Christmas 2009

I apologize for not getting our blog updated since school started. It's been a crazy 4 months. Here's what's been going on in our neck of the woods!!

Perryn is still doing quite well in kindergarten, she can read, but doesn't like to take the challenge to read on her own without lots of encouragement. It seems like she doesn't have confidence in herself that she knows the words in her brain and they can appear ANYWHERE and she will still know them. We both absolutely love Mrs. Gunn her teacher and she is doing a PHENOMENAL job!!!

Teagan is doing well. He is really trying recognize his name, so anything that he sees that starts with the letter T is his name even if it's the word 'the', it's his name!! He is still very big into trains and cars. In fact, we all pitched in (grandparents) and got him a second hand Thomas the train set and table!!
Gabe is still doing well at Scott and White!! We moved at the beginning of Decemeber and we now live 3 minutes from the hospital!! In my opinion it's the best move we made next to moving back to the Austin area. We get to spend more time with him before he goes to work and he often gets to go get Perryn from school with us and we all take him to work!! His shoulder has been healing from his surgery that happened over the summer, but he is having to deal with some painful scar tissue that has broken off or something..this is making his shoulder very tight and painful.

I'm doing well too. My best Christmas present from Gabe was allowing me the opportunity to quit my job and come back home to spend time with Teagan. God has provided what we need in order for me to do that. I am looking forward to getting back into my card business and expanding to do more of my cakes. I MISS my students terribly, but have already made promises with lots of them to be able to have play dates frequently!!
Our Christmas this year was grand. We focused on Jesus's birthday and even sang to him and had made him a giant cookie cake for the celebration. We did get to do stockings and even got to have breakfast with Santa.
We got to participate in an old tradition at Gabe's grandmother's house of decorating cookies for the first time this year. It was a BLAST!! Perryn (especially) and Teagan really loved getting to decorate the cookies that Omie had made for them. Then the best part was they got to pick some of decorated cookies out to bring home with them to eat...they loved it all around.

We once again gave our annual handmade Christmas ornaments to our families, but we went a step further this year and gave money on their behalf to help orphans and the least of these over in Africa. We have some friends that started the Hopemongers Cooperative so that we can help fund some of the needs in Africa with a little bit of money...meaning we got give what we could afford and see exactly where it was going. We got to choose who we were helping and often see it be delivered before they Hopemongers team left Ethiopia!! That was the COOLEST part ever!! Here's where we helped this year on the behalf of our family:



We got to help give a diaper shower for 35 babies at the Kebebtshey orphanage in Ethiopia.

We helped with hair care and staff supplies at the Kebebetshey orphanage as well.

We also got to help fund a nice Christmas dinner at the Leper Colony.

And...we got to help fund getting mosquito nets for the orphans at Emmanuel orphanage in Ethiopia.

Each of our families got a card and a picture of where we donated, so that they could see exactly where our gift for them was. I am hoping that God will allow me to team up my card business with the Hopemongers team so that if/when people donate and they want to do it as a gift for someone, I can help with a card and a picture.

Please pray that God will continue to bless our family in 2010 and that He will bless my little creations business as well. I would love for it to take off and it be able to fund little things like adopting our next child. Enjoy the end of 2009 and may God bless your family immensely in 2010!!

The First Day of School

So, it's been a day of firsts in our family today....Teagan moved from the Geologists class to the Astronauts class, I moved from the Ecologists class with my students to the Editors class, and Perryn started her VERY first day of Kindergarten!!

I can't even believe that Perryn is going to kindergarten. Any of you who know us, knows that we would much rather be homeschooling, and God wants us to send her off to kindergarten. This has been very hard on both of us (Perryn and me), but as much as I want to do what I want to do, I am hoping to show her the example of obedience.

Yes, I teared up on the way to school, a little bit more walking in the door, and A LOT more on the way out the door. The traffic was INSANE, but we made it!! The highlight of my day, was seeing her smiling face when I went to pick her up in the daycare van and she ran to give me a hug!! Here are the few pictures I was able to capture, yes we were running late with the traffic we encountered, so just deal with these pictures please....

We are in quarantine...AGAIN!!

So, bless Teagan's little heart, he has another run of his staph infection. The second one in 8 weeks. This run seems to be worse than the first with a couple of his spots looking like there is a bigger 'infection' going on. We must watch him carefully and if he is NOT making healing progress by Thursday, we have to go BACK to the doctor on Friday...here's what he looked like last night after his bath..

In unrelated good news...here's what we did at the end of May..Miss Perryn graduated from Pre-K (I don't have any good pictures) and we had her dance recital. She was spectacular. She was quite tired by the end, but all in all she did very well. Here are some pictures from that day...There is a video from photobucket that is one post down from this one...the last picture is BFORE everything started when she was excited..this picture, was part way through the recital when I could tell she was getting a bit bored...

A bit of fun

So who says that when you are in 'quarantine' you can't have a little fun and pretend to be a fireman wearing 'sunglasses'?? We should be in our last day of having to stay home and I am so proud of Teagan and how he is handling everything. We still have several days of being on THREE antibiotics, but soon we should be down to one. I can tell that the kids are missing their friends at school and so am I!

A 'forced' vacation

So I have been 'put on vacation'. To some it wouldn't be such a bad thing, but for me, I feel like I needed to plan more and I feel like my room is quite ready for me to be gone ALL week!!

For his 3rd birthday, my sweet boy got another gift from our party venue, an infection of hospital grade! Evidently it's going around, and when I stopped by to let them know about it, they didn't seem all that concerned or interested in cleaning their playscape....not sure we will be going back.

Now that we know what our sweet boy has, we have to stay 'quarantined' til at least Friday and pray that he does NOT get any worse. He does NOT act sick other than crying at the DROP of a hat. He is on a potent antibiotic every 8 hours, for the next 10 days. ALL of us get to put an antibiotic ointment in our noses twice a day for the next 3 WEEKS!! So for my 'unplanned' forced vacation, I will be cleaning my apartment like nobody's business, getting back into my running regiment..slowly, and trying to rest as best I can with the extra bathing and laundry I have to do EVERYDAY!

Bluebonnets

Well, we finally made it to the bluebonnets!! We have been driving by them everyday for I don't know how many weeks and we finally made it over there to them. I may use these as their yearly pictures this year!! Not sure though. I think they came out pretty good. These are my top favorites!!

Teagan's 3rd birthday

I can't believe I have been so busy that I haven't been able to post a blog!! Yikes!! Sorry!! So here's our family update from the last 6 weeks.

March: Gabe had his 33rd birthday, I had my 32nd birthday, and we celebrated our 12th anniversary. I got a 'promotion' at work. Basically, I got some added responsibilities to see if I have the leadership qualities to possibly get into an administrative role within my company.

April: Gabe had shoulder surgery on his left shoulder and will be back to work on Monday. Teagan has turned 3!! I am being recognized as "Teacher of the Month" out of ALL 18 schools that are within my company!! Right now Teagan might also have a staff infection on his side. He has lots of blister type things all over his right side and they seem to be spreading. He is on a topical antibiotic, doesn't seem to be itching them, and we will know something definitive on Monday. We are also planning on going camping at the end of the month with Gabe's mom, as well, as celebrating my grandparents 60th anniversary. It will be another busy month and I would like to figure out how to start running again in the midst of it!

Here are some of Teagan's birthday pictures from his party!! Enjoy and just look at how big he is getting!!

Friends make life fun!!

Last weekend we went down to help with the Food Pantry in Giddings. This month we got to take Perryn's new BEST friend, Adaline with us. She is quite precious and adorable. Here is there fun on the trampoline AFTER we handed out 225 baskets of food that nice, cool, Friday morning!!