A Special Surprise 5th Birthday!

We planned a fun, surprise birthday for John Michael's 5th birthday.  He didn't even know until that morning of his birthday that we were leaving to go get on a plane to head to Panama City for his birthday!  We woke them up and let him open gifts and blow out a candle.  His last gift was sunscreen, sunglasses, and a book about the ocean and then we tried to get him to put it all together that we were going!

To say that they were excited was an understatement!  We already had everything packed, in the car, and ready to go (even their breakfast that they ate on the way to the airport!)

We have a small airport so everything is so easy to get checked in and get through security.

We were ready to take off!

We had a small layover in Dallas, and then on to the beach! We watched a movie on the floor at our gate while Jordan got us Chili's To-Go and we ate that just hanging out on the floor watching the movie.  Kind of gross, but it worked for us!

By our second flight, Noah was not happy.  Every time we walked onto the plane he would just try to get out and say no, no, no!  He fell asleep and eventually did fine.  He did much better on the return flights (sort of!).

Jordan's mom picked us up at the airport.  I LOVE the beach so I was SO excited to be at the beach for a few days!!

I have not been to Panama City since I was in 6th grade and I didn't know a lot about it at all.  We stayed at "Splash!" and had a great time.

I mean, when this is your view, how in the world can you complain about anything.  What a blessing to be ON the beach and see this!

We went out to eat and then opened presents and did John Michael's cake after dinner.  The boys were SO tired by the end of the day.

I love surprises so it was so fun to plan this and not tell them!  We had a great time and the boys traveled so wonderfully.  It was a fun way to celebrate our oldest turning 5!  I still can't believe he is 5.  The time has flown by, but it's been such a sweet few years at our house.  John Michael will start kindergarten at a private Christian school next school year.  I am so proud of him!  More beach pics to come!

SO Biiiiig!

How did Noah get so big?!

I can't believe he will be TWO in a few weeks!  It's crazy!  Love this little blessing!

Easter 2013

 We had a wonderful Easter this year!  We didn't have any family to celebrate with, but we had a great day of worship, food, and later in the day, celebrating with friends.

John Michael came to big church with us!

We came home for lunch, a nap, and then we were off to a friend's for an egg hunt!

The boys had a VERY fun time, as did we!  It's nice to get together with friends for a holiday, especially when you don't have family close by!  We had a great day of celebrating the Lord's resurrection and what it means to us as Christians.  It was a neat time to talk to the boys about what HE did for us and why it was so special and important!  I've heard that Christmas is definitely important for Christians, but that Easter is the big show!  What a special thing to celebrate that we get to be with HIM forever.  It's amazing!

January 2013 Review

We started our new year out by taking a quick trip back home to Alabama for a short week before the boys started back to school.

After our regular activities and preschool started back we added a swim class on Monday mornings for Matthew.  He started out not doing so great for his coach, but he's gotten better and better each week!  Noah and I also started a Mommy n Me swim class and it has been SO fun!  I have love swimming with him each week. He smiles and laughs the whole time and it's just a neat time for just us two to bond a little.  They all love the water so much!

It seems like we did have a few nice sunny days in January and we took advantage of it!  It's hard to be in the house so much with kids during the winter, so if it's warm, we go out!

We did some fun things like water play....

Or truck and rice sensory play.

More park time!

Goodness, Matthew is so cute!

Matthew and John Michael started really working on learning their states in their states puzzle.  They have done such a great job with them and they know all of them.  I'm so proud!

We went to the drive through Safari one sunny Saturday.  We love is every time we go!

We went inside the barn but our boys were more interested in the cat than anything!

Matthew asked us if he could ride Jewel the camel and we said yes!  Jordan rode it with him.

We had a n afternoon snack on the Crystal Bridges trail with cookies and oranges!

And we visited the LOVE statue in front of the museum.  I love our museum and the new, beautiful trails!

It was a fun and cold January!

Of Tonsils, Adenoids, and Viruses!

Life just keeps moving and it never stops, does it?!

I had a New Year's Resolution to make sure I blogged more and as you can see, that hasn't really happened.

I hope to get back to blogging about things that have gone on in January and February but this past week has been a really hard one.  A few months ago we started wondering if Matthew was having snoring/sleeping problems.  I happened to notice his tonsils looked enlarged, but not red and inflamed. I mentioned it to the doctor and he referred us to our ENT.  He determined his adenoids/tonsils were, in fact, enlarged. We also had a sleep study that proved that Matthew was having a lot of severe apnea with dips in his O2 levels during the night (umm, hello, scary!).

This made a lot of sense to us and we felt like a lot of pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together with lot of behavioral problems we had been having with Matthew.  Our guess was that he was not being able to get into a deep sleep and was walking around exhausted every day.

Tuesday he had his tonsils and adenoids taken out and had a tube placed in one ear that would just not clear up all fall and winter.

  

This was a HUGE deal for me to hand my baby over for surgery.  I was so nervous and I had so many friends and family praying for us.  It went really well and the Lord took care of what I was most nervous about...handing him over to go back to the OR.  The nurses were great and they let him watch Cars 2 and they wheeled him off and he did just fine.  I was so nervous that he would scream and cry and call for us, but thankfully, he didn't.  It was a  quick surgery and it went well.  We stayed and recovered for most of the afternoon and then headed home.  I got lots of snuggles in, so that was kind of nice even though it wasn't in the way I would have wished!

For the first 2 days things went well and we thought he was just doing wonderfully, and then we got hit hard with his recovery and on top of that he caught a flu-type virus on top of everything.  I have never felt so sorry for him in all my life. Luckily, we had family n town for the part of this but it has been a hard few days for me as I take care of him and try to take care of the other boys too.  We did end up with a late-night ER trip when his fever just would not come down. Even Noah came down with a fever on Friday but his didn't last long.

Even with sick little ones, life goes on.... The boys are out of school for Spring Break so we've been playing, eating lots of ice cream and popsicles, taking tons of Tylenol and Motrin, watching movies, doing puzzles, playing chutes and ladders, and Candy Land. Although it snowed today, we have had a few good days so we have played out back and played with worms and lady bugs (before Matthew got very sick).

Don't squish the worm!

The hardest part of the past few days of Matthew's recovery was just him being in so much pain during the night.  I stayed right on top of the Motrin/Tylenol but he was in so much horrible pain and just screaming so much during the night.  It just hurt my heart so badly.  I finally called the doctor and just demanded that we be able to have something else .  I got them to call us in lidocaine lollipops and a steroid for the inflammation.  This has seemed to do the trick and I'm happy to report we are through the worst of this!  I mainly write this down so that I can remember what happened.

It's strange to walk in the boys' room at night to check on them and I can't even hear Matthew.  He's not really snoring anymore and his breathing is so quiet, so I know the surgery was definitely a good call.  It was a hard call but a good call for him.

Noah knew brother needed to be comforted.

 Feeling better!