The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Weekend

That is what we are calling our Labor Day Weekend. Do you know that book? I never really enjoyed reading that book but I sure can relate with the title. We got hit hard with a stomach bug that sent Mom and Dad(me and Big B) to the hospital. Little B was the first to get it and you'd never know he was sick except that he was throwing up. He was resilient- mom and dad were not. To recall this Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Weekend, I will tell it to you through my thankful list. Again, this list kept me focused on HIM and the many showers of blessings that flowed as he continues to supply my every need! SO many little things that worked out that continue to amaze me of His attention to detail in our lives.

I am thankful for:

September 2, 2011

- for B being in a great mood when I walked in his room this morning despite the throw up all in his bed and all over himself

- for it being Friday and having Hubby home to help clean up B in the bath and air out the room by opening the windows upstairs

- for B saying "nap" and running to the pack and play to tell me he was ready to go to bed

- for B taking a long nap

- for B saying "xuse me" after he sneezed

- for getting to hold B as he threw up

- for Hubby answering his phone and running downstairs to clean up the throw up while I cleaned up B and me

- for a parking place opening up at the doctor office right as B starting throwing up in the car

-for a nurse giving us a room right when we got to the doctor

- for B continuing to be in a great mood despite him being sick

- for gatorade and for B drinking it to replenish himself

- for grandparents on their way to spend time with B

September 3, 2011

- for Auburn football season beginning!

- for Soos to help with B while I wasn't feeling well

- for Hubby running upstairs to take care of me while throwing up(during Auburn game!)

- for Auburn winning in the last second!

- for an Emergency Room to go to for just pregnant women- so nice

-for my nice nurse Karin to make me laugh and encourage me

- that Hampton was fine and for getting to hear his heartbeat and move for many hours while he was plugged onto the monitor

-for a TV in the hospital room for Hubby to watch and for good football games on to pass the time

- for IVs, 4 bags of fluids, nauseous medicine, nauseous shot, imodium and whatever else they gave me!

-for my sweet in-laws being in town and ALL of the help they are!

- that Bennett hasn't gotten sick despite being over at our house Thursday for a play date

- for making it home by 11:00pm and getting to sleep in my own bed

This is from Thursday's play date- they are too cute

September 4, 2011

- for barf bags from hospital to hand to Hubby when he got sick(at 5am)

- for Hubby telling me he needed to go to the ER

- for Susan to take him to ER so I could stay home and rest

- for B eating something finally!

- for Pops taking B on a walk and to the pier so I could shower/rest

- for Soos and Pops and all that they did and the decision to leave Sunday at lunch in hopes that they wouldn't get the bug

- for our family of three laying in our bed watching movies

September 5, 2011

- for Labor Day and a day to re-cooperate from being sick

- for hubby helping with Little B while I quarantined the house

- for the Walmart worker being so kind when I told her my son had thrown up on the toy aisle(blueberries-his tummy wasn't quite ready for that!)

- for Marta to call to see if she could watch B tomorrow while I go to doctor since he isn't quite ready to go back to school yet

- for the Boney's not getting sick so far

-for Hampton's business in my belly and the high school girls getting to feel him

-for making it through the night without throwing up the two chocolate chip muffins I ate- totally regret as I couldn't resist the temptation!

Whew! Did you follow that weekend? Basically alot of throwing up and alot of cleaning up and alot of help from the in-laws! Marta got back in town late last night, so we literally would not have had any help to watch B while we were away at the hospital on Saturday and Sunday. Thank you BONEYS for coming and serving and cleaning and playing! Thankfully they took some pictures on Saturday morning. WAR EAGLE!

The heroes of the weekend! Soos and Pops!

Look what arrived for Hampton! Thanks Ma C and Ranger for the anywhere chair!

Unfortunately, this is where we are today. B has a small fever and is very tired. He is napping now and am hoping he is feeling better once he wakes up. He might be a future doctor as he has gotten really good at taking his own temperature!

Hope to be back soon about Hampton's status and his room and the playroom!

B goes to "school"

Today was quite an exciting day for B and me! B had his first Mother’s Morning Out day and I got three hours to myself! Did you know that every Tuesday is Target’s markdown day in the women’s section? I got shirts and tanks for $4 and $8! This could be tempting as I will have a break every Tuesday morning now! Also, I got to stop by some kid consignment stores that I have wanted to check out for a while. They had some great clothes and toys for such low prices- makes me never want to pay full price for anything again!

Anyways, Little B loved school. I think he was actually the only one in his room for most of the day which meant he had Miss Bessie and Miss Janice all to himself! There are four kids signed up for Tuesdays as we are only going on Tuesdays. I think a lot of the other kids are doing M,W,F and Mother’s Morning out is closed on Thursdays. They said he did great and he had the biggest smile on his face when I saw him on the playground. They also said he talked all day long- shocker.

I made sure he had his name on his shirt the first day so there was no confusion on what to call him!

So excited!

And to document that we are one month and three days away from meeting Hampton!

We have been talking about school ever since Friday’s Open House where he met his teachers and saw his little class. This morning he was so excited to put on his backpack- he ran up and down the sidewalk of the neighborhood giggling while wearing it.

Action shot

Also, this is totally for the grandparents. Watch how he sings "Magic, Magic, Magic" now. Yall get ready to watch Aubie and talk alot of Auburn when everyone comes in September!

Potty Time

I originally starting videoing B while he was saying "Auburn- Ch-Ch"- what Daddy taught him this weekend. But the video ended up capturing him using the potty! We are by no means potty training- but B started showing signs of getting ready to potty train (poopy at the same time each day, a dry diaper for 2 hours or more, telling us when he is going poopy, etc.) so our doctor recommended we get a few potties to go around the house to start talking about it and encouraging it. He cracks me up.

2-4-6-8-10!

Well I am officially 6 weeks away from having baby number 2! Though we are excited- I have noticed we are having a lot more talks about what is to come and throwing out expectations that we have and preparing for them in the best way we know how. We still don’t have much set up for Hampton but hope to in the next few weeks. We are putting him in the guest room so he won’t really have a nursery. Hampton will get B’s crib and B will borrow a neighbor’s crib. Sometimes I feel sad that I didn’t do a full blown nursery for Hampton but I did order him a pillow with an H to go on the guestroom bed so that made me feel better! I plan on moving both boys into the big guest room once Hampton is the appropriate age(whatever that is?!?!) . So instead of spending money on Hampton’s room- we have been gradually redoing the playroom. I didn’t have a budget for this so I found a way to make one! When we sold a piece of furniture on craigslist then I would replace it with a new one for the playroom(sold a bed and barstools to buy the couch, sold the armoire to buy bookshelves). I also took the dresser out of the guest room and put it in the playroom. FREE! I am loving the playroom as we spend a lot of time in it and it looks out at our scenic neighborhood. I am realizing the importance of a playroom and am so thankful for the random front room that now has a purpose. I sold the rug on craigslist Sunday which means I ordered the rug I have been wanting Sunday night! Once the rug is in I will post pics of the entire room as it will be complete for now.

Probably B’s favorite thing in the playroom is the new fish that my dad painted. My dad is very talented and we have several of his things he painted back in the 80’s. I called him last week and asked if he could do some art for the playroom. Since Big B fishes a lot and loves to show B the fish that he caught off of the pier- I figured some fish paintings would be a hit. I let Big B pick the fish that he wanted- he chose a rainbow trout, tarpon and red fish. All are local inshore fish that he has caught. He wanted to do two more but I only had three frames so three was the number!

Check out these beauties- my dad did these in a day and used watercolor to paint. So thankful for him sharing his talent to look at each day! Little B loves the fish and runs down to see them after each nap.

Top- Speckled Trout- Middle- Tarpon- Bottom- Red Fish

Video of B naming the fish and also showing off some more of his tricks (counting to 10)

More playroom:

I originally got these buckets to store art supplies and things for the playroom but right now they are a daily sorter for B to sort his toys and letters and animals.

This is the dresser that I moved down from the guest room. I love looking at all of my favorite books from teaching and all of my son's favorite books too!

Random but I've been meaning to share this fiction book- great Australian author- first book I have ever read of hers and hope to read more from her- had me laughing and crying the entire book!

Also, I am still successfully counting my blessings and seem to have gotten a great system down! I took a few pictures out of my new journal. I had a great week last week and am continuing to feel like myself again- owe it all to counting and thanking HIM for all that He gives me!

Also, those that watched the video know why I chose the title of this post- he loves his even numbers :)

Fumigated!

We continue to learn more about home owning in Florida. We have learned that you have to get a water softener if you don't want to replace your appliances every five years. We learned that the builder who built our house cut some corners and didn't install any kind of ventilation in our master bath- hence the new shower we got in April. We learned about subterranian termites and paid (a lot of) money to get our house treated for those when we first moved in last summer. We learned even more about termites in June when we found out we had drywood termites. Not knowing that drywood termites were not a good thing- I called our pest guy to let him know we had found alot of wings and this peppery stuff in our master and in Bradford's office and that we had also seen some little bug things flying around. I was thinking they would come out and spray something and we would be done. The guy comes downstairs and asks me: "When do you want us to tent your house?" Excuse me? Tent my house?! What?! Oh and it will cost (a lot more!) money. After learning more about how serious these suckers were, we realized that tenting was our only option. Apparently our whole neighborhood has all done it and even our house had been tented 7 years ago! So we picked a date in August to move out for three days and packed up all of our food, plastic toys, baby mattresses and precious items for our house to be fumigated.

This is the picture my neighbor sent me on Thursday afternoon. Poor house.

Thankfully, I had hotel points that expired in September so we used those and booked a hotel room near Disney. We left Thursday morning and headed to the Darch's for the day in Lakeland to play while Daddy worked around the Lakeland area. Daddy met us at the Darch's on Thursday evening and we headed to Orlando from there. We chose this hotel based on their excellent location to Downtown Disney and their splash pad pool. Big Bradford worked from the hotel on Friday while Little B and I hung out in the room and at the pool. Little B LOVED Downtown Disney. I think he learned 50 new words in those three days just by getting to see so much fun stuff. Though there were some positives to the trip- there were quite a few challenges. Like naps- they didn't really exist. Each night I think he finally fell asleep around 10pm. Being in one room and KNOWING we were in the room just wasn't the best situation. Live and learn- next time we will book a hotel suite. Mom and Dad were pretty tired as B got up early each morning too. We did think ahead and packed Bradford's projector screen to atleast partition part of the room.

All in all, we survived and are really glad to have it past us! I wanted to go ahead and solve the problem before Hampton arrives. Another positive is that we cleaned out alot and got organized which meets my nesting needs!

Hotel room with our genius partition!

It just made me laugh all weekend- wonder what the cleaning ladies thought of our set up

Enjoying a grill cheese at Downtown Disney Friday night

Watching the fireworks from our hotel room

Enjoying Downtown Disney

His favorite- Mickey

His favorite animal!

Can you see the happiness?

Taking the boat taxi back to the beginning of Downtown Disney

Cooled off in the fountains before he headed back for a nap- Saturday was the first day he took a nap!

We do hope to take advantage of living close to Disney and look forward to taking the boys in a few years! Orlando has so much to offer!

Happy Birthday Reid!

Happy Birthday Reid! We hope this can bring a smile to all of your faces! We love you guys and are thinking of yall during this time! Come see us soon!

Still counting...

So I took a week off of counting and I went back to this not so pretty person. I started throwing pity parties for myself and thought that the world revolved around me. So after evaluating what the root of the problem was- I realized that I had not written down ONE thing that I was thankful for. I quickly started writing them down again and I think I am well on my way to getting out of the funk. I think I mentioned to one friend last week that I might be already experiencing the baby blues and he isn't even here yet. We have been sick here the last few days also and have had several sleepless nights. It is pretty awesome that during the hardest times, so many good things happen. Just thought I would share a few that were on my list. I am in search of a fun journal to write them down in and hope to start that immediately. For now, I type them in a draft email that says, keep counting anna.

- for healthy delivery of baby Elijah(July 20th) and the perfect timing God worked with all of the details of getting Noah while she delivered Elijah

- for a low key birthday for Bradford and him loving his birthday gift- framed BCS Memorabilia

- for coffee with a southern girl and the breath of fresh air she added to my day!

- for a handy husband

- for a day to cook yummy food in the kitchen for friends

-for generous neighbors that gave us two bike seats!

- for B talking the whole way on the bike ride and saying "again" when we got back

- for time with Allison my BSF leader and the safeness I feel with sharing with her

- for B rocking the "baby"

-for the verse Proverbs 30:8-9- only asking for my daily bread!

- for skyping with Lindsey and the warmess it brought to see her while talking

- for the forever friendship that has gone so much deeper with each passing year with Jenn and VV

- for a bold prayer I can take to God- Pulling a King Hezekiah prayer

- for my new favorite number- five

- for nice new neighbors next door- they are expecting a baby girl in December

-for a day to work outside alongside with hubby

-for hubby getting the tahoe to fit in the garage by taking off the grill guard

-for B being a trooper even though he isn't feeling well

- for a morning at the zoo when we can't go to church since B and mommy had a runny nose

- for selling things on craigslist to go to the playroom fund!

- for realizing I did not have a thankful heart while being sick and needed to get refocused

- for a long bath in our clawfoot tub

- for Bailey playing fetch with B

- for the handprints on my pantry door from where B loves to throw things in the trash- his favorite is throwing his popsicle stick away

- for B talking to Bailey " where da ba go?"

- for B napping with his Doggy pillow that Nanny gave him

-for Hubby and his deep dish pizza