Ten on Tuesday

1. We took a road trip to Iowa last weekend to watch the Aggies play basketball against Iowa State. We drove into a snowstorm Friday so our 5 hour trip turned into an 8 hour trip with a stop at Chick Fil A for dinner. The kids were actually very good and Emalyn did pretty well too. She slept amost the whole way with a few crying spells in between. I was amazed to see 20-30 cars in the ditch on our drive. Not a fun trip.

2. Here is my little Aggie cheerleader. We stayed at our friends parents' house and this was a rocking chair they had that was just the right size for Emalyn.


3. Our friends are fans of Iowa State so we had a friendly rivalry at the game. The Aggies won! Yeah!


4. Here we are at the game. Emalyn was so alert. So many things to look at and so much noise. She did take a bit of a nap right before the game was over.


5. The kids were eating "clone cones" at half time.


6. An attempt at a family picture after the game. They erased the score board right away (b/c they lost?) but we had to get a picture of our first Aggie basketball game. We realized all of our Aggie gear is faded so when we head back to Texas for Easter we will have to buy some new Aggie clothes. We'll also stock up on Dallas Cowboys gear since we can't buy any of that in Illinois.


7. We ended up driving home after the game because another snow storm was coming and we didn't want to drive in snow again. It worked out great because that meant we got to stop at Chick Fil A again (they would have been closed on our drive home Sunday). We ordered 10 sandwhiches to bring home and freeze. They thought we were crazy and then we told them that we can't get Chick Fil A here. The manager went on his computer and found that our Chick Fil A will have it's grand opening on August 5th. I'm so excited!!! Several other Chick Fil A's will open after that in the Chicago area. I've eaten Chick Fil A 4 out of the last 5 days and think I'll have it again tomorrow. I might have a problem.....

8. Cade got a concussion last Tuesday at the Healthplex after running into another kid and falling back and hitting his head. We had a checkup at the Dr. Monday and Cade can go back to "being a boy" Wednesday.

9. Baby girl has her first cold. Maddi has/had a nasty cough and shared it with Emalyn. Ugh. Emalyn's been sneezing and coughing a bunch and she's as happy as can be. She woke up this morning with snot all over her face and in her hair and she was all smiles...until I wiped her nose/face.

10. Cade told me this morning that he thinks he might want to be a king when he grows up. Ha ha! I explained that being a king isn't really an option, so he said he'll stick with being a doctor and astronaut or maybe President.

"Stuff"

This post is of a bunch of random "stuff" in random order. Starting with my 7 and a HALF year old! The kids had a half day Thursday (they have such a random calendar) so we went for allergy shots and then to lunch to celebrate Cade's half bday!

This was taken on Valentine's morning. Cade is absolutely in LOVE with Emalyn. You can see it in his eyes.

We spent Valentine's Day hanging out with the family and going to eat at Red Robin.
Brett had taken the kids sledding the day before and I thought he took pics, but I guess not. Emalyn is a little young for the sled slopes, so she and I hung out at home while the big kids and daddy spent time together.

Emalyn absolutely LOVES her bath. She kicks and squeels and splashes water all over the kitchen. Brett was trying to get pics of her but she was literally turning her head away from him as he tried taking her picture. Brett and I laugh about how creamy/pasty white she is. Poor thing hasn't seen sunlight in her short life, it's been cold and wintery. I think she looks just like Brett and I think she got his fair skin so I imagine they will be sharing the 60 sunblock together over the years.

Brett and I celebrated Valentine's Day Friday night by going to a Robert Earl Keen concert in Chicago. I couldn't get good pics with my camera, but I had to have something to remember it by. It's been ages since I've been to a REK concert, but it was fun hanging out with Brett. He sang a lot of his older songs which I knew so that was good.

My Maddi girl when we went to lunch for Cade's half bday. She came home with special valentine gifts from 3 boys! She got a stuffed animal from one, a chocolate rose from another and a big cookie from the third. She has a way with boys and they are so attracted to her. She says they are "in love with her" and I am telling her they think she's a nice girl and want to be friends. She's in 3rd grade...how will we handle her teenage years?!? Also, I took her to the ENT and her hearing is perfectly fine. Now I know she can hear me when I say "put your clothes in the hamper", "put your plate in the sink", "go get in the shower", etc!

Here's Cade at a basketball game. He is on a 2nd/3rd grade team and is probably one of the youngest boys in the league since he barely made the birthday cutoff for 2nd grade. Anyway, he looks like one of the oldest, but he needs a little time to get a little more coordinated. He's doing well and really enjoys blocking/guarding (what's it called?) more than dribbling/shooting. As soon as he gets the ball he'll pass it real quick. It reminds me of hot potatoe! We are going to watch the Texas A&M basketball team play Iowa State this weekend and he's really looking forward to watching them play.

Project, Parade, and Pretty Baby

Starting with the pretty baby trying to sit in her Bumbo.

Emalyn loves her fingers. Looks like she got her thumb in her mouth this time but usually she'll just get any fingers in or even just near her mouth and she's a happy girl. She really has no interest in the paci and would rather her fingers. I don't really want her to suck her thumb because I don't want all those germs in her mouth, you can't take a thumb away when they get older, and she seems to have eczema and sucking her fingers makes it worse. Oh well, what do you do? It's so funny when we hear her slurping on her fingers.

She's becoming well known in the nursery at the healthplex where I teach for her big bows. I took her last night without a bow and the workers were asking where her bow is. Ha!

Sunday for the Super Bowl the kids decided to have a parade supporting their teams. Our house was going for the Saints and our neighbors went for the Colts. Since it was probably 28 degrees and most of the snow had melted it was a perfect day for a parade! Every time the snow finally melts, it snows very soon after. It snowed two days later so no more bikes, skates, etc. for a while!

Maddi and Grace with their signs to support their teams. I guess Maddi is rooting for the Sants. Spelling is not her thing!

I'm not sure if Cade's face here is when he was throwing his fit or if he was just caught making a weird face. The girls were roller skating, Jack and Andrew were riding their bikes and Cade decided to pogo stick. Well, he found out it was very difficult to keep up the pace on a pogo stick and had a little fit about it.

He traded in the pogo stick for stilts and was much better off. We were supposed to go to a Super Bowl party but since we had all had that nasty stomach bug we decided to stay home and keep our germs to ourselves.

The weekend was full of projects. Maddi was working on her social studies diarama. I always hated projects as a kid and I think I hate them even more as a parent. You want the project to look decent but you want it to be the kids work and it's hard to find that balance, I think. Brett ususally works on the projects with Maddi (Cade seems to get his done himself) but this time he was working on putting together a basketball goal with Cade in the basement, so I was stuck with helping her. It had to be something about Illinois so she had pictures of corn fields and farming equipment and then a bag of real corn and popped corn and she wrote "Illinois favorite snack comes from Illionois farms." Of course I didn't get a picture of the finished project. Ugh.

3 months!

3 months old and full of smiles! She's looking at Maddi here after just waking up from a nap in her swing. She loves her swing and loves to watch tv in her swing. She'll fall asleep and we won't even know she's asleep. She's such a good and happy baby. Maddi was helping me take some pictures of Emalyn and she was all smiles for Maddi. We just love to see her face light up when she sees her brother, sister, mommy and daddy. I talked Maddi into getting in some pictures with Emalyn too. Sisterly love. Maddi's nickname for her is "smoosh face." Maddi squeezes her cheeks and calls her smoosh face and Emalyn smiles so big. Some things she's up to at 3 months include sleeping from 9-7! She sleeps on her tummy and she scoots herself half way across her crib during the night. I put her in the middle of the crib and in the morning she's all the way at the end. So funny! She loves her bouncy, swing and just hanging out. She eats about every 3 hours and she's getting breastmilk and formula. I can't seem to keep up with her appetite so we're supplementing and she'll eat anything now, whether it's in a bottle, formula, nursing or whatever. Hard to believe Maddi was this little 9 years ago. Brett and I realized the other day that when Emalyn starts kindergarden, Maddi will be a freshman in high school and Cade will be in 8th grade at middle school. Crazy! I'm not sure how much she weighs, etc. but she's definitely getting bigger. She's wearing size 1-2 diapers and 3-6 month clothes. Happy 3 month Birthday baby Girl! This is my crazy tongue baby cooing at her bouncy chair.

Patience for Patients

He's all smiles now, but yesterday was a different story. Cade complained of a tummy ache and proceeded to vomit and diarrhea from about 5:30pm-10:30pm Tuesday night. He didn't always make it to the bathroom so that made it lots of fun!

Here he is showing me how he felt Wednesday. The boy didn't move from the couch the ENTIRE day. He had a high fever, but wasn't sick to his stomach any more. I got a call from the county health department asking me of his symptoms and whether he ate the cracker with butter at school the day before. They had "farm friends" come and teach them how to make butter and they got to try it out on a cracker. Apparently 15 2nd graders were absent with vomiting the next day. Since Maddi got it the next day, I don't think it was the butter making my family sick.

Notice his bowl in case he felt sick and his gatorade. He's feeling good today but still can't go to school since he hasn't been fever free for 24 hours.

Here is my other patient, Maddi. She went to bed Wednesday night perfectly fine and woke up around 1:30 am and had thrown up in bed. She threw up and had diarrhea every 15-30 minutes until about 5:30 am. I was worn out tired from getting up with her around the clock, and I'm sure she was exhausted too, but she sure isn't acting like she's tired today!

Here she is on her couch with her bowl and water bottle.

She's faking here like she's sleeping, you can see the smirk on her face. Oh, I hope everyone is better soon and Emalyn, Brett and I don't catch this nasty bug.

Here's my assistant, Emalyn, waving to you from her bouncy chair. She is being a sweet girl while I'm taking care of the big kids. She has become quite the spit up girl so I end the day smelling like baby spit up, vomit and who knows what else. It's a glamorous life, being a mommmy, but I love all those little kiddos and wouldn't trade being a mom for the world. However, I am looking forward to a night out Saturday without kids and some adult conversation. Can we say STIR CRAZY!?!

They say things come in 3s and in the last 3 weeks Cade had pink eye, Maddi had strep throat and now they both have had the stomach flu. Hopefully we are on our way to good health! I haven't been able to capture Emalyn's adorable smile just yet. She has a smile that lights her whole face and it's so precious. She has starting laughing now too and you can't help but feel happy when you hear her laugh.

Speed Racer

Saturday was the big race day, the Awana Grand Prix! Here is Cade's Texas A&M car at the pit table, along with some other cars.

Daddy, Cade and Maddi. You can see on Cade's face that he was very nervous. He was quiet and not real excited when we got there. He was sort of taking it all in and would say things like, "maybe I'll get an award for design". I don't think he had any idea just how fast his car would be.

Here he is with his driving license in front of the track. A little more of a smile, but still not so sure about how this would all go. They had it all decorated so cute!

Most of the cars lined up waiting for the race while everyone sizes them up. There were so many cute cars. There were about 40 in Cade's age division which is kinder through 2nd grade.

Maddi and her friend, Grace, are ready to watch the race. Maddi made a car but just for fun. She didn't race it because she doesn't do Awanas since 3rd grade is on Wednesday nights.

This is the first race, Cade's car was on the far left. It was CRAZY fast!

This is another race and Cade's car is 2nd from the left.

Cade won the 2nd race too! Maddi and Daddy were so proud of him and were telling him congratulations.

The three of them were talking about how when Cade won the first race they thought maybe the cars he raced were really slow, but now he smoked the cars in the 2nd race too, so he must have a really fast car!

He's not nervous anymore. He's so proud of his hard work after his car wins race after race.

They have software that keeps track of the cars and their times and calculates the winners. Cade won firt place for speed with an average speed of 205 mph! 2nd and 3rd place had an average speed of 178 and 176 mph. These are all the winners of design, novelty and speed. I have to admit, I thought this race might be a little boring, but it was so fun to watch all the kids get so excited to watch the cars racing. There were 2 car wrecks and everyone went wild, just like a NASCAR race. Ha! The kids all worked so hard and were proud of their efforts.

We were all proud of our little Cade man with his super fast car. He designed the car and did all of the work except for the cutting with the saw. Brett helped him along the way to make sure it was all done just right and they had fun working together. My little engi-nerds sure know how to make the car speedy! Notice little Emalyn has her little tongue hanging out of her mouth, just like big sister used to do. Cade, by the way, will be getting an expander and braces soon to fix his crazy teeth. And, on a side note, Maddi has failed her hearing test at school. I'll take her to an ENT to see what's going on with that later this month. No wonder she never hears me when I say, put your clothes in the hamper, put your plate in the sink, and she never seems to wake up when her alarm goes off!

Cade couldn't stop smiling after the race. We ate lunch at church (hot dogs, chips and lemonade) and he kept talking about how he'll make his car for next year. He thinks he wants to win for design/novelty next year but Brett wants him to go for speed again. We'll see what comes of that....