Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a full 2 days for us with both families having get togethers. It was nice to see all the family I hadn't seen in a while. Jonah even surprised us with a project he had done at school saying he was "Thankful for Mommy and Daddy" when they asked what he was thankful for. He also worked on making a turkey complete with paper feathers with Mommy for school.

Halloween 2008

Well as you can see Jonah was the blue power ranger for Halloween. He enjoyed dressing up except for wearing the mask all the time. His daycare had a Halloween parade which I missed by 60 seconds because I couldn't find a place to park! I was also the only parent dressed in costume but the kids all seemed to enjoy that I was dressed up too. Some of them even recognized me as the Cat in the Hat. Then we went over to see Mia and Papa and he posed with E* for a few pictures. Doesn't she look cute in her peapod costume! He also had a blast pretending to beat up "bad" guys to protect Auntie Lala. Later he really had a great time going around the neighborhood with our friend K* and A* trick or treating. We even ran into one of his friends from school who was helping hand out candy. By the time we had gone around the block he was telling me his legs were really tired and running out of energy. It was a really great day! I hope I get to take him again next year!

Pumpkin Patch

We took a trip to the Pumpkin patch to celebrate Paul and my birthdays. It was great weather. By the end of the day we were tired and hungry so we had a picnic by the car with chocolate cupcakes instead of birthday cake. The kids really enjoyed it. Baby E* and J* did well for their first trip to the Patch. We are all looking forward to going again next year.

Catching Up

We've been crazy busy! Shawn went back to school while still working full time. I've been working 50+ hours a week. And a lot has happened since I last blogged. Go figure. We celebrated 4th of July with Aunt Amy and Uncle Richard down in KY. We celebrated Shawn's Mom's b'day and she received b'day news that she can expect a new grandchild (its a girl) in March from Shawn's sister Lisa! I ripped out the carpet and baseboard in the living room and hallway and bought laminate that looks like a real hard wood floor. I bought a new car (2009 VW Jetta) Sept. 6. Jonah was diagnosed with asthma. We found out the family is again growing with Ella gaining a new sister. We celebrated Shawn's birthday during which I was unfortunately sick with pneumonia for the first time in my life. I was a bridesmaid for my good friend Glenda's wedding. We celebrated my and Paul's birthday at the pumpkin patch in Arthur. We bought furniture for the living room (finally we'll have a place to sit) that arrives tomorrow! Whew! I think we crammed a lot into that short a time period. We are hoping to slow things down a little bit but with the holidays fast approaching... Well we did manage to have a little fall family time by having a fire in our pit on our back deck this past weekend roasting hotdogs. Jonah is of course growing and changing everyday. He cracks me up with his amazing imagination and growing curiosity as well as expanding vocabulary. He recently put a roll of toilet paper on his arm and when I asked him what it was he replied very matter of factly that it was his blaster. Then yesterday he told me he wanted more of the "delicious" chocolate milk I'd fixed him. He can still push buttons and limits even more so now it seems, but we are coping and overall he is a good boy. Hope to post more later.

Moving in, Remodeling, and Weddings, Oh My!

So just to make the beginning of the summer start off with a bang we've decided to make some changes. First we are adding a member to our household. Becky, Paul's girlfriend needed a place to stay and we now are in the position to help her out. She decided to stay here closer to Paul when her parents had to move back to Virginia and has been living in an apartment with a friend the last year. Now her friend is moving back home to save money and she was stuck making the decision to work more while continuing school in order to make ends meet or move in with my Mom and Dad. While this would probably have worked it would have been difficult seeing as Laura and Ella are still living at Mom and Dad's and are not quite moved out. So Shawn and I talked and talked and talked about it and decided to offer Becky a bedroom here and she accepted. She will be living with us for the next year while she finishes up at school and then hopes to join Paul in Florida where he hopes to finish up with extra training down there.
While this is all going on we are also starting our remodeling in our house. Shawn will be starting with ripping up the carpet in our living room and hallway and replacing it with hardwood laminate and then we are buying new living room furniture that I've picked out. We are hoping to have it done within the month. I will post pics as we progress. Shawn is trying hard to get some of our remodeling projects completed over the next couple months since he will be returning to school by this fall to hopefully complete an engineering degree. And finally, we have Laura and Aaron's wedding coming up in four weeks! Jonah just got fitted for his tux as ringbearer yesterday. He looked so handsome in his little jacket. I will have to get lots of pics during the wedding. I only hope we have finished with potty training by that time. He is doing well with going pee and only having an occasional accident where he wets himself but he is extremely stubborn regarding pooping on the toilet. I may resort to Liz's tactics for M*. As for work, I'm finished with my orientation the end of the month and while I still feel I have a lot to learn, I feel a little more confident everyday. I even got a boost to my self confidence when I received a card from my assistant manager stating I had been mentioned by name in a satisfaction survey as being "wonderful". It makes me feel like I'm really doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Now if I can just stay sane during my transition to night shift I think everything will be fine.

Three year old ham!

Well here it is the end of May and I haven't posted since March! Sorry I haven't been keeping up. Anyways we have been keeping quite busy and between Jonah, housework, and working I've felt quite worn out. Jonah is really changing fast. I don't know if any of you other moms out there experience this as well... but three seems to be an extra challenging year. Jonah wants to challenge us at every turn and his independence along with mood swings can wear my patience to a very thin point. Add to that the potty training and well you get the picture. I can't say its all negative. The onry squirt keeps us laughing with the things that he says lately. A three year olds logic can be very amusing... and the faces he makes along with what he says. I never seem to have a camera to capture the face at the moment he says it. Anyway I thought I'd include a couple of pics I've taken of my funny guy over the last couple months.

His school pics above turned out really good this year despite the school taking them on a different day then I was aware of. What I want to know is what they said to get that particular expression out of him. The other pics are of him dancing and playing on the furniture.

I DID IT !!

I passed my boards! Woohoo!! Hallelujah! I can really say I am now an RN. I am impatiently awaiting my letter in the mail that makes it official. Work is going well and everyone is glad I passed and anxiously awaiting my letter so I can do more things at work. Tomorrow I start learning about how to be a labor/delivery nurse. (Before I was doing mother/baby nursing) I feel a sense of relief and accomplishment even though it hasn't fully registered yet that I don't have to say "I have to study" anymore. I apologize to anyone I haven't called or texted yet to tell them this news, I have run out of minutes on my cell and am waiting for the next cycle. Anyways, thank you to everyone for supporting and encouraging me through this past 3 years to get to this point.

The DREADED FLU

Okay, so this is the face I would make towards being sick for the past week! [Jonah is getting more of an education at daycare lately, than I realized :) ] You got it ... I caught the dreaded flu bug going around. I thought I actually might escape and then WHAMMO! the big mac truck that is Influenza A hit me on Sunday. I ran a fever of 103 and yesterday was the first day that my fever finally went lower than 99.4 (even with medication). Breathing became a difficult task, and heaven forbid if I had to get out of bed for very long. I should consider myself lucky I guess. I have a wonderful husband who took care of me, Jonah, and tried to keep up with necessities like laundry and dishes on top of his work. On Tuesday when I finally called my Doctor they got me in the office in 90 minutes to do a swab and gave me samples of Tamiflu he had on hand. Also thanks to Aaron (Laura's fiance) who drove me there considering I had trouble just walking out to my driveway and then he paid for my lunch and took me to the pharmacy. It gave me a fresh perspective on being genuinely ill. I do not have a high pain tolerance and by the 4th day in bed I wanted someone to put me out of my misery.

I don't think I've ever been that sick in my life! To make matters worse, I could not study for my board exam which I sat for today. I felt human enough to go take my test, but as to whether I passed or not... well I'll let you know as soon as I find out. At least I had a good afternoon with my friend Glenda who was kind enough to drive me to my test and then out to lunch. I'll be really happy when my lungs can fully expand and I can read Jonah a book without hacking a lung up every other page. Hope everyone else in the family is staying healthy!

Jeremy's Surprise Birthday Party

So Kenzia planned a really cool surprise party for Jeremy's 30th and it turned out great. He suspected something but had no clue as to the great lengths she went. His roomates from college, family, extended family, and even a few cousins were there. It was great to see everybody. Jonah had a ball playing with Jeremy's nephew Dillon and I got to hold Jack. He even smiled at me (probly gas just like his father the little rascal). And of course Jeremy took a self portrait to commemorate the occassion. In the meantime I must study, study, study for boards next Friday.

Mia's Birthday

We celebrated with cake, chocolate and fun! A good time was had by everyone! Becky and Papa made us all laugh! And everyone got to hold new Baby Jack. Mia said she had a wonderful time and that is the end of my silly rhyme.










We got Mom chocolate from the Chocolate Factory for her birthday (cause you can never go wrong with chocolate). I made Dad try one of the chocolate covered blueberries and he made this face. I don't think he liked it but everyone else did. I got this cute picture of Mom with Jack and at the last minute we decided to try to get all the grandkids with Dad. (lucky for us the kids cooperated)

Baby Ella

I promised more pictures of Ella to some people so here they are. She is getting so big so fast. It never fails to amaze me how fast they grow. She is about 4 months old in these pictures taken at Kenzia & Becky's birthday party as well as at home while she was discovering her squeal and very proud of it.

Honesty

Okay...this is me being honest with myself. I am officially overweight for my age and height. There I said it. Now I had already made a new year's resolution to lose weight just like everyone else in the world, right?! I had also determined not to tell very many people that I was going to try since I didn't want to look like a fool if I don't lose the weight. So in a conversation with myself tonight... (yes I talk to myself) I realized I was setting myself up for failure by thinking about failing to lose the weight when I've barely even started. Think positive, right?! So I have decided to enlist support from the people who know and love me best... my family and friends. If you want to help me on this journey to a new lifestyle please send me emails of encouragement every once in awhile or tips for fitting in a healthy lifestyle in a very hectic schedule. I made my first healthy step last week by making it to the gym twice. I made it to the gym again tonite with a little encouragement from Shawn. Yay me! My eating habits are my biggest nemesis, however. I have a torrid love affair with sugar. There are some days I have thought about driving to the store just for a bag of candy. Then there is the whole "setting an example for my child". Guess what Jonah loves... sugar! So I am trying a trick from the new cookbook by J. Seinfeld. I am putting vegetable puree in different dishes. I tried sweet potato tonight in homemade tomato sauce for chili mac. I couldn't even tell it was in there! I think I'll try something with spinach next. Jonah of course didn't try it but I will persevere. Now I need to get to bed so all my hardwork at the gym is not wasted. Oh and one last thing... pray for me at the beginning of March... I take my board exam then. Love you all.

Catching Up

Jonah in Feb 07 on our snow day

Jonah has been growing so fast and I haven't had the chance to post near as much as I would have liked to. Sooo, I thought I'd post a few funny pics from the entire past year. Its still amazing to me how fast he is growing and changing. Its been challenging taking care of a 2 year old but I can't say it wasn't fun too. It will be interesting to see what the next year brings.

Jonah wearing Daddy's sweatshirt

Jonah this past summer with cake

Jonah trick or treating

Jonah in the leaves at our new house

Jonah pretending to be asleep in the laundry

Jonah trying on Santa's hat

Jonah's 3rd Birthday

So we celebrated Jonah's 3rd Birthday Sunday. We had Transformer balloons and cake and plates since it is his favorite thing right now. His birthday always seems to sneak up on me. It seems I will have to start planning his birthday before Christmas if I'm going to be organized. As it was I kind of threw it together at the last minute. Jonah only had one friend over which was fine since we were kind of recovering from going to the ER on Friday. Jonah was at daycare and it seems about 15 minutes before I picked him up he stepped on a toy and slipped and hit his head on the floor. He ended up with a GIANT goose egg on his left side right above his ear. And if this wasn't bad enough, the daycare said that he hit his right side. Now for those of you not just graduated from nursing school... this panicked me because I was terrified the bump on the other side was from a bleed on his brain. To make matters worse as I was driving to the ER he was falling asleep and I was yelling at him to stay awake. He sat on my lap on the gurney in the ER like a perfect angel, which anyone with a 3 year old knows is not normal behavior. He lay perfectly still for the CAT scan. Finally, while we were waiting for his results to come back he started acting up and trying to take off his ID bracelet. I don't think I've ever been happier to see my child "misbehave". The end result was only soft tissue damage, nothing inside the skull was hurt. He is lucky he has such a hard head. The xray tech said we could have a CD of his scan which I don't have yet but will keep to show him when he gets older to tell him all about the day he scared at least a year off his Mommy and Daddy's lives. Anyways his party was a success and we are all happy to have a healthy normal 3 year old in our lives.

Graduated!!!!!!!!!

As all of you probably know already, I have graduated from the RN program and after studying and taking my board exam I will finally be a nurse. Thank you everyone for all your continued support and prayers. Here are a few pics from my graduation party late December.