An everlasting love

I'm so glad I already had this one on the desk top so I could post it.

Congratulations Mom and Dad. We are so proud of y'all. There couldn't be a better example for your boys of what a marriage should be. Thank you for showing us all how it's done. We love you.

Boy am I behind

on all my posting. I can't catch you up on all of it because it is 7:10 in the morning all my kids are already up and ready to go. Don't they know everyone is suppose to be on vacation? And I can't catch you up on everything because the printer thing-a-majig is on the fritz again so it wont let me pull up any pictures. So here I go with my only recent post that is without pictures. I will try to keep it short but who knows......

Monday I had my heart doctors appointment. We had to schedule this one, after not seeing him for over four years, because we had ourselves a little scare a few weeks ago. And when I say a little scare I mean we thought I was having a heart attack. But after a horrible visit to the ER, and seeing a Doctor (I use that term loosely) I hope to never see again, we learned that it was not a heart attack, we don't know what it was but it wasn't a heart attack. There were able to see my irregularities with my heart but by testing my blood they knew that I hadn't had a heart attack. So since they had no answers for me we were told to see my cardiologist, well actual mine is an electro cardiologist.

We had not seen my doctor for years. Not because everything was fine but because we were at a point were the only thing he could do for me was get me a pacemaker and at 21 that was just out of the question for me. I will always think that was the right choice for me, and while we were with my doctor he agreed that I had made the right decision. It's nice to have confirmation.

To try and shorten this up,
We will receive another heart monitor soon and I will wear it for three weeks. After that I will see the doctor again and we will make decisions after that. I do want to share some things that I learned at the doctor that were a comfort to me.

The average heart rate for a woman is about 70 - 80 beats per minutes. At times my heart can get to 170 beats per minute or greater. That's an extra 100 beats per minute. I have always been concerned that at some point my heart would just get tired of all the extra beating and just up and stop. I talked with the doctor about and he told me at 300 beats my heart will decide that's enough and stop. It was really comforting to have a number, 170 seems really high unless I compare it to 300 so that gave me some peace. He also explained that even if my heart beat at 170 continuously, which mine doesn't it just fluctuates, it would take two months before it would literally just wear my heart out. Obviously I would see a doctor before any of that could happen. Just those two little bits of information were such a comfort to me.

If you all could pray that God would heal my heart or that I will go into another one of my periods were I feel fine for a while I would appreciate it. Although it's nice to know I wont die it still dramatically affects my everyday life. When I am having episodes by the time the kids are eating lunch I am trying to rush everyone through to get to naptime so I can get some rest. I am just exhausted! Having your heart rate that high when you are doing everyday things just wears a mommy out.

Christmas celebrations in a nutshell

Our first celebration was a few weeks ago with my mom.

I know you are all wondering how on earth we were able to arrange for Santa to join us but no that's not Santa. We have people in our lives that prefer not to be shown or talked about on our blog and we respect that. Unfortunately seeing that I was very tired that day this is the only picture I have of Kati.We get things like bananas in our stockings. We also get this like olives and nail polish. Just whatever Mom knows will make ya happy.

This is just about the only decent picture I got of us celebrating with Jeff's family. I'm just gonna be honest; when we are all in one room all doing things I just get plan overwhelmed. There were all of us plus three more people there that night and lots and lots of noise. Happy noise, but noise, cap gun noise but happy noise, cap gun noise in surround sound but happy noise. Laughter and smiles. I love it, overwhelmed or not.
We wish Jared could have been with us. I would also love to see more girls in these pictures.

Ehem boys

We headed home and prepared our house for Santa

Here are my cuties before the could go in the living room to see if Santa came.

And we of course made our traditional trip to IHOP

This just may be Bears favorite gift. He hasn't stopped playing with it.

This isn't from us. Bear received it from Uncle Jesse the night before but the boys had to play with it between opening gifts with us.

I wish the ball hadn't covered his face this could have been a super great shot.He ended up moving it all up to the couch to keep it away from Timbo.

My girl

Here is another shot from our day at the park. I love this photo. As soon as I took it and saw it on the screen I knew this was the one I was looking for. I immediately told her she was all done and could go play.

Anyway, it's the same shot in a couple of different ways. I loved it so much I couldn't stop playing with it, or staring at it for that matter. I love my girl.

Merry Christmas

I hope you all enjoy your time today with family and friends but mostly I hope you take some time to remember the real reason we celebrate this season, the birth of our Savior.

Jeffrey has been working a lot lately, with no end in sight, and although we are grateful for the needed overtime I miss him like crazy. While I was driving home from the store one night I saw the most beautiful scenes of the moon. I drove home right away to grab my camera and spend some time doing something to cheer me up.

It was really lovely to snap shots of this haunting look while my kids happily chattered in the back of the car. In some ways it mirrored, in that moment, the way I was feeling; lonesome but content.






Just one week after taking these shots I read a blog about how to better shoot the moon, now I can't wait for another opportunity.

I had the most fun taking pictures of the kids at the park last Friday. It was the day that just keeps on giving because I am still having so much fun playing with all the pictures.

This isn't at all how I wanted this picture to turn out but you get what you can take when you are trying to photo a very active 18 month old. In case you are new to my blog this little green guy is Bubba and Timothy can't live without him. They are inseparable. If you ask Timothy if he wants to go night-night his very next words are "Bubba? Bubba?" he throws his arms up in a where are you stance and begins to look around. If he falls asleep in the car I can gingerly carry him to his crib and gently lay him down and if he can't feel his furry friend then his little eyes will fly back open, 'Buuuubaaaaaa?'.

Really I feel as if Bubba has just become another part of the family(clearly if the he has come to the photo shoot and has his own Santa hat). We all look out for him, the children included. Since I see him as a family member it is always difficult to just throw him in the washing machine, watching the scalding water engulf his fuzzy little green body, but then I suck it up and remind myself that he just a toy, and not really one of us, even if Timbo can't live without him.

My boys

We went to the park today with this beautiful weather and I enjoyed taking tons of photos. After all this dreary weather it was nice to just be out with the sun shining on our faces.

I'm not sure what it is about this photo that I love so much.

Works of God weekend

So I saw this neat idea called Works of God weekend and if I was crafty enough I would know how to do the linky-do thing but I don't and Jeff is sleeping so I am out of luck. Anyway, I thought the idea was great. I know that I have trouble sometimes only thinking about negative things and I want to change that. The idea of this weekly post is to list five ways you have been blessed, seen God move in your life or things that you are thankful for. I think this will be a good start for me.

• I am thankful that my problems this past Saturday weren't a heart attack.
• I am thankful that we have insurance so that I am able to see a heart doctor and find out what is going on.
  
• Although I miss Jeff terribly I am thankful for all the overtime he is getting.
• God blessed us with a gift card to a grocery store. It's not much but it's free to us.
• God has blessed Jeff with a job that he enjoys and is wonderful at. I think it goes without saying that is important to a man.
  

A pea up the nose

Nope, this isn't a re-post he has done it again, except this time I can't get it out. I tried. Jeff tried. No luck. I think the only thing we succeeded in was some guaranteed therapy when he is older.

As soon as we got up this morning I had them sit down for breakfast while I got everyone's clothes together. After I rushed everyone along I began dressing Timbo. He gave a big sneeze and something popped out but went back in. And I thought "Yes! I don't have to call the doctor and make a fool of myself." He sneezed again. And out flew a fruit loop.

Are you kidding me. After all of his horrible experiences last night he still stuck stuff up his nose!! And don't think to yourself 'oh, he is just a baby, he doesn't know', this kid is a real smarty.

So we are off to the doctor this morning. Maybe I need to scratch peas and fruit loops from his diet. But he loves them.

Oh, this boy, he sure does keep us busy.

More ICE night talk

When I left for Kyle and Michele's Monday Jeffrey was still working and by the time we left for ICE Jeff was still working. I felt terrible about leaving Kyle to take care of the baby but they had a great time. They talked a lot, Timbo shared some terrible gas with Kyle, they had pizza that Timothy was vocally happy about, played ball, and dinosaurs (although Kyle did feel jiped, Timothy would only share the herbivore, he's not stupid he wanted the cool dinosaur)

Our third attempt at a photo.

Before you even get to the ICE exhibit there is so much to see. You will have to check Kyle and Michele's blog to see if they post any pictures. It is absolutely gorgeous! There was a huge real ginger bread house as well (500 lbs of flour) but when I looked at the picture it was terrible. I didn't notice before hand that candy had been picked off. It just ruined the whole picture. But look at all these other great shots.

It's impossible to get a serious and good shot of both of them.

I forgot to post this one yesterday. Doesn't she look like she is freezing!

I know you saw this one yesterday but I loved it in black and white too.

This may be my favorite picture of all. Just look at my little girls face. I love the wonder that is there. It captures just how she and Bear felt that night.
She was stuck next to Michele all night.

What a doll.

I love this one but it would have been so much better if he had given me a real smile. This is a new thing, I pull out the camera and he sticks out his tongue.

ICE 2008

I had heard about ICE before but it wasn't good things. I was told you wait in line so long and it wasn't really that exciting when you got in but once I saw a segment for it on TV I had to go. I knew that Jeff would go but wouldn't be nearly as excited about the things that we saw. Let's be honestly, he wouldn't care at all but I just knew that Michele would like it. The segment said that it was nine, that's right 9, degrees in there so I didn't think it would be good for the Timbo so he stayed with Kyle and Jeffrey.Meet old man winter. He greeted us on our way in. I was a little disappointed that we didn't get snowed on like we were suppose to. Isn't he amazing!!

Isn't this adorable! There was a cute gingerbread house that you could walk through. Bear liked it so much he had to walk through twice.


We waited forever to go down this slide and poor Michele was at the bottom all alone waiting to take the pictures. I wish we had it on video, Kati and Bear both go stuck going down. Even still Bear wanted to go again.

Isn't this just beautiful.

Aren't they adorable in the coats. They give you a parka to borrow while you walk through and I am so glad. By the time we left our bodies were in pain from the cold. Hours later poor Michele's thumb still hadn't recovered. I do have to share this funny story...Notice how Bear's hands can't be seen, this was his second jacket, the first was even bigger. I thought he was so cute I couldn't stop laughing but Bear had different feelings, "They're doing this to be mean to me!"