I love Christmas

Man I have to tell you that Christmas is so much funner with a little kid. It's not been until this year that Marcus has made it REALLY fun. He's getting into all of it, loves putting the ornaments on the advent calendar and every morning races upstairs to turn the tree lights on. It's so cute!

I've been pretty lucky that the boys don't try to rip the presents open. They go over and act like they want to open them up but a "no, no!" does the trick. They rearrange the gifts and everything but they don't rip them open. They do, however, move the ornaments like their life depends on it. They even have started putting their toys up on the tree like ornaments. Their faves are their duplo lego blocks. They make perfect ornaments.

I'm happy to report that Marcus is starting to be a nicer brother. He was reallllly mean for a while there, no matter what I tried. I mostly tried giving him more attention when he wasn't acting mean and I guess it finally got through to him because he started being nicer. If he hurts Jamesen, he'll go up and give him a kiss and say "Ah debber" (all better) and hug him. At least it's something. Can't wait for them to be a bit older and be the best of friends. That'll be so cute.

Sabe and I got the idea to take the boys mini golfing. The picture in my head was so fun and awesome with lots of great pics of the boys golfing... yeah. Didn't happen. Jamesen didn't want to have anything to do with the club and decided that the hills and things were his own personal running course. I had to quickly stop him from picking up the ball of the golfer behind us who we would have let pass us if the boys hadn't been running through the place like nobody's business. It's a good thing it was free because it didn't last longer than 10 minutes and I couldn't get a single pic of Jamesen! That was disappointing.

We bought the boys some cute little winter Sunday outfits. The thing that sold me was that one of them had a penguin on it. Couldn't resist. The boys needed Sunday clothes anyways since they didn't really have anything other than plaid shirts. They look so cute in them! I just wanna eat them up :)

Well, that's our update. Sorry about being so scarce around here. I'm sure it'll pick back up a lot once we get to where we're going. We'll know where that is in a few months. We're crossing our fingers for Cali though!

Here's some pics from the month
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2411643&id=17817329&l=6d954ce692

October

What a great month October has been turning out to be. Other than the awesome seasonal things like Halloween, carving pumpkins, playing in leaves, etc, Sabe's packet was approved! We'll be finding out where we're going in about a week. I'll be sure to let you know where we're going once we know. I'm excited to move into our own place.

I've gotten onto a home cooked meal kick and that's been fun. The boys are eating a ton so I guess they're loving the variety I've been giving them. I forgot how good I cook because I've not done it in forever, lol!

Anyways, enough with the rambling. I know you want to see pics. Here's
pretty much a month's worth on my facebook

thanks for looking.

Back from the MRI/MRA.

I think I mentioned earlier that Jamesen was having an MRI/MRA done on the bump on his head. If you don't know what I'm talking about...

Here he is in December of '09 when it really start to show.


Here he is almost a year later in September of '10. Noticeably larger.


It's called Sinus Pericranii and it's pretty rare. A normal person has the big vein running a long the top of their head that splits into two along the back and runs along the bottom of the ears and under the chin, turning into the jugular and on down to your heart. Jamesen has an extra vein that breaks off from the large one on the top of the head, bypasses the jugular and goes straight to the heart.

It's really not that big of a deal. It could potentially be, but for now it's not. For now it's a waiting game. We'll see if it starts getting smaller rather than keeping with it's current trend of getting bigger. If it's not getting smaller then it'll need to be removed.

Thing is, is this thing has the potential to bleed a lot. Head injuries always bleed a lot more than anything else but this one would be even more than that. If it ever ruptured (for whatever reason) it would take a bit to stop the bleeding. His Dr. said the surgery is really not that big of a deal usually. He also said that it's either the easiest surgery or a nightmare, there's no in between. There's a potential for him to bleed a lot while they're operating so if we do surgery, it won't be until he's at least two and can handle to lose more blood.

All in all I'm glad we know what it is, we know what the risks are and we're on watch. I guess it's a good thing I take a ton of pictures so I can document the thing huh!

Shauna and I are best friends

and yet we're in totally different places in our lives. Usually, best friends do everything together but that's not the case with us. She's got a steady boyfriend while I'm married with kids. Talking with a lot of people in the same place in their lives as me, they said getting married and having kids really showed them who their true friends were.

Shauna is my only friend that hasn't done everything at the same time as me and I think it really just makes our friendship stronger. Even though we're in totally different places in our lives, we're able to talk to each other about it still, without feeling alienated or anything like that. I'm able to help her through things and she's there for me and listening to me and my problems as well.

Every time we get done chatting with each other, I marvel at how well we get along. Not to say we've not had our disagreements, but they've been few and far between with quick make ups as well. I really think we were a match made in heaven, haha. We're so alike and yet different enough that we mesh really well.

Thank you Shauna for being there for me and I know we'll have many years a friendship left in us. I hope to some day be old ladies going out to lunch together, reminiscing about the good ol' days.

Jamesen's Appointment

I can't for the life of me remember what they called the thing on his head... it was like an AVI or something. Something to do about a bulging vein. I can't remember..

Anyways, the bulge is right on top of, or connected to the main vein that runs along the head and connects to the jugular. This could pose a risk, so we're scheduled to do an MRI and an MRA on the 6th of October. He said that it might possibly go away on it's own, but the fact that it's not already started to by now and that it could be connected to the jugular, makes him want to get more testing done.

He initially wanted to do it like November, but we're hoping to be out of here by the end of October. Rather than having us move and possibly not getting the tests done at all, he's going to bring them forward. I was happy about that. We were supposed to have this appointment in Kentucky but the lady never made my appointment (despite lots of calls) and then we ended up moving and I kept forgetting to call. Then when I did call, we had to wait four weeks. I'd rather just get it over and done with at this point!

SO... we'll have to not give him food or drink for 12 hours before the MRI (which is at 7:15 am). I'm gonna have to get up pretty early since it's an hour away. Anyways, he'll have to be sedated because the MRI takes half an hour to 45 mins of laying completely still and then he'll stay asleep because the MRA is the same thing. Please give us your prayers. I'm nervous about him being put under. I know younger babies have been put under, but I'm sure any mother would be nervous of their child at any age being put under.

I'll update more after that appointment. We should know A LOT after that.

I haven't wanted to say it...

for fear of jinxing everything... but it looks like we're officially 100% day potty trained!! GOOOO Marcus! I think me starting work is what threw him off so bad. I bought suckers and constantly told him if he went poop in the potty then he'd get a sucker... only, the couple times he went poop when I wasn't home, Sabe and Lynne didn't give him a sucker. Poor kid was confused. I finally sat him on the potty and did everything I could to keep him on there for as long as I could and eventually he pooped, got TONS of praise and huge sucker out of it. The next day, before I left for work, I did it again and he got another sucker. Plus I told Sabe he HAD to give him a sucker for going poop and sure enough, he's been doing it ever since!

We bought smaller suckers though because he was getting bored having to lug the tootsie pops around, only using one hand to play. Jamesen would try and get a hold of it, or it was given to me and I don't need the extra calories!

So woooooot to Marcus! He's such a big boy.

I know it's late...

But Happy Birthday Marcus!

I had to work the evening of his birthday, but we decided to have lunch at Chilis anyways. While we were waiting for Sabe to get ready, the boys and I went outside. They were seriously all smiles for me! Too bad I wasn't trying to get "Professional" pictures when they were in this good of a mood.

While the boys were waiting for me to get ready, Sabe put Marcus' present together. He was so excited when he saw it!



You should have seen him when it was finished.




We seriously couldn't get him off of it, lol! But it was getting closer and closer to the time I had to go to work, so we put him in the car, crying for his bike. We promised him we'd eat and possibly get ice cream and he said "eye-cweem" the entire way there.

I pulled out my camera to get a few pics and Marcus insisted that he needed to take some as well. These are the best out of the many he took:

and

Couldn't leave mommy out!
I put my camera away while we ate and then we ordered a Molten. I forgot my flash wasn't on and I'm a bit sad that I can't really do more for this pic. He was so excited to see the ice cream.


Though he wasn't too thrilled when my coworkers started singing to him.



I couldn't help busting up, it was so funny having him scream his head off when we were singing to him, haha!

The next evening after I got off work, we took him to Chuck E Cheese for a small party. My friend Lindsay, her three boys, and grandma Lynne came with us. All the boys had a blast!!







Afterwards, we went back to Grandma Lynne's to do cake. Since I've been working, I didn't have much time to make a cake, so we bought one instead. OF COURSE it had to be Thomas (or Taw-peet as Marcus calls him).




I had the next day off so we took Marcus to Bridal Veil to try and get some 3 year pics of him. It really didn't turn out too well. There were tons of people there and everybody was playing in the water since it's been getting cooler and they want to do it before it gets too cold. With the sun fading fast and other people getting in my way, I didn't get much, but here are the best out of the few I did.








A few days later, we attempted pics again. This time, we took the boys on the Provo Trail since there's a lot of pretty green there and not many people hanging about. I've not gotten a picture of our BOB stroller. This thing was EXPENSIVE, but so worth it. Before I started my job, Sabe and I would take the boys running on the Provo Trail every night and this stroller was so smooth and awesome to run with!

Here are the best out of the few pics I got. The boys didn't really cooperate again.







Sorry for all the pics, or you're welcome if you loved them, haha. Thanks for looking!

The things that make me happy

I've decided that I need to remember to make time to do the things that I love. I've pretty much stopped doing a lot of things at this point and have been just moping around the house. I've been having a really hard functioning to be honest. My emotions are always in turmoil and I just can't help to think about all the things that have happened to me lately. It all eats me alive.

I will be the first to admit that I've not been a fun person to be around at all. My poor kids. I got a job because I needed some me time [we needed the paycheck too, but that's beside the point]. I finally picked up scrapbooking again because I really missed it. I was afraid to do it before because Sabin I think thought that scrapbooking was taking up too much of my time rather than realizing that I was doing it to keep me sane and destress. When you're stressed all the time, you will be doing your thing to destress all the time too!

The other night I decided that I was going to take some time and have a girls night out type thing. There's a really sweet girl at my work that I decided I wanted to have go with me, so we made a dinner date. We went to this really yummy restaurant just down the way. They've got this amazing chocolate cake desert thing that we ordered and we just sat there and chatted away. It's a good thing the place was really quite dead so we weren't camping there taking up room and costing the server money.

Anyways, I'm rambling... My point is that doing that made me realize that I can't be a good wife or a good mom if I'm not taking time to do things that I love. For example, I stopped taking pictures all together. For anyone that knows me, they know that's kind of a big thing. I use to take at least 50 if not 150 photos a day of my children. In the entire month of August I think I may have taken maybe 100. So today I whipped out the camera and realized, again, just what I love about capturing my children at the exact moment that they are being themselves to save for all of time to see.

A few nights ago, Sabe and I stayed up late playing Mario on the Wii. I love Mario. Even more, I love playing Mario with friends and family. We actually had a great time playing a stupid video game. We haven't played a video game together since before we moved to Kentucky. Before Marcus was born, we use to play Halo together all the time. It was stupid, yet fun bonding time. I missed that.

Anyways I'm rambling again. My blogs have turned into crazy random posts lately. My goal for this month is to do more of the things that make me happy so I can truly and honestly say that I'm happy to be in my shoes again.

Frustrating

I know I've been trying to blog about the positive things for the last couple days, but I'm frustrated...

Marcus will poop in the potty for anybody but me. Sabe and Lynne have both said that he goes to the potty all by himself for them. For me? If he's wearing underwear he just poops in it and then says "uh oh!" if he's not (I thought him going nude would help him poop in the potty better like it did with pee) he poops right on the floor. It's so frustrating! Especially since I'm the one he's with most of the time.

Jamesen is such a bad sleeper. I don't know what it is, but I guess I've been cursed with bad sleepers. We got Marcus to sleep through the night by finally just letting him cry it out and it worked really fast. We've tried it with Jamesen recently but it only wakes Marcus up. It's really frustrating getting home from work at midnight or later only to have to stay up with the boy for an hour or two before I can sleep and then get woken up quite a few times between then and 7ish when he gets up for good. Makes me really tired and then I mess up at work which gets me in trouble.

Ah I feel better now. I was hoping that blogging about my frustrations would do that. Thanks for listening.

OH it's been a day

I've sure had a day [and night actually]. Something is keeping Marcus from sleeping. He wakes up in the middle of the night and turns on his light so he can read his books. This wakes Jamesen up and then we're all up.

BUT....

Even though it's been a day...

Jamesen fell asleep really easy on me for his nap. I snuggled him for a few minutes before putting him in his crib and he just sat there and sighed.

Both boys ate lunch really well. They haven't been eating lunch very well the last few days and barely ate dinner at all so it was good to see them eat.

Marcus has taken himself to the bathroom three times today!

We were watching one of the kid videos and I guess they got bored. Marcus threw the blanket over his head and Jamesen pulled it down. They did that for about 5 minutes straight, laughing and giggling the entire time. Super cute.

Marcus found his games for his Computer Cool School that were supposed to be for his birthday. I loaded them because of the look of excitement on his face and was blown away by his ability to do the games on the ages 4-6 cd.

So yes, I've had a day, but at least it's not be completely full of horribly bad stuff. Definitely could be worse!

A few things...

I think I'm going to start this blog back up. When I first started it, it was to let my family in on what's been going on in my life while we were away in Kentucky. The kids were growing fast. Some hadn't seen Marcus in months or even met Jamesen yet.

Then quite a few struggles happened in my life and I thought it was pointless keeping the blog up. The reason I started it didn't really apply anymore. I didn't care if some people knew about my kids or not and the few that I still did, I called often enough that it seemed quite pointless.

Now, I've gotten past a few things but I still find myself heavily dwelling on the negativities in my life for the past two years. I look back and am surprised that I made it through everything as well as I have. But the fact that I'm dwelling on it is the reason I'm going to continue with this blog. Not for anybody but me. I'm going to fill this blog with all the happy and exciting things in my life, even if they seem few and far between. I need to remind myself that despite everything, I've got a God who loves me and is guiding me through this. Despite everything, my husband loves me and my kids love me. My mom has always been there for me and I don't see that changing any time soon. My best friend is still there for me through everything even though we're at totally different stages in our lives. I've got some online friends who have my back and have supported me and loved me through everything.

For these things, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for the knowledge that there's a loving God to give me comfort and guidance. I'm thankful for my beautiful healthy children. I'm thankful for the fact that they are healthy enough to walk and run and go go go without stopping. I'm thankful for for so many things...

Anyways, I'm rambling a bit now. This is me, making a conscious decision to let go of the past. Learn from it, but stop dwelling on it. To move forward and make the most of what I've got left.

Here's a snippet of just how blessed I am.

Recent Happenings

I can't even tell you how proud I am of Marcus. We're officially pee potty trained! He's been dry for a full 12 hours! How amazing is that? I didn't think this day would come for at least another year and yet here we are. Not only that, but he knows all of his colors now too. I've been trying to teach him those for awhile. Apparently he was learning because he knows most of them. He's so cute when he says them. He knows blue, purple, red, green, white, yellow, orange, pink and sometimes brown. We're working on a few others and he's doing really good.

Jamesen is totally amazing. He's so smart. I can't even begin to tell you the great things he does but he's so coordinated and such a problem solver. We put him on Marcus' trike and he was trying to figure it out. His legs are still too short so it didn't really work, but it was like he knew what he had to do, he just was incapable of doing it.

Anyways, my kids are so amazing and such great kids. I'm so blessed to have them, even though they're extremely busy.

A Visit from Freddie

I'm on an online message board for moms. There's groups of kids who are due around the same time. When all the babies are born, it's called a playroom. In Jamesen's PR, the babies are called the July Fireflies. We've got a firefly toy that gets sent around the PR. He got sent to us this week!









Sadly that's all the interaction that poor Freddie has had since he's been here. Jamesen just isn't interested in him at all! We should save the poor guy some loneliness and pass him on quick!