What a year!

I can't believe 2008 has come and gone so quickly. We started the off this year in anxious anticipation of the arrival of our precious baby girl Gwyneth, born on February 7th (my mom's birthday). She has been such a blessing to our family, and I still can't believe she's already walking around everywhere, where did the time go?

Before Gwyn was born, Emily put together a "girls weekend" for me and some friends here in Houston, and we had such a good time. We had many visitors after Gwyn's birth, which was such a blessing...going from one kid to two is an exponential jump! Rick, Sue, Stacy, and Justin came, and we kept Sue an extra week. My mom came down for almost 2 weeks, and I really took advantage of her! Emily came down with Grace for a long weekend. We were able to visit Tulsa in May, when Gwyn was dedicated. Brian was able to go to visit John in Florida for a "guys weekend" in July, and Claudia came to visit me and the kids. Nick and Erika were able to come down for a week in October with their beautiful boy Rafael. We spent a week in Tulsa for Thanksgiving, I so miss friends and family back home! We went to Colorado with Brian's family before Christmas, and came back home to celebrate Christmas with my family. We are ringing in the new year here at home with the kids, hopefully sound asleep and not disturbed by the fireworks!

Jacob has grown from an 18 month old toddler into a VERY energetic 2 1/2 year old. I realize now how much of a baby he still was when Gwyn was born, but he has really grown up so much this past year. He loves to run fast, loves to do "soccer stance," loves playing with his daddy, he loves to help out with anything, loves to be in the garage with Brian, loves playing legos, and he really does love his baby sissy.

Gwyn is such a sweet baby, she went from crawling at 7 months to walking at 10 1/2 months. She sleeps through the night (finally!!!), she has four teeth and loves to eat, and she just wants to be whereever Jacob is.

We are thanking God and counting our blessings at the end of this year. We are thankful for Brian's job, our house, our family, our friends, our church, and our health among other things. We are really thankful for Jason living in Houston, it has been awhile since we have had any close family living nearby, and we LOVE having him here.

Happy New Year to Everyone!!

Merry Christmas, we've got a walker!

We've had a whirlwind week. We went to Colorado with Brian's family for 5 days. We had a great time. We went skiing, sledding, shopping and enjoyed the Colorado weather. Jacob LOVED the snow...Gwyn, not so much. She was all bundled up wherever we went like a little snow bunny.

Jacob's favorite part of the trip was sledding, he got carried up the hill and got to sled down the hill, so he had fun the entire time. We were all huffing and puffing from climbing up the hill at an altitude of 9,000+ feet...makes us appreciate Houston!

Gwyn is officially walking now, she goes everywhere Jacob goes. She explores things by herself, has to be in the middle of whatever is going on, and is enjoying her new found freedom of mobility! We're having a hard time keeping up with her.

My parents came down for Christmas, and we were able to spend a few days with them and my brother. The kids enjoyed Christmas, and Brian enjoyed putting the kids' new kitchen together, all 100+ pieces with not one extra screw, a bad design by his standards!

We lived at the dr this week, but hey, we got to see Santa!

This has been an eventful week, we have practically lived at the Dr this week. Not only did Jacob get an ear infection (of course on a Friday night, so we had to go to the urgent care center which our family alone is keeping in business), he then had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic (which he had taken twice before). I was thinking he had measles or chicken pox or something, but never crossed my mind that he was allergic to the medicine I kept shoving down his throat because I'm a huge supporter of take-every-dose-of-antibiotic just like the dr. says. Anyways, after another trip to the urgent care center, he's off that antibiotic and is doing fine since he took some steroid to combat the reaction and is now saying his name is Bobby...not sure if that came from me calling him Bubba sometimes, or maybe it is a side affect of the allergy to his medicine?? Just kidding, but no kidding, thoughts like that do constantly run through my mind if he ever does something weird I think I'm totally messing him up or something. Oh, and I also went again to the urgent care center to get another round of antibiotics to get rid of this awful sinus infection that is probably causing brain damage. I'm SO ready to be well again!!!! And if that is not enough, I thought I might go ahead and take both kids in to see the pediatrician before we go skiing and it turns out that Jacob has my sinus infection (another round of non-penacillan antibiotics here we go) AND not only does Gwyn also have an ear infection, she has to get some breathing treatments for this weezing she's doing. I was in the dr. with both kids for 2 hours (Jacob who is running around crazy and who my dr says that steroid the urgent care prescribed causes hyperness and anger in small children - which explains some of his actions this past week later in this blog) I had to do a breathing treatment on Gwyn for 15 minutes holding this mask on her fact with one hand, holding her body still with that same arm, wedging her other arm underneath my other arm while it is restraining her other arm and head. She is literally thrashing about and screaming the entire time. It was awful. But, she's got some medicine and doing fine, the Dr. thought it might be RSV, but since she responded so well to the breathing treatment she gave me one of those asthma cannisters to give her. To sum it up, I'm SO sick of drs!

We are preparing for our ski trip to Colorado. So many things to do because when we get back it will be Christmas! Just add that to my list, to be prepared for Christmas and cooking Christmas dinner a week early.

Gwyn has really started walking, and will walk all the way across the room as long as there isn't any food to stop and eat on the way or her big brother to get in her way. Here is one of the videos, of course she had just walked about 15 steps right before this was shot, so I'll get a better one sometime and post it, I'll just add that to the list. Oh, and notice my tone of dissapointment in Jacob when he steps in front of Gwyn, another bad mother moment for myself:

Jacob had a Christmas party at school on Wednesday, he just LOVES his school and I was excited to get to be in his classroom with him for an hour. He showed me where they sat to read books and ate all the icing off his cupcake while not eating a single ounce of the cupcake itself. It was fun to be there with him and he loved that I was there which felt good.

Brian has entered a top chef competition for work, it isn't really as professional as it sounds, some guy just got a wooden spoon and wrote on it with a sharpie, but it comes with bragging rights, so anyways, here is his creation for his work party tomorrow. For those of you who aren't engineers or for that matter don't know what this is, it is a derrik barge that is used to lay pipe and install platforms offshore in deepwater, or at least it is supposed to be! Ha, he did a great job. Everyone was really impressed.

Now, while I was making 4 batches of homeade icing to go on this cake, Jacob got into a little trouble himself, as you can see. I was dying laughing, Brian was the angry one since he had to clean it up. I wish I would have gotten a picture of Jacob before Brian took his clothes off, but he was covered head to toe, everything except his eyeballs had a nice white dusting on him. Brian was supposed to be watching him, and I told him that if Jacob is ever quiet for more than 2 minutes then he's up to something!

Our weather here has been a constant roller coaster, freezing, then in the 70s, freezing, back in the 70s. Brian took the kids out in the street for races. He pushed Gwyn in her car and Jacob pushed his own "fred flinstone" cozy coupe. Jacob didn't really want his picture taken, but did want me to take a picture of his car.

I guess you could tell from the picture at the top that I took the kids to the mall (same Santa as last year) to get their pics with Santa. I met a group of friends there and we all made our kids sit on Santa's lap to get a picture of them screaming, paid the $40 for the pictures and then packed everyone back up to go back home. I thought about not doing it this year, but then I remembered it would be Gwyn's first Christmas picture with Santa and I HAD to do that if I was a good mom, so I did it. Scratch that one off the list.

Santa Claus is coming...

We decided to start the Elf on the Shelf this year (thank you Rick and Sue for the book and elf!), Jacob doesn't quite get the concept of the elf flying back to Santa each night to report on whether Jacob is good or bad, but he does get the point that every morning he gets to search around the house to find where his elf is sitting. If you know Brian, then you know we have had some very interesting locations of where the elf has decided to land and spend the day spying on Jacob for Santa. We're hoping next year we can break the elf out in October and get a full three months of Jacob on his best behavior!

I can't believe how time flies around the holidays. I thought I had all my shopping done on Saturday, but I ended up doing a little bit almost every day this week. I'm doing my part to stimulate the economy like every American should (at least that is my excuse to Brian)!! This past week Jacob made two ornaments at his preschool and was so proud to hang them on his Christmas Tree.

Gwyn has four teeth now, I still haven't gotten a very good up-close picture of her showing off her teeth, but they are there and they are so cute when she smiles. She's getting closer and closer to walking everyday.

It got a little chilly here in Houston on Wednesday and it even snowed!! Of course it wasn't enough snow to even stick to the ground at our house, but we did see some snow flurries falling from the sky and it was pretty cool. It was 75 degrees one day and 36 degrees the next, I've been living in Houston long enough that I just can't stand the cold anymore!

Here is a video that I meant to post awhile ago, but I forgot. It is of Jacob pulling Gwyn in a wagon at Emily's house on our way up to Oklahoma. He stops and gives her a kiss and makes sure her and her doll are covered up.

Christmas is in the Air

December is here and we're rolling out the Christmas decor BIG TIME at our house. Jacob is 2 and really into the whole idea of Christmas. Brian and I have an annual argument this time of year, every year, when I ask that he go up into the attic to drag out the 11 bins of Christmas decorations down. He claims I ALWAYS choose the worst possible time for him, he is either hungry, exhausted, has a headache (that is always a good one), or something, and I tell him he is ruining my favorite family time of the year and eventually he gets it all down for me. I win that one every time when I tell him that we will just have to tell Jacob that we won't have a tree because daddy doesn't want to get it down from the attic. I'm terrible, I know.

Anyways, after working at a christmas store in Tulsa over Christmas breaks in college, I was able to collect a Dept. 56 North Pole village collection (which I justify because each year when I worked at the store I got a huge discount, this is where Brian reminds me that I never made any money at the store because I spent it all plus some, so I actually ended up paying them to work there....but the village is pretty cool!!!). Jacob is fascinated with it this year, he wants to live in a place like that, with all the elves, sugar plums on the streets and where m&m's grow on trees (he tried to bite the m&m tree just to make sure, even though I told him that they weren't real).

We also (Claudia's idea), let him decorate his own tree. He was so excited about putting on each ornament, all of which are unbreakable. I was going to let him put the tree in his room, but since both kids are doing SO well sleeping at night, I didn't want to chance it being a huge distraction to him and not going to sleep. So, the tree is in the living room and he makes sure everyone who comes over knows that is HIS tree. Since Jacob decided to hang all the stuffed animal looking ornaments on the bottom of the tree, Gwyn is fascinated by them and has pulled the entire tree over 3 times now! Jacob acts like the world is going to end for about 30 seconds, then realizes some ornaments fell off and he gets to redecorate it, which makes having a little sister okay for the next 2 minutes. Jacob with his tree:

On Tuesday, my bible study at my church hosted Carol Kent for our Christmas Luncheon. She was an awesome speaker, and has such a moving testimony after suffering a family tragedy. Check her out if you get a chance (http://www.carolkent.org/).

On another note, Gwyn is on the verge of walking. I think THIS IS CRAZY, she's not even 10 months old. She's taken about 2 steps, and is so good at standing by herself without holding on to anything. She took about 3 steps towards Brian the other night, she did it about 5-6 times until I got the video camera out and tried to get her doing it, and as usual she didn't do it again that night...why does that always happen??? Anyways, here is a picture of her standing on her own.

Here is the video of her not walking, stay tuned in the next couple of weeks to come when she'll be walking away!

I hosted my Moms Club Book Group at the house on Thursday, about 10 kids, hectic and crazy. There was rarely a conversation finished with so many distractions, but we did select the first four books for next year. My Enemies Cradle by Sara Young, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsglover, Life of Pi by Yan Martel, and Push Not the River by James Conroyd Martin. Here was our 2008 list that we read:

The Ultimate Gift / The Ultimate Life by Jim Stovall
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Other Mother by Gwendolen Gross
The List by Robert Whitlow
Woman In Red by Eileen Goudge
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
Nights in Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Oh, and to top our hectic week off, Brian had to take Jacob to the Dr. today and he has an ear infection. This is his first one, and he acts like he is in pain. I feel so sorry for him, and I can tell he likes the extra attention when he is sick. My mom always used to do that with me and Jason...treat us extra special when we were sick, so I'm doing that for Jacob now too!

Happy Thanksgiving!

It has been a couple of weeks since my last blog, but we have been busy! I had my kidney stone burst into pieces and I'm totally back to normal. My mom came down to help us out and then she drove to Oklahoma with me and the kids the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Brian flew up on Tuesday night and we all drove back home together on Sunday. It was a great trip, we had so much fun, but it is so nice to be back home. Today was spent doing laundry, unpacking, cleaning out the fridge, etc. I had gotten sick on Friday before we came home, but I'm feeling much better and it was nice having Brian home today. Here is a picture I took of the kids at my parent's house. Gwyn doesn't like hats, but if you distract her while you put it on, she forgets about it. Jacob is pretty proud of his hat, and when he sees anyone else with one, then he HAS to have his on too.

She's going to be a Daddy's girl...
The four of us...
Uncle Jason likes hanging out with Gwynnie and Jacob, we were trying to get Jacob to say Jason's name, but it came out more like Juicen...he's learning!

We had such a wonderful time seeing family and friends. I SO MISS TULSA!!!! I even got Brian to admit that he missed it too! We were able to see Erika and little Rafael (who still loves to chase after Jacob), we were able to see Amy, Noah and Eva (those kids are too cute!), and we were able to spend some time with Neely, Ava and Catherine (those are some girly girls who we miss dearly!!!). We had two thanksgivings, one with my family, and the other with Brian's family. We went to the church I grew up in, and we got to hear Jason preach and lead praise and worship.

Jacob and Gwyn had a great time at Rick and Sue's house. They have lots of toys and Jacob enjoyed riding his "little quad." Jacob was into his "choo choos" and if you wanted to play with him, he would give you the couple of pieces he didn't like so well. Gwyn had a great time too, she's standing up so well now, and was facinated with the dog. Here is Sue with Gwynnie...

Here is Jacob on the "little quad"

Here is Rick and Gwynnie...

Jacob and my Dad eat m&m's together, whenever Jacob sees them in the store he points and says "papa." Gwyn and my mom liked to hang out in the middle of the night...I was sleeping!
Thanksgiving picture...

My mom with Gwyn...

My mom and I went shopping on Friday morning. I know it sounds crazy, but it is quite the experience to get up so early and see all the crazy people, me included, going shopping at 5 am! Anyways, I'm feeling better, and the kids are somewhat back to normal. Hopefully, it will only take a couple of nights to get them back to their routines. It seems like I get so used to not getting any sleep, and then once I start getting sleep again I realize how much I really need it, so it is so much harder going without it again.

I can't believe it is already December. This year has flown by, Jacob has gone from a baby to a little boy, and Gwyn has grown up so much!