Recent Happenings

March marks a year since Susannah's DS. She's had several checkups lately, and everything checks out good! Her pacemaker is functioning properly, her mitral valve leaks moderately (down from severely), and she's down to only two medications, as of last week. We get 4 months off from seeing the cardiologist! This will be the longest we have ever gone without seeing one of her heart doctors. She's learning and growing and getting bigger and stronger every day!

Timothy got to experience Myositis a few weeks ago. He had run a fever for two days without any other symptoms, and then about 2 days after he couldn't walk. His calf muscles hurt too much. Apparently this can cause bad enzymes to be released in the blood and can cause kidney damage. We got to go to the emergency room twice, per Dr.'s orders, to have his blood drawn. Our pediatrician was very surprised they didn't admit him the first night. The treatment is just rest and IV fluids. So we pushed fluids for several days at home. His blood work came back all normal last week! Yay!

Grandpa Riffel came down a couple weeks ago to put together the kids playset. He worked on it for four solid days and finished all but the crow's nest!! The kids have been out every single day since playing and swinging on it! So thankful he was able to come and do that!

Leigh is repairing/replacing/updating the master bathroom shower. He has been hard at work at that. He has two-ish walls torn up, replaced the drain/pipe going to the drain, and laid cement. It's slow going.

The kids and I went to Dothan for the weekend. My sisters came over Sat. morning and stayed through to Sunday. We went to Spring Farm day at Landmark park. It's a small farm with several historical buildings they've moved there. They open the buildings and do several demonstrations and stuff in the spring and fall. It was so much fun and took me back to my childhood!! :) Josiah's souvenirs include, a corncob, a nail from the blacksmith, wool from the sheep shearing, and a circle of a tree that he and Luke sawed off.
Mom and Dad are on a trip, so we weren't able to see them.

The kids are working hard at school. Looking forward to being done for the summer!!

Caleb is 16 months old and says many more words than any of the other kids did at his age! He is a busy, busy little guy that makes many, many messes every single day! He is a lot of work! But he's so cute and happy!!

Our Interesting Day.....

Our day started quite normally with the kids getting up far too early, started school, got to a good pausing point, went to the store, came home, ate lunch, got the kids going strong in finishing their school day, and I decided to go outside and start taking the giant overgrown philodendron vines down out of the tree in the backyard. I got dressed, got my tennis shoes on, opened the garage door, and almost walked out of the garage and there was a SNAKE in my driveway!!! I don't DO snakes!!! So, like the responsible adult I am, I closed the garage door and went inside and got my camera!! He watched me very closely while I took his picture, and then I closed the garage door and went inside. I was DONE outside!! It was kind of neat because he was out in front of the house, so the kids could watch him from the windows. Then he went in front of the living room windows and there were THREE snakes all slithering around! ICKY, ICKY, ICKY!!! Luke declared he was going to have nightmares and not going to play outside any more, Emily thought maybe she might go outside after a few days, and Josiah decided all the snakes were eating each other!

Watching the snakes took a good portion of our afternoon, and then Leigh came home early from work!! That was a nice surprise. Since I was motivated and had my shoes on, and felt slightly braver with him helping me, we went out back to work on the vines. It was entertaining and we had a few Tarzan moments! :)

We didn't quite get all the vines down. They're pretty stuck up in the top where we can't reach. Kind of hoping maybe they'll die and fall out since we've cut them. As we were pulling some of the vines out to the curb, my tennis shoe fell apart!!

And that was our exciting day! I know, it's just sooooo thrilling, but compared to most of our days, it was quite entertaining!! :) :)

In other news, Susannah sat up two times today all by herself, and she doesn't scoot on her tummy any more, she does her best to crawl. It's kind of like an inchworm, by walking her feet/knees up and falling forward. Sometimes she puts her head down and scoots with her head down and hiny up! She's so funny! We keep waiting for her to turn a flip.

A FUN DAY!

We had a very fun day on Monday. First off I went to the high-risk doctor and that went fine. The appointment was for 8:00am so I asked Leigh if he minded staying with the kids and going into work late, and he was fine with that. The high-risk doctor is 5-10min from our house and it was a quick appointment, so I was home by 8:30, which was nice. I had the kids pick up the living room and family room and then they got their swimsuits on and took them to a splash pad park thing not far from the house. There was one other day I was going to take them, but we drove by and it was packed with kids, so I thought if we went in the morning there wouldn't be too many other people. There were a couple other kids there when we got there, but by the time we left the parking lot was full and that little place was hopping! They seemed to have a great time! Timothy played on the little playground area while the others played in the water, and it wasn't until the end and I made him get in that he finally got wet and enjoyed the water part too.

After the water park we came home, they got baths, ate lunch, and then we watched a movie together. After that it was nap time and then supper time. After supper I took Luke and Emily to the library's summer reading program kick off. THAT was quite entertaining! They held it on the front lawn and had a DJ playing loud annoying music, a photo booth, a goody bag and then they had the kids hula hooping, doing the limbo and the chicken dance!! It was hysterical. Luke and Emily had  a great time because they got to learn how to hula hoop! Anyways, when it was almost over we went inside to check out some more books. I kept waiting for them to do something more organized, but it was basically just playing! Emily was really cute getting her books. It was only the second time we had been to this library, but she knew right where the books were that she wanted to check out and had them ready to go in under five minutes. Luke was still picking out his first one! :) This library is the Plantation library and isn't far from our house, so I'm hoping that we'll get to it more often since it's not out of the way.
Over all the kids seemed to really enjoy themselves!

News Flash

Emily learned how to ride her bike over the weekend! I had worked with her a little before we moved, but she would get whiny, and I would get frustrated, so I was going to let Leigh help her. She was very close. In our new house, the bikes get to stay on the back patio, so they can easily take them in the yard and ride them. (The rental house, they were hung from the ceiling in the laundry room and I couldn't get them down by myself.) So, Luke's been helping her!! It took her all of a day and now she's as fast, if not faster than Luke is!! Which is typical Emily fashion-taking off and trying to do better than Luke!
Interesting little fact: Luke learned to ride his bike on Grandmommy's birthday, September a year ago, and Emily learned to ride on Grandpa C.'s birthday, Saturday, Feb.2.

Happenings

Well, I didn't realize it had been a year since I last posted anything. A lot has gone on, mostly good! Trying to think back as to what we did that long ago. I think the kids and I went to Dothan in March.In April we went on "Spring Break" to St. Simon's Island and met up with Dana and her kids. We had a blast!! We had a sunrise service with baptism at the beach in April for Easter. The end of May we went to Dothan to pick up a friend to intern at our  church down here, and ended up swinging over to Pensacola to attend a funeral for a friends baby-very sad. Leigh was able to go with us on that trip because was over the weekend and combined with Memorial Day! June was a super busy month. The church had four interns that went out door to door almost every day, and the last week we had VBS. After July 4th, the kids and I took Norian back to Dothan and spent a week there. In August, we went to Sanibel Island to celebrate our 10 year anniversary (which was in June). We took the kids with us and were beach bums for a day and a half. It was sooo much fun and I am looking forward to going back sometime!
Luke started school the end of July. We started him in the A Beka video streaming, and I have absolutely loved it!! He does his school mostly independently, which gives me more time to school Emily and Josiah. I started Emily and Josiah the beginning of August. Josiah's in K-4, so his doesn't require too much work. He's been doing a really good job and seems to enjoy it! We had a little bit of a problem with Luke not thinking I was his teacher, too and not wanting to do the work I assigned him, but we dealt with that and this second semester, he has really jumped in and been  doing an excellent job participating and getting his work done quickly. A lot of days he starts earlier than the rest of us, so he can get done and play! He started going to the orthodontist over the summer and in the Fall, we started a treatment plan due to the way his teeth and jaw are aligned. This past week they put in an expander on the top and bottom of his mouth. The top one is one that we turn twice a week with a special tool. It's to help the top of his mouth expand out because his upper jaw causes his upper teeth to sit slightly inside the lower teeth and jaw. The lower expander is expand the lower part a little so that his permanent teeth will have more room. All of his teeth are crowded and when the permanent ones have been coming they are awfully crooked. There would definitely be a problem later on, so they say the earlier the better to start fixing some of it. He has really been a trooper through all of it! I thought sure his teeth would be more sore and he would be complaining about it while eating and such, but he's only mentioned it a time or two. He has eaten a little bit slower, but it doesn't seem to bother him much at all. He's had tylenol once since getting all this new hardware in his mouth. I've been very pleased with how he's done!!
We bought a house!! Signed contract in October and moved in December. We're still getting moved in and settled. I should say we're settled fine, but we still have a ton of boxes to unpack. They're mostly in the garage. We've had the normal homeowners issues of having to fix random things that break, etc. The roof is older, so we had to get some estimates on it and a licensed roof inspector out to inspect it per our insurance, but it passed, so we have a couple years before we HAVE to get it replace, but we're so thankful it's not this month/year. There's a leak in the floor/wall in a bedroom on an outside wall that Leigh's been working on trying to find the cause and fix. He's pretty sure it's related to how the sprinkler system hits it or something. Then he got new tires on the car and was informed his brakes were bad, so he replaced those, then he changed the oil on the car and van and realized two or the motor mounts on the van, that he just replaced had cracked  clean through, so now he has to replace those again. He feels like it's never ending. I've been trying not to ask him to help me move things in the house cause he's so busy already. But maybe I will ask him to hang my two big pictures! :)
In October we got to go to Orlando and meet Dana and her kids and go to Sea World. That was a super fun treat! We were offered a place to stay for free and Dana was offered free tickets from a friend!! That doesn't happen very often, and we had so much fun!!
We went to Dothan for the Peanut Festival Parade in November, and Mom and Dad and I actually took the kids to the fair! It was a lot of fun, and the kids seemed to really enjoy it! We don't usually go to the fair, just the parade, so it was a fun treat! In December we went to Pensacola for Christmas and had a nice time. We got to see some friends and Leigh's brother and family a couple times and hang out with my sisters and parents. It wasn't too cold, just a little chilly a couple days, so that was nice. Came back home and finished moving everything out of the rental and cleaned it and got settled in our new home.
I think that about brings us up to now. Very thankful for how God has blessed us and the fun things we got to do last year and family and friends we got to see! So very thankful for our new house, too! It's so nice to finally have a little more space!
If you're on Facebook, you can see all the pictures that should go with all our trips, etc. I tried to find them and add a few, but I couldn't get them to work!

Play

Timothy has learned to climb in and out of the stero cabinet. Today, Josiah climbed in with him and Timothy was not pleased, so I made Josiah get out. I'm not quite sure how Josiah got in without hurting Timothy, but he sure did!! Timothy also has two new teeth coming in on the top on either side of the two middle ones. He stood up today from bending over on a toy. He's standing for longer periods of time. Luke and Emily have learned to roller skate! They've been going outside almost every day and "practicing." They're doing pretty well! I need to take them down to the park and see how they do. Maybe we'll do that this weekend!!

kiddos

The kids are doing very well in school. Some days are harder than others to keep Josiah occupied. There was one week he kept snitching food out of the kitchen. (My dad would say I should feed the kid!) I had made chocolate chip cookies - that was probably the problem - and they sat in a container on the cabinet. The cabinets in this house, excuse me, the countertops, in this house are not as deep or as tall as the ones in Pensacola, so if something is on it, Josiah can get a stool and easily reach it. That week he ate cookies, crackers that I had made for Timothy (although Timothy won't eat them), graham crackers out of the diaper bag, graham crackers off of Timothy's high chair tray, two of Emily's skittles, part of one of Luke's cookies at lunch, and drank out of everyone's water bottles. No, he's not starving, he gets plenty of food, I think he was just bored that week or something. I don't remember Luke or Emily ever snitching as much as he does.

Timothy started saying "uh-oh" a week or two ago. And, he uses it appropriately. He has started playing the "throw my food off my high chair and say uh-oh" game. It is very cute though. If he drops a toy while he's playing he says uh-oh, too. He was playing with a dinosaur at the coffee table the other day and it sounded like he was making it roar. He was making it "walk" down the table and he was doing a very good job!

Josiah entertaining himself at school with address labels

that we got in the mail.

Baby Update

Hee hee. Did that make anyone nervous for a minute??? hahaha.
Sorry. I'm probably the only one laughing :). So, my little baby turned 10 months old on the sixth!! I can't believe he's already 10 months old and growing up so fast! He has four teeth. Two bottom ones and two top ones. He has started standing for a few seconds at a time without holding onto anything. He crawls fast and loves going after and playing with his siblings. He learned to wave Bye-bye this week. It's really cute!! He uses both of his hands and he says something while he does it. I don't think any of the others waved bye until they were at least one. (No, he's not a genius). The development charts say that waving bye can start as early as 9 months, but I had never seen a little one do it until a few months before we left Pensacola.  There was a little girl in the nursery who was barely crawling, but she could sure wave! (She was cute, too.) He seems to be outgrowing his fussiness. He has been, by far, our fussiest baby. He has gotten to where he will play by himself without demanding to be held, and has learned to open cabinets, drawers, and pull out whatever is in them. So far, he hasn't emptied a dresser, but I'm sure that day is not far. :) He loves to take baths and splash in the water. He likes to climb onto the trundle bed and then stand up and reach for things on Luke's bed. He loves it when the kids play with him. A few days ago, he was the "sister" to Emily and Josiah according to whatever they were playing. Also, the past couple weeks, he has gotten to where he will be content with me while I hold him and let me rock him. I was sitting on the couch one day holding him and rocking him a little and he went to sleep!! I was surprised he did that. Usually if I'm holding him and he's tired, he just wants to nurse. A few nights ago, we were trying to put him to sleep and he sat and rocked with me for about 30 minutes. He never did go to sleep for me that night, but it was such a sweet cuddle time. He has been jabbering a little more lately, and he has gotten louder. He has started letting us know when he is displeased with things being taken away from him, usually when Josiah is playing with him. Josiah often doesn't think he is allowed to play with things and so tries to protect him by taking them away. They're actually quite funny to watch interact. He's a busy little guy and smiles a lot!! And I'm so glad he's coming out of the "fussy" stage!! Oh, I almost forgot, He has also started sleeping through the night!! Wahoo!! He still gets up about once or twice a week, but that's heaps better than two or three times every night!!
Take a few minutes this week to hug your babies tighter!! They grow up way too fast...

Beginning of School/ First day off

 We started school on August 29, which seems really late to me because we usually start the last week or last partial week of July. So I have been trying to do some extra lessons and such to "catch up" so that we're not doing school until the end of May. I like to finish near the beginning of May, usually just because I start getting ancy to get other things done, and the beach craving sets in about March/April when the weather starts getting warmer. So this past Friday, Sept. 30, we finished our first six weeks!! WOOHOO!! I'm not cramming in lessons, it came out to one extra lesson a week, which was doable, especially since the first few weeks are a lot of review. As a reward we took yesterday off. It was so nice to have a day off. We don't take holidays, except for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so all our days off are based on what I need to get done, or when I decide to go visit someone, or someone's sick, etc. I found last year, that the kids really enjoy looking forward to having a day off, and since we don't take holidays, they were missing out, because I would plan my schedule and tentatively plan a day off here or there, but not tell them, in case I changed my mind or I was able to fit school in along with the other things. I didn't realize this until towards the end of the year, so they only had like one or two days to look forward to, so I decided this year to try to make them a little more planned. They had a Great day, even though I didn't plan anything special or anything, it was just a day off. L had asked for the trains and track to be brought out a couple weeks before so they could play with it, but I wanted to get their room cleaned and reorganized, so I could get the tub down and leave it down, so we did that Monday morning and they played in their room very happily with the trains and track most of the day. Which made it very nice for me because I was hoping to get some sewing done and I was able to, and even got more done than I had planned!! I needed to make Emily a slip to go under some of her dresses, because it is very difficult to find little girls slips, and when you do it's hard to know what size to buy because they make things so short, so that's been on my sewing list for quite a while, so I was able to get that done. Then Luke only had one pair of summer pajamas and I had put them in the laundry and they were stuck in the laundry for three days (usually I try to wash them and dry them in the same day, so he can wear them again, but I got behind) so I had already decided I was going to make him some more pajama pants. I had two remnants of material that I had picked up somewhere along the way and I thought one of them would be long enough-it was a full yard, but due to the stripes, it wouldn't work for pants, but it would work for shorts. So after looking at them both, it ended up that I would have enough to make Luke shorts and matching shorts for Josiah and Timothy. They turned out cute and I was able to finish all three of them!! Leigh  even gave himself a little less to do. He called his recruiters and did a few of his job emails/application/stuff and then he worked on the church's website. HE's been doing their website since they started, but he's had ideas and such that he's wanted to add, take down, change, etc and just hasn't had the time. He hasn't had the time, or some of the info, to do it, so he took a few hours yesterday and worked on it. He seemed pleased with how it was going. I told Mom he had changed it, but I didn't realize he hadn't put it live yet. So if you read this Mom, it won't look different yet. :)  Anyways, we had a nice, fun, relaxing, yet productive day!!

 

Differences

I am fascinated by the differences between little boys and little girls! It is at times interesting, fascinating, annoying and at other times, Hilarious!

The kids and I were packing today to go to Grandpa and Grandmommy's house in Dothan (a 2 1/2 hr drive) for the weekend (left P'cola on Thursday after lunch, and leave Dothan on Sunday after lunch). Well, when L and E find out we're going to "Grandmommy's" house, they both have to pack their own "suitcases" (bookbags). I always make sure I go through them and discuss things with them and try to guide their choices.

The Difference:

L (our son)

• pajamas
• 1 pair underwear
• slippers
• book
• coonskin hat
• favorite car
• favorite stuffed animal
• toothbrush/toothpaste
• new toy phone

E (our daughter)

• pajamas
• slippers
• 2 dresses
• 3 skirts with shirts (of which only one matched :) )
• 3 pairs panties
• 3 pairs socks
• 3 pairs shoes
• hairbrush and comb
• misc small toys
• 3 baby dolls
• two extra little bags of baby doll accessories (blankets mostly and 3 bottles)
• baby doll bed
• 2 barrettes
• toothbrush in toothbrush holder
• and she wanted another bag to put one of her babies in

It just makes me laugh. And yet it really shows their personalities. L would wear the same clothes all weekend and it not phase him in the least, whereas E enjoys changing her clothes a couple times a day (although as she's gotten older, she's gotten much better with that). (although there are still a few days when she goes down for a nap in one outfit and when she gets up from her "nap" she is in a completely different outfit)

L also keeps one pair of clothes on the floor of his bedroom and that's what he wears each day until I specifically tell him to put it in the hamper ( which is usually every day, sometimes he's allowed to wear it more than one day in a row if we didn't do anything that day). E has all of her outfits that she has worn recently and pajamas (which are different every day) strewn about her room. Most days look like a tornado has gone through her clothes and left them laying about (we're working on it) :)

Anyways, I just think it's fascinating and quite Hilarious! They're so funny about it, too. We did discuss their choices, and we added several clothing options to Luke's bag and weeded out a few from Emily's bag, although she did still have an extra bag for her baby's stuff (and a spare pair of shoes) and she was allowed to bring her baby's bed (because we had room, and it's just sooo cute to see her play with it).

I love my kiddos!!!!!

Yay for T-BALL!!!!!!!!

T-ball

I love t-ball! Our church has an in-house t-ball league that they've done for two year, now, and it's so much fun for the kids to be able to get together with their friends and play. We practice once a week and all our games are on Saturdays. This year L is in the 6-8 year old age group and E is in the 3-5 year old age group. In the 3-5 year olds there were only enough kids signed up to make three teams, so about every third Saturday she gets to play two games in a row! They love it and I am so glad that we are able to have this opportunity for them to learn how to play with a team and to learn to have good sportsmanship!

Their numbers correspond with their ages.

Kids

I'm sitting at the computer listening to my kids play. I am so thankful that they play so well together. They are playing cars. L is using different voices for the cars and then E throws a little in. Ooops, Now I hear, JOSiiiiiiiAH. (I say, L he just want to play too). (sigh) "He messed up my track." Continued playing....... They're so funny to listen to. I want to bottle the moments up and treasure it, because I know in just a few short years, I'll be missing it.