Even After All She Had Been Through!

I took this video of Alexis the night they arrived.  Even after a hurried trip to the airport, her first plane flight and horrible, long, snowy trip to our house, she was still in a great mood. Mom was sitting over by her and Alexis though that Grandma was the best thing ever!!

Of Course There Would Be A Blizzard!!

 Happy Baby!

 Jack and Lexi!

 Ummm, yeah this plasma car is totally cool!!

 Jack feeding Lexi

 Carter feeding Lexi!  She was such a good sport!

 Best Buddies!

 Aren't we just the cutest bunch!

 Livy and Lexi

 Michael reading to Lexi

 My family, Melissa and Lexi, my brother Todd, my grandma and grandpa, and my mom!

 My dad reading Carter's favorite books to him.

 The kids hanging out at the pool and Uncle Todd's hotel.

Alexis taking a rest on Uncle Todd before her big flight home to Colorado

Two weeks ago we had our first major blizzard of the season and OF COURSE that was the week all of my family was coming to visit.  The last time we all tried together in Iowa was 4 years prior and that time there was a blizzard in Denver that trapped my sister at home there and my brother and his wife at the airport there!  At fist Melissa's flight was cancelled and she re booked for Thursday from Tuesday.  But she was going to rent a car and was mom's ride up here so I sent Jason off in the blizzard to retrieve mom from Des Moines.  He had been on the road less than an hour when my sister called and said she had gotten on a flight (she had been on standby).  She wasn't even packed so she was running around trying to get ready because she hadn't found out with much notice.  Since I had already gotten Alexis' diapers, food and formula I figured if she forgot something we could survive.  Mom arrive around 1 in Des Moines but her a Jason had to wait around til 4:30 for Melissa and Alexis.  Oh, and we had decided at that point that Melissa was not going to rent a car due to the weather, but she had planned on renting a carseat with the car (cringe) so now we had no carseat.  I could have sent one, but remember Jason was already on the road.  So I called the Ankeny Wal-Mart and had them pick out the carseat I had seen online, put Jason's name on it and put it at customer service for him to stop and get.  The whole afternoon I was frantic that Melissa's flight would get cancelled or redirected as the storm got worse.  As it got time to land I called Jason and begged!!!! him and the others to get a hotel and not try to drive back.  Long story short, 4.5 hr of blizzard driving later they made it home.  I have never been so worried in my life!!  After that we enjoyed a fabulous rest of the week with our house guests.  It was so nice to have a baby in the house again!!  Alexis was a perfect angel the whole time and the only time I ever heard her really start crying was when Uncle Jason was changing her!  She even took to us all right away, even though I had warned the kids she might not like us at first.  We had not seen her in six months!  My brother and his wife arrived on Thurs and we all just enjoyed some wonderful family time together!  Of course as usual the time went too fast!

Happy Day After Valentine's Day!

Had some technical difficulties yesterday getting these loaded (okay really I lost my cord to hook my camera to my computer) but better late than never.  The 5th graders were deemed to old, much to my dismay, to hand out Valentines so Michael was kind enough to pose with the after school snack I made them so he could be in the post to!  Daddy was working last night so I got to spend it with 4 of my favorite people on this earth!  We had lasagna and watched a movie together and had a wonderful evening!!

The Ever Changing Porch!!

When we bought are house, we really like the front porch.  I would call it then a 3 season porch.  It wasn't really functional in the winter but during the rest of the time it was.  We have used it for so many different things it is hard to count.  I LOVE change and am always rearranging and moving things around in our house.  The porch was always a good sport.  Sometimes, I am afraid it was simply a place to put "stuff".  I hated that though because you had to come in it to get in our house!  When I did daycare, it was a nice big area for the kids to play when it wasn't too cold out!  We have even had a hockey table and big basketball hoop out there!  After the hail storm we were given some money from insurance for the porch. Part for the roof that leaked, but mostly because we had to take everything out of the house that way because are sliding glass door was shattered and boarded up.  This meant there was a lot of glass and other stuff that was tracked through.  Anyway, we decided to try to make it a more useful space and divided the porch up.  We left an over sized hallway coming into the house, and created a room on each side.  One room is a bit larger than the other.  For awhile Michael wanted his bedroom out there, but then he decided he wanted to move back upstairs.  So....to my point.....I decided to take Michael's old room area and create a scrapbook room out there.  So far all my stuff is out there, but not organized yet.  Oh, and when we made the rooms, we raise the floors and insulated them and piped heat out there.  The other side was lacking purpose still.  Today I was bored. It is really boring not being able to talk!!  So I took on a new project.  I created a toy room for Carter.  Our house is only so big, our basement isn't really that finishable and so some (alot) of Carter's toys were in our living room.  Also his playhouse was just in storage because we had run out of room for it.  That extra room on the porch seemed like a perfect area and HE LOVES IT!  The whole time since I got it done today he keeps saying "thank you mommy for giving me my own room!"  He has been out there playing for hours!  He absolutely loves "role playing" best.  So I put the house, kitchen and workbench out there for him.  I still have some ideas for it, and I need to paint it, but for now it is a good thing.  This spring we had already decided we needed to put in new windows out there, so that should help it stay even warmer.  I can honestly say now that I don't think there is hardly one space of this house that we have not utilized!!

WARNING-May fall under the label of graphic and TMI

Okay so I thought it would be appropriate to post these pictures from today!  Before and After of my vocal cord.  You can see the polyp on the left and then it is gone!! That clearness at the bottom with all the bubbles around it is the breathing tube.  I didn't think they would be able to put one in, guess I was wrong!!

Not really sure why the right side cord is so much thicker than the other. Guess I will ask him when I go back in two weeks!  He will take pictures again then! Cannot wait to see what my voice ends up sounding like.  It has been hoarse for so long, I really don't remember.  And also cannot wait to sing in church again!  That is one of my favorite things and I haven't been able to do it because my vocal cords couldn't vibrate well enough to do it. Do be mistaken, I cannot really carry a tune, I just like to sing the songs!

Almost Wordless Wednesday

What I found one day when I walked into the living room!  Poor Lucky he is such a good sport!

Another trip down memory lane!

After we have got all that snow last night I was missing summer a bit!  I decided I would post another -6mos ago today- picture. As you can tell this was all from one vacation! Since where we picked Michael up only an hour or so away from Virginia Beach we had to include a day there before we headed out.  This particular day was gorgeous.  Although it was a little overcast when we got there, the temp was around 90s and we had a blast.  It was even a high tide day, which the kids really enjoyed!  Jason ran across the street and bought them some boogie (?) board and they enjoyed riding the waves on them!  Carter really enjoyed playing in the sand.  One of our other favorite things was looking for seashells. We found quite a few.  I had been to the ocean once when I was young but didn't really remember it.  No one else had seen the ocean before.  We certainly were surprised on how actually salty the water was!  Needless to say we had a great time, stayed hours longer than we had planned, didn't get to Jason's uncles house in KY til 2 in the morning, and had a lot of sand that needed to be cleaned out of the van.  I certainly hope we can get back there someday!