Christmas 2010

We were lucky to spend time in North Carolina this year for Christmas. Craig's brother Bob is stationed at Fort Bragg and he and his wife Alison invited us and the rest of the family. We met Craig's mom, dad, and other brother Keith there. It was a fun time! While we were there Fayetteville received over 8 inches of snow (which is a TON in that area)! They sand and slightly salt their roads, but us Ohioans know how to drive in snow! Went bowling on base and the ladies played bingo one evening. That was an adventure to say the least. The boys visited the local Airborne museum and kids and girls went to Fascinate U. All of the kids played so well together all week. It was fun celebrating Christmas in a different way. Overall we did a lot of eating, hanging out, eating, playing, eating, sleeping, and eating.

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Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! Hope your upcoming days are filled with HOLIDAY FUN (ours have and will be)! Making crafty things like yearly ornaments.

Eating lots of Christmas cookies that make your tongue green.

Playing some soccer.

Folding some laundry!

Decorating your very own tree!

Putting a train under your very own tree.

Talking with Santa!

Sitting with Santa (and not crying)!

And loving your family and friends!

Merry Christmas

Love, us

First Haircut

Mallory got her first haircut yesterday! She had a bit of a mullet going on, so I just wanted it to be evened out. She watched me get my hair cut first and then Luke. When it was her turn, she whimpered the entire time. She held still, but just made an annoying sound. She looks so cute though. One must sacrifice for beauty!

This was her happy face when she was done.

Some Lucky Girl....

Some lucky girl is going to marry this fine looking boy a long long time from now. I think we know already what she is in for. This picture was taken Sunday afternoon, after his nap, while watching football. Uh-oh!

A Visit from Grandma

Grandma Peggy came to visit during Mallory's heart cath. She was able to stay with Luke while we were at the hospital. It worked out perfectly. We were able to fit in some fun while she was here.

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Balloons, Balloons, Balloons

Mallory has returned home from a short stay at Akron Children's Hospital. Her doctors thought she would benefit from heart catheterization to explore around her heart and a balloon angioplasty. She was a trooper. The day started off at about 7:30 when Mallory got up. She had 1/2 cup of apple juice and that was all she was allowed. She didn't complain about not getting her morning milk or being hungry. When we arrived and checked in, she mentioned she was HUN-GY once, but we distracted her and she forgot. We went to the scary part of the hospital where all the people come and talk to you. After the physician's assistant, anesthesiologist, and nurse met with us we had a child life specialist talk to Mallory. I figured it would just be geared towards us and wouldn't do her any good, but it was great. The lady showed Mal all the funny stuff the doctors and nurses would wear. She let her play with the mask she would put on to fall asleep. Mal even got to rub flavored lip gloss on the inside of her mask so it would smell good. Then they did a practice walk away from mom and dad. They held hands and walked out of the room and pretended to go off to the cath lab. Mallory didn't cry at all which was very surprising. Before this practice walk, a nurse gave Mallory a stuffed bear. Mallory named the bear Lunch Box, so the nice lady and Mallory got Lunch Box (and Luke) a funny hat to wear during the procedure on their practice walk. When it was time for Mallory to go, I had envisioned a screaming, crying goodbye, but she left happily with the nurse. The procedure was supposed to take one and a half to two hours, but she was done in just about an hour. After we met with the doctor we went to recovery to see her where multiple nurses were gathered around her trying to keep her under control. For the 45 minutes Mallory was in recovery, she gave them (and me who was holding her) a bit of a frenzy. She had to lay flat and keep her leg still. YEAH right. She got to the point that the nurse had to call another anesthesiologist to give her something to calm down. When he arrived, Mallory was laying perfectly still in my arms. Not more than a minute after he left, she started flailing about again. That's my girl! We did make it out of recovery alright and into a room. Mallory was still feisty, but would calm down eventually. She drank some liquids and then got sick. As we were catching her vomit in a tub, I remembered the nurse said, just hit the red button for help and if it's an emergency, just yank the whole cord out of the wall. Well, I consider throwing up an emergency, so I yanked the cord from the wall. It's amazing how quickly people came and how many!! I felt horrible! Just a slight overreaction, but that's okay. After getting sick, Mallory felt 100 times better. She didn't look miserable and started to talk a little bit. She watched multiple Christmas movies and cartoons. For dinner she ate/devoured an entire bologna and cheese sandwich! We realized it had been just about 24 hours since she last ate. The doctors told us she would sleep most of the afternoon, but she didn't fall asleep until after 8. On Tuesday morning, she got to take a ride in a wagon to go to the heart center. There she had an echo cardiogram/ultrasound of her heart. She screamed and fussed the entire time and kept saying..."I want to be done!" A few hours after that we were released and went home, but not before stopping in the lobby to get a strawberry smoothie, a tradition when we visit Akron Children's Hospital.

Mallory and Dad waiting before her procedure with her new medical kit and friend, Lunch Box.

Mom, Mal, and Lunch Box waiting patiently.

After the cath. The blue thingy on her leg was to keep it straight. Mal wasn't so happy in this picture. She is covered with an awesome blanket that was given to her. It was handmade by Project Linus. It is really beautiful and was so nice. She hates to be covered up, but she didn't mind being covered with this blanket.

Her first meal! She loved it. Such happy faces after we were told we could go home. :)

It's a Bird, It's a plane, It's...

The ISS (International Space Station. We were able to see it with the entire family thanks to Grandpa Amos! The ISS is in the picture below. The big light is the moon, and the ISS is off to the left of it somewhere. Luke and Mal had fun waving to the astronauts on board as they passed over Carrollton.

Fallnter

Fallnter is my new combination of the fall and winter seasons. Last Saturday the kids were outside playing around 8 am in the first snow of the season. This Saturday the high is supposed to be 70. This is why I love Ohio! Really, I do. The weather is great!

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They had a good time throwing snowballs at Dad, jumping on the snow covered trampoline, and sliding down the bike ramp.

First Boyfriend

One Wednesday Luke, Mallory, Grandma Renee and I celebrated my spring break. It came a few months early in the form of high winds. The electric to our school was out, so school was cancelled. Since Ohio is only offering 3 calamity days this year (which I'm sure we will use all and then some once winter hits) losing a day because of power almost assures we'll be in school over spring break and into June. Anyway, we all went to Chuck E. Cheese. Luke and Mallory had a ball! Not to mention Grandma and I had fun too! When we got home Mallory was carrying a phone around talking on it. We asked her who she was talking to and she said my boyfriend. When we asked who her boyfriend was, she said Chuck E. Cheese. YIKES!!!

Chuck better watch out for this cute little girl's daddy!

Fantabulous Fall Fun

Fall has given us so much time to do fun things! We were able to decorate pumpkins at church together, go to a pumpkin carving party at Davon and Chris' house, and have a blast trick or treating. Here are some pictures of the fun.

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The kids and Dad going through the loot. I'll admit, Iwas down there too, just stopped to take the picture. Craig and I decided that some smart parent a long time ago came up with the whole idea of 'checking' the candy to make sure it was safe to eat. We remember hearing stories of needles and razor blades in candy. However, we now believe it was that parent's genius idea to get to the candy first and take all the good stuff out!!!!!!!!! So, we are stealing the idea.
Mallory was flower pot for Halloween. She was the cutest little flower.

Luke was the meanest Darth Vader out there! This kid was so excited to be gathering candy from all over town. He walked the entire way. He didn't complain about anything! We had a lot of fun while Grandma Nee handed out candy at our house.

Nappin', Dancin', Decoratin', and Yard Salin'

It's been a busy few weeks. We have had lots of fun doing some fall things.

The most exciting thing ever...well not really ever, but it's pretty exciting. I found this crate last year at a yard sale. It was the first time I had ever seen a Campbell's crate other than in a museum. So, I needed to have it for my kitchen. It was marked $50.00. YIKES! My frugal mom talked them down to a whopping $45.00, but I just couldn't splurge. $45.00 bucks is a lo of money. So, this year...I went back to the same yard sale searching for the crate with every intention to spend $50.00 or more on it if they still had it. This crate was so important, I drug my son to the yard sale who was recovering from the flu, and had to drag myself off the couch also recovering from a touch of the flu. I was covered in sweat searching the sale for the crate. I had the owners searching for it too. Finally, I saw it. The price tag was on the bottom and took forever to find. There it was...$20.00! A whole year passed and they knocked $30.00 off the price! I was so excited. I had every intention of going home, cleaning it, and displaying it right away, however, I still felt horrible, so I crawled back on the couch and displayed it in the morning when I felt better.

Here's the other stuff we've been up to:

DECORATIN' the outside and inside for Halloween.


DANCIN' at cousin Dawn's wedding.

Trying to catch the garter at Dawn's wedding. That's Luke in the left hand corner

NAPPIN' peacefully.

There's always time for LOOKIN' good!

Some more NAPPIN' on a Saturday afternoon, so Luke needs to sleep with his OSU gear.

Finishing up with soccer too!

Sadly Missed

Rocky entered our lives on Valentine's Day in 2002. Craig kept him a secret. We were shopping in Canton and he told me his brother Keith needed us to pick up some dog treats and food for his dog. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why Keith couldn't buy his own treats and food, but soon to find out, Rocky was anxiously awaiting our arrival home. Rocky was quite the ball of fuzz to start. He grew to 95 pounds of pure love. He was our baby for so many years, but not nearly enough. I think the kids drove him crazy. He would give them a grumble when they were too close or too annoying, however he always checked on them after they went to bed. Mallory gave him a hug and kiss every night. Luke was to the age that he could let Rocky in and out of the house and it made him feel so proud and grown up. It's been a long few weeks around here. It's been too quiet. There's no one to feed, give treats to, let in, yell at for being under your feet, or help tuck the kids into bed. Rocky is missed greatly!! Luke asked if God dropped a rope down and pulled Rocky up to heaven? He sure did Luke!!!

We were much younger in this picture! Yikes.

Rocky and Fancy at Rocky's first birthday party. Yes...we had a first birthday party. Fancy was the only guest though.

This is how Rocky would lay, however, we realized he stopped laying like that in the last year or so.

He wore this bucket for a few weeks after he had his ACLs...yes, two ACLs repaired.

Rocky after one of his ACL surgeries.

One of my most favorite pictures of him.

Playing in the snow.

Craig would shovel snow and Rock would try to catch the snow he was throwing in his mouth. He would always cough and sneeze because I think it kind of gagged him.

Enjoying one of his many birthday gifts from his Great Aunt Neva. She got him better birthday presents than we did. She spoiled Rocky!

Enjoying a boat ride. We were afraid he might jump out. Rocky wasn't the greatest swimmer. Infact, he hated to swim.

We had the junkiest cap that fit on the back of the S10. Craig took out the back window of the cap so we could open the sliding window on the truck and talk to Rocky. I took the picture on our way home from camping.

Inspecting Luke.

Hiking with Julie and Jake.

Claiming the kids' toys his own was his way of saying "Why are these little turds constantly bothering me? I'll get them back!" Rock would pick up their toys, take them to our bedroom, and hide them in the corner. We also found the kids' shoes there as well. If we couldn't find something the kids needed or wanted we looked in that corner. It was usually there.

He's thinking..."Not another one!!!!"

But he loved her too!!!

Camping in the living room.

What a good looking family!!!!!!!!!!