Hoppy Easter!

Look what the Easter Bunny left the kiddos!

*Mia knows that I am the Easter Bunny!
Caleb told her last year!

Easter Egg Hunt 2013

This year we hosted our 2nd Annual Neighbor Easter Egg Hunt!
Mia was so excited to stuff the eggs with goodies for her friends!
I surprised them all with special shiny eggs, 1 for each with their newest obsession "GoGos" inside!
They thought I was the coolest of ever!!!!
It should always be this easy to make their day!

Later that night I found a wonderful thank you note that they had all made me!
It said "Thank you for everything!" they all wrote their names and then signed it
"The GoGo Kids"!
So sweet!

The first of many!

It is warming up here and today I decided to break out the water table!
Mia hasn't played with this for a couple of years, but I had it tucked away cuz I knew we would use it again someday!

 These 2 had a ton-o-fun!

I love it when they play together!

At one point I realized that Marshall was only standing on one leg.

 I watched him and realized that he didn't like the way the grass felt!

 He would cautiously lower his left foot, but the minute it touched the grass he would raise it back up!

Silly boy! 

Life and Death

My career as a nurse in labor and delivery and now hospice has has given me many intimate, up close looks at both.
One of my first experiences with hospice was a lady that was transferred to one of the inpatient units from the hospital and life support was withdrawn. You might think that death is immediate once that happens. Not always true. This particular lady continued to breathe on her own after the ventilator was removed. She remained in a coma and would pass away within a few hours. But during her time at the hospice home, things were very peaceful and calm. I walked into her room at one point and just stood there observing her family. She was surrounded by her female relatives. Sisters, daughters, cousins. They were playing her favorite song and singing along with it, rubbing her feet and expressing their love for her. (The men were in the waiting room!) I got tears in my eyes as I pictured this exact scenario from my L&D days.
There have been many situations since then where I was able to draw a connection between the 2 and even channeled my experience in labor and delivery to help me thru a situation.
Tonight was a very intense example.
I had a patient who was actively dying and she was in a great deal of pain and distress. And she was all alone. I had to order her medications from the pharmacy and was told it would take 2-3 hours for them to arrive. This poor lady needed them NOW. She would have waves of intense shortness of breath, agitation, distress and what I can only assume was pain. Being that there were no meds I could give her I had to do the best I could. I climbed in to her bed, held her hand, spoke softly to her, applied a cool wash cloth to her forehead. At one point I was even humming a lullaby. As I lay there with her, trying my best to help sooth her and get her through this, I  was struck yet again by the similarities between my 2 jobs. The waves of distress that came over her were followed by a few seconds or minutes of peace. Just like labor contractions. There was one point where she was looking at me. It was one of those intense looks that goes right to the center of your being. Help me it says without words. The same look that an expectant mom would give me when her pain was too intense to bear. I closed my eyes and held on, helped her, soothed her. I did my best, I did all I could think of to help her.
I can only hope, pray and have faith that her reward is as glorious and beautiful as that of my labor and delivery patients.
Being a nurse and a part of both the beginning and end of life is an amazing honor.
Every day I work I experience something new, something profound, something that I will carry with me for the rest of my days. I am so thankful for my career and job...

GoGo's

It seems this is the latest craze with the neighborhood kids!
Mia used some of her allowance to get some of her own.
They are little figures that you pretty much play marbles with!
You set up your guys on your side and then flick one at the opponents guy's and whoever knocks out all of the other's guys first wins!

It's some good, clean fun!

Sassy!

I just had to put in this pic of my girl showing off her new shirt, shoes and sunglasses!
(Note she is still only wearing her black leggings! It's her fashion trademark I guess!)
I love this sassy thing!

*And am gonna need a lot of valium in her teenage years ;)

Outsmarted, but not outdone!

So, it took 12 days for my boy to figure this out.

You see, my ingenious gate invention only stood in front of the stairs, like a barricade.
It wasn't attached at all.
This little monkey saw daddy just move the gate out of his way so he could go upstairs and it was all over!
It may as well not have been there at all anymore!
In fact, it might have been better if it wasn't there, as it is now quite fun to sneak over and pull the gate out and then sneak up the stairs!

Well son, you might have outsmarted me, but I will not be outdone!
I put my crafty hat on and came up with a plan.

I sewed some ribbon on to the gate cover, stuck 2 hooks on to the banisters and tada!

The gate is now attached to the stairs!
Let's see how long it takes him to figure this one out!!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

This year Marshall got to help his sister put the Lucky window clings on!

 Notice how she is putting them way up high?

She had to.

She would put one on, he would take one off!

It was a fun game...

for him!

I'm not ready

While I was enjoying a peaceful shower this morning,
(everyone was still asleep, I was getting ready for work!)
I had a sudden realization that my girl is going to be starting kindergarten very soon.

I have known that she was going to start "next year", as in the next school year.
Well people "next year" starts July 22nd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our school district does a modified year round schedule.

I am not ready for this.
I don't like thinking about my girl being gone from the house all day long, 5 days a week!
And to make things worse I realized that due to my schedule, which has way more pros then cons, she and I will only have days off together when there is a school holiday or if I take a day off work.
I almost started crying.

She is so smart and oh so ready.
I guess this is the beginning of her growing away from me.
I am going to miss her so bad.
Will she miss me?

I. Am. Not. Ready. For. This.

He sleeps

After I put Marshall to bed tonight, I thought about what a wonderful little sleeper he is and always has been.
He slept for 8 hours straight when he was only weeks old, then completely thru the night (10-11 hrs) when he was just a couple months old!
And I have never once put him in his bed when he was already asleep!
I have a vivid memory of being so exhausted in that first week home with him.
It was about 8 o'clock at night and he seemed wide awake.
I couldn't hold my head up any longer,
so I lay him down in his cradle and I lay down beside him in my bed.
As I lay there watching him and reveling in the glory of having a new life in our family,
he quietly and preciously drifted off to sleep all on his own!
I couldn't believe it.

And he has done so every day since then.

Naps included!

How did I get so lucky?
I have no idea,
but I thank you my precious son for this amazing tender mercy!
Love you so...

M2 D2

I have had it with sitting around this house!
The kiddos are getting better and the weather is gorgeous.
So we took a drive to wal-mart, got some groceries, a new movie, and some sand toys.
We then packed a lunch and headed over to our neighborhood park for some sun and dirt!
(My mom came up with the M2 D2. Marhsall and Mia, Vit. D and Dirt!!)

I took off my shoes,
put my toes in the sand,
closed my eyes,
and for a minute I was there,
at my happy place,
the Beach!

I could almost smell it!
You gotta take what you can get sometimes!
Had to take pics of my babies piggies too!

I think Marshall was a little unsure about the feel of the sand between his toes!
He sat with his ankles crossed a lot!

We had some fun.
There was lots of snot involved and it was a some work getting everything ready and then getting everyone cleaned up.
But now Marshall is napping and Mia is watching her new movie and we are all a little brighter for our time in the sun!

Little Rascal!

Mia never did this

Marshall does it every chance he gets!
Oh I do close the bathroom doors,
but he has some sort of toilet paper radar and if I (or someone else in the family) accidentally forgets,
he is in there like lightening and has the whole roll unrolled in 1.2 seconds!
That mischievous little monkey!

Sickos

My poor babies have been sick for almost a week!

Today I took them both to the doctor really expecting them both to test positive for the flu,
no such luck.
It is RSV for both of them :(
Mia started with high fevers- 103+!! And then came the full on congestion.
Her lungs have been in tip top shape this last year. She hasn't had a breathing treatment in over a year and we even stopped using her steroid inhaler regularly over the summer!
Well she is back on all the lung stuff now!

And because she loves her brother so much she wanted him to experience the speed like rush of the breathing treatments!

She is such a wonderful big sister that she blew bubbles and danced around the exam room to keep him entertained during his first ever treatment!

(It went much better then Mia's first one!)

We have been laying around a lot these last few days!

I am pretty sure this a record for the number of consecutive days I haven't put on makeup or left the house!
Get better soon my babies!

Problem Solved!

The Problem 

When we first moved in here Mia was 1 1/2. 

We bought 2 gates,

1 for the top of the stairs and one for the bottom.

Spent close to $250.

Well, because of the unique shape at the end of the stairs we couldn't find a reasonable way to make a gate work at the bottom.

We decided to send that one back and just be vigilant about watching our girl.

That worked out just great.

Until now!

Marshall has started to try to climb the stairs.

I can't keep up with him.

And the dishes, and the cooking, and Mia and so on and so forth.

So we needed a gate.

We looked on-line and found that there hasn't been anything new and great invented in the last couple of years.

Well, my crafty mind started working and I came up with a plan!

I sketched it out, packed the kids in the mini (van that is!) and hit Lowes!

Loaded my cart with 40ft of PVC pipe, elbows, crosses, Ts, 45s & 90s, 

And here is the solution!!

I must admit that Caleb helped me build the top portion,

I'm telling you I could measure 1000 times and still have to cut at least twice!

Then I bought some heavy duty fabric, sewed a slip cover and 

Voila!!!

A custom made $40 baby gate!!!!

I am pretty darn proud of myself!!

I think Caleb might even be impressed!

(He kind of doubted me in the beginning!)

So far it is working like a charm.

Fingers crossed that it takes him a while to figure this one out.

Zoo Field Trip

Mia's school had a field trip to the zoo today!
It was pretty much a bust.
There were tons of people there, we didn't even stay together as a class, it was pretty much a hot mess.
But the weather was nice and the kids had some fun.
That is all that matters I suppose.
Did manage to get a couple of cute carousel pics!

 It's pretty rare to have a snap shot of me with both my babes!

Getting Mia to look at the camera is quite difficult.

She seems to favor the coy, gazing off into the distance pose these days!