A Few Pics

I still need to download pictures off of my camera, but here are a few from Jay's dad and one that Jay took with his new cell phone.

Here's a picture of Alex with my mom. This was right after all of the present opening.

Here's Alex with two of his Dora balls. This is what he did most of Christmas day. He would not let them go, and he even has had to sleep with them.

This was a picture that Jay's dad took of Alex a couple of weeks ago when he was visiting. I LOVE this picture. It really shows Alex's personality. (you know, mischievous!)

Whew! What a Christmas

We made it home and we've had quite a couple of weeks.

I didn't blog last week because, guess what?, I was sick AGAIN!! I got over my tonsil infection and then two days later got a huge head cold. I was so sick last week it was pathetic. I couldn't breathe - my head was so stuffed up - and the snot - oh the snot!!!! It was so bad that it was Thursday morning, we were wanting to leave that night at 6:00 and not one thing was packed.

We did make it out at 6:15 (I'm not sure how) and we made the almost 6 hour trip to my parents. Alex did great, and slept in the car. We got to my parent's house at 12:30 am. We weren't able to get him in the house without him waking up and he wouldn't got back to sleep. Jay was up with him from 1:30-3:30. At 3:30 he gave him to me as he couldn't stay up anymore. I was up with him until around 4:45 when we both got in the car and went for a ride. Of course, he fell asleep right away. I was able to get him in his crib and he slept for a couple of hours. That was then repeated almost every night that we were gone.

Friday we didn't do much of anything. (it was nice)

As many of you know, Bekah and I grew up in the same town. Unfortunately, we weren't able to meet up with Drew and Bekah this trip. But, I did find out that one of the guys that I graduated from high school with and his wife just brought their daughter home from Guatemala about 3 weeks ago. K was able to come over with beautiful E. It was so nice to see him. (K also went to our church growing up so he and I spent a lot of time together growing up) E. is BEAUTIFUL and seeing her did NOTHING to lessen my desire to have a baby girl from Guatemala. :)

We did Christmas on Sunday with my family. It was all a little overwhelming for Alex. :) He wasn't quite sure what to do with all the presents. As I mentioned earlier, Jay got me an iPod Touch which I LOVE LOVE LOVE!! It's pretty cool.

We left Monday morning and drove the 3 hours to Jay's dad's house. Alex basically still wasn't sleeping and I still wasn't any better.

Jay's dad got Alex a set of 3 balls (soccer, football, softball) that are pink and purple and have Dora all over them. I thought Alex was going to have a heart attack when he opened that present. He was so excited.

We then left Wednesday morning for the 6 hour trip home. Alex traveled really well - he just didn't do so good once we got where we were going.

And the kicker of all of this - I took NO pictures. You heard that right. I just never got the camera out. So, I leave you with this picture. Jay took it with his cell phone after we had opened all the presents at my parent's house.

I have lots of presents from before Christmas that I'll post later. I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday!!

(Ok - Blogger won't let me post a picture right now - I'll try again later)

Merry Christmas

We would like to wish your family a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year! We just spent a few days at my parents and now we are at Jay's dad's house.

Santa as very good to me as I'm typing this on my new iPod Touch!! This thing is pretty amazing.

I hope everyone stays safe and has a good holiday.

Guatadopt Calendar

So - do you have yours yet???? I just got mine in the mail today. I was so excited this year as we just missed the deadline to have Alex in it last year.

I was going through it and I think I found some of my blogger buddies. Here's the ones I could find. If I missed your child - let me know in the comments.

January - Is that Nino? (bottom of the top page in the bouncy) If so, they spelled his name wrong. :)

January - Sabrina (I could pick out that smile ANYWHERE!!)

March - Maya (I always loved that picture)

April - My little guy!! (down in the far bottom right hand corner)

June - Kemry (what a sweet picture)

June - Alec and Mikayla (poor Alec's name was left off!!)

October - Gia? (is that her in the upper left hand corner?

December - Kya Blu

MUCH Better

First - thanks for all of your kind words. I really was not feeling well on Sunday!!!

Jay forced me to call our friend who is an ENT on Sunday. It wasn't that I didn't want to call him, but I didn't want to be that person who tried to get free medical advice. ;) Well, he wanted to see me to make sure that there wasn't something more that needed to be done.

So, I went and saw him Monday morning. By that time I was already feeling better. He looked at my throat and said that he didn't need to do anything to it, but I had better let him know if I didn't get any better. He also told me that if I get one more tonsil infection he would suggest that I have them taken out. :(

So, here I am a few days later, and my antibiotics are obviously working. I can swallow, breathe, and it doesn't look like I have a goiter on the side of my neck.

This is jut another example of how thankful I am that I have access and can afford good healthcare. Although Urgent Care is twice my typical co-pay (as was the ENT) I could afford it. I didn't think about the money at all when I decided to go to Urgent Care, or to get my prescriptions filled. How blessed am I!!! Because I went when I did - and got the medicine started when I did - I got better very quickly. All I could think about was the people that Mayan Families works with - how if something like this would happen to them - it would probably get to the point of it being an emergency - and even then they may not have the ability to do anything about it.

Alex has a really bad cold - so I'm hoping that it doesn't turn into another ear infection.

Here's a picture of Alex's first ornament - he made this at day care.


We've decided to only put up our little tree this year. It's pre-lit and we aren't putting any ornaments on it. Alex loves the tree. He likes to go up to it, point, and say "Mama, WOW." His latest phrase is "No way" - which he says with a twinkle in his eye.

Let's Play Jeopardy!

Ok - so the answer is "WOW"

Do you know what the question is? I'll give you a hint - I was at Urgent Care.

Well - the question is: What do you NOT want to hear your doctor say when he looks in your throat.

My throat started getting worse again this weekend, so I headed to the Urgent Care after church. And yes, that is really what the doctor said while he was looking in my mouth.

I guess I have a VERY infected, enlarged, red, etc. right tonsil. It's practically cutting off my windpipe. He said if it was a little worse he would have sent me straight to the emergency room to have emergency SURGERY to have it drained!!! YUCK and YUCK.

So, I now have a heavy antibiotic, Diflucan for what will happen to me after the antibiotic, and Vicatin. :)

I literally can't swallow without this horrible stabbing pain. It's not fun.

So, it's all kind of fun in our house.

Me Too!! Me Too!!

Since everyone else was getting new looks for their blogs, I decided I needed one too!!

So, like everyone else, I contacted Nikki. Most of you know Nikki's story, but I'll tell you anyway. Nikki is a college student who spent some time this past summer in the Dominican Republic. She wants to go back this summer and spend an entire month working with the kids there. To help raise money, she is stylizing people's blogs. She's also only charging $20.00 with $5.00 during the month of December going to Kiva.org.

I haven't had a new look on my blog since I started it over 18 months ago.

I like it!!

Vacation

We made it back!! On one hand I was ready to come home but boy it was hard to leave the 82 degree weather and come back to the lower 30s!! (I'm not sure I ever said where we actually went - we spent the week on Sanibel Island with my parents in their time share.)

Alex did great on the flight home. He learned what airplanes were on this trip and every time he saw one in the sky, he had to point and say "Airplane!!!!!" When he discovered that we were getting on an airplane to come home his brain just about exploded he was so excited. :)

Sunday night my cousin and her husband went out to eat. My aunt, uncle and my cousin's two kids came to our condo for dinner. L. is 3 1/2 and W. is almost 2. Alex had so much fun playing with them.

Alex LOVED L. He wanted to hug her all the time.

He tried to do everything that L. did. You can kind of see it in this picture, but he was sweating he was playing so hard.

Here he is climbing on my mom.

Here's W. - isn't he cute!! (that's my uncle in the background)

Here's Alex at the beach for the first time. He wasn't too sure about it.

On Monday night we headed to the tip of Captiva Island to a restaurant called the Mucky Duck. It's a great place to get pictures at sunset. I really wanted to get a family picture taken. Unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy that night, it was really windy, and Alex was REALLY not in a mood to cooperate.

Do you see how windy it was??

We then tried to hand Alex to my parents to get a picture with them. Well - he wanted NOTHING to do with that. We have about 10 pictures - and video that looks like what you see below.

Here's my brother and sis-in-law. They are so cute they make me want to puke. :)

Here they are with Alex. Alex LOVED his Uncle Chris and Aunt Jamie. This is where he ended up most nights - on the couch playing with them.

There is a grocery store on the island that we went to. They were decorated for Christmas. As a northern, I found this pretty funny. I have to say that we don't see lizards on our Santa decorations up here. :)

They also had something that Alex really liked......

Birds!! They have about 6 parrots in cages around the grocery store. Alex loved going and looking at them.

There was also this big iguana that hung out all day Friday just outside our condo. He was really cool.

Alex seemed to learn SO much last week. He really started talking - he's added so many words - and he is now trying to say everything we are. (chickenbus is being used more and more in our household now!!)

He would go for "walks" with my mom and dad in the stroller every day. He loved this. He would go grab his stroller and say "bye bye."

My mom took him to the beach one day. He played in the sand for a little bit. We both tried to take him back another day and that lasted all of 30 seconds. :)

We did go to the pool every day. Alex really got brave. I did dunk him on the second day. I've never done that, but I felt like I needed to. He did good. He came up coughing and sputtering but he didn't cry. By Friday he was dunking himself! :) Not quite all the way down - but up to his nose. He LOVED it.

So we're back - back to work - back to daycare - back to real life. I was able to take naps every day, read a book and a half, and pretty much got to do what I wanted to. Between my parents and my bro and sis-in-law I didn't have to deal with Alex all that much. :)