Catching up on Summer

Once again, it's been awhile since I have posted so I have a lot to share! This summer has been super busy and I can actually say "too much camping!"!! The kids don't know how to stay in their own beds, meals are crazy, and the daily routine is extremely boring to them! They love camping as much as I do and are having a hard time readjusting. In the trailer they have their own beds all within a few feet from ours and I think that makes them stay in their own beds because they know we are right there. When we are home they all come down at night and in the morning we find them all over the living room which is just ourside our door. Kind of frustrating but at least they don't come our bed! They love waking up in the trailer because their clothes are laid out, breakfast is hot, and as soon as their plate is clear they may take off for the playground! I love it because it takes me 5 minutes to clean up the trailer and breakfast and then I get to sit in the sunshine with my morning coffee (yes, I take the BUNN camping..) and chat with Kara and catch up on my magazines. We eat lunch and then it's off to the lake and we swim and make sand castles for the next 3 hours. Then it's nap time (or quiet time for Everett) and then more playground time or bean bag games or bike rides. Then is dinner on the grill and a bonfire with smores (yep, nearly every night!) and bed by 8. This is our routine, unfortunately this is going to have to change and the kids are up for a reality check. We camped a week in June, 2 1/2 weeks in July, and 2 weeks in August. We def. love camping!

While camping at the end of this summer we were fortunate enough to have our house painted outside and in. The siding looks brand new in an olive green color and totally seperates the store from the house. My kitchen and entry are new canvases for me to decorate. Amy and I went to Shipse this week and I found a couple of great wall pieces for each room. There was a booth that was going out of business and I found some great deals on the shabby chic style decor. My kitchen is a light yellow with sea green and white accent and I think I am going to get fabric with grey print for the curtains. Thanks to Janell my entry is a light blue (she had 1/2 gal. for me from her kitchen) with black and white accents. I can't wait to get the rooms put back together!

Tim has had a great summer in the store with more processing orders than we've ever had!Now that the fairs have wrapped up he also has gotten more animals to process from them than other years. We are anxious to see how deer season goes, this is by far our busiest time of the year. Thankfully Tim has been able to take a few days off for our camping trips. He has been able to fish again this year for the first time in about 3 years, if you know him at all you know how much he loves to fish!

Everett's eyes are doing good. There has not been any progression of the "macular degeneration" (not really what it is but it's the best way to describe it), his eyes are irritated a lot but that has a lot to do with his allergies too. At his last exam with the surgeon we were told he didn't have to come back for 4 more months, yeah! Like I said, his allergies are crazy now and is partially why we are done camping this year. There is just too much "stuff" in the air right now and he is doing breathing treatments all the time. These wind him and he about bounces off the walls after each one. It is impossible for him to stop chattering too! He is so pumped for 1st grade and may be more excited to ride the bus too. Thankfully the bus comes right next door so he will be on the public bus this year, it makes me nervous but I have been assured it's not bad especially b/c he's so young yet. I sure hope they're right! Everett has not really learned anything new over the summer but he has def. perfected riding his bike and swimming! I am fairly certain that he did not do much more than these 2 things all summer!

Deana is still just a quiet as can be. If you hear noise from her it is prob. singing or reciting the Apostle's Creed. She is just in her own little world and entertains herself all day long. She sometimes drags Jax into her make-believe but he too has a mind of his own. She refuses to ride a 2-wheeler, even with training wheels and rides a trike all over the campgrounds. We had to take Jax's pedal loader camping with us to keep those 2 from fighting over the trike! She is infatuated with the #4 and everything has to be "just right". We are not too worried yet but if she doesn't change her favorite # to 5 on her 5th birthday we may have a problem! She counts eveything she sees and in multiples of 4! It's pretty crazy! She has totally fallen in love with a cat that showed up on the porch and always saves some her meals to share with it. She loves coloring and drawing pictures, she is def. our artistic one (maybe b/c she is so particular)! Deana heads to preschool this year and seems to be taking it in stride, not overly excited, just happy to go to a real school and graduate from "mommy school". I cannot stand character backpacks and clothing and don't you know the only bag she wants to take to school has Dora on it....yep, I'm giving in and letting her use it!

Jax is the definition of terrible 2 and def. lives up to the stereo-type! There is nothing sacred around the house! He has violated everything! He somehow figured out how to open RX bottles and I spent the night in ER with him a few months ago. Thankfully he must not have eaten any, or if he did they had no reaction on him! He has colored my walls numerous times with permanent marker (he finds them no matter where I put them so now they are all in the trash!). He has done well in church though and now sits almost the entire service, the only embaressing thing with this is that when he does need a spanking he cries "don't spank it, mommy!" and there are smiles on everyone elses faces when we walk out making it that much harder to spank him when I do get out! His health is a little concern to us right now as he has been placed on a no-dairy diet. Everything he eats goes right through him, and it may just be toddler diareah but he has to do the diet for a month to see if it's a dairy problem. He loves his milk and his sippy-cup so I guess now is time to break that habit! At least he can still have soy milk. This kid spends his days looking for ways to bug his mom and sisters, he leaves Everett alone (maybe b/c Everett gets him back!). He is def. a tease and totally reminds me of his uncle Dave in looks and personality. He (and Dave too ;) are both pain in the necks but can turn right around and be super sweet and huggy and lovey too. I just hope Jax gets it out now and doesn't give us trouble when he's older (keeping my fingers crossed!)

Last is Kara and she is just the perfect baby! She smiles all the time and rarely cries. She is crawling all over and pulls herself up on anything in reach. She walks from sofa to table to loveseat so it'll be soon that she is walking. I am wondering if she'll beat Jax who was walking at 11 months? The only reason she sits in her walker is b/c she can move faster and she likes to give Jax rides on the back of it. It's no wonder she has good chunky thighs, everyone pinches them thinking it's fat but it's solid! She has really strong legs, the ped. said so too at her 9 mo. checkup. She thinks Kara will be walking soon too, I guess we'll just have to see....She waves "bye bye" and makes kissy faces (and smacks her lips) if she likes you. She says a few words "Dadda" was the first at 7 months and she made sure he knew what he was saying! He walked in the door and she would yell it with a wave! She just started saying "Mama" and absolutly will not say it if I ask her too. She may look like me but she is Daddy's girl all the way! There is not a food that she doesn't like...we had spaghetti tonight and she actually picked all the onions out of the sauce and ate them first! She takes a bottle 3 times a day and not because she's hungry but prob. b/c she just ate something dry! I rarely have to cut her food, she just picks it up and takes little bites like she's been this for years. She follows her brothers and sister around the campgrounds in her walker all day long, like she can keep up with whatever they're up to! Someone just needs to tell her she's not 3 years old yet but 9 months old!

So that's the update on the fam. hopefully I don't take this long to write again...I had a cup of coffee at 7 tonight so I had to fill in the last hour I haven't been able to sleep. Hopefully I can go to bed now and get a good night's rest and be ready to tackle the kids again in the morning! G'night!

Everett's Surgery

As I said in the last post, Everett needed surgery for his eyes. We had the surgery today and it went really well. My parents picked us up at 5:30 this morning and we went to the Outpatient Surgical Center out on E. Paris in Grand Rapids. His procedure started with Fluorescein Angiography which is a dye injected into the blood stream to follow the blood flow in the eye. He has a lot of bleeding in the right eye and very little in the left. The bleeding in the right was causing his sight to act like Macular Degeneration, but it was not Everett had. Macular Degeneration is when the eye loses it's sight because of excessive blood vessels and bleeding in the eye, starting with the central vision and degressing from there. There is no name for what Everett has, Dr. Aaberg said it was like a birthmark in that there is no reason, medically speaking, for it to be there - it just is. The treatment given today was an injection of Avastin to clot the blood vessels that are still releasing blood into the eye. We go back on April 2 to see if this worked. If so, we will just have to come back periodically to make sure all is good. If it doesn't work then we do this procedure again until the blood clots. Laser Photocoagulation may have to be done only if Avastin has shown not be at all effective. Dr. Aaberg was very optimistic (I know it's a cliche' but he really was!) that this would work and we won't have to laser the blood flow to stop it. If it is lasered then the nerves are also deadened and he will never regain that central vision he has already lost. With Avastin there is a slim chance his eye could heal completely! It is hard not to get excited when you hear this but I have to remember that it is a "slim chance". He said children heal very well and better than an adult. So anyway, after his procedure we picked him up in recovery and headed to meet Tim for breakfast at Rainbow Grill. We were there around 10:30 already! He was a little loopy coming out of the anesthesia but over all came out well. He is bouncing around the house right now asking to ride his bike around the yard, so I think he will be fine :) Thanks to all of you for the prayers of his surgery and recovery we really appreciate it! And to Nikki, Pam, and Emily who took the other 3 kids last night too, it was a HUGE relief not to have to worry about them during the night last night and the day today too. Thanks for the words of encouragement as he came through this ordeal. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

It is high time I catch up and keep up on our blog! It has been almost a year and a lot has happened!
Deana has since graduated speech and as long as she is not around her big brother she does not stop chattering. And it is chattering...she is making up for the delay in speech and asks everyone in the stores what they are buying/doing and why and most often she asks "what next?" She still thinks it's funny though to sign with Bubba and leave Mommy guessing what they're scheming...

We did a lot of camping last summer, the kids love it and I need the time away from the house with them so that I am not so distracted with housework that I don't appreciate how quickly they are growing up. We rent our trailer out (to pay for tuition, and it did this year) and I am camping with it whenever it isn't rented, it is out a lot at Chapel in the Pines. This is only a mile or so from home but it's quiet and the kids have reign of the park during the week and the water is clear and shallow (the only way I will swim in a lake) and safe for the kids to roam. Tim comes out at night and goes back home for work so it's good that we're so close to the store.

Everett started kindergarten this year. He had a hard fall season with asthma but only missed a few days of school, they go every other day so that worked good for us and his allergies because it usually takes about a week from start to end when he is having trouble. He was really tired at the start of the year and we attributed it to the asthma meds but come to find out he was only seeing with one full eye! His right eye just has peripheral vision, no central and that left eye was compensating for it making him really tired (understandably so!). He has surgery March 1 and we hope to stop any progression of sight loss in both eyes. It has started in the left but is not as severe as the right eye. Other than this he is a very normal and rambunctious 5 year (almost 6) year old. He loves soccer and riding his bike and giving his little brother piggy-back rides around the house. He has lost 2 teeth and has a loose 3rd but he won't let me pull it!

Jackson is about as terrible as terrible 2s can be...he is into everything he can get his hands on. 3 times he has emptied bottles of baby powder all over the nursery! He likes the taste of it, yuck! He loves to empty lotions and hair gels too. He has drawn with crayon on almost every one of my walls and then has clean it off by himself, with my magic eraser.

He and Everett are terrible mean to their sister Deana and way too helpful with Kara. Although they did sit down for a picnic with her today so I guess they're not all bad. They knew exactly what they wanted...little ham sandwiches, carrots, grapes, cheese sticks, and juiceboxes. So this also became dinner and they were none the wiser, eating from Deana's pink and purple princess tea set!

Kara is 3 months now, she was born November 13. The end of the pregnancy was terrible but the rest was not so bad, I actually lost almost 40 pounds! She was 7pds 12oz (I think), my biggest one yet! She is extremely good and loves all the attention she gets. She eats and sleeps on a schedule and when we are out she usually sleeps the whole time. She goes to bed around 9:30 and sleeps until about 7am, she has done this from the start and it definately makes up for the end of the pregnancy! I had a lot of little problems with this pregnancy, but the culmination of them made it my worst yet, maybe I am just getting to old for this, hmmmm!

Tim is starting to get busy again in the butcher shop, we had a little lul between deer season and spring but it looks like things are picking up a little earlier this year. This is good, it means we are getting new farmers and buyers and word is getting around and people like us! It's interesting to see where this business takes us there are a lot little paths we can take off the main line of butchering and it's neat to see where we go.

I am on a serious excerise and "eat right" kick and it's sort of working, first I lost weight and now I am noticing my shape is changing but not as much weight loss. I guess it's shifting around but hopefully I can start losing again. I am also the queen of organization and have stowed everything I can in grey totes and labeling them all. They are floor to ceiling in the boy's closet and everywhere there is room for them. You see, I don't nest when I'm pregnant I just wait until it's over and then hit it full force! I do the same with cleaning my house, I can't believe some of the things I don't notice to clean when I am pregnant but when I'm not it's real obvious!
It sounds like we are headed to MN again over Memorial Day and seeing my last blog was about last year's trip I thought I should maybe catch up on the fam. before we go.

Tim & I had a little romantical getaway a couple of weekends ago. We drove to Traverse City on a Thr. and visited wineries and toured the city. On Fri. Barnhills and Dykstras came up and we went out sledding, it was like sledding but to the extreme...the hill was iced over and we were on tubes and had a leader that gave us spins with the maximum g-force, I thought I was going to go "wingin" off but thankfully my hiney stuck in the hole of the tube so I really had nothing to worry about! I had to roll to the left with all my force to get out of the dumb thing! On Sat. we did a "thrift trail" and visited the local thrift stores, we didn't find much but it was fun anyway. It was a great little vacation (even though we went somewhere colder, than warmer!)

All right, well, TTFN and I will write again when I have updates!