Saying good-bye to Blankie

Today was a sad and happy day for miss Aubrey. Today we got rid of her baby blanket. It has been a good blanket but it was time to move on. She would rub her lips on it and a way to soothe herself, and bit it for may be the same reason. So, it was stinky and full of holes. I made her a new minky blanket and she was so excited about it! We took some pictures to say good-bye to blankie. She was happy and excited with her new blanket, but as soon as I left the room the tears started flowing. Luckily her big sister was there to comfort her.

One little secret-mom has had a hard time letting go of blankie too. :) I was going to throw it out but instead I washed it and I haven't been able to get rid of it. I don't like that my kiddos are growing up so fast!

2013 in Review!

In February, Morgan had a valentine's themed daddy-daughter date with Mike at our friend's home (the Tidwells).

In March we found out that Mike matched into and ENT residency in Philadelphia. I had some mixed emotions about this. We were grateful he got a spot though! We spent a week looking for houses and stayed with a 5th-year ENT resident and his family. They showed us some things to do in Philly like going to the Please Touch Children's museum, Rita's water ice, and yummy frozen yogurt. It was a stressful week of looking for houses and luckily the day before we had to leave I found a new listing and that turned out to be what we were looking for!

In April we of course celebrated Easter. The girls looked so cute in their Easter dresses!

May was a busy and emotional month. Morgan celebrated her 6th birthday party with friends. It was a rainbow themed birthday party. We had relay races, and painted all the girls nails rainbow colors. After Morgan's birthday Mike's mom came to watch the girls so that Mike and I could have one last hoorah with our friends the Pettits and the Coombs. We went on a Carnival cruise that had stops in the Bahamas, St. Thomas, San Juan, and Grand Turk. In the Bahamas everyone except Ben got a huge burn! It was place though. Mike and I went snorkeling and we all played on this huge floating thing in the Ocean (probably where we all got burnt). St. Thomas was so fun. We took a speed boat tour of the island and got soaked. San Juan was such an interesting place and I could definitely go back there for sure. It has history, hiking in the rainforest, beaches and more. We started out by doing a rainforest hike and the rainforest lived up to it's name. It poured on us and we all got soaked. The water irritated Mike's sunburn and made him super itchy. So he was seen running through the rainforest (like a mad man) to get back to the van to dry off. haha. Afterwards we toured a huge fort (can't remember the name now, but it was super cool). Grand Turk turned out to not be so grand. It was a very flat and dirty island, which is known for it's snorkeling and scuba diving. Unfortunately, the day we got there the water was murky due to a storm coming in so the snorkeling wasn't great. Overall, we had a great time on our cruise and we were so glad to spend that time with friends.

Mike graduated medical school! So many years of hard work had finally paid off and we were excited for the next step! We were so grateful to have spent those years of medical school with some great people who supported us and made life just plain wonderful! We are so lucky to have friends like them.

The beginning of June we, with the much needed help of Mike's parents, moved to Philadelphia. We stayed in some pretty sketchy places along the way but we made it in tact. The day we got there we signed our mortgage papers and got our keys. We were home owners for the first time! The day after we moved in Mike's parents had to leave but promised to return in the fall. Mike's brother Steve and his wife Stephanie came a couple weeks after we moved in to visit us. We all explored some of Philly for the first time. I quickly became introduced to Philly traffic by driving downtown by myself, getting lost because the GPS was dumb, and braved driving in a 5 lane traffic circle. Can you tell I don't like driving in the city? We had a nice visit with them. We went to the art museum, a nice park, a not-so-nice park where the kids were smoking weed, the USS New Jersey, and tried a Philly cheese steak for the first time.

Mike began residency and was an official doctor in his long white coat.

My parents came to visit and helped us settle into our house. There was a lot of work to be done and we couldn't have done it without them!

In August, we found out that we were pregnant with #3! Morgan started her first day of school in September and we explored the Jersey shore and Cape May zoo for a bit the weekend after school started.

In October we went to Six Flags and Aubrey made friends with a ground hog there. Mike's parents came to visit us and they also helped us out a ton with the house. They also bought and set up a swing set for the girls as an early Christmas present. They love that thing.

For Halloween the girls were a fairy and a masked snow white.

In December, Aubrey celebrated her 3rd birthday! I made a dinosaur cake because she loves the show Dinosaur train. We invited our neighbors over and we had a fun time. We found out that we are having a boy! We were so thrilled when we found out! We can't wait to meet him soon. We bought our first van in order to get ready for life with three kiddos and drove out to our friend's the Pettit's in St. Louis, Missouri! We had so much fun spending the week with them and sad it had to end so soon. Our friend's the Coombs came down for a visit since they live pretty close to the Pettits. Sadly though their trip was cut short due to everyone getting the stomach flu. We were glad to see them for the short time they were there though!

There you go, there is a quick review of 2013!

Miracles

I don't know if I've ever truly believed that miracles were present in my life up until yesterday. I'm not saying I didn't believe in miracles before, like the birth of my daughters were miracles, but I'm talking about things that happen and can only be explained as a miracle.

Yesterday morning started out with some exciting news; Mike became a US citizen! So, we were excited about that and about other things coming up like Med school graduation. 

Later that evening, we were hanging out with Mike's mom and our niece when I noticed some friends of ours at our front door. They surprised Mike with red, white, and blue treats and by decorating our front door with Fourth of July decorations while playing "Proud to be an American." So, we were outside our front door talking with our friends and their kids were running around our yard playing. I was taking pictures of course to document how sweet our friends are for thinking about Mike. 

I didn't notice that Morgan and her cousin had opened the play room window to yell down to their friends who were down below. While I was taking pictures I hear, "OH MY GOSH! AUBREY FELL OUT THE WINDOW!" I turned the corner and Aubrey was on her back crying. Everything was kind of slow motion and things weren't really registering in my head. A million things were going through my head. I wondered if she had fallen out the downstairs window, I swear she was downstairs...Oh my gosh, did she break something, is she going to have a concussion, she fell out the window??? How did this happen? I should have noticed that they had the window open. 

Our friend scooped her up and Mike immediately grabbed her and said we have to go to the hospital. As I am running through the house to get the car keys, Morgan is screaming and sobbing as she runs down the stairs. She starts yelling over and over,  "Aubrey fell out the window!"Aubrey was screaming, that unnaturally pained scream that, as a parent, makes your heart sink into the pit of your stomach. Mike held her in the front seat while I drove. A minute into driving to the hospital the shock subsides and I really comprehend what had just happened. Then I start worrying and thinking about what COULD have happened. She could have broken her neck and died, she could be paralyzed, she could be bleeding internally, her back could be broken. My eyes pool with tears and I can't stop crying. Meanwhile Mike is calmly trying to console me and Aubrey at the same time. "You need to be calm, we need to make it to hospital safely," he says. I try to pull myself together and luckily we made it to the hospital safely.

While at the hospital she calms down, but is quiet. On the way to the hospital Mike and I were trying to get her to tell us her name, our name, where Morgan was and she new the answers. The nurse puts a cervical neck collar on her. She is a trooper and doesn't even complain about it. The doctor checked her out. The only evidence of the fall was the grass on her back and in her pull up. She wasn't bruised or even red where she had fallen. "She appears to be in good shape," the doc says. While we waited she slowly started acting like her normal self, being goofy and playing hide-n-seek around the room. Finally they took her to get x-rays and we helped her get a urine sample. Luckily, everything came back negative and she was released a couple hours later.

It's hard, when something like this happens, to not blame yourself and to think about the "what ifs." I remembered thinking about putting something in some of the windows upstairs because they are pretty low and Morgan can easily open them. I had disregarded that thought because I knew we'd be moving soon. If I had just done that, this wouldn't have happened. If I hadn't been taking pictures, I would have noticed that they opened the window and that they were in the window. I could have been there...I could have caught her. 

I found out later by my friends who saw her fall that she was falling head first toward the ground and at the very last second she flipped and landed on her lower back/bottom onto the grass. (miracle one) They both said they couldn't explain how she flipped like that. Also, the doctor mentioned that possibly since it had rained that the grass was soft and squishy enough to help cushion her landing a little bit (miracle two).  

Aubrey fell out of a window and the very best possible outcome from that fall is what we happened.

She fell probably about 15-18 feet and has walked away without a bump, bruise, or scratch on her. That is the biggest miracle I have personally witnessed. I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for this miracle. I just can't help but think about all the mom's and dad's who this may have happened to and have either lost a child or their child is permanently injured from such accidents. Hold your kiddos tighter today...in an instant they can be taken away. I am so grateful I didn't lose my baby, I never thought something like this would happen, not to me, not my family. 

Catch up!

Every year my mom's request from her kids is to make scrapbook pages of our year. This is my last page from 2012. I have to catch up on my blog so this the best way I know how. This year we started the tradition of Elf on the shelf. He did some pretty funny things like wrap our tree in toilet paper, went fishing for goldfish in the toilet and drawing funny faces on our pictures. We had a great Christmas!

Thanksgiving, Visitors, and the Polar Express!

We were pretty lucky this year for Thanksgiving. We had Mike's parents visiting to celebrate with us. The girls always love when grandparents visit. This year I made all the food and I definitely made way too much! Mike would always say you could never make enough rolls but I definitely made a bad choice in making ham and turkey! It was delicious though.

Later that night me and some gal pals went to the black Friday sales! Boy that was crazy! I wish I had pictures to document the craziness. Our black Friday experience was pretty successful I would say. One interesting thing that happened was when we were walking out of the mall a truck was driving past us and a guy leaned out the window and puked. I guess he ate too much turkey! Yuck.

Two days later the Coombs, the Pettits and us hopped on the Polar Express! The train took us to the North Pole and along the way we ate cookies, had hot chocolate, listened to a story and sang Christmas Carols. The kids loved being on a real train! Once we got to the North Pole, Santa Claus came by to give each child their own bell from his sleigh. We're grateful to have such good friends and family to share these fun experiences with!

I'm so grateful for this time of year where I came stop and take a moment to look around me and count my blessings. I am so grateful for my family, my friends, and for the time we have had here in Iowa. I never thought that our time here would give me some of my most treasured memories.

Family pictures

My lovely and talented friend Danna took these amazing family photos for us. It was a super windy day but she managed to get some terrific pictures! So grateful to be a mom and to have such a beautiful family.

October 2012

This was our last year to go to the Howell's pumpkin patch in Iowa. It's such a fun place for the kids. They have tractor rides, petting zoo, tire swings, slides, see saws, corn mazes, and of course a pumpkin patch! Below is comparison of Morgan our first year here and our last. She's changed and grown so much!

Danna is probably going to hate me for this but on our tractor ride to corn maze we were goofing around and taking pictures of each other. She has kept me sane during these crazy medical school years!

On the 27th the ward had there trunk-or-treat night at Maple Grove. The girls had fun and Aubrey was ecstatic about getting and eating the candy. Before the trunk-or-treat Danna and did an impromtu photo shoot of our kids in their halloween costumes. Aubrey didn't like her costume too much, but as I recall Morgan didn't like that costume much when she was her age either. haha. Below are some pictures of them in the costume.

On Beggar's night Tearsa, Danna, and me (all husbandless because of rotations) took our kiddos out trick-or-treating. The moon was orange and spooky which I thought was perfect for trick-or-treating. Wish I had a better lens to get a good look at it. It was a fun night and the kids got lots of candy. Poor Addie got hurt and Danna had to leave early. It sure is hard being a single mom!

Pumpkin Carving

It's that time of year again. The time of year where we truly put our art skills to the test. We let Morgan choose how she wanted the two little pumpkins to be and I thought it'd be fun to do an Ariel pumpkin to go with Morgan's Ariel costume this year. Well that pumpkin kind of turned out looking like a skeleton but hey, we tried and more importantly had fun!

My Little Helper

As some of you may know, I have been dabbling more in photography lately. Whenever I set up backdrops for my photo shoots in my bedroom Aubrey will undoubtedly come in and ask me to take her pictures. I think it's cute and of course I have to take advantage of it because I know that when I actually want pictures of her she will refuse. She's such a cutie pie.

Morgan's Kindergarten Class

Morgan is loving Kindergarten! The first week was a little rough because she was exhausted but she is making lots of new friends and is always telling me fun things she is doing at school. Her most favorite subject is art so far and of course she loves recess!