::super bowl XLIV::

We had a little super bowl party on Sunday. I guess it was more because we like the family, the food, and football, not necessarily the two teams playing, but just football in general-cause the Cowboys didn't quite make it :(

Not the most exciting of Super Bowls, but a fun time nonetheless. We all talked, ate, and made lots of jokes about the Who (the Who???).

Here we all are...

The kids liked the snackies...

Chloe, Porter, & Addyson (Cooper was sleeping, and Brylee was playing somewhere)

The Saints won, and we were happy about it (I guess). Matt only cared about the numbers of the score...I guess he was in some kind of superbowl betting pool thing where the two last numbers of the score at the end of any quarter had to end in 3 and 3 for each team, and he'd win some money. He was about as lucky as the Colts were :)

We're so glad everyone could come over. It's always fun to get together.

:)

::mom's moving day::

Grandma & Papa Kitty moved this last Saturday, and we went down to help.

Well, they hired movers, so we didn't actually work too hard.

They moved to an apartment since they sold their house and didn't have another one yet. The kids LOVE the apartment. They ran all around and loved the awesome vertical blinds (haha), and the super high bar in the kitchen. They jumped on the bed and just enjoyed all the excitement.

After everything was inside the apartment, we kinda helped arrange things, unpack a few things, and put a couple of pieces of furniture together (gotta love IKEA).
Then it was back to the old house to help pack a few things and move some furniture and boxes to the pod. They have most of their stuff going into storage and only a few things coming to the apartment with them, so it was kind of a complicated move-especially on their end (deciding what needs to go where and just staying organized).

And Coopie...

...moving makes him tired.

The funniest part about this weekend...the offer they put in on their new house got accepted on Monday. So they're not going to be in the apartment for too long; which is good, cause they don't love it, and they already miss their house, but we're going to be packing up and moving it all again real soon.

:)

::good advice::

"Try a little harder to be a little better."

-Gordon B. Hinckley

great advice. especially for me. especially today.

::cousins playdate::

We went down to visit my brother and his boys and Grandma & Papa Kitty on Saturday. They took us to Chilis (YUM!), and we just talked about Mia and kinda got to hang and see how everybody's doing since it's been such a tough week for them. The kids had so much fun being with their cousins. They were so silly at the end of the table (poor mom had to sit down there with all 4 of the crazy kids).

Bubb likes Chilis too.

When we got to Grandma & Papa's we saw this...

They told us around Christmas that they were going to put their house up for sale, and it's already sold! They've already started packing! They're looking for another one, but in the meantime they're moving to an apartment (which is weird). So the kids ran around and looked the house over to see what was missing and what had been moved. The bookshelves, dishes, silverware, and a few decorations. Nothin' gets past those little guys!

Good thing they hadn't packed up the toy room yet!

When I talked to Billy that morning, he told me he was planning on going sledding with the boys and asked if we wanted to go. So we had every intention of going (brought the sled and everything), but those kids were having so much fun up there, we just let 'em play!! We figured they better soak up as much of Grandma's house as they can!

Then Grandma made us some cookies (from Chloe's school fundraiser dough-yum!)...

And those crazy kids again...

(I know these pictures totally look posed, but they're not, I swear!)

...and that was our Saturday.

Baby Mia is doing better everyday. She is expected to come home on Tuesday or Wednesday (most likely Wednesday). She's still on oxygen (through a nasal cannula), but off the feeding tube and IV, so that's great progress!! We're all so proud of her, and SO excited for her to go home and meet her big brothers!!

::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.