Anxious

Just in case you were wondering, we are still waiting for the arrival of my brother and SIL's twins. She's at 36 weeks now and hanging in there although she is miserable. A c-section has been scheduled for next Monday as long as everything is looking good. I hope she can hang in there until then as from what I hear bed rest is miserable when you are huge with twins and uncomfortable with it all. Her Mom is with them to help out with the other kids and everything around the house. My Mom is also frequently going over to help out as well. My Dad gets back this evening, and then they can all wait patiently or not so patiently together. I can't wait to be an aunt again!

It all works out

It's been another busy month. But one thing has repeatedly struck me this month. . . it all works out. God knows what He's doing and somehow or another it all works out. Just when I think we wont be able to pay for an unexpected bill, somehow something happens and it all works out. Often when I think wow, we're going to have extra, something else happens and we just break even, and it all works out. I hope that doesn't sound pessimistic as I don't mean it to. It's more of a God knows what is coming up and looks ahead for us. I am a worrier by nature, goes along with my being a planner, and if I can't find a good plan I worry, etc. But as God shows me repeatedly that He cares for me and that it'll all work out in the end, I am starting to let go of the worry and be able to enjoy the little joys of the day even without knowing the full plan.

My 8 year old

Jaden is now 8! Ok, I know I'm several weeks late with this post, but better late than never right?

I can't believe that 8 years ago tomorrow we were finally allowed to bring our precious firstborn son home. I always find it a little hard and emotional to celebrate Jaden's actual birthday as it holds so many terrifying memories. It's the days like Nov. 2nd when I was able to hold him for the first time. Or today, Nov. 10th, when we brought him home where I really celebrate. Can he really be 8 years old? Can we really have lived here that long (now that is a whole other post)?

As I've said before in posts Jaden has the most amazing imagination. He cracks me up daily with his stories, and he plays pretend with his little brother and sister so well as he paints the picture for them of what is occurring through his words. His friends love him, but he really is more of an introvert by nature,and enjoys spending time just being at home. He still has a passion to be come a Volcanologist when he grows up, but he loves all things science related. He created a list this year of the 3 top places that he wants to visit: Hawaii, Egypt, and Pompeii (two of which are volcano related choices of course). He has become so much more responsible this year it just amazes me, he remembers his homework, watches out for and corrects his little sister as necessary (and has more patience with her than I do I must say!), he keeps his room clean and bed made, doesn't complain about the rules, etc. Gosh, I love this boy! Weaknesses-well his # 1 weakness is that he's so much like me. Hence, he is a planner, and when those plans he has set in his mind get changed without warning he isn't very happy about it. He can be a bit timid in sports involving a ball flying straight at you that you are supposed to stop with your own body. He doesn't like to ask questions in class. So yeah, he's completely like me in those respects. Poor kid!
He had a great "monster" birthday party here at home with a bunch of school friends. He wanted cupcakes instead of a big cake so we went with that. It was a fun time to celebrate him!
Happy Birthday Big Guy!

Getting creative for Halloween

Joshua has been begging for years to be allowed to decorate for Halloween like he does for Christmas. I always flatly refuse, but I did let him get creative and we worked together one afternoon to make a giant spider web. We needed a stress reliever and figuring out how to make this web was just what we needed. Now he wants a black light spotlight to shine on it so it'll glow at night. . .

It's COLD!

Ok, I know it's silly to blog on the weather. But really, it's cold here for October, not to mention the amount of gray skies and rain that we've received. We are well on our way to having the coldest October in recorded history according to our weatherman. We are consistently averaging 5 or more degrees below normal, and we've never even gotten close to 70 this month which every October on record has hit at least once (usually multiple times). We've been off on our weather all year. In fact record cold months most of the summer as well. I REALLY hope this doesn't mean that our winter will be unbearably cold!

Halloween Video

Halloween Video

Sick. . .

Last Sunday afternoon Colten played a wonderful soccer game. We got home and a little while later he started coughing. We sit there thinking no big deal, he's getting a cold. As I put him to bed he feels slightly warm and I take his temperature which is at 100.1 degrees. Ok, so I'll keep him home tomorrow from school, no big deal. Well he wakes us up at 1:00am coughing still, but goes back to sleep. At 4:15am he starts crying and I go in to check on him, and he reports that he feels like he can't breathe. Ok, panic starts to set in. But hey, we have a nebulizer at home and albuterol in stock so we give him 1 breathing treatment, he doesn't sound or feel much better so we give him a second one. He reports that he's feeling some better after that one and promptly falls asleep. He's still having rapid short breaths though and a fast heart beat. We let him sleep and I get a doctor's appointment as soon as they have one available. We get to the drs office and they check his vitals and when they hook up the blood oxygen monitor to him they keep rechecking it thinking that he must have it on wrong. But no, his blood oxygen level is down at 90-91%. They looks Colten over, take the history, make a consult call, then direct us to take Colten to the ER and that they'll call ahead and let the hospital know that he's on his way over. So we head to the ER where they give Colten 3 breathing treatments of various sorts, draw blood (I think the trauma of that one will stick with him awhile!), do flu tests, etc. They eventually decide that he's not responding like they would hope and decide to admit him into the hospital for the night. After they finally get us upstairs they start breathing treatments again every hour, and early in the night as his blood oxygen level still wasn't raising put him on oxygen as well (now that was quite interesting trying to get a sleeping child to let them stick the oxygen tubes up his nostrils and not rip them off. I ended up having to crawl into the bed with him and hold his arms down the rest of the night so that he wouldn't rip it off). Tuesday they spent trying to wean him off of the oxygen and space out the breathing treatments. By Tuesday evening we were down to breathing treatments every 3 hours and they took the oxygen off right before bedtime. He managed to do well with that overnight, and Wed. mid day we finally got to come home.
It felt so good to finally be home. I was a walking zombie by that point for lack of sleep, but I knew I could at least sleep in my own bed that night. Colten's first comment on coming into the house was "Why is it so dirty?" How to explain that when Mommy is gone for 3 days and everyone else is just trying to survive that the house gets kind of messy?
I must say a HUGE thank you to all of our friends and neighbors that jumped in to help take care of Jaden and Ashtyn from getting Jaden to and from the bus stop, entertaining him after school, etc., Ashtyn actually got to go to the zoo, etc. with friends. Everyone was such a big help, and we couldn't have done it without you!
So what was it that caused Colten to get sick. Their best guess is a virus that caused an inflammatory response in his airways. I guess that they have had quite a few cases that are similar in the past month in kids with no history of asthma, etc. He was tested for H1N1 and many other things that came back negative so it wasn't anything like that. They did say to watch him closely now as the second option was that it could be the beginning of asthma, but they really seemed inclined to the first option. This picture is when he was in isolation before the H1N1 tests and other tests came back negative. Felt like we were in an E.T. movie as the nurses and doctors came in all suited up and with their own air supply, etc.

MOPS

For those of you who don't know what MOPS is, it is a group dedicated to Mothers Of Preschoolers. It's a wonderful, international, Christian group that literally has groups in just about every city and town. If you have children from newborn through kindergarten be sure to find a group near you and check it out! Over the last several years this group has been a Godsend to me. Not that it was anything profound, but just to know that 2 mornings a month I could take my kids in, leave them in someone else's capable hands and go enjoy a couple of hours with other mothers going through the same struggles and joys that I was dealing with. To eat a wonderful meal while not having to cut up anyone's food, dish up anyone else, etc. Now I'm admittedly a quiet, shy person so I never walked in and made deep friendships with the other ladies, but just sharing our struggles, mess ups, and laughs always made me feel like I was ready to face the world of motherhood refreshed after the meeting was done.
We had our first meeting this morning and it was nice to be back. I can recognize so many faces now, I'm feeling less reserved, and just had a great time getting to meet the new table I've been assigned to. This year I'm helping on the leadership team as Hospitality coordinator (a glorified way of saying, the set-up, clean-up, food planner, etc. person). I'm sharing the role with a good friend, and it feels good to have a part in the team. I hope that we bring a breath of refreshment to the ladies that come to the meetings.
On a side note: In past years we've always had a "Mommy mess up" award each meeting for a Mom willing to share how she made some mistake over the past couple of weeks (because lets me real, we all make some pretty funny mistakes as moms). Well, we didn't do that today, so I thought I'd share mine with you all. In all the craziness lately between office work, kids back in school, various schedules, soccer, gymnastics, cub scouts, getting things set up for this first MOPS meeting, etc. I've become a bit scatterbrained and stressed shall we say. Well, yesterday I actually forgot my child at preschool. It was only Ashtyn's second day, and I completely forgot that she was at preschool not upstairs taking a nap like I am used to. I got busy working on insurance stuff and didn't think about the time until the phone rang. The second I heard the phone ring (even before I saw who it was) I just knew. AGH!!! I made a quick apology to the teacher, jumped in the car and luckily the preschool is only 1 minute away from the house. Ashtyn just loves being at school so she really didn't care that Mommy was a few minutes late. But boy I felt sooooo low. What kind of mom forgets her kid at preschool? Anyway, there's my mommy mess up.