Costumes

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman! And, a boy in green long underwear!

Oh wait, he's actually a dinosaur! (The back of his outfit has felt spikes and a tail... I made it for him last year, and he wanted to wear the same thing again! Fine with me!)

We're still here!

I can't believe almost a month has gone by without posting! We are still here - just trying to keep our heads above water!

Our most recent (well, ongoing...) adventure has been Owen. I posted a while back that he has reflux. The past month has been the hardest for him so far with teething complicating his already poor eating habits. We had a couple weeks where he would eat only about 1 oz. at a time, except for in the middle of the night when he would eat much more. He would begin a feeding and then start arching his back and squirming and fussing after just a few swallows. This meant feeding him constantly to be able to get enough milk in him! He is doing better at the moment, and we hope it lasts! This past week he had an upper GI x-ray done, and his results came back normal. This means that nothing serious is wrong with his digestive organs, and he should hopefully outgrow the reflux.

So my days have been revolving around caring for Owen and squeezing in school for Aidan wherever I can and trying to spend some time with Gresham too! It has definitely been a trying experience, but I can truly say that I am learning more about the sufficiency of God's grace. Being in a place of total dependence on Him is a good place to be, even though it is not always comfortable.

Aidan and Gresham are doing well. Aidan is really mastering telling time and counting money, which is fun. He is also reading chapter books by himself now! By God's grace, he taught himself to read. I don't know what I'd do if he required a lot of help with school right now... Gresham is starting to recognize several alphabet letters and numbers. He cracks us up every day with the things that he says.

Jordan is really enjoying his new job and is doing great with it too. His position is a telephone sales position selling advertising to businesses. We are all loving his new schedule and having every weekend off. After 6 years in retail, we are so excited for him to be off for the holidays this year!

So that's the update on everyone... and hopefully soon I'll be back to posting lots of pictures and cute things the kids say... they give me lots of material, but mostly I'm too brain dead to remember at the end of the day when I have time to sit down and write!

More to come...

Gresham is 3!

Here is the birthday boy! He was too cute. We only let him open two of these presents at breakfast, and took the rest to his party at Grandma and Grandpa Packard's house. The long striped one was just too irresistible to him, and he started opening it twice before it was time!

Opening a construction truck book from Grandpa and Grandma Dees!

Aidan was happy to read Gresham's cards to him. Gresham wasn't that into listening, though... he wanted to get onto the presents!

Twice a year, the city of Grapevine has a day of free family activities at the historic Nash Farm. Aidan and Gresham have been looking forward to Nash Farm ever since April, when we missed the spring one because I was at the ladies retreat at church. Well, Gresham was thrilled when we found out the the fall Nash Farm was ON his birthday! He has been telling everyone - even strangers at the grocery store - about Nash Farm for the past few weeks. I don't think he even remembers the one last October, but he knew that it sounded fun!

Also, Jordan got to go with us for the first time this year! We are really enjoying his new Monday-Friday schedule at his new job. The weekends are so much more fun now.

The weather was cold and overcast. We would have stayed longer, but we were all freezing! The high was in the low 50's and it was very damp. The boys didn't mind too much, though.


I am so sad that this picture is not in focus! It would have been so cute!

Aidan just got this western shirt and hat. He would wear the shirt every day if I would let him.
He loves dressing up like a cowboy or like an Indian.

This was what was in the long striped package! Gresham has been wanting a guitar, and I saw one on clearance (I'm a sucker for clearance...) at Toys R Us. It's a real (well, semi-real) guitar, and he will be able to actually learn to play it at some point. I gave him a couple picks to use with it, and now they are both inside the guitar.

He had a construction cake... the close-up picture of the cake did not come out in focus either. Thanks to Grandma Evonne for getting the construction trucks for the top of the cake!

He had a great birthday!

A few random pictures...

I have LOTS of blogging to get caught up on, so I'll start with a few random pictures from the last month.

I put Owen in the saucer for the first time the other day, and he had this shocked look on his face the whole time! He had a great time chewing on all the toys, but got tired quickly. It's fun to move on to new things - he is sooooo active and is getting tired of just sitting in his bouncy seat!

We went on a quick one day trip to Shawnee (where I went to college) a few weeks ago. My aunt and uncle were in Shawnee on a business trip, so my mom wanted to take the chance to go see them while they were only 3 hours away (they live in Cincinnati). It was fun to get out of the metroplex for the day! The boys had fun seeing buffalo in a field and going to Super Wal-mart to buy a plastic bow and arrow set.

The beloved Raley Chapel... What a beautiful day to be on the OBU campus... Brought back memories of when Winderweedle and I snuck up to the steeple part while they were doing renovations on the building and had the door unlocked. It's a great view from up there (where the windows are)! Remember that, Winderweedle?

Kid Funnies

Wow, I'm on a roll with posting!

On Mondays, Aidan gets a dollar for his allowance. We went out yesterday and ran several errands. I told Aidan that if he brought everything in from the van (which would take him at least 5 trips) that I would give him some extra money. He happily agreed, and started working. The next thing I knew, he was hooking up the shop vac and vacuuming out the van because "he thought it needed it."

I told him that I would give him $1 for his allowance and $2 for cleaning out the car. All I had was a five, so I asked him to get his wallet. I told him that I would give him the five, and he would give me two ones back so that I would be giving him $3. He said, "Okay, let's see how much money I have now. I had $13. Now I have... $16. Every time we do this (me paying him with a five and him giving some ones back), I end up with more money, and I don't know how that happens!"

I explained the transaction again, and he understood the math better this time!

Then last night, Gresham hurt himself while Owen was napping and started screaming. If you haven't been around Gresham, you should know that his screams can shatter glass. I quickly took him into our bedroom and asked him to tell me what happened. He screamed, "I GOT HURT!" I said, "Show me how to say 'I got hurt' in a quiet voice." His response? "I GOT HURT IN A QUIET VOICE!"

And this morning at Bible time, we were reading about the wise men coming to see the baby Jesus. They came into Jerusalem. Aidan said, "Oh!! Is that Drew-slem like in the song I learned in my Sunday School class? Lord, prepare me, to be a sanctuary, pure and holy, tried and Drew... It sounds the same, are those two things the same?" After a good laugh, I told him that the song is supposed to be "tried and true" and Jerusalem starts with a "J" not a "Dr".

It's a good thing they're so cute...

Owen's 4 month stats

We took Owen to the doctor today, and he was... (drumroll)...

a whopping 12 lb. 13 oz.! That's the 11th percentile.

The big news was his height - he grew 2.5 inches this month, and went from the 16th percentile to the 70th. He also grew in head size from the 4th percentile to the 24th.

He is definitely healthy, and I think that he will fill out more when he outgrows his reflux issues. The doctor is not worried about his weight at all, although he did say that it would be good if he fills out some to match his height better.

Do you know what this is?

If you guess that it's a backhoe loader with a broken back scoop, you are wrong. It's a... dynamite shooter! I'm not exactly sure where they got this idea. I think Aidan came up with it. The broken part on the back shoots the dynamite.

Usually I think that having little boys is better than having to play Disney princess or ballerina all day, but other times I don't understand them at all...