Slave Labor

One day they will be doing everything for me, and I can't wait!! Right now I have them clearing out rocks for more garden space. (What is crazy is that they really do enjoy working on it!) I tried to take pictures of the garden but they didn't come out since the flash isn't working. My cucumber plants are huge, like 9 feet in the air. I have a lot of little cucumbers and one big one that we will get to eat in the next day or 2. I have about 4 jalepenos growing that will be ready this week to eat and we have eaten basil that we grew. I also have zucchini, pumpkin, butternut squash and watermelon plants that are growing big but haven't produced any fruit yet. I'm clearing space for a couple different types of tomatoes, bell peppers and more cucumber plants that should produce in the fall. I never knew I would enjoy having a garden so much. I wake up and the first thing we do is go look at our plants to see how big they have grown. I know I am way more excited about them than the kids are, but they do enjoy them as well:)

It Is So Fun

To have a little baby around again!

He is 2 weeks old and growing too fast like they all do. He is over 9 lbs and doing well.
I just love his little mohawk.

I think he just wants to be left alone to sleep, but he is just too cute to leave alone.

He looks just like his Dad, only with dark hair.

Rest Of Trip

The baby sure loved Grandma Gail! I can't get over how big my baby is as I look at this picture...she will be 6 months this week and still seems to be growing fast. The Dr has told me not to give her any more food for now, possibly until after her surgery, as solids put more of a strain on the heart. Who knew! So, anyways I am feeling a bit like a milk cow for the time being as she is always hungry. We are going to St. Joes hospital for another appointment this week and will see what the Dr there says. I have been told that he is the best so I'm hoping that I will like him as I wasn't totally thrilled with her last heart Dr. He had only been out of Medical School for a few years and appeared way to young to be fixing my baby's heart! I know I am biased but I can't help it...I want someone who has done this procedure many many times.
Our last day camping the boys and hubby put together the rockets they got from their Aunt & Uncle last Christmas. They were so excited and we had the perfect meadow right behind the campsite to set them off.

We had to do the countdown several times before the first one finally took off, and boy did it take off! It went so high no one could see it for a good 15 seconds and then we saw it floating with the parachute.

The kids running off trying to find the rocket. They got their excecise as they would go get it and bring it back and then we would do it again! It wouldn't be any fun to have them run across the field only one time:)

Drowning

In Laundry.

I cannot seem to get caught up and it is taking all of my free time! We are going camping again in 2 weeks and I think I may just get everything done only to do it again. Camping for 8 days is something I don't think we will be repeating again soon. I think we will stick with 3-5 day trips.

The boys are doing Vacation Bible School this week and are having so much fun. As most of you probably know I am totally neurotic and wouldn't even think of just dropping them off without watching everything for a while to make sure everything seemed o.k. Well...let me just say it was total chaos. They put a 13 year old boy in charge of a group of preschoolers and it was his duty to move the kids from room to room for the various activities. He would say o.k. kids follow me and would just start walking and not checking to make sure that the kids were following etc... I immediately decided I was going to stay because I didn't want my kids to get lost. Long story short 2 of the kids in his group did get misplaced (the director would not use the word lost!) At one point one of the kids told him he had to use the bathroom and he pointed toward the door and said it is down at the end of the hall (it was a long way away). These are 3-5 year olds! Thankfully the director realized it was a little more than he could handle and so today there were 2 teenagers in charge of the group and the girl definitely had a much better idea of how to handle little kids so I left for a little while. Tomorrow (and for the rest of the week), though, I am looking forward to dropping the kids off and having a whole 3 hours with just the baby to get things done. It almost seems to good to be true that I will only have one to deal with:) I think I am going to like having Big Man start school.

Also, my new camera isn't working. The flash won't pop up and the pictures are coming out really dark. When I get some free time I'm going to have to deal with that too:( So for now you are going to have to imagine my sweet little baby who is sitting up so good now without support!!

Just to make you smile here is a sweet picture of my niece that my sister sent me tonight. Isn't she so cute!

I've Decided To Take A Break

From my napping and reading to finally post some pictures!

This is the first campsite we stayed at on our trip outside Payson. It had electricity and nice paved roads. We are now outside of Williams with no electricity just in the middle of the forest. It is roughing it as far as I'm concerned!

The boys have found and tortured many insects and amphibians on our trip. We have seen a lot of animals at our current campsite including deer, elk and cows walking through the forest and through our campsite.

She does love camping and seems to enjoy just looking around at all of the trees.

Little Man has been a bit off today. He kept coming up to hubby and I and asking us to tickle his back and saying he needs to lay down. We even went out for ice cream tonight and he didn't want anything! Poor guy, I don't know what is wrong with him:(

Big Man had lots of fun in the dirt making a monster truck track. He is one kid who does not mind at all being totally filthy. Isn't that what camping is all about? Who am I kidding, I let him get filthy at home too:)

We have a meadow right behind our campsite where a herd of cows are usually grazing that we have been taking walks and bike rides through. The cows are pretty funny as they are walking through the forest they will come to our campsite, see us and then start running. I don't know why but seeing a cow run just makes us laugh because they are not the most graceful!

We went to a cowboy show in town tonight on the steets where they had a little shootout. It was a lot of fun seeing the cowboys, the boys were a little scared of them after the show, though.

We'll be up here for a few more days and then it will be back to real life. Tomorrow there are a bunch of friends and family coming to camp with us so the kids will have some playmates and it should be a lot of fun.

On The Road Again

We are up north camping this week. I'm too lazy to post any pictures right now, but we are having a great time relaxing, reading, bike riding and fishing. The weather is absolutely beautiful and cold. In the middle of the day we are all wearing long sleeves and jeans and still have to stand in the sun to be warm:)

Out With The Old, In With The New

Sport that is.

I would be lying if I said I was going to miss baseball. Three times per week with three kids, usually by myself, was a little too much work for me!

Big Man sure did have fun, though. He improved so much over the season and he had a great time. He misses it and now thinks that since baseball is over that it is my duty to play with him in the back yard every day. Thankfully, though, the boys and neighbor kids have figured out how to play by themselves and have made pretend bases and hit off the tees and do their thing. They even lined up all of the extra chairs they could find around the house for bleachers so people can watch them. It is really cute!

We are now in our second week of swimming. For the last 2 weeks they have gone 4x/week for lessons and most days we stay after and swim too (and yes I did have to get a special water wrap for the baby as well!) Their good friend, Hunter, who played baseball with Big Man also signed up for swimming and they have been having so much fun.

Today was the last day in the session so the kids got to jump off the diving board for fun.

Or in Little Man's case, tossed off.Big Man was the only one in his class who jumped on his own and he let everyone know that we saw today.
He was even able to swim over to the side by himself. It took almost the full two weeks to relearn how to swim, but he is doing good now. After swimming I think we are going to try Karate. The boys are all ready practicing their karate chops and hiyah's!

She Sure Looks Perfect

And soon enough she will be. After a day of testing at the Cardiology office she has been diagnosed with Patent Ductus Arteriosis (PDA). It is a mild congenital heart defect where she has an extra artery that will have to be closed surgically since it did not close as it should have at birth. According to the Dr it is a heart defect that is on the far mild end of the spectrum so that part is good. Having to have heart surgery, not so good for me! They are going to try and go in through the leg as they said she has a medium sized PDA and as long as it is that size or smaller there should be no problems. If they can't go in through the leg they will go in through the side of her chest in between her ribs to cut off the extra artery.

They said she is one of the healthiest babies they have seen with this condition as usually the babies are very sickly and small because it causes mild heart failure. They want to get it done before the winter season hits because with this condition the babies always have fluid in their lungs and therefore get sicker with colds and end up with more wheezing and pneumonia and just take longer overall to recover. Since she all ready had wheezing last winter with a cold that sounds like a good plan to me as I don't want her to be that sick again this winter. So, as long as she continues to thrive we will go back in August for the surgery consultation and then schedule the surgery from there.

Sam Has Arrived

Born last night at 7 lbs 11 oz. He is so sweet and has the best squacky cry!

The proud Mommy. After what she went through last night I can't believe how good my sister looked today. Why can't babies just come out without pain.

Little Mimi has no idea how much her life is going to change:)

My boys were so excited to go see him. They went up to the hospital 3 times today because they just couldn't get enough of him.

The boys. They do love babies. After last night I can definitely say I will never have another one. Never. I'm not even sure I want to be in the same room as another birth! My hubby is so relieved to hear me say that:)

Party Time

My brother in law has Guitar Hero and I have been wanting to play it so my Brother, Sister and their families came over along with my friends Eric & Marissa and their cute kids. The kids had a lot of fun pretending to play the game and playing with each other and we all had a lot of fun catching up with E & M!

Special Teeth Medicine

When Little Man's front teeth came in I noticed that they had dark spots on them. I thought he had some horrible disease but the Dentist said they were just enamel defects and that there is no protection in that area so he will get cavities there. On his first birthday they tried to fix them up as much as possible to prevent cavities, but they still came. His teeth have been looking worse and worse so we finally decided to have them fixed. I had been telling him he was going to the Dentist and they were going to give him special medicine to drink and then they were going to look at his teeth to see how it is working. He doesn't let them ever clean his teeth or anything usually so I was a little nervous as to how he would react. Hubby took him and Big Man in at 6:30 in the morning and he drank the special medicine really well. It takes about 45 minutes to work and he became a little crazy on it!

I got there about 7:30 so hubby could go to work and he wanted the baby to lay next to him. As long as she was there he would close his eyes. He would open them occasionally and say: I need to go home, Mom, I need to take a nap. We tried so hard not to laugh at him and his slurred speech and crazy talk!

After he was sufficiently sleepy they took him to the room hooked up the nitrous and papoosed him. He didn't mind it at all. He kept laying there with his mouth wide open. She would say were not quite ready you can close it, but he was ready for the Dentist.

He obviously doesn't remember much, but he keeps saying how nice the Dentist was and how he wants to go back for more of the special medicine that makes him dizzy. If anyone needs a good Dentist, I love mine, I have known her since High School. She is the daughter of my schools Health Occupations Teacher that I know some of you had:)

How Can It Be?

That my little girl is all ready 5 months old. She is growing up way too fast!

She went to her check-up today and she weights 17.5 pounds, so not as big as I was thinking but still in the 90% for weight. The NP was just commenting on how healthy and beautiful she was and then started listening to her heart and kept listening and listening and I knew something must be up. Then she said I'm going to borrow her for a minute and left the room and went and had 4 other Dr.'s listen to her chest in the hall. She came back and informed me that she has a type of murmur that they have never heard before and that if she wasn't so fat, healthy and pink we would be going to the hospital because it sounds so strange. She gave me the name of a Pediatric Cardiologist that we will be seeing next week to determine if it is a normal fine murmur or a congenital heart defect and tells me to try not to worry too much. Yeah right. Needless to say I fought the urge to take her to the ER anyways because I want an answer like now, but I will be patient until we see the Cardiologist. Everything I have read on Dr. Google is not very positive stating that most murmurs heard before 6 months are not normal murmurs but I'm still hopeful.