This is Our Life!

Well, we have been busy as usual. It looks like this winter is going to be one full of snow. It isn't even winter yet and we have had 4 storms with plowable snow. We have a Nor'easter coming this weekend. It is supposed to hit early Sunday morning and go till Monday morning. My parents are leaving between 3:30 and 4 am tomorrow to go help Sarah and John move back here to Maine. Because of the storm and the fact that my parents have 2 dogs, we will be staying at their house for atleast Sunday. We could take the dogs to our house, but we don't have enough runs for them to be able to go out and go potty, plus my parents have a woodstove should we lose power. So, we will probably go over Sunday morning and spend the night there to wait out the storm. Hopefully we will be back home on Monday afternoon. I hate not staying at home, there is so much stuff to pack for 6 people, even if it is only for one night. To make things even more hectic, the twins have now been diagnosed with asthma. They had been sick for almost 3 weeks when I finally brought them in. When I say sick, I'm talking about just what I thought were colds. They didn't bother them too much, they just hung on. Finally for the past 2 days their coughs had become horrible and kept them up all night. As soon as the Dr. walked in the room, he said "oh, they have bronchial coughs", then when he saw their eyes with the dark circles under them, he said that was a classic sign on allergy induced asthma. They were so bad, that they have been put on two medications to be given in their nebulizers, plus claritin every night. Thankfully we were given another machine so they don't have to share and it goes much faster. So, our regular schedule goes like this:

7 am ~ wake up and do one medicine, wait a few minutes and do the next one.
8 am ~ eat breakfast
11 am ~ eat lunch
11:30 am ~ nap
2 pm ~ wake up and do both medicines again
3 pm ~ go pick up toya and jordan
4 pm ~ arrive at the gym (stay for 1 1/2 hrs.)
6 pm. eat supper (i love my sutomatic oven, supper is ready when we get home from the gym)
7 pm ~ do machines again and take the claritin
8 pm ~ bed time

So, this is why I have not been able to catch up on the blogs and leave comments. please do not hold it against me. The girls will be on this schedule for atleast a week. Their coughs are getting a little better, but nothing drastic has happened. Now, we have 3 kids with asthma. They are all stage 1 so that is good. Hopefully they will grow out of it. Jordans is cold induced and the girls are allergy induced.

On to other news. As we were getitng ready for school this morning, I sent the kids out to the van and I ran up to brush my teeth. I then heard Jordan coming up the stairs. This is our conversation:

Jordan: (excited voice) "Mom, I have to tell you something"

Mom: (mimicking his voice) "What?"

Jordan: "I lost my tooth"

Mom: "Let me see, where's your tooth?"

Jordan: "I lost it"

Mom: "yeah, but where did you put the tooth?"

Jordan: "it was all bloody so I threw it!"

Mom: "threw it where?"

Jordan: "in the snow"


There was about 2 inches of fresh snow on the ground, so, needless to say we never found his white tooth in the white snow! I was a little dissapointed since it was his first tooth, but it was pretty funny. You can see in the picture that he actually had an adult tooth come in and push that one out that he lost.

So, anyway, that is all for now. Please pray for my family to have safe travel. My mom, Sarah, and Grayson will be flying back home on Wed. night, but my Dad, John, and John's dad are driving the trucks back and won't be home till Saturday probably. My sister Jess comes home on Thursday. If I do not get a chance to update again or comment on your blogs, please know that I am just busy, and I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!!

They're Coming Home.......All of Them!

My sister Sarah, John, and Grayson are moving home!!!! They have been thinking about moving home since Grayson was born, and by the time they came home for Thanksgiving, they were pretty sure that was what they wanted to do. A couple of days before they came home, they put their house on the market. They sold it yesterday and signed all the papers. One of the stipulations from the buyer was that they wanted them out by the 23rd of this month. Sarah and John agreed to it. It would be one thing if they were moving somewhere close, but they are moving from N.C. to Maine. They have no family there to help them. They are planning on flying my parents, and John's brother down to help pack and then to help drive the truck and their two vehicles home. The guys will be responsible for getting the vehicles back to Maine, and Sarah, Grayson, and my mom will fly back home. They do not have much time to get everything done, so please pray for things to go smoothly and for the appraisal to go alright so they can get home. Sarah was a little upset, she will miss the girls she was a nanny for (and essentially raised) for the past 7 years. My kids have basically thought of them as cousins for that time as well. So, they will be home for Christmas after all! It is truly amazing to watch from the outside, all of the things that havbe just fallen into place. Houses do not normally sell that fast, and it was only shown twice. Both parties were very interested in it too. Anyway, please pray for safety as well.

My youngest sister Jess is also coming home. She is coming home from college for good. She was originally coming home for Christmas, but decided she is not going back. She already finished her degree last year, but wanted to go for one more year. She has now decided that she is all done. They will all be living in my mothers house for now. It has been 10 years since all of us have lived in the same state, and now we will all live not even 5 minutes apart. It will be strange in deed and take a little while to get used to, but it will be AWESOME!

Today we went to the gym, and they were having santa come and visit with the kids. Kelsey was great with santa, but Kaylee did not like him at all. We finally got her sitting with him, but she made sure Toya was next to her. She didn't stay long either. I only got one picture, but the owner got a couple, so when I receive them, I will post those too. Here is the picture:


That is all for today. Have a great week!

Toya's First Game

Sorry it has been so long, AGAIN! Now it's catch up time! This post is before Sarah and John left to go back to N.C. On Friday (11/30), Latoya had her first basketball game to cheer for. All the girls did really good. We were super excited that Sarah and John were here for her first game. Here is a slideshow and a video from the game (in the video, toya is in the very center and then is the base for the pyramid on the right hand side):

On Saturday was Sarah and John's last real day home. My kids normally spend the night at my mom's on Saturdays and they did that night too. The adults stayed up to play uno attack, and the kids were in bed watching a movie. Here is a picture I snapped on all 5 grandkids:


On Sunday, my hubby and I brought John, Sarah, and Grayson to the airport. It was soo hard saying goodbye to them. I kept telling myself that I wasn't going to cry, but after they got checked in and Sarah came to get Grayson, I lost it. I now know how she felt every time she had to say goodbye to my kids. I think it is just about as sad as it would be saying goodbye to your own kids. Here is a picture of the little man at the airport:


When we came back home, we went to pick up the kids at church and went to the fire station where my hubby volunteers (cause you know he has ALOT of free time). They had a Christmas party. They always have santa come and each child gets a gift. While we were there, my hubby was promoted to Captain! He was very excited about that. On the way out I took pictures of the kids on the firetruck. Here is a picture and then a slideshow of the Christmas party:

On monday, we got a snowstorm. We received severel inches of snow. The kids loved it and were very excited to go out and play. They played while I snowblowed the driveway. Here are some pictures in the snow:



The rest of this week has been fairly uneventful. The girls are not feeling well and have not been feeling well for quit a while. Hopefully they get better soon. I think I will go to the toy library tomorrow if the girls are feeling a little better. They have been home since Tuesday.

The last bit of news is that we will be doing a fundraiser for Brendon. Many of you remember him from when we raised money for him. He is my friends son that was diagnosed with lymphoma in April. Here is the letter we sent around via email. I am part of this, but not the main person. I help set up the site, but it was not my idea (although it is an EXCELLENT one). I know many families are having a hard time this Christmas, but in case there are those who do want to donate to someone in need, please consider this. Here is the letter:

Hi, I am a friend of Andy and Amber Dunn . I am writing to everyone on Amber ’s Myspace Friends page. If you read the updates Amber does, you might remember a recent one when she said they went to a parade and Brendon said he would give up all his Christmas gifts if he could only get a dirt bike. Amber said that it just wasn’t feasible. So, immediately my friends mind started racing on how she could help make this dream of Brendon ’s a reality, then it hit her. She started a blog page that you can get to by clicking http://helpmakehiswishcometrue.blogspot.com/. Our goal is to raise $1,000 (it sounds like a lot but really, if 50 people give $20, there is $1,000!!!) by December 26 so we can present Brendon with a dirt bike (or a 4 wheeler, we know he really wants one of those too) when he comes back from Legoland. If you were looking for something special to put some Christmas money towards please consider putting it towards granting Brendon ’s second wish for Christmas! (his first of course was Legoland!).

Please send this on to ANYONE you want!

If you have any questions about this message please contact me or Miranda (her email address is on the blog page).

Brendon does not know anything about this, but Amber does. Feel free to verify the information with her. Last she knew it was just a thought, she does not know that we are actually putting the thought in motion. We would like to keep it a secret from her and Andy as well, but understand that people may want to verify that this is in fact a real fundraiser.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Have a great week!