Feast

Why am I not sleeping...I really don't know! I just downloaded a ton of pictures off my digital camera, and guess I felt the need to blog. I really wish I was more timely in my blogging, so I could better capture my memories. I think that will be a resolution for 2010! In the meantime, Alex had his annual Feast at his preschool last week. In thinking about his feast, I realized that this is his third Feast at St. John. Wow! Third, and last. Sad! What makes this feast special is that as 4-year olds or Pre-K, they have their feast at the back of the old sanctuary, instead of in the classroom. So all the classes ate together at big long tables. It was very nice to not be squished in the classroom...all the parents and all the children squeezed around a table designed for little kids: not so comfy! I love feast because they make all the cute Thanksgiving crafts...hats, clothes, placemats, macaroni necklaces, treats. Love it all! And it's the one day during the year that we get to eat with Alex at school. So fun. Also, we sat with his teacher, Ms. Sarah, so that was a treat as well.

When we arrived at the school, Alex was all dressed up and waiting patiently for us.

Alex and Roger as we waited for our turn to get some food.

Addison and I as we waited to eat.

Alex and his teacher, Ms. Sarah. He really loves his teacher this year. They seem to get along really well, and Ms. Sarah tells me how sweet Alex is at school. So thankful that he is sweet at school!

Thanks for Thanksgiving

Wow, I can't believe Thanksgiving is over! We had a really nice, small Thanksgiving celebration this year. I spent the morning cooking, and then we met my parents at my Grandmother's house. We ate a late lunch, enjoyed the Cowboys game and ate some more. I love that at Thanksgiving, and for the whole month of November, Alex and I have been talking about what we are thankful for...each other, our home, Grandma, Papa, Nana, school, the park, and of course, Daddy. And here's a few reasons why:

Naps with Daddy

Playing bubbles with Daddy

Having Daddy at special days at school, like Alex's Feast

And even getting to celebrate a holiday with Daddy every once in a while!

Now that Thanksgiving is officially over, bring on Christmas! December is already shaping up to be a crazy, fun month. We have my sister moving back from St. Kitts, my brother and his kids coming in for Christmas, and Nana visiting for Christmas too! Can't wait!

Ode To Adam

Roger is a huge fan of the television show, Man v Food. In case you're not familiar with it, the show is on the travel channel and the host is Adam Richman. Adam travels around to different cities to eat crazy, wild food...a lot of the time it involves crazy, spicy foods! Anyways, it's pretty entertaining and Roger enjoys watching it. Adam did a show featuring San Antonio and Austin. So, thanks to Adam, we hit some pretty fun restaurants on our little family trip down to San Antonio.

Our first stop was the Salt Lick in Austin. It was a bar-b-cue restaurant and it was FABULOUS! Oh, so good! We really enjoyed it. Thanks Adam!

On our way out of Austin, we hit Round Rock Donuts. And honestly, I haven't met a donut that I didn't like. They were yummy! The best part of that was watching Addison put away some donut holes! Wow!

Our next dining adventure, thanks again to Adam, was Big Lou's Pizza. Big Lou's is famous for HUGE pizzas. Check out these pizzas!

Our wasn't that big! But it was delicious! We went to another place on the way out of San Antonio, but we had already eaten breakfast, so we didn't go in. All in all, we had a really fun time being together as a family. We haven't ever done any vacations like this before. Hopefully next year we can do something again and for longer than just a few days. And seriously, we are going to Sea World one of these days. Sea World or Bust! Maybe in the spring.

Pumpkin Patch

Before Roger left for Alabama for three weeks for the military, we decided to take a little trip as a family down to San Antonio with the intent to visit Sea World. Well, that didn't quite work out. So we made a plan B, thanks to Jill, to visit Medina, Texas, home of the Lovecreek Orchard and Pumpkin Patch. Can I just say how beautiful this little drive was and how much fun this pumpkin patch was! We just had such a great time! Below are a bunch of pictures. Again, sometimes it's not the destination in life, but the journey. So while we didn't get to visit Sea World (yet!), we enjoyed a few days together as a family with nothing to do, but have fun together. It was great!

Hats Off To the Military Wives Out There

I really don't know how military wives do it. How do they juggle everything while their husbands are deployed? I struggled keeping it all together these last three weeks. I can't imagine doing this for 3 or 6 months!

Roger comes home tomorrow night. Originally, he was supposed to work Sunday night from 5 p.m. until midnight, and then 8-5 for the next five days with next Saturday and Sunday off. Well, he told me tonight that his training class was canceled next week, so he wouldn't be working 8-5 next week after all. So now, he has to drive all day tomorrow from Alabama (11 hours) and stay up all night Saturday night so he can get back on his 5 p.m.-3 a.m. schedule that he works with the police department. So our one day with him home has now been reduced to a mere few hours because he'll be sleeping during part of the day on Sunday, and then leaving for work.

I'm so disappointed. I was so looking forward to having him home all day on Sunday so we could have one full day together as a family before we got back to the grind. And I was so looking forward to having him home every night this week. And I was also so excited to have a weekend with him.

I'll get over all my disappointment. But it really made me wonder how military wives survive these long separations. I try to think positively that these last two trips for the air force are easing me into the reality of a pending deployment. But then I just go back to wondering, honestly, how do these military wives do it? My hat is off to them! Big Time!

18 Months and Back On The Charts!

More good news about Addison! She had her 18-month check-up at her pediatrician's office on Wednesday. She has gained a solid 2 pounds! This may not seem like much of a weight gain, but this is huge for Addison! She's grown in height and her head has grown too. What a relief! Here's a run down on her stats:

2 weeks: 8 lbs 14 oz

2 months: 11 lbs 10 oz

4 months: 14 lbs

6 months: 15 lbs 11.5 oz

9 months: 16 lbs 14.5 oz

12 months: 16 lbs 9.5 oz

15 months: 17 lbs 8 oz

18 months: 19 lbs 12 oz

You can see that from her 4-6 month appointments and on that she really struggled to gain weight, and at her 12 month appointment, she had actually lost weight. This earned her the diagnosis of Failure to Thrive. And that set in motion the visits to her small army of doctors. At her last appointments with her pediatrician and her GI, they both threatened tube feeding Addison if she didn't get some meat on her bones. So you can imagine my relief and elation that her appetite has picked up and/or her calorie supplements are working.

So her weight is actually plotting on the growth charts again. That's right: Back on the charts again! Hallelujah! Honestly, I cried at her pediatricians office when I saw her growth. As a mother, you can't help but feel ultimately responsible, good or bad, for your children's growth and development. It has been a long, hard past two months: constant worrying, constant and vigilant research, constant prayers, constant stress. And though we are not completely out of the woods yet, we are definitely over a hump. Hopefully, her next appointment with her GI will go well, and hopefully her next MRI will bring us some good news too! In the meantime, here are some recent pictures of my sweet Addison. She's silly, funny, playful, fiesty, and generally a real joy to have around. She's my little gem. Enjoy!

Tour Of Blue Bell

Before Roger left for Alabama, he wanted us to go and have a little family vacation. We had originally planned to go down to San Antonio to visit Sea World. A few nights before we left, I decided to surf around on Sea World's web site and discovered that Sea World is now closed during the week. We were planning on going on a Tuesday. Yikes! So I quickly started researching a plan B. We considered going to Houston or Austin. In the end, we really wanted to visit San Antonio. One thing I did find while researching our plan B was the Blue Bell Creamery in Brenham, Texas. Brenham is pretty out of the way from San Antonio. But Alex LOVES Blue Bell "Homemade Vanilla" ice cream. So we thought he might really enjoy visiting the place where they make his favorite ice cream. So on our way home from San Antonio, we veered out to Brenham.

The tour was actually pretty fun. On the tour, we saw three or four different rooms -- one where they receive the milk and where they create the ice cream, another room where they flavor the ice cream and then pack it into cartons, and the third area where they were packaging it up to ship out.

For the privacy of the employees, I couldn't take any pictures on the tour. But one of the catch phrases for Blue Bell is "We eat all we can and we sell the rest." Well, I have to admit, I found it quite amusing to walk by the employee break room and see nearly all the employees in there eating some Blue Bell! Can you imagine? I could never work in such an employee friendly atmosphere. I would be so pudgy!

Of course, the best part of the tour was the free ice cream at the end! We could choose from 24 different flavors, and then have seconds or thirds for only $2 more. How fun! We really enjoyed the tour, the ice cream and the gift shop! If you ever find your way near Brenham, it's definitely worth the stop!

Addison was not cooperating...she was tired.

Here we are waiting for the tour to start.

After the tour, waiting in line for our free ice cream!

Roger and Alex enjoying their ice cream. Addison fell asleep part way through the tour. Don't worry...when she woke up, she had her share of the free ice cream!

This is the logo on the Blue Bell ice cream cartons..the girl walking the milk cow. This was outside of the tour. Alex loved the statue...sparked his imagination!

Again, really fun little stop on our way home. We love Blue Bell!

And The Day Turned Out Just Fine!

After yesterday's disappointment over not going to the zoo today, I tried to think of something fun that Alex and I could do at home to help pass the morning. He wanted to buy some sugar cookie dough at the store yesterday and I normally won't let him...why buy sugar cookie dough? But I caved yesterday and let him buy the packaged stuff. So this morning we rolled it out and made turkey cookies using our hands as patterns. He saw this one day on Nick Jr (I think). He was thrilled to do this little project! So on parchment paper, I traced and cut out his hand print to use as our turkey cookie cutter.



Here we have the dough rolled out and our cookie cutter in place. I just cut the hand out of the cookie dough.

And here is his final, iced product. I know it doesn't look much like a turkey. But it made him so happy!

My parents ended up coming over with gifts of books for Alex and Addison. They took us to lunch, which was really fun since we've been pretty much quarantined in our house for days. Later, I took the kids over to my parents. They enjoyed so much helping my mom decorate for Thanksgiving, playing outside, and "raping" leaves...Alex kept calling it raping instead of raking. I'm just waiting for him to say that at his conservative, Lutheran preschool. Nice. Then Papa, the sucker he is for his grandkids, ordered pizza for dinner. Alex told me it was the best day! In the end, it just reminded me again that it really doesn't matter what we do, just as long as we're spending time together. That is all that really matters to him. I wish I could remember that more often. And at the end of the day, the day turned out to be just fine!

Fail Proof

It never fails that when I try to make plans, one or both of my children will get sick. And I will have to cancel my plans. I'm not kidding here. It NEVER fails. It's a new law of the universe. This week, I had planned a fun trip to the zoo with my mom and a friend of Alex's. Well, true to the universal law, Alex got sick. He has strep throat. Unfortunately, I had told him earlier today that we could go to the zoo tomorrow. So tonight, when I broke the news to him that we couldn't go to the zoo tomorrow after all, it broke his heart and that broke my heart. He just started crying because he was so sad. He was so looking forward to going to the zoo. I told him that his crying was breaking my heart. He looked at me inquisitively for half a second. Then told me, "It's okay Mommy. I can fix your broken heart...I have tools and screws!" How sweet is that. My broken heart melted.