Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas!!

We are so excited for Christmas around here!! This is the first year we have been alone as a family in our own home!! We have loved getting to spend Christmas morning with our family all these years (either at their homes or ours) but are looking forward to it just being us in the morning. :)

I have monkey bread sitting in the fridge and ready to be popped in the oven as soon as we wake up.

Today was such a fun and relaxing day. We had no last minute shopping to do so we had the whole day to just be together. I have been wanting to snap a few pics of the kids with their Christmas clothes on so today we did just that.



Does she not look like such a big girl in these pics!?!?




That was just a few of the fun pics we got today. Unfortunately we weren't able to get any with us all together because we couldn't find anywhere to set our camera down. Boo...
But, i've already asked a sweet friend (who is a great photographer :)) to take some family pics after the holidays. So looking forward to that!!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!! I've gotta go snuggle with Santa. :)

Thursday, December 23, 2010

The Week of Christmas

We have spent the majority of the last week chillin around the house in our jammies. Watching lots of movies, baking and eating lots of sweets, snuggling, and playing.

After being sick with colds and sinus infections for the last few weeks Andon goes and gets the darn flu! Poor guy got really sick for 2 days then felt somewhat better for a couple of days and then threw up in the middle of the night and then felt better again. I think he's in the clear now. Fortunately Jared, Adelyn and I never got it!

We'll be spending Christmas morning here at home as a family then heading over to where our parent's live to spend the next couple of days with them.

I absolutely love this time of year!!!

But one mistake I made this year was to "bake" some Christmas gifts. I've only done it once, years ago before Jared and I got married and it wasn't the best idea then. Not that the stuff is just plain nasty. I just get really stressed about the whole thing. I feel like I have to deliver the stuff within an hour of it coming out of the oven and the longer I wait to give it the more stressed I get!! And not to mention the fact that I chose to make things that I have never made before. (Truffles and Toffee) Not a good idea people. Even though, oddly enough, the things I made that I never made before people have been loving and the other things that I usually make I haven't heard anything about. ;)

Anyways, I like the whole baking at Christmastime. It reminds me of when I was little. The smell, the tastes and just being in the kitchen together making all of it. Just not so sure about the gifting of the baked goods idea.






Andon and I did the gingerbread house this year. Daddy wasn't able to help but I think it turned out great anyway. :)

Addie in her jammies.... We haven't had any problems with her trying to mess with the Christmas tree. I think because we have a train going around it she doesn't want to cross the tracks! :)

Saturday, December 18, 2010

My Sis


I'm just missing her so much. It has been a year and four months since I last had my arms around my sister. We were only supposed to be driving to Florida to bring her kids back to their Dad.

But she had other plans.

I've gone to visit her in the jail she's in but it wasn't what I had expected. They make you visit through TV monitors, she was in a totally separate building. I could see the place where she was which made it so much harder knowing that she was right there.

Unfortunately we took Andon to see her and that was very confusing to him. He has asked to see her again but we're not taking him. I put him on the phone when she calls and they write letters back and forth.

Her birthday is December 28th and I have an appointment to visit her again. I really am looking forward to seeing her face and finally introducing her to Adelyn.

Jamie was there with me through the hardest part of the infertility. She and I would cry together while I was aching for another child. She truly hurt for me and with me.

And that story is nothing short of amazing! When I returned home to Tennessee without her (we lived there at the time, have since moved back to Florida) I found out that I was pregnant! After 3 and 1/2 years of trying to conceive!

We had had Jamie living with us for over a year and that was her third time living with us. But this time was different, she had made tremendous progress. She held a job for the first time in years, she got her GED!!!!! for goodness sakes! We were SO proud of that accomplishment for her! She was attending regular NA and AA meetings. She was growing and changing and it was awesome to see.

But her addictions ended up winning in the end. She is still awaiting trial for the crimes she committed. When that day comes I will be there to take a stand for her and be a witness to the person that I know she is.

Monday, December 13, 2010

8 Months Old

Adelyn has changed SO much since the last post I wrote about her. She was 6 months old and we were just starting to try to get her on a sleep schedule.

Well, it was only a couple of weeks later and she started taking 2 - 2 hour naps a day and sleeping through the night!! It seemed like such a hard thing but once I was able to stick to my guns and not go get her as soon as she whined, we were good to go. She goes to bed at 7pm every night and is up at 7am every morning.

She loves to stand! She will pull on on anything and just stand there, if she falls, she gets right back up. She has stood all on her own a few times but it is still easier to pull up on something. She cruises along the furniture a little and for some reason her crawling has changed. Instead of the typical crawl on all fours she crawls with one knee and one foot on the floor! It is very funny!


I still breastfeed her as well as give her baby food. She pretty much likes anything we've given her so far. She also loves snacking on Cheerios and those little puffy stars. She is now sitting in a high chair at the dinner table. For the last few months we had her in a Bumbo seat on the table but once she could pretty much just get right out of it, it was time to change!

She has signed "food" and "more food" a few times. We're still working on those but it is so fun to be able to communicate like that with her.

I love these fun pics that Jared snapped of her and I last Sunday after church...



She is just the happiest little baby! I couldn't be more thankful than I am for her. Just not possible! :)

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Pics with Santa 2010

This morning I took my littles to see Santa Clause at the mall. Almost every year we have gone to the Millennia Mall because the Santa there is awesome. But this year I just didn't feel like it. (We have been sick around here for the last week and still feel pretty crummy.) We were there a week ago and the line was about an hour long. Last year, like crazies, we waited in line for 3 hours to see him! So this morning Andon asked "are we going to the long or the short one!?" haha! :)

Here they are waiting for Santa...


Andon has been so interested in Santa this year. Asking lots of questions and wanting to know whether he is real or not. All I ever say is "what do you think?" So when Santa came walking out this morning I saw him inspecting and watching, trying to decide what he thinks.

To my surprise, Santa came right over to Andon. He asked his name and invited him and Adelyn over to talk.

He was so very sweet and kind to my kids. It was adorable! He asked Andon what he would like for Christmas this year and Andon tell's him The Joker Castle. Well, he told me last week that he was going to ask Santa for Lego World Racers!! So that is what Santa already got! Guess we'll be going to the store again. :)


I was able to take my own pics and as many as I wanted to. Love that! After Andon had a chance to talk with him we put Adelyn on his lap too. She didn't have a problem with it at all! She was very interested in him and what this was all about.


These are my favorites... :)


When we are all done, Santa asked Andon if he could have a big hug. He told Andon that it made his day to meet him today and that he was a very special boy. It was so sweet!

And the verdict is in... As we were walking away he say's "oh yeah, he's real Mom and he made my day too!" :)

Friday, December 3, 2010

Time


It has gotten away from us this week. We have all been so sick around here all week! It started with Adelyn and then quickly struck the rest of us.

It's ok though because I have gotten lots of snuggles from both of my busy little ones. Andon seems to think he's too old for that stuff now and Adelyn is just not much of a snuggler. Boo.

Somehow Andon and I were able to get 2 weeks of school done this week!! Woo Hoo! We brought the school work out of the classroom and did a lot of it on the couch and living room floor. It's nice to have a change of scenery sometimes.


And see these test scores he got today! (i know the handwriting's a bit messy but sometimes that happens when he's done a lot of writing all at once. :))



And speaking of time flying, Adelyn turns 8 months old tomorrow! I wasn't able to write a 7 month old post because we were in the hospital for Andons's last surgery. So I have a lot to catch up on here about her sweet self.

Looking forward to relaxing this weekend with my little family. I think we may go out and get our Christmas tree, if we're all feeling up for it. I know i'd love to have it set up for us all to look at and lay under and smell already!! So hopefully, we'll see. :)

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

My Goodness

I hate it when weeks go by without me writing a single post! I am not sure who reads this blog other than a friend or two and my Mom whenever she can. But, I absolutely love looking back on the last couple of years with my sweet ones here.

So......

I am really gonna commit to posting at least 2 to 3 times a week. Even if it's only photos of Andon and Adelyn. They are growing and changing right before my eyes!! Please make it stop! I ask Andon all the time to stay the age he's at. When he was younger he would ask if that was possible, now he say's "no way, I want to be a teenager!" Great. This post is gonna be all over the place but I have a few things to catch up on!

Andon had a major reconstructive surgery a month ago. They took bone off of his skull to build his cheekbones where they were deficient. This was a surgery that has been somewhat planned and talked about since his birth. It always felt so far away and all of a sudden we found ourselves here. I was and wasn't ready for it. I knew it was going to somewhat change the way he looked and that was what I struggled with. He is my baby and I think perfect just the way he is. But Jared and I have to make decisions for Andon's life and this was one of those decisions. This surgery would give his face some more symmetry and lift his eyes where they were somewhat slanted due to the lack of bone. Trust me though, those eyes were then and still are just precious. Oh I love my boy!! So now we are a month away from this surgery and he is doing wonderful. He is still slightly swollen in places and we can expect changes in him through the next coming months. Just this week he is able to resume normal physical activity which has probably been the hardest thing! He is an active little boy!

I have one picture I want to post. Andon had to be cut from ear to ear so they had to shave is head from ear to ear. Well, Daddy gave himself the same haircut so him and Andon would be the same. Trust me when I say if he could have been cut too he would have! We feel honored that God chose us to be Andon's parents. That He trusts us enough with His precious gift. I never feel that more than when Andon has a surgery. The whole time he is away from me I am in constant prayer and thanking God for Andon and telling Him that he is your's Lord before he is mine, I trust you in this situation. We are SO Thankful for our boy and all that God has done in and through him!

Now here's the picture of the awesome haircuts being sported around here!


Thanksgiving was last week and we had my family over. We pretty much go back and forth each year between the families. But this year my Father in Law joined us as well. My sister and her kids came over the night before so we could do some prep cooking and my Mama got here a little early that day so she could help with the things I had no clue about (stuffing and giblet gravy!) Which by the way is very good but this year I bit into something (i think liver, ahhhhhh) and i'm not sure i'll ever eat it again. But who knows, i'll probably forget all about that scary taste by next Thanksgiving. Either way, I only snapped a few pics that day but here are two of my faves.

My sweet Addie girl on her first Thanksgiving...

And her with my niece Briana.

I know these photos look totally different but I am teaching myself how to use photoshop and trying out all sorts of new things on pictures. :)

Hmmm, now what. Well, we find ourselves in the month of December!! We have started the Christmas decorating process but aren't finished yet. We like to buy real trees and didn't want to have a dead tree on Christmas morning so we will be getting that this Friday. But Andon's tree is up in his room and we have a few decorations around the house. I will post pics when we finish. One fun thing we like to do is get new Christmas p.j's to wear while we decorate with the smell of cookies in the background. (yeah, about that.... we have been making cookies so much lately that I have just been making batches of dough and leaving it in the fridge for when we want to just bake a few! This could lead to some serious trouble!)

Anyways, here's some pics of me and my girl in our jams. Jared and Andon just got pants because they get really hot at night. :)


(please excuse the squirelly look in my eyes in these pics. i foolishly decided to stay awake all night with some friends for black friday shopping this year and this was the day after! not sure if i'll ever do that again.)

And last but not least.. I told you this post would be all over the place!

Here's my sweet guy and his Jedi sword. He drew a bunch of Jedi swords and cut them out to fight me with. The kid loves Star Wars! He is constantly talking about it and asking questions and I have NO CLUE what he is talking about. But that's ok, I can hold my own with the sword! :)

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Getting Out!

The kids and I have been couped up in our house since Andon had his surgery a week and a half ago. Except for the day we went back to Tampa for a post op appointment. Which by the way went very well. Andon had to have some stitches taken out and the Dr. said everything looked great! We will write a whole other post regarding Andon and this last surgery. This was his 13th surgery or so and he did so great (as he usually does.) We are so proud of our boy and so glad that he doesn't have any more until his early teens.

So yesterday we decided to go on a family bike ride around the neighborhood. Adelyn is now big enough to ride on the bike seat on my bike!! I am so happy about that. I loved riding around with Andon in there and now I get to have her there too. So fun! I snapped a couple pics of my peeps before we headed out on our 20 min excursion. haha Really though, the weather is so beautiful right now. We enjoyed our little bike ride so much that we later loaded the kids up in the wagon and went around again! :)



As you can see we finally gave the blog a new look!! We had the title "The Three of Us" and that just doesn't work anymore! :) So yesterday Jared and I (I didn't really do much besides pick out the stuff I like for it) made the new header. I still have things I want to do but it all takes so much time so i'll get it done when I can. Hope you like what we've done so far! :)

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Pumpkin Patch

Today I took the kids to a little pumpkin patch down the road. I had been planning on going for the past few weeks and time just got away from me! No biggie though because today was the the perfect day for us to go. I wasn't really planning on buying any pumpkins since Andon is having surgery next week and they would just go bad anyways. (I just wanted to get the kids pics taken with all the beautiful pumpkins!) But Andon had some birthday money in his pocket from his Papa and he insisted on buying one for him and one for Adelyn. So sweet!

So we walked through all the aisles looking for the perfect ones. He spotted one for her right away. He took quite a bit longer looking for his. The patch was pretty raked over but still plenty of good choices. :)

Every time I would put Adelyn down with the pumpkins she would pick one up and start biting it! Little thing puts everything in her mouth!


As we were leaving they asked Andon if he also wanted to take a white pumpkin. They said they aren't great for carving so he could take it home and paint it or color it with markers. Unfortunately I don't have any pic of the final product. Andon colored a face on it then gave it arms and legs and wrote on it's forehead ~ Andon's friend. He named it scarer! It is very funny and he wanted it to watch a movie with him during his quiet time today! The thing is huge so I said scarer had to stay in the school room. :)

Here's a few more pics from the pumpkin patch. I couldn't really get Adelyn to look at me. Every time she did it was so bright that she would quickly look back down. But I am happy with the pics I did get and I'm SO happy we were able to make it to the patch this year!!!




Happy Fall Everyone!