Samantha's New Baby Boy

Cooper

9-9-09

Natural History Museum

We went to the Natural History Museum on Labor Day. Ironically, it was the first Monday of the month so admission was FREE! This offer stands every month, so take advantage of it sometime...the kids loved it and it was a great get-out-of-the-house activity.

.

Rice Crispy Treats

After school today, the kids made rice crispy treats....mmmmmm!

I put all of the measured ingredients on the counter along with a wooden spoon and read them the directions. Nathan tossed the butter in (literally!) and watched it melt. Natalie poured in the marshmellows...I think they only ate about 10 or 20 each in the process :) She stirred them like a PRO! Check out how she holds the pot steady with her non-stirring hand....Nana Nancy will be proud of our little cook's stirring skills :) Once the marshmellows were nice and gooey, Nathan stirred in the rice crispies. DONE! Now the hard part...waiting for them to cool so we could eat our tasty treats :)

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....yummy!

Natalie's Nose

Doesn't look so bad now, thank goodness!

scroll down to the next post to see what

that beautiful nose is supposed to look like

Last night we went to a friends house for a play date. We made pizza and then the kids had some fun running around the backyard in the rain. Everyone was having a great time until Natalie's nose collided with a swing...the swing won.

To say the least, her nose gushed terribly. There was more blood on her face and clothing than I think I have ever seen in my entire life. My mommy instinct said, "well, probably just a bloody nose, but I don't want that cut to leave a scar, better take her in!!" So, Nathan and I took her to the urgent care clinic.

Travis is in Houston for work and my parents are on vacation in Wyoming....of course, these things only happen when everyone is out of town, right?!!! Nathan was such a huge help. He held papers for me, loved on Natalie, carried my purse and the wet wipes.

Unfortunately the urgent care doctor said this was beyond their scope, she was concerned that the septum may have been damaged, so she sent us to Children's ER hoping they would cauterize the nose to stop the bleeding and check out the septum.

Travis and I decided it would be best to leave Nathan at our neighbors house since there was no way to know how long I would be at Children's with Natalie. He did great and I am so thankful to them for taking such great care of him. They watched movies until around 10. We gave him the choice of spending the night, or having me come pick him up in the middle of the night and he asked to stay there....so brave!! He did great! Slept all night with no problems. Our neighbor was sweet enough to take him to school this morning as well so Natalie could sleep. She drives her kids to school every Friday, so it wasn't a big deal for them, but such a HUGE help for me and Natalie got some much needed rest. She didn't wake up until 10 this morning.

Ok, so we waited at Children's from 8:30 until 11:45 before we were called back. Then it was another 45 minutes before we saw the doctor...the first one anyway. Luckily, the bleeding stopped during that 45 minute wait, so there was now no need to cauterize!!!!! That was such a relief. They did not put any stitches on the cut, felt like it would heal "prettier" if left alone. But they were concerned her nose may be broken or fractured so they did a couple of x-rays. The doctor felt the x-ray looked ok to him, but wanted radiology to take a look this morning. They sent us home with some neosporin and told me to give her tylenol as needed. We got home around 2:30...we were both wiped out!

This morning I got a call from radiology saying they could definitely see a fracture and want us to follow up with our ENT after the swelling goes down in a few days. We have an appt scheduled for Monday at 10:45 with the ENT who did her tubes this past spring. Will be interesting to see what he says.

That's about as much as we know now, but I will keep everyone posted through the blog, emails or phone calls :) Feel free to call if you want to check in on her :)

Natalie's 2 year pictures

You can click on these picturese to enlarge them!

Backyard Fun

We had a lazy weekend...just played in the backyard most of the day on Saturday and took naps on Sunday.

Natalie LOVES to jump into the swimming pool. We can thank big brother for teaching her that trick :) She stands on the side of the pool, perfectly balanced, and jumps as high as she can into the pool. She played in the pool most of the day.

Nathan LOVES to play golf....he's going to be really good when he gets a little older! We just need to work on how he holds the club :) He happily hit golf balls around the backyard all day...wish I had gotten some pics of him hitting balls that turned out good...but, I did manage to get this pic of our goofy boy. It sums him up perfectly...silly, and ADORABLE!!! I can say that because he is my kiddo :)

Nikon D5000....AKA, Mommy's new toy!!!

I love fancy pictures and would love to be able to take professional looking photos of my kids throughout their life. So, I bought a fancy camera in hopes of learning how to take fancy photos. That apparently was the easy part despite the high price tag of nice cameras. The owners manual is about half an inch thick with 8 pt font and every other word seems to be a term I need to look up before proceeding. So, the journey of learning photography begins!

Here are a few pics I have taken so far. Nothing fancy, just trying out a few of the techniques I am learning.

Picture #1 with the camera

Ok, so it takes sharp pictures, but how do you work the flash on this thing?

Check out the water beads on his forhead!

Pictrure #79

Ok, found the flash!

Super cute picture of Nathan, but he would not hold still so it turned out a bit blurry.

Kids are constantly in motion (no kidding, right?) which makes it incredibly hard to focus and shoot quickly. This is a skill that will only come with time and will hopefully become easier once I learn to use the functions more efficiently.

Here I am trying out the aperture settings on the camera. The goal is to focus on the subject (lens cover) and blurr everything in the foreground and background. The lens cover is a bit fuzzy but I think that was because I was not holding the camera steady enough. That being said, the background and foreground turned out fairly blurry which is exactly the effect I was looking for :)

Here is my attempt at using the above mentioned effect on Natalie. Turned out pretty good! After doing a bit more reading this morning, I have learned that I need a lower f number than what my lens will do...so this is about as blury as I can get with at this point. Still, this is MUCH better than my point and shoot camera would do :)

Same effect on this next shot, but just had to throw it in because she looks so precious :)

I probably won't do much blogging about the photography stuff on the "kids" blog, so if you want to see how I am progressing, check out the "photography blog". You can find a link to the right :)

Nathan's First Day of Kindergarten!!

How did we get from here to Kindergarten so fast?!

He may be a "big boy" now, but this is how I will forever see my sweet boy...

Our big Kindergartener in his Class of 2022 t-shirt!

How old does that make you feel???

The day has finally arrived...Nathan started Kindergarten today! He is so excited!

Last night went great...he and Natalie were in bed by 8:00 and he slept well all night, despite the thunderstorms that rolled through all night long. Amazingly, our morning went extremely smooth...

out of bed on his own..........check
shower on his own..............check
bowl of oatmeal................check
dressed himself.................check
backpack / school supplies....check
shoes.............................check
hugs and kisses for mommy...check
buckle his own seatbelt.......check

Well, guess that just about covers it! He's really ready to go!!! I have anxiously awaited this moment and now it is finally here. So far no tears, just pure excitement for him :) We will see how the rest of the day goes, it's only 8:15!

Travis will be taking Nathan to school most mornings as it is on his way to work and he leaves right about this time of the morning anyway. Drop off and pick up should be fairly easy for us...the school staff pick him up from our car in the morning and bring him to our car when we pick him up in the afternoon.

..............UPDATE............UPDATE.............UPDATE...............

Travis just called and said Nathan did GREAT! He pulled up to the curb and Nathan jumped out of the car and ran into the gym ... no hesitation!

I will update the blog later to let everyone know how the day went, for now enjoy the pics of Nathan heading off to school!

Just returned home from picking up our big Kindergarten boy. He said he had a great day and asked if he can go back tomorrow...that's a good sign!!

Hannah Update....

Well, a week or so ago I posted to let everyone know that Hannah would be having surgery to repair her torn ACL. The surgery was last Friday and it went well, but she is hurting terribly as you can imagine. The past few days have been really rough. She is doing better today, but still not even close to our old Hannah Dog. The incision is huge! Much bigger than I had expected. She won't bear weight on it at all, but somehow manages to hobble 5-10 feet when she really needs to. For the most part, we are carrying her around the house and outside to do her business. She can't even sit up to eat...I have to hand feed her. Anyway, here is a pic of our poor puppy dog...prayers for fast healing, please!!!

What's the strangest thing your kids will eat???

So, what do you think my 2 year old daughter ate first off her dinner plate tonight?


Was it the grilled chicken?

No.

Was it the blueberries?

No.

Was it the chopped vidalia onion?

YES!

My grandpa Ray, from whom Natalie gets her middle name, used to eat raw onions like they were candy. Apparently our sweet girl got the onion gene! I have to admit, I too love onions, although I don't like to eat them straight up...on tacos or hot dogs or in a salad is fine, but NOT plain! For the record, she had 2nds on onions and didn't touch anything else on the plate :)

Super Heros

As most of you know, this is the week between summer Mother's Day Out / Pre-K and the start of the school year. So, I have been having tons of fun having both kids home all week.

So what are we doing to keep busy? Well, playing super hero of course! I worked in the new office most of the day yesterday while the kids played. They were so quiet most of the day that I barely knew they were here. That is until I hear loads of laughter that appeared to be coming from children zooming through the house! I come out of the office to find both of my cute kiddos running top speed through the house with towels draped like "super capes" around their shoulders. Too cute!

Pwease Mama, uh?

How do you say "no" to that face???

I don't even remember what she wanted...

obviously she got it whatever it was!

BUBBLES!

So the kids had a blast playing in the kiddie pool this evening after dinner. It started raining at one point and they barely got out...just kept on splashing around having a grand ole time :)

After the rain came through it cooled off considerably and the kids got cold so we went in for a warm bubble bath. I ran a fairly deep bath in our whirlpool tub for Nathan and put lots of bubbles in while the water ran then let Travis get him in the tub. A few minutes later we hear Nathan yelling "COME LOOK AT THESE BUBBLES!" I instantly knew that he had turned on the jets and was praying all the way to the bathroom that there were not bubbles running out the door into the bedroom...or down the hall...or into the kitchen!!! This is what we found when we walked in ...

Natalie had no problems reaching into the tub to play with the bubbles. Notice how the top of the bubbles is almost even with her chin!!! That gives you a good idea of how high these bubbles were.

Nathan's New Room

Well, we finally went ahead and moved Nathan to the upstairs room yesterday. I have been waffling over this for several months now and finally decided to just do it! I still have my reservations about him being up there, but he LOVES it! He and Natalie went to Memaw's all day while Travis and I moved everything and when he came home and saw it we could tell right away that we made the right decision. He has barely come down since yesterday afternoon!!!

I was a bit worried about how he would do sleeping up there all alone, but he did GREAT last night! Didn't get up once and even slept in this morning until about 8:00. On the flip side, I didn't sleep well at all! I kept thinking about how he might be up there freaking out but too afraid to come downstairs, or heaven forbid if there was a fire...how in the world would we get up there to get him out??!!! Yep, not a wink of sleep last night.

He has his own full bathroom up there which is working out nicely. He showered and got himself dressed all on his own this morning...what a big boy!!! Looks like he might be ready for Kindergarten afterall :)

Family Fun

Ashley, Jerry and Avery came over on Friday night for a dinner / playdate and we had SOOOO much fun! The kids played really well together and the "grown-ups" enjoyed hanging out with other grown-ups talking about grown-up stuff (except for the conversation about which Noggin cartoons are the best and which ones we wish our kids didn't like :)

We had such a great time that I don't think any of us was ready for the evening to be over. We are really looking forward to our next visit :)

Tried to get more pics of the kids, but they wouldn't sit still long enough...enjoy this one pic that came out clear of Natalie and Avery (3 months apart :) eating popcorn in the rocking chair.