Santa's Lap

It is pretty classic that little children freak out a bit when they sit on Santa's Lap and our Elizabeth was no different.  We were in Virginia to celebrate my dad"s retirement and since the kids were all dressed up to go to the ceremony we decided to get pictures done with Santa.  At first Elizabeth was willing to follow her brother, but eventually she decided that she was not okay with this Santa guy.

And then there was one!  At least we did get a good photo at the beginning.


After our Santa attempt we headed over to Grandpa's retirement ceremony.



Earlier in the weekend we got to see my cousin Chrissy and her family.  We all headed over to the Air and Space museum and the Natural History museum on the Mall in DC.  We don't get to see them much so we really enjoyed spending time with them!




We also celebrated my brother's 26th birthday.




It was a great trip back to Virginia, but it is nice to be home again also.  Jason really enjoys being able to play with all his trains again!

The most amazing husband or why I'm a klutz

Our house was starting to look gross so I decided to clean it from top to bottom.  It would be nice to return from Thanksgiving to a clean house then get decorated for Christmas.  When it opened I called the hand surgery unit because Elizabeth's wrist, where they took the skin graft from for her hand surgery, was taking longer than expected to heal and was possibly looking infected.  I sent the nurse a picture and she said she would talk to the doctor and call me back.  So while I was waiting I went back to cleaning.  I had just finished moping the kitchen and was moving all the cleaning stuff to the bathroom.  I grabbed the paper towels, cleaning spray and my phone so that I could catch the nurses return call.  As I turned to head out of the kitchen it happened, I dropped my phone and spash, of course it landed in the mop bucket!  I could not make that shot if I had tried!  I grabbed it out and worked on ripping off the cover. 

After looking on the internet I found out that there are a few things you are NOT supposed to do if you drop your phone in water:

• Turn it on
• plug it into the power cord

Before I saw this guess what I did...turned it on.  The screen had dark spots on it and the sound wasn't working, but I could and did text my husband freaking out about what I did.  Then I remembered I had heard about people using rice to help dry out waterlogged phones.  I realized that the rice was getting lodged in the crevices for the power cord and the headphones so I plugged it in and put in the headphones to avoid getting rice stuck in there.  Then I looked online and realized I was doing everything wrong and expecting miracles too soon.  So I ploped it into a bowl of rice, left it alone and went back to cleaning.

I was just finishing all the cleaning when I heard the garage door open.  In walks Jeff and says so what happened with your phone?  I relate it all to him and he asks if going out to lunch would make me feel any better.  Yup I numbed the pain of my loss with yummy food for a little bit.  Now I'm going to leave my phone in the rice until Wednesday when we leave for San Antonio and hope it will work!

I get it!

You know when you have been struggling with something and then you finally get it?  My mom used to say "light dawns on marble head."  Well that is how I felt this week.  I have been trying to get better at photography.  Not like I want to become a professional photographer, more like I want to capture my kids really well.  I know the most important part is understanding my camera and how to make the most of my photos straight out of the camera, but sometimes things don't work out right.  So I have been wishing I knew more about some photo editing software.  We were gifted Photoshop Elements and it had been sitting on the shelf until I decided to install it.  Now what?  I opened it and had no clue what to do!  So a couple of months went by and I ran across a tutorial by accident and the light dawned.  I'm slowly (very slowly) learning to figure this stuff out.  So you get to be tourtured by the fruit of my work:

I've always wanted to learn how to do this!




Something else I'm loving, Jason's imgination!  Lately when Jeff comes home he has been begging Daddy to play Pooh and Piglet.  Sometimes Elizabeth is even let in on the action.  They go to the "thoughtful spot" to figure out if they are going to play chase, go ice skating, go fishing, listen to Owl read a story, or do a dozen other things Jeff is wonderful enough to think up.




And of course we need some focus on my sweet girl wearing a headband for about 5 seconds!

Big Day!

Goodness!  Yesterday was a huge day for us.  I'll start off with the cute Halloween photos.  We went trick or treating around our neighborhood and the kids loved it!  Jason was ready to get on his costume as soon as we got home from Dallas.  After dinner and some photos we headed out for the night.  Both kids were carried a bit, but Jason was almost running up every driveway.  Eventually we were debating if we should be done or hit one more street and Jason said to us, "I think I'm ready to go home now" so we did.




Earlier that day we headed into Dallas and were looking at new car seats for both kids for when they are riding in Jeff's truck.  Jason's had expired and for Elizabeth we were using her infant seat, which she had outgrown, or moving the convertible from my car to Jeff's truck and back again.  We did find a new seat for Jason, but weren't able to find one that was as compact as we would like for Elizabeth.  It seems like car seats are getting bigger and bigger lately!

The main reason we went to Dallas yesterday was to get the kids casts off.  Grandpa has been displaced due to Sandy so he joined us and helped Jason watch trains and pass the time while we waited.  The last time Jason had a cast on there was a mix up and he had a harder cast.  They had to use a cast saw to take it off and although he did pretty well we knew he was anxious about hearing that noisy saw again.  This time he insisted that his sister go first and we were all pleasantly surprised when the nurse just unwrapped Elizabeth's cast like an Ace bandage!  Elizabeth was concerned as her hand was unwrapped, but when it was all done and her hand was washed she took having her hand back in stride.  Jason was more excited about having his cast off, but as the cast came off and he saw his hand he started to freak out a bit.  We washed his hand, but he wasn't happy until we covered his hand back up.  He alternated between not wanting to see his hand and wanting to pick at it.  We covered up his hand so that he couldn't pick at it much and it wouldn't scar too bad.  The hands look a little gross, but I did take some pictures.  The hands will look way better in the next few days.  I know not everyone will want to see these hands so I am putting them at the end of the post.  Thank you all for thinking about us!


Elizabeth's hand photos:



Jason's hand photos:

October so far

14 years ago today I asked Jeff to go out with me. It was the best decision of my life!



I know I haven't written much lately. Mostly it has been because we have just been hanging out as a family lately and laying low. The kids have been doing pretty well working with their casts. Our little town is great about holidays and had the town square all decked out for Halloween so we decided to take some photos out there.

 





Last weekend Jeff suggested we go camping, so we packed our bags and headed down to Huntsville, TX. It was pretty chilly at night and we were disappointed when we discovered that our heater wasn't working because of a problem with the battery. We all bundled up and cuddled Elizabeth in the middle of the night. We were a little concerned we wouldn't be able to find a camp site because it is camping season and that also made us decide to veto hiking. We did get to explore the Texas Prison Museum and chase the kids around there. We all found the Sam Houston Museum more interesting and the kids had lots of fun walking around holding hands.

 



We have had some beautiful fall weather lately, but I know that isn't true for the east coast. We even claimed a refugee from that area. My dad was traveling and couldn't get back to Virginia so he decided to stop in and visit with the grandkids for a few days. Since he has been here we have been preparing for Halloween by carving pumpkins and the kids decided to rearrange the baby pumpkins I had outside the front door. They brought them down the walk to the mailbox planter and back up again. Over and over again.



 



Tomorrow is a pretty big day for us here. The kids get off their casts and we are all excited to see the final result. After we return from that we are getting decked out and going trick or treating. I hope to post photos from tomorrow soon and I can't wait to see all the cute little munchkins dressed up tomorrow at our door and on Facebook!

surgery update

It has been a week since the kids had surgery on their hands.  All in all it went pretty well.  We got up early to get to Dallas in plenty of time.  There was lots of waiting around for all the nurses and doctors to be ready and have everything assembled.  Elizabeth was up first and not happy about letting any one other than Jeff or I do anything to her.  So we gave her the "goofy juice" or I tried to at least.  It doesn't taste very good and neither of the children were very cooperative when we tried to dose them up.   Soon enough it was time for Elizabeth to go off to surgery.  When I scheduled the surgeries I was under the assumption that Jason would be in an almost concurrent surgery, but we found out that Jason wouldn't be taken back until after Elizabeth was done.  It was a nice distraction to entertain Jason instead of constantly worrying about how Elizabeth was doing. 

After about 2 hours it was time to go back up to the recovery area to wait for Elizabeth to come back.  As she slept we got Jason ready to go back.  Although neither of the children got the full dose of the "goofy juice" they didn't give us any trouble leaving with the doctors.  Elizabeth was still sleeping after Jason was left so the nurses said they would call us and we could run down and grab lunch.  While we were eating Elizabeth woke up and I rushed back to her.  We cuddled her a lot and gave her juice.  She was pretty fussy and very angry that she couldn't use her arm, but she didn't seem to be in much pain. 

Soon enough Jason was back with us and he woke up on the way back to recovery.  Jason has never been very happy when he wakes up, but in a new place with lots of strange things going on, he was not a happy camper.  I got him some juice and cuddled him and he was alright.  The nurses needed to be sure he was ok for a half an hour after surgery and he was so we loaded the kids into the car to head home.  Thankfully they both fell asleep on the way home.

That first afternoon we spent lots of time cuddling and we have laid low more this week than normal.  The kids are mostly weaned off of any medicine and sleeping well at night, or at least as well as they were before casts.  Jason is taking really well to the cast.  I think it helps that he understands what is going on because he has been through it before.  Elizabeth is often frustrated because she can't hold everything she wants to.  I have even banded "Dolly" to her cast before, but she didn't like that either.



When we were going in I thought they would need to have the casts on for 6 weeks, but I must have misremembered because they are getting the casts off in a little less than 4 weeks!  It happens to fall on Halloween and I don't think I have looked forward to a Halloween this much since I was little!  Hopefully we will find time to do the cast removal, get back from Dallas, get suited up and go trick or treating because Jason is already talking about it and insisted on practicing using our bedroom doors the other day.

 

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers for the kiddos as we go through this.  The other day in the store an older gentleman noticed Elizabeth's cast and after I explained that she had surgery and that she was born with her hands that way, he asked if it was serious.  I am so thankful that in the grand scheme of things this really isn't serious.  It isn't a problem with a major organ like the heart or brain.  I just read a blog about a classmate who has breast cancer and realized that these issues that we are dealing with are miniscule compared to what her family is battling!  I thank God every day that my family is generally healthy and I will take my two gimped babies any day of the week and twice on Sunday.  It doesn't hurt that they are so adorable either!

18 months!

Maybe I'm in a little bit of denial, but I kept stalling on writing this post.  As you probably guessed from the title, my baby girl is a year and a half old!  Jason's preschool recently asked for a family picture and with our trip and everything going on I didn't remember until yesterday so I had to search through my stash.  The only one I could find was from May 2011 and Elizabeth was so little!  I can't believe that our ittiy bitty baby has turned into this sweet little girl.  She has such a personality!  Elizabeth has her own opinion and will tell you to "go" while pushing you somewhere and she has a little temper that will let you know when you don't do something her way.

Elizabeth is such a sweet little cuddle bug, especially with her Daddy!  She is working very hard to have him wrapped around her finger.  She also gives the sweetest kisses, you just ask her for one and she will lay one on you!

I know I have said this before, but I am so thankful that Elizabeth isn't struggling with speech the way that Jason did.  She knows so many animal sounds and loves to name them when she sees them (like the cow on the milk jug.)  When we are done reading a book, we frequently hear "again, again" and hearing "please" is music to my ears.  She knows all her favorite foods and that she wants them on her "plate."  She loves to say over and over "Mommy" and "Daddy."  It seems like every day she is adding new words and I can't keep up!

On a little more nerve wracking note: the kids are both having surgery on Friday.  Jason is having his left hand done and Elizabeth is having her right.  I'm not as nervous this time about Jason because he handled it so well last time, but I really worry about Elizabeth.  She is just so little!  So please keep both of them in your thoughts and prayers on Friday!