::blocks::

We play blocks a lot. Usually it ends up in screaming and crying and "he kicked my castle over" and "she kicked mine ovih fihst" and throwing blocks and all kinds of ugly things. But the other night we made some pretty cool castles with no fights...

Chloe's was almost as tall as her.

Then we tore it down and built a big one together...

Coopie likes to help. He usually puts one on and takes two off.

Then he found a cup and some plastic spoons (after he emptied out the drawers), and played with those and the laundry basket.

The final few blocks...

...and FINISHED!!

It had doorways, windows, horses, girls, boys, kitties, doggies, slides, diving boards, towers...

Then they tore it up...

...and started all over again.

Like I said, they usually don't play this well together with blocks. This was a rare occasion, so I'm glad I got it on camera. Since then, they've been grounded from the blocks for throwing them at eachother and knocking down eachother's castles-I know it sounds like that's not that big a deal, but when it happens EVERY day, you've gotta do something about it! Chloe says "I wish we could play with blocks. Maybe we can in February??"

In other news...
The Denams (my brother's family) had their baby girl on Monday. While they're thrilled to have their baby here, they've had a rough week. Suzie had her via emergency cesarean. She's been in the NICU since Monday. She's been on oxygen and had help breathing with a ventilator. As of right now things are looking up and they're hoping to go home Monday or Tuesday. There are more details, but I'll save that for Billy to share (facebook, his own blog, phonecalls, email-whichever way he wants). Extra thoughts and prayers their way are much needed. Oh, and her name is Mia (Mee-uh), and she's beautiful!

::oh, Bubba!::

This is what Cooper likes to sneak off and do when we're not paying attention...

Every once in a while I'll hear "Oh, Bubba!!" Then when I walk back to his room, he's usually emptied out his whole dresser. When I catch him doing it, I just say "you can't do dat" and talk to him, and he looks at me and whips those clothes out and throws them across the room.

Sometimes he likes to take out all the diapers in his little diaper stacker or empty out the cabinet (full of extra blankets, burp rags-from when he was littler,) He also likes to empty out other people's dresser drawers and get into the pantry and dump out chips, plastic spoons, or whatever he can get his hands on.

We don't mind. We just think he's cute :)

In other Cooper news...

He's walking!! He gets up and walks around all by himself now. He still mostly crawls to get places, but a few times during the day he'll just start walking. The other day we were playing, and he was in Portie's room and Chloe and I were in her room (the 2 rooms are adjacent to eachother) and he comes walkin' right in on his own. He has 4 teeth now. He got one on bottom, then one on top, then another on bottom, then another on top-a little out of the normal order, but we'll take 'em. He also says "pyooo" when I change his stinky diapers.

::20/20::

Surgery Day.....

We got up as usual. Got the big kids ready for school, fed all 3 breakfast, Grandma Snowman came over to take the big kids to school, and we were off to surgery!

Chloe gave me her pink, squishy baby doll to take with me so I wouldn't be scared.

I told her a couple weeks ago that I was going to have eye surgery and she was really nervous and said "NO!!!" I just said that all they were going to do was fix my eyes so I can see better, and she was still really concerned and didn't want me to do it. And then I said "and they might move one of my eyes up here (and I pointed to my forehead)" She laughed and said "nuh uh!!"

I was nervous, but trying to be brave.

All done...

The surgery itself took all of 10 minutes. I spent about an hour and a half filling out paper work, doing some pretesting, and a bit of waiting. We watched a few surgeries on the monitor in the waiting room, which only seemed to make me more nervous. I signed the consent to allow them to show mine in the waiting room too-so Matt got to watch my surgery.

I took the valium, which probably helped, but I was still pretty nervous. I cried a bit before. I always get like that. It's just pure nerves! I get like that right before one of our babies is about to be born too...the tears just start to flow out of pure nervousness. I don't know why. I wasn't even that upset, I was just sitting there, and the tears were just falling. It was making me laugh a little because I had no control over it.

Anyway... I went into the surgery room and couldn't see anybody's faces (because my eyes were that bad). I just laid where they told me to and listened to them the whole time. After it was all over, they told me I could sit up, and I could see (not perfectly clear) their faces. Things were cloudy but I could see way better than before. It was amazing. I had a pretty serious headache going by this time, and my eyes hurt and watered and were SUPER light sensitive for the next couple of hours.

Matt took me home (actually we picked up Chloe from school on our way-and she kept touching my face and asking me if I was ok). I took a pain pill and went to sleep for a while. Matt came in and put drops in my eyes every hour. He took such good care of me and the kids. I'm so glad he was there with me. From then on, the vision just improved all day. The next morning I had my 1 day post op appointment, and I'm 20/20 in my right eye and 20/25 in my left! I can't even believe it! The dr. says my vision will keep adjusting.

Right after the surgery, as we were leaving the surgery center, I told Matt that if I could have gone ahead in time and sort of had that experience and then gone back to make the decision, I'm not sure if I would've gone through with it, but now things are great. The eyes feel pretty good, I can see!, and things are only going to keep getting better.

Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts and prayers, support, and concern.

I feel so loved :)

::tomorrow::

The surgery's tomorrow. For most of the day today the nervousness felt like it faded, but now it feels like it's back. I'm excited too though-maybe more excited now than nervous, but still pretty nervous. I can't imagine being able to see without any contacts or glasses. I've had them since I was little (first pair of glasses in 3rd or 4th grade, I think), so I have no memories of ever just waking up and being able to see. I still can't quite grasp that idea-just seeing when I wake up. Tomorrow.

Matt gave me a blessing. I kinda sprang it on him too. It was beautiful. He always says such sweet things, comfort was mentioned several times-definitely some divine inspiration if you ask me :)

Now some Law & Order and then to bed. Hopefully I'll get some sleep tonight.

::today we ironed::

Anyone who knows me well, knows I hate ironing. It's by far my least favorite household chore. I'd argue that I'd rather clean toilets than iron ('cause cleaning toilets only takes about 10 minutes).

So I was not excited when Matt whispered in my ear this morning that he was about out of shirts. Don't get us wrong...Matt can iron a shirt. I just usually do it, cause it's the last thing he wants to make time for at 4:30 in the morning when he's getting up for work.

So here's my pile...

...and here's my helper...

Every time I iron she brings up her little ironing board and "helps." She irons her baby's clothes and some of Dadduh's shirts. It's cute, and I love that she does that.

We (the kids and I) also watched the news today and saw some families cry about not knowing where their loved ones were because of the earthquake in Haiti. At dinner tonight, we prayed for those affected, and we all got a little teary-especially me.

In other news...

I'm getting Lasik this week. Thursday actually, and I'm pretty nervous about it; so is Matt. We think a little about what if I lost my sight all together, and it scares us to death. I've got too many precious things to look at. I play out the worst case scenario in my head pretty often just so there aren't any surprises. My mom tells me to think positive. I try, but I can't help but think of all the rediculous things that could go wrong (power surges, power outages, earth quakes during the procedure, what if I have like a seizure and start shaking and the laser cuts my eye in half, miscalculation of my eye and therefore receiving the wrong surgery, etc) .

My pre-op appointment is tomorrow, and I'm even nervous about that! I hope all goes well. I could use a few extra thoughts/prayers this week :)

::our family::

...according to Chloe

goes like this...

Matt

Amy

Chloe

Porter

Cooper

Ava

AVA?!!?

(this is not an announcement, by the way)

She is just completely in love with the idea of a baby sister named Ava (and so am I :) ) She talks about it everyday (everyday!!). Counts "her" in as part of our family, looks at baby girl clothes at the store and says "if we have a Baby Ava, we could get this for her," keeps her clothes/toys she doesn't want anymore in case "Baby Ava" might want them, counts animals/objects in pictures-each one is one of us, and one is also Baby Ava.

Can you believe that?? I swear it not because of me! I'm not quite ready for a "baby Ava" yet. Hopefully a little later, but not yet!! I asked her, what happens if it endes up being a Baby Spencer?? Her face got pretty serious, "well it won't." "We already have 2 boys, now we need another girl so we can have 2 girls."
Makes sense.

::our little late bloomer::

Coopie is 13 1/2 months old, and he doesn't walk. He climbs on EVERYTHING, talks (about 10 or so words), crawls at warp speed, stands all by himself, climbs up and down the stairs all by himself, feeds himself, opens the house doors, turns on the shower ...you get the idea. He's just a stubborn boy! We stand him up and he just sits down. We hold his fingers, and usually he'll walk, but as soon as he doesn't feel like it, he sits down. And it's kinda frustrating. He does just about everything BUT walk!!

...until yesterday!!

He took his first independent steps yesterday! 4 in a row!! From me to Grandma Snowman!! We didn't have the camera ready to get any pictures of the momentous occasion (because who does?), so we tried to just get some of him with the tripod today (on the continuous shooting/al servo), but he was so distracted by the camera shooting (and flashing-cause we had to have a faster shutter) all by itself, that he wouldn't walk. I was kinda bummed that we weren't going to get our shots of him walking all by himself between Matt and I like I had planned, but when I saw them I thought they were hilarious! They make me laugh out loud every time I look at 'em.

I keep telling him he's late. Everyone tells me "he'll walk when he's dang good 'n' ready!!" He would only ever roll over (at first) when I wasn't in the room, and his Auntie Sarah said "you know he gets up and walks around the house when you're not looking." I've been kinda worried about him and his walking and thinking-what if he never walks, but 13 1/2 months is ok, right?

In other news...

I hit a mailbox in the Hahoe today-knocked it right off its post. I looked in the rearview and all I saw was a broken post sticking out of the sidwalk and the mailbox lying on the ground. I backed up and pulled into the people's driveway, picked up the mailbox-laughing the whole time. I rang the doorbell. The guy answered and probably knew immediately what happened when he saw me standing there holding his mailbox. I explained what happened and that I thought I knew him. He asked my name and where we lived. I told him. He invited me in. They are an older couple. His wife was making bread in the kitchen. They said people hit their mailbox all the time. I was fighting back laughter the whole time, (letting it leak out at any mildly funny remark they made) because who does that?? Who hits a mailbox?? So then I pick Chloe up from school a couple of minutes late. It was just her and one other girl standing outside, and she says "Mom what took you so long?" I told her I'd tell her in a minute. As soon as I opened my door, Porter must've already told her, 'cause she says "YOU HIT A MAILBOX????" As you can imagine, Matt hasn't let up on me either. I guess it's payback for my relentless teasing when he broke the mirror backing out of the garage. I think that was way worse than hitting a mailbox though, right?? As for the Hahoe, she's a tank. Just a small dent above the headlight and a little crack in the top of the headlight. Not too bad.

::a late christmas bonus::

Papa Guitar came this last week for a quick visit. He stayed at our house (which is SO fun) for a couple of days.

He played with the kids...

...watched some TV with Portie...

...and he took us out to dinner one night (for some "Utah"-Mex).

We had a little Christmas party with Papa & the Denams at our house.

Papa brought a few gifts :) ...

...and we were excited...

jammies, shoes, boots, clothes, books, some happy kids :)

We had a great dinner (potato soup in bread bowls and salad mmmm!)

Portie, Liam, Chloe, Tristan (Cooper took a nap during dinner)

Time to go...

Liam (being the huntchback-I think)

bye-bye kisses from Papa

We don't get to see Papa for Christmas, so we're so glad he comes out as close to it as he can. We're glad the kids to to see him and give him some little presents too. We had fun with him while he was here. He and I sat up late and just talked Tuesday night and I loved it. We don't really do that a lot, but this time we just kinda talked about stuff and it was precious, and I'll always remember it, and I hope he knows that it meant a lot to me.

Love you, Dad.

In other news...

Chloe and Port went back to school this week after about a 2 week break.

We'd been telling them all weekend that things would be different on Monday and to get ready, so when I woke Chloe up on Monday, so was pretty slow, and she says " here we go, back to our old life. Goodbye new life, hello old life" She was good about it though. She was excited to get back to school to see her friends and her teacher. Same with Port. He got to be snack friend on Tuesday. So he got to bring snacks (Buzz fruit snacks and chocolate milk) and a toy for show and tell. Then on Thursday, they had a special show and tell day for everybody where each kid got to bring a favorite toy to show. He brought his new Buzz wings. He might like Buzz a little :)

::our new years' party::

We had our usual New Years' party at Matt's mom & dad's :)

Here we all are in our awesome 2010 glasses!!

(this is the last year for 10 years that you can make this type of thing 'til 2020-so we had to take advantage)

We had tons of great food...

...played a few games...

...then headed outside for some midnight firecrackers

Matt, George, & Jordan (Amberlee in the background)

New Years' is just fun. We usually do it up pretty mellow. We're not big party animals. We play games, talk, eat, and just enjoy being together with all the family. The kids didn't make it 'til midnight. The all fell asleep at some point before midnight. We're glad for the close family we have, and that we enjoy being together so much. We're looking forward to the new year and and all the new and exciting things that will come with it.

Happy New Year!!