On The Mend

As you know Tyler broke his elbow August 18. After the doctor told us he needed two more months to heal Randy and I decided we needed another opinion. Randy had a doctor who did his knee surgery a couple of years ago. After over a week and much time on the phone trying to get records transferred I ended up having to go pick them up and deliver them myself to the new doctor. Dr. Flanagan ordered a CT scan which showed that it really hadn't healed much at all and told us he needed surgery.

On November 17 Tyler had surgery to have a screw put into his elbow and a bone graft done from his hip to fill in where the screw went. We're now a month out from surgery and it seems to be healing. He was put into an arm brace three weeks after surgery and is now going through some physical therapy to increase his flexibility and strength in that arm. We go back to the doctor December 31 and are praying after 4 1/2 months of this he will finally be able to do more than play video games!

Good eats

Our friends Greg & Andrea and their baby, Samantha (Sam for short) are over almost every weekend. Sam is 10 months old now. She's really gotten into eating table food. We'd fixed spaghetti for dinner last weekend and made her a plate. As you can tell, she loved it!

First Field Trip

Sadie had her first field trip to the pumpkin patch last week. She had a lot of fun and it went pretty well. She seemed to like the hay ride, the petting zoo and getting her pumpkin the best. We also roasted hot dogs for lunch and marshmallows for dessert. When we got home we got some markers out and she drew a sweet face on her pumpkin.

Baby Whisperer part II

If you've read my previous baby whisperer post then you know Randy has a way with babies. As you can see, he has that effect on big babies too.

Powder

Sadie thought she needed some powder in her shoes. As you can see she went a little overboard. No, we didn't purposely let her do this on her own. She was being very quiet in her room and this is what we found when we went to check on her.

Disappointed

Tyler broke his elbow eight weeks ago. He was in a cast for three weeks, then in a splint for four weeks. He went back today to have it xrayed. It is better, but not totally healed. He can do more with it now, throw a ball, ride his bike, etc. but he can not do any contact sports for two months. His doctor said it would just take one good hit to that elbow and it would re break. Then we'd be looking at surgery. Unfortunately this means he's out for this wrestling season. Needless to say, he's very disappointed. This would have been his second year wrestling. He went to a week long camp in Georgia during the summer and has been very dedicated to workouts, even running when he was in the cast & splint. He has a great coach who will still let him be part of the team, go to the matches to support the guys. But it won't be the same as being on the mat. It's hard seeing your kids disappointed about things that are beyond our control. But I think it's times like this that give your kids the opportunity to build character.

Big Mama Panties

Sadie always keeps us laughing. One day this week I was changing clothes after work and she was in my room talking to me. She got quiet for a minute then said, "Little girls wear little girl panties, Big Mama's wear big mama panties."

The Baby Whisperer

Randy seems to have a way with babies. All in the same day he rocked my nephew Hudson and our best friends' baby Sam to sleep. We've decided to call him the Baby Whisperer.

Hailey's Birthday

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Hailey's birthday was September 5. She got a new bike for her birthday from us and tickets for her and two of her friends to see Taylor Swift in concert the following weekend. She took Raechel and Molly. The girls spent the night with Hailey the night of the concert. Hailey and Raechel made posters to take to the concert. Of course we had to buy t-shirts when we got there. At one point during the concert Taylor had gone in for a costume change and Molly had to go to the restroom. I reluctantly took her, I was afraid we'd miss something. When we walked out of the arena Taylor walked right by us with her security guards! She was going to sing in the audience about three sections down from us. We were so excited! I will never again groan when one of my kids needs a bathroom break! In addition to what Randy & I gave her she received a camera from Nana & Bertie, a Justice gift card from Aunt Alicia, money from J & Kristi, a High School Musical Barbie set from Mimi & Popi, a Nintendo DS game from the Moon's, American Girl doll clothes and a HSM magic 8 ball from Greg, Andrea & Sam, and some money from friends. She had a great birthday!!!!

Jonas Brothers

Friday Randy brought home tickets to see the Jonas Brothers (thanks Chad!). Hailey was so excited! My friend Ginger and her daughter Raechel went with us. We had a great time. Here are some pics:

End of Summer

How did it go so fast? I'm a little sad this week the kids start back to school and it marks the end of their summer vacation. Here are a few more pictures of the second half of our summer:



Tyler with Sadie and Sam. He's such a ladies man!

Hailey and my nephew Parker enjoying lunch on the fourth of July.




This is Randy's favorite pose! This was on the fourth of July after lunch. That's our good friends Greg and Andrea's baby girl, Sam. She fell asleep with him just a few minutes later. So sweet!

My nephew Hudson had his first birthday party. He was getting ready for his cake here. He had a rubber duckie theme party complete with a large duck the kids can play on in the pool. He is such a cutie!

We had a Girl Scout "Kidnap" breakfast at Cracker Barrel. My co-leader Ginger and I went to each girls' house and got them out of bed. The only thing they could do was brush their teeth. They weren't too happy about being seen in Cracker Barrel in their pajamas.

Summer fun

Ok, I know it's been a while. We've been pretty busy around here. I wanted to give everyone a quick update.

We started off the summer with Girl Scout camp. Hailey & I stayed two nights at Camp Kanawahala. We had a great time! The girls did swimming, canoeing, archery, low ropes, climbing wall and lots of crafts.

Tyler had wrestling camp for a week in June. Now they're doing wrestling workouts three nights a week. He's working on dropping a few pounds so he can wrestle in a lower weight class. He loves it!

Hailey and I went to Nashville for a weekend for the CMA Music Festival. My sister in law Kristi went with us. We saw Lady Antebellum, Kid Rock, Luke Bryan, Jake Owen, Jason Aldean, and a few more. It was awesome!

We've been going to the pool a few times a week. While Kay and Ron (my in-laws) were out of town Randy had a sunbathing deck put up by their pool. I'll post a picture of this. It was their anniversary/father's day surprise. With 9 kids plus adults they needed more deck space around the pool.

We just returned from Orange Beach on Sunday. We took Kay, Logan and Molly (my nephew and niece) with us. We had beautiful weather! The boys stayed in the Gulf most of the time. Molly spent half her time digging in the sand, the other half in the water. Hailey stayed in the sand most of the time until Saturday when we finally got her in with a boogy board. She loved it and was a water bug after that. Sadie liked the sand, didn't care for the water. We ate a lot of good food (my scale reflected that when I got home) and had a great time!

So that's it in a nutshell. I'm posting a variety of pictures. Hopefully I'll post again before the end of summer!

Chain of Command

Tyler frequently babysits Sadie for us. He's very good with her and says she behaves very well for him. He may be giving her everything she wants, but that's part of being a big brother, right? Well, Randy told Sadie that Tyler is the boss. So if you ask Sadie who Tyler is she responds "the boss". He's now taught her who mom and dad are too. If you ask her who mom is she says "the CEO". When you ask her who dad is she says "he's just the worker".

I took Hailey, Sadie and my niece Macy to the pool yesterday afternoon. Sadie was through swimming after about an hour. She climbed up in the chair with me and as we were talking she said, "Mommy, I don't wanna get big. I wanna stay little." There are sweet moments like that when I wish the same thing, that she would just stay little.

The Heart of a Child...

School is almost over and Hailey brought several of her notebooks home yesterday. She didn't bring them to me until this morning. One of them was her journal. I started flipping through it and came to this entry. I wanted to share these sweet thoughts she wrote about her Papa.

Boys and Their Toys

Randy came home from Orlando last week with a new toy. A guy that works for him was getting rid of this mini dirt bike. It was just too good a deal for Randy to pass up. He'd told Tyler he was getting one so Tyler was anxiously awaiting his arrival. Needless to say Tyler was dying to get on it. He's never ridden a motorcycle before so Randy gave him a crash course on how it works. It took him a little while to figure it out but as you can see he's now tearing the streets up in the neighborhood. He rode for hours the next afternoon. We told him the neighbors were going to call the police on him for disturbing the peace!

Sadie's latest adventures

Sadie has been a real stinker the last few days. Yesterday she was a screamer. She screamed about everything! She ended up in her room (we have a doorknob cover on the inside of the door so she can't escape) for a time out. She cried for several minutes then she got really quiet. I knew she was probably into something, but waited before going to check on her so I could enjoy a few peaceful moments. When I went into her room, she was sitting in the floor emptying the last of the bottle of baby powder into her potty seat (which we only use as a stool now). It might be humorous if this was the first run in she'd had with baby powder. She had gotten in trouble a few days earlier for "dusting" her room with the stuff, so she knew better.

Tonight she was getting ready for her bath and brought a towel into the bathroom. Instead of setting it on the counter, she put it in the bathtub which was already full of water. Bath towels can soak up a lot of water! Not long after that she was playing with a stick horse in the living room. I caught her standing on the coffee table trying to touch the ceiling fan with the horse's head. She got close enough to knock a few piles of dust off the fan!

Oh, and I forgot to mention that before the towel and horse incident she was outside with a stick she found butchering one of my potted plants. Stay tuned for more.......

Teacher for a Day

Hailey's teacher has a reward system set up for their accelerated reading program. For each small goal they get a reward. Hailey has worked so hard this year and had a goal to make it to 100 points by the end of the year. She accomplished that goal last week. Her reward was to be the teacher for a day. She picked yesterday to be the teacher. She got to go to the classroom as soon as she got to school instead of having to go to the gym. She went with her teacher to get the kids from the gym. She helped teach, her teacher had to take her tests for her, and she got to sit at the "teacher table" for lunch. She was in hog heaven!

I am so proud of Hailey. We are so blessed by her. When I'd pretty much given up on having any more children, God surprised us with a beautiful baby girl. She is growing up to be such a sweet, thoughtful, smart girl. Keep that sweet spirit, Squirrel! I love you!

Neighborhood streaker

Sadie was playing outside yesterday and came in to go to the potty. I was sitting by the front window so I could keep an eye on her. I heard her go back out but didn't look at her as she walked by. A few minutes later I heard her in the yard and looked out the window to check on her. She was walking around in the front yard picking flowers with her pants and panties down around her ankles. There are no pictures because I was making a mad dash out there before any of the neighbors saw her. Every day with Sadie is an adventure. What will she do next?

Meet our new baby!

Meet Hyzer, our new addition to the family. He's an Australian shepherd, possibly mixed with something else. He was a rescue dog I found on craigslist. He looks mostly Australian shepherd but his brother was bigger and looked like he could be a St. Bernard. He's going to be a big boy! He is a blue merle with just a little brown around his face. He has the most beautiful baby blue eyes. Our other dog Joey took to him right away, even acted a little protective of him. Joey's been a little lonely since Sheila died, so he's going to love having a playmate!

Sadie's 3!!!

Sunday was Sadie's third birthday. We had to cancel the party because Randy was sick. She still got presents from us, Mimi, and the Moon clan. She got a new baby doll and stroller from us and a new bedding set from Mimi & Popi. As you can see in the picture she was a princess in the dress her Aunt Robin gave her. Sadie is such a blessing to our family. She is very mischievious and keeps us all on our toes, but when she wraps her little arms around my neck and gives me "sugars" all of her misadventures are forgotten.