It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I think my favorite thing in the entire world is decorating my tree. I finished this morning! yay!



Now onto the outside and the garland inside, which I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to attach it without a bunch of nails in the stairs.


Levi was carrying on his own shenanigans while I finished the tree. He was in his room and called for his Dad....when we walked in we saw this.


Followed by this....what a witty little fella!



Where's Levi???



boo!!


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Trent and I have SOOOOOOOOO much to be thankful for! We spent this Thanksgiving with Trent's side of the family in Amarillo. We left on Wednesday morning and headed out to Mimi's!




We had SUCH a wonderful day Thursday with LOTS of Trent's family! I was terrible taking pictures because I was preoccupied with fun and babies. haha. There were lots of atvs and Levi had a BLAST! I was so torn between watching his eyes light up and being scared to death that the dust was going to make him have another asthma attack. He kept saying RIDE!

Daddy snapped this picture of our sleeping angel. They were both so good but Chloe was exhausted by this point!



Of course Uncle Brent has to give us a goofy pic!


I guess Trent was just following Kaytie around taking pictures. haha


Great pic Mimi and Diana! I think everyone was having a great time!


Lots of Ganns.


He actually said Cheese and looked at me!


Beautiful Brielle! (This morning when I asked Levi what he wanted Santa to bring him, he said Brielle. hehe!)


Friday we headed to the horse barn to meet Mimi's horse Axle. Once again with the asthma I was pretty nervous. Levi's very cautious (which I totally appreciate!) so I wasn't sure how it would go, but I was SO very proud of him!




He started out pretty nervous to get too close....




Dad dressed for the part of course....


He watched like this for a while and then started asking to touch.






Dad took a turn...

After Uncle Brent and Mom took a ride, Levi took a spin with Mimi! I was so proud of him!!


Chloe hung out with Tiffy!!



It was a wonderful week with our Amarillo fam! Levi had a blast playing with Mimi's pool table, meeting Axle, and riding 4 wheelers!

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Location:Thanksgiving 2012

5 Months!

I'm a week late, but our little angel is 5 months old!


She's turned into the absolute sweetest baby! With the colic in the beginning, we weren't so sure about her but she's got the sweetest personality now.

She's slowly but surely getting more interested in solid food. Still just cereal but we had to mix a little fruit with it because she was having some tummy troubles. After about 10 attempted bites, she all of a sudden gets real interested and ferociously takes a bite. haha.



Her smile is completely infectious...it's like she smiles with her ENTIRE face.

Her schedule is getting better, she's never been on quite as tight of a schedule as Levi was. Of course by this point I was back to work with Levi and he was at a baby sitter. I felt like it was much easier to do a schedule with Levi because the world revolved around him. Well this time I don't think it's fair to make him sit at home all the time because his sister is here. She doesn't nap well anywhere but her crib. When we're gone she will nap, just not good long ones like she takes at home. I'm hoping soon that we will get her to just 2 naps a day and then maybe they can consistently nap at the same time! yay for getting stuff done!




Chloe Grace, you have brought so many smiles to this house. When we decided to have another baby so close to Levi, we knew there would be many trying times. But....we always said "just imagine how many smiles we'll have." That is so true! You and your brother are the most amazing blessings I could ever imagine!

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A few smiles for you...

Today has been a wonderful day! Nothing special, but I am so thankful for everyone's health! We have been mostly smiles around here today. (Besides the office chaos my mom and I have been dealing with lately, but that's cheesecake compared to what we've been facing :))

We started our morning by giving Chloe cereal for the first time! Our pediatrician in Houston always told us to watch for signs in regards to solids. She's definitely been showing some interest when we are eating so we thought we'd give it a shot! She wasn't too fond of it, but what baby is the first time?




She kept trying to grab the spoon, haha. It looked like she was trying to push it out of the way but I think she just wanted to hold it. She probably didn't eat 2 spoonfuls but we'll get there.


It's been chilly here, but beautiful. The high has been in the low 70's so we got some much needed outside time this afternoon. Here's Chloe sucking on her bottom lip...so adorable!


Sweet giggles while watching her brother play with playdough.


Some crazy yoga pose he was doing, haha. Have you ever seen a cuter face???


Here's my playdough mom! It's green! (We had a little lesson since Chloe's chair, the playdough, and Levi's cup were all green.)


And here are a few from bed time. Both of our kids are wonderful sleepers (besides Chloe's tendency to wake up and make a lot of noise at 6:30, which is 30 minutes before I allow anyone out of bed around here!) We love bed time! Which is usually 8. They both almost always go to sleep with big smiles on their faces! Chloe is still a paci girl. She's much better at keeping the paci in her mouth, though she likes to grab the handle and throw it across her bed. So now her favorite is to have her little paci in her mouth, and play with her wubbanub. I noticed that when she would get upset and I would go pat her tummy to comfort her, she really just wanted to hang on to me. It was the sweetest thing, she'd grab my thumb with one hand and my pinky with the other. As adorable as it is, you know we're those mean parents that teach our kids to go to sleep on their own, so the wubbanub gives her something to hold on to and she can get it in her mouth if she loses her little one.


Levi usually acts like he's not ready to go to bed, but once he's in his crib he always grins and we say "night night" and "love you!" As you can see, he's still sucking his thumb and sleeping with his blankey. I know the day is approaching when we should push him to stop. He has a callous on his thumb from his bottom teeth rubbing it, so as much as I adore his sweet thumb sucking cuddles, I know the days SHOULD be limited.


In all of our sickness, we are ever more thankful for each other. As hard as it is to watch the ones you love suffer, it always brings you closer. Praise God we are healthy today and that our "unhealthy" is extremely minor.

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UNCLE!!!!!

I've got no pictures for you, trust me....you would NOT want to see what we look like around here. Levi got to come home from the hospital on Friday but it's taken him until today to really start feeling better. He threw up a few times over the weekend and on Monday. I was beating myself up trying to figure out what was causing it. He'd been in the hospital pumped full of medicine and steroids but we couldn't find any research that said it could be causing it. I had about decided it was his allergy medicine. He had been on the Walgreen's brand of zyrtec but when he ran out I bought a different brand. The one day I forgot to give it to him is the one day he didn't puke.

Until.....I woke up puking at 5:30 this morning. And now, it's really early and both kids are asleep and we are both curled up on the couch because Trent's all green too. I guess it's safe to say we managed to catch a stomach bug when we haven't been ANYWHERE in the last 4 days.

So you know that game you played when you were little where someone was bending your arm back until you said "uncle?" Well....we're screaming uncle....seriously NO MORE PLEASE!

On a good note, the kids seem to be doing much better. Up until today Levi had been a terror that was attached to mine or Trent's hip at all times. Well since I couldn't even sit up, Nana had to save the day and come keep the kids until Trent could get home from work. She said he was an angel! His normal self playing with his cars. What a beautiful sight! Chloe is still a little congested, but I had Dr. Ritter look in her ears and listen to her lungs on Monday at our checkup and she got a good report. The check up was really for Levi, but she checked out Chloe too because I'm just so sure at this point she will get pneumonia, ear infections, or bronchiolitis which are all common after RSV. We're not in the clear until the congestion is gone, but we are down on our knees praying we will all be well soon. And I'm really praying I don't wake up to both Trent and Chloe tossing cookies!

Someday, when I'm having a really hard time, I'm going to read this blog post and remember just how bad it can get!


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Now we are in the hospital...

Just when I thought we couldn't get any sicker, Levi is in the hospital.

He looked like this Tuesday morning



3 hours later he couldn't breathe at all. We did about a million breathing treatments over the next 12 hours and it wasn't doing anything but making him stop screaming.

This is absolutely miserable. My RSV infested baby can't come anywhere close and the hospital is about 45 minutes from our house. There's a pediatric unit here so that's why they sent us here. Nothing is worse than having your 2 babies in different places and not being able to be with both of them.

It's been a long couple of days here filled with a little of this....


And a lot of breathing treatments. His oxygen levels were dropping too low while he slept last night so he had to be on oxygen. His lungs are sounding better and if we can get to treatments only 4 hours apart, plus sleeping with a normal oxygen level then we get to go home. Hopefully he'll be discharged tomorrow.

Today he's definitely in better spirits...




Just say some prayers for all of us...it's been a very rough month at our house. Dad is staying at the hospital with Levi at night so I can come be with Chloe, who's been with Nana and Grandpa for the last two days. Everything happens for a reason, thank goodness I'm not drowning in lesson plans and paper grading. Thank goodness Trent's boss is completely understanding. Thank goodness we are close to family who can help us through this rough patch. God is good, He will get us through this!

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Dallas World Aquarium with the Birthday Boy

We started our morning off by singing Happy Birthday of course! And had birthday pancakes....yummmm!








Nana and Grandpa brought over a present for him to open because I needed to use it for a centerpiece at his party. :)





Then we headed off for the Aquarium!


As usual, he was very observant and serious. The pictures don't really appear that way...but he really did enjoy it!


First stop was the shark tank, they were feeding them and it was so cool!








Super creepy, enormous crabs.


Poor guy doesn't understand that they're all behind glass and can't get him. He looked at us like we were crazy for trying to get his picture with it.


Helping him give the birds a blueberry


Can you see those flamingos up there?? That's the roof!


He would not take his eyes off that waterfall to get a picture!


We had a blast taking him to do something special on his very special day!

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