Totally exhausted

A couple of weeks ago Maddie headed up the stairs to get her baby doll. After 15 minutes, I thought I would check on her and I found her just like this...

Poor thing was so tired that she didn't even make it to the top of the stairs.

Eye Candy

I'm feeling a bit under the weather so updating all our fun summer stuff will have to wait a few more days. In the meantime, you can just drool over this sweet little guy! He seriously has the most kissable cheeks. I could just smooch them all day long.

Snap...

We recently have acquired some new equipment at our house. Allow me to introduce you to

"Hopper"

and "Bolt".

It has been a crazy couple of weeks at our house. Three weeks to the day that I had Kael, Kaiden broke his leg right above his knee. He tripped over the our neighbors' dogs and landed just right to break his femur. We didn't know that he had broken it because he didn't seem that upset. About 5 minutes later he started screaming and Jason took a closer look. He put him in the suburban and headed to the ER. I met him there as soon as I could leave the kids and by that time they had decided that he would probably need surgery and wanted to take him via ambulance to another hospital.

At the second hospital, we met a pediatric orthopedic surgeon who gave us the option to either do surgery right then and insert rods and screws into his leg or putting him in a full body cast (yes, you read that right) for up to 4 months. We opted for the surgery to save all of us from going crazy having a 5 year old trapped in a full body cast. They took him in for surgery and admitted him to stay the night.

It was quite the experience but he did really well. I was surprised at how calm he was. The highlight for him was riding in the ambulance and having them turn the lights and siren on for him. Here is a picture of him in his bed right before he was discharged. He was loving the pain meds.

The good news is that he is healing very well. We saw the surgeon yesterday and she is pleased with his progress. We did have to pull him out of preschool until January and he is limited on what he can do, but he is plugging along. He is using the "hopper" at the house but begs for "bolt". He is crazy in that thing! My hope is that he will be able to start putting "tiptoe" weight on his leg in 2 weeks but we will see how that goes. We are just happy that things are healing well and are looking forward to getting things back to normal around here.

We have a baby!

Kael Reed was born on October 2nd at 36 weeks.
He weighed 7 lbs 13 ounces and was 19.5 inches long.

I will post more once I am a little more with it but I wanted to put up a few pictures.

Is there a doctor in the house?

Who knew?

My washing machine wouldn't drain this morning, so my clothes were dripping wet, and it kept shutting off on it's own. Of course, I wasn't willing to call a repair man, so I used the trusty Internet to figure out what was up. I had to take the front of it off and it was stinky and gross but my washing machine is now working like it is brand new. Jason got to dodge another of those "fun" things that happen when he is gone. :0)

Oh, and Maddie was helping. I'm not sure what she thought her bat was going to do unless she was worried that something alive would make it's way out of the filter, but she was prepared. The little helpers always make these jobs more interesting.

Uprooted

And I mean quite literally, uprooted. When I told my mom that I wanted to get a good rain storm tonight to soak up my grass, I didn't expect one of my trees to get uprooted and roll into the neighbor's yard. I had to go out during a break in the rain and drag it back to my yard. My only hope is that everyone was nestled in their homes and not looking out the window as I tried to tackle the tree and drag it back. I'm sure my pregnant tummy made it all very graceful. Guess what I get to do in the morning...

What am I missing here?

Does anyone want to tell me what this...

and this...

have in common that attracts trouble? Or perhaps why my four year old continues to force his fingers into things that they don't fit in? I thought he would learn his lesson after we had to cut the ball apart to get his finger out but he decided that it was so much fun that he tried out the vent cover. Eventually he will get it, right? Either that or I am going to need to buy the "jaws of life" to help me get him out of these sticky situations. :0)

Some girls have all the luck...

But Mackenzie isn't one of them. The kids were playing outside when all the sudden everyone was running for the house and Mackenzie was absolutely freaking out. Kaitlyn had to tell me what happened because Mac was sobbing. Apparently a bird flew over the swing set and happened to drop a worm at the same time that Mac leaned over a bit. The angle was so perfect that the worm fell right down her shirt and stuck to her chest. After a bit of jumping and screaming she managed to get it to drop out of the bottom of her shirt but she still had the brown goo stuck to her chest. I did what any good mom would do and broke down laughing so hard I had tears. I couldn't help it. How many people can say that a bird dropped a half eaten worm down their shirt?

Just for the record, I did help her clean up once the tears in my eyes dried enough that I could focus.

Peace and quiet

Need I say more?

Just some pictures

Jason has been lucky enough to get some cool shots of him flying during each time he has been deployed. He sent me a few pictures that were taken the other day while he was refueling. The plane with the white top is the one Jason is flying. He is hooked on to the back of a KC-10 with a B-1 flying in formation on his right side. The plane taking the shot was in formation on his left. That's a lot of planes really close together! I guess everyone needed to be fueled up.

As hard as it is to have Jason gone on deployments, I am so glad that he is doing something he loves. I cannot imagine how hard it would be for him to lose his wings. Pilots don't seem to do very well when they are grounded. So, we keep trucking along and figure out how to fit deployments in our lives. :0)

One last time...

We were planning on keeping things quiet a little longer but since the man at the takeout window asked me when I was due, I figured that it was getting too obvious to hide. That and I ran into a few people from church at Target this week and they gave me that "look". So, surprise! We are having a little one this fall. I told the kids today and they are excited. Honestly, I am surprised that Kaitlyn didn't put two and two together before now. We tried to keep it quiet and only told a couple of people but I know that some of you were starting to get suspicious.

As always, it hasn't been a real smooth pregnancy, but I am doing pretty darn good despite that. They have me on a nice little cocktail of Zofran and Phenergran and it is helping me keep things down. Thank goodness for modern medicine. We have heard the heartbeat several times and things look like they are moving along as planned. Here's hoping to a nice and quiet next 6 months. :)

Whew!

Okay, I am finally caught up with most of what has gone on in the last few months. It is much easier to just not get behind on things. I better not ever get that far behind again.

Kaitlyn's Baptism

I am so proud of Kaitlyn for making the decision to be baptized. She is such a good little girl and is always trying to do what is right. I am also grateful to have a husband who is worthy to bless our family with the priesthood.

I hope that someday Kaiden will realize that he doesn't have to be a goofball in every picture. I would say that at least half the pictures we have of him have his eye crossed in them.

Daddy-Daughter Date

Every year the base does a Daddy-Daughter date around Valentine's Day and my girls are all over it. We have been doing it for 3 years now and they look forward to it almost as much as Christmas. I'm sure it wears Jason out but he is a good sport and makes sure he buys tickets each year. The girls love getting dolled up for a "fancy" night out with Dad.

The only sad part this year was that Maddie isn't quite old enough to go and she really wanted to. She grabbed her coat and pretty much refused to stay home with me. She finally felt better when she realized that I was going to take Kaiden and her out to eat and then have our own movie party at home. Only another year or so and she will finally be old enough to join in on the fun.

Cookies!!!

Of course we had to make cookies for Christmas. Jason like gingerbread cookies and I'm not a big fan so we did both sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies. Our sugar cookies were absolutely covered in sprinkles by the time we were done but the kids ate them up.

Christmas in a flash...

Kaiden's Christmas Program

Kaiden's preschool did a program this year. Our little Kaiden has a mind of his own and pretty much does his own thing. I had to beg, plead, and threaten him to get him to sing the songs. He had told his teacher that he didn't like to sing so he wouldn't. For the record he did sing, it was just to his own rhythm, as you can see. :0)

Kaitlyn's Birthday Party

I cannot believe that I have an 8 year old. Where did time go? This year we did a big party for Kaitlyn's birthday. Apparently I didn't realize the drama of having 10 extra 8 year old's in a house. It was crazy. I have never heard more squealing and screaming in my life! After cake and ice cream, we headed to the movies. Let's just say that although Kaitlyn had a blast, Jason and I have decided to limit birthday parties to a few less kids. We were happy when everyone had left to go home and we could have some peace and quiet. At least Kaitlyn enjoyed herself.

Putting up the tree

Here are a few pictures of when we put up the tree.