paid off everything except the student loans. Hopefully it will sell fast but we aren't going to pick out another house until ours sells. It is very exciting for us but the biggest challenge will be keeping the house in tip top shape with our busy schedules and a toddler running around.

Quote of the week: Michael was talking to Grayson and Olivia comes over to Michael and says "Daddy, he doesn't understand you." Like, duh Dad he's just a baby! She's developing quite the attitude already!

2008-11-21T13:14:00.000-08:00

More pictures...

2008-11-21T12:38:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to add these....

We'll be there between 8 and 10.....

2008-11-16T11:42:00.000-08:00

Ever had new cable service? I don't think it is ever an easy process but I think what we have been through the last few weeks can top all cable installation horror stories. Here is the outline of events:

3 weeks ago: AT&T salesman knocks on our door, says he can beat our current cable provider's price, give us more channels, DVR, WIFI and free long distance on our phone. Sounds great to me, you know we LOVE to save money. They scheduled the install for Wendesday the 5th.

11/5/08- Installer comes, stays about 15 minutes. Says he can't install the cable because it hasn't been ran to our house yet. He'll let us know when they come back.

11/6/08-Guy comes to run the cable to our house. Schedule to come out on 11/8 between 12 and 2 to finish the install.

11/7/08- my day off. I'm on the way out the door at 8:15 to get my weekly errands done. AT&T calls and says they can come in 30 minutes and have it installed early. Sure, I can run my errands later. 11:30 rolls around, no one has showed. I call AT&T and they proceed to put me on hold for 45 minutes. I finally talk to "dispatch" and explain to her the whole situation. She says "ma'am, I don't have any record showing we called you this morning" Excuse me, but did you think I made that up so I could stay home and wait on AT&T all day? I am not making this up people! (those were my thoughts, not words). So, she tells me that someone will be there between 12 adn 2. The installer shows up around 1:30 and works until 6:00. At 6, he says "well, theres a problem with your line. I'll have to get someone out tomorrow to fix the line." So, he leaves with our house smelling like BO and still no cable. I can't forget to mention he left the gate open earlier in the day and both dogs got out. I had to go marching down the street in the 25 mph winds with both kids in tow to find them.

11/8/08- Another guy comes in the morning to fix the problem with the line. Other guy comes in the afternoon to finish the install. After working for a couple of hours, "well there's a problem with this box and I can't give you another one." At this point, I call AT&T and once again, I'm put on hold for 30 minutes. Finally, I ask the woman to please give me a good reason why I should not just keep my current cable and forget about AT&T alltogether. She gives us 2 months free, an extra $100 cash back and $30 off for 6 months. That makes me feel a little better. She also assures me that they would contact me first thing Monday morning to finish the install.

11/9/08 (Sunday morning)- Installer from Friday knocks on our door: "I'm sorry I think I left my tester in your attic, can I go check?" Luci bolts out the door and goes running down the street. Michael pull his car out of the garage, the guy looks in the attic "I'm sorry, I forgot there isn't a ladder to get into your attic. Michael goes and gets his ladder of of the shed (he has his shorts and a t-shirt, no shoes and it is freezing outside). He goes to look for Luci and by the time he gets back the installer says "well, it wasn't up here, I guess I left it at another house."

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday go by..don't hear from anyone.
Thursday rolls around, I call to find out. I'm transferred 3 times(have to explain the whole situation each time) then placed on hold for 25 minutes. Finally, I get to someone. "Ma'am, my records show your order is complete." Really?! Because I'm pretty sure we still have our old service. They finally got someone there on Thursday night to set up our cable and internet. We still don't have phone service throught them, that's supposed to come in two weeks. I'm not holding my breath. I'm also wondering where the whole concept of customer service is hiding itself.

Sorry for the unabridged version of the cable story, I'm sure that was boring for everyone. I think I just needed to vent my frustrations to all 5 of you who read this! By the way, I was never rude to anyone on the phone because I know that it is not their fault and they are just the middle man.

Grayson is officially two months old, AHHHHH! It is going by way too fast. He went to the doctor this week. He is in the 75th percentile on his weight and the 50th on his height. He's sleeping for 4-5 hours at a time now and is starting to laugh. Like Charlie said this morning, babies take a lot of work but when they look up at you and smile, it makes it all worth it!

Olivia learned to sing her ABC's. I didn't even realize she had learned them until she just started singing them all the way through yesterday. It's nice to hear a song we recognize for once rather than the made-up songs about whatever she is doing at the time. We're hoping to get a video of her singing soon so we can post it.

We always say we need to write down funny things she says and we never do so we will start blogging them instead. This week she said: "Go away rain, go eat lunch!"
She has started making excuses after we put her to bed. She'll come running out of her room and say "I'm sorry, I need to get my book" Then come running out a couple minutes later screaming "I'm sorry, I need to get my Rarr" (one of her 5 stuffed tigers).

We are sooooooo excited about Christmas! I LOVE Christmas. This weekend I decorated the inside of the house and Michael spent 10 hours decorating the outside.

We had some GREAT pictures taken last week at the park. More pictures to come soon...

Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know we have a lot be thankful for. In the grand scheme of things, we should be greatful we have TV, phone and internet rather than complain about how long it takes to get it!