Merry Christmas - Part 1

Make a Smilebox greeting

RSV

So our plans have changed a little for Christmas this year at the last minute. We were going to spend Christmas night with my dad and our family, but today I took Jenna to the doctor and it turns out that we will be pretty much stuck here at home for the next week. She was diagnosed with RSV - a common problem in kids around cold season, but especially dangerous in children under age 2. It has many of the same symptoms as a common cold (which also has a lot of the same symptoms as teething!), but because babies have such small nasal passages it can quickly turn in to pneumonia or something like that.

She is on day two of the virus and it can last anywhere from a week to two. I have been told that days three through five are the worst and so we are going back tomorrow morning to make sure she will be okay through Christmas. I am also going to have Joshie checked out since he is so close to the "cutoff" age.

I did some research on RSV and apparently it is a common condition in which a lot of children get, however it should be taken seriously if your child has a fever, runny nose and wheezing with cough....which of course poor Jenna has all three. So what do we do?? Besides pray, we have to give her breathing treatments every four hours and alternate between Tylenol and Motrin to keep the fever at bay. She is highly contagious, so Christmas will be just us four for this year and with everyone else in January. We also have to keep her room moist with the vapoizer to make her breathe easier. It kinda sounds scary, but I am so glad that God is in control over this whole situation. We should see improvement in her by Friday or Saturday....

We will keep you posted, and that you for praying/reading!

Rockin' in Christmas...

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

"Nesting" ....times three??

Its been said that when someone is expecting a baby that there is a "nesting" period in which the mom feels like she has to clean everything, prepare for baby, and just have everything in order before the little one arrives. Its a surge of energy that is supposed to arrive somewhere between the end of the second trimester and the middle of the third.

I have personally never experienced this with the first two pregnancies...Maybe that's why I am making up for it now! LOL... With Josh and Jenna I wanted things in order, but not like with Julianna. Maybe its the new house, but I thought I would be more tired since I have two small kids to also look after that need 100% of my time. Guess I was wrong!

Since we've moved, the 4th bedroom, which is supposed to be Jason's office, has been reverted to a "catch all" for our boxes that we have yet to go through. Seems like we just never have the time to actually sort through it and find a place for it. So that's where my "nesting" comes in.

I decided that for part of Jason's Christmas present I would clean and organize the office for him. I had Sherrie watch the kids for me so I could concentrate solely on the office and organizing it. Here are the before and after photos:

Jingle Bells and Big Boy Chairs

Joshua has decided that he is "too big" for his booster seat at the table and needs to sit in a "chair like daddy's". So now Jenna sits in his seat and the high chair is waiting for Julianna. He actually does really well at the table, although he wants to get up, down, up, down.... and is so excited to be "free". I suppose that will wear off soon enough.

One of the cutest things he has begun to do is look after Jenna. He is always concerned about her and will do anything for her! He learned how to sing Jingle Bells (or kinda sing it anyways) and I could never get him on camera.... until I asked him to sing it to Jenna that is!! Enjoy the video of our little big boy!

Teeth...finally??

Jenna has been miserable this whole week. You can tell just by her face. She might have been "ahead of the game" in everything.....but teeth. She is almost 13 months old and has absolutely NO teeth. Surprisingly it hasn't stopped her with eating food, but now I think it has her beat. I know that they say the later, the better, but poor thing has a bunch of teeth coming in all at the same time now...

I just hope they will be in by Christmas so she can enjoy Christmas dinner....

Joyeux Noel

Christmas this year will be so much fun. Last year it was a little hard with Jenna being "just born" and all. This year Joshie is into all the Christmas lights and the presents and both kids LOVE Christmas music. Jenna dances anytime it comes on. Joshie likes to sing along with both "Jingle Bells" and "Happy Birthday Jesus". In fact, anytime the Birthday one comes on, he then goes throughout the house saying rather loudly - "Happy Bert-day Jesus!" It really is the cutest thing. :)

This year we are getting together with my dad and family on Chirstmas afternoon since my sister and her husband and little boy are flying back home to Cali that evening. It will be a little different as I think the last time I actually celebrated Christmas ON Christmas was in 2004 - Jason and I were engaged and we hadn't moved out here yet. Christmas was always at my auntie's house with my cousins and gramma. I will definately be thinking and missing them again this year.

I am really hoping and praying that my mom can come out right after Christmas. She's thinking about "sneaking" out here, and it would be the PERFECT Christmas. I know that Joshie and Jenna would love seeing gramma again. He talks to her on the phone and always talks about her and "papa Joe" when he sees their picture. I'll keep you updated on that one. :)

But Christmas isn't about the presents, or even about the family. Its about God sending his own Son down to the world as His present to us so that we could then go to heaven. As I get older, and especially now that we have kids, it makes me stop and think about songs like "Mary, did you know" and "Joseph's Lullaby". I can't imagine giving my kids to strangers...I don't even like being away from my own family for very long. I guess that's what makes it so awesome. He did it so we wouldn't have to. We can not only go to heaven, but hopefully our families will too.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Here's some pictures as of 7:00 pm (Dec. 10th) of the snow.....Its coming down pretty good out there!

Our BBQ in the backyard

The kids' play slide (backyard)

Our car

A wheel in the back of Jason's truck

SNOW!

So apparently after a hurricane we have a cold winter here....So nice for Christmas! It was cold today - so cold that it is indeed snowing outside. Not sleeting, not hailing, but actual snow! And its sticking to the ground!!! So awesome! The high today was supposed to be 49....this morning they announced that it would be 44....Actual high.....34 degrees!!! Here's a few pictures from this afternoon at about 4 o'clock of our front yard.....

The temperature is supposed to drop to mid 20's tonight (we'll see how low it goes) and more snow is expected throughout the evening...I'll post some pictures tomorrow of what it looks like in the morning!

Hopefully we will have a white Christmas this year!

Birthday Fun!

This is Jenna writing this post :) Today we had my birthday party...It was so much fun! There were lots of pink balloons and a lot of my friends came to play with me at my house. Thankfully it was a warmer day too so we all played out in the backyard for a little bit on my slide and chased each other in the grass. Here are some pictures of my friends and I playing together:

After playtime, it was time to open present!! This was the best part becasue I like to rip open the wrapping paper. There were some bags that I could probably fit into! My grandma Debbe sent me my very first dolly and I love her so much! It was fun to crawl around in them. Thankfully i have a big brother and some friends that helped me open my presents. Here's a few pictures of me opening some presents:

And here's a silly video!

Following present time it was time for cake!! YUMMY!!! Everyone sang to me and then I got to eat my first piece of cake. It was so delicious that I ate the whole thing! Good thing mommy and daddy have a Christmas party to go to tonight so I can run my sugar off with Joshie at the babysitters. Here's some silly pictures of me being messy with my first piece of cake:

And of course mommy caught me on camera! Silly momma!!

The funniest thing was Joshie wearing our friend Caleb's cowboy hat and pretending to be a cowboy...He sure was silly!

Thank you for sharing in my birthday celebration. I am sure going to like being one year old! It's been a lot of fun so far - especially playing with my cool big brother. I love him so much!

"Baby its cold outside"

So as you can see from the map - Its very cold in the middle of the US. Coming from So. Cal, it usually is still warm outside - we're talking 70 to 80 degree weather! I guess it does take a while to get used to the fact that we actually have seasons here....I LOVE IT though!! I used to always be bothered with singing Christmas songs about snow and warm fires when I could wear shorts outside on Christmas day...not the case here.....

Today is Thursday, 4th of December and it is almost 10 am. The weather outside here is crisp and cold. Its 45 degrees outside now and supposedly going to hit a high of 55 at some point. It will probably only get to 53 or something like that. Factor in the wind chill and the news says that it will feel like in the 40s all day. So nice to bundle up and smell Christmas in the air. I love Christmas anyways, but now it makes having hot apple cider and snuggling up so much more worth it.

I am hoping that this next cold front that is coming in from Alaska and Canada will bring with it some snow. It snowed here the Christmas before we moved here...Conditioins are favorable, we just need some rain to accompany the front when it arrives in 2 weeks....

2 days...2 milestones

So the week has started with 2 eventful days - 2 major milestones for our family.

The first was of course Jenna turning one on the first of December. Hard to believe she's already one year old already! Here's a picture on the day she was born:

We didn't really do much on her birthday since it was Monday, but we are celebrating this Saturday with a little party. It's kinda hard with it being in between Christmas and Thanksgiving to find a free weekend for her. Poor thing.

I was hoping that she would have some teeth by now, but nope - still a toothless smile! She'll have to have her friend Mason show her how to get some teeth in since she showed him how to sit up. She's really excited to visit with him again on Saturday.

The other milestone concerns the new "bean". It was funny because the poll had boy in the lead for the longest time, until the last minute. The final results were: Boy - 4 votes, to Girl - 6 votes. I voted boy. I know my husband thinks boy.....I asked Joshie last night if he wants a little brother or a little sister. He said sister.

This morning we had our BIG ultrasound appt. This is the one where you get to find out what the baby is. We tried for almost an hour to find out what this little bean would be, but there was no "for sure"...The tech said she is pretty sure that this new baby is a girl since there was nothing "hanging down", but couldn't say that she was 100% sure. I guess we will have to just wait until April to find out!!!

The two names we have picked out so far are Jayden Christopher and Julianna Faith....these are by no means set in stone....oh well, it was still an exciting time to see the new baby and know that it is doing well.

Jenna's Photoshoot

Destruction...times two

This is why I cannot get anything done around my house...or at least it is a very slow process of getting things put away or clean....LOL...

Thanksgiving - Part Deux

So, I totally forgot to add Joshua's cookie pictures and our family portraits!!!

Joshie made (well, cut out) gingerbread cookies and he actually did a good job! Here's a few pictures of him:

And my sister, Jessica, was so sweet and took all our family portraits for Christmas. We haven't had a family picture since last year, so it was nice to have one with Jenna being a little older. It was funny though to see Hana with all the kids....and to see Sherrie try and get a "grandkids" picture....You try getting 5 kids all 3 and under to sit down!!!

Thankful

Thanksgiving is not just a time for eating delicious food, but also for being with family and remembering to be thankful for all the wonderful things and people that are in our lives each year. Thanksgiving is always a "difficult" holiday for me. I don't mean difficult because some horrible tragedy happened, or some awful anniversary is remembered. I mean difficult in the sense that since we moved out here to Texas its made me so much more thankful for my family that I ever was before.

I have a large family and every year for Thanksgiving we would all gather together and be thankful for each other and the past year. We're not talking about a "small" gathering...or even a "large" one in the sense that a lot of people think of large. When my family gets together for thanksgiving, there's between 60 and 90 people there...all family and related and closely knot together. That's in California.....We're now in Texas....that's why its "difficult".

This year was different though. This year my family back in Cali didn't get together. So many people are spread out all over the country now and with my grandparents and their brothers/sisters getting up in age its harder for all of them to get together. This made me so sad to think that the gatherings had come to an end. How could anyone not want to drive a million miles to spend time with the family?! But then came a sense of thankfulness. I was thankful that I got to spend about 23 thanksgivings with my family together and that I could always remember that and bring that legacy here to Texas for my kids to see.

We celebrated Thanksgiving at my sister Jessica's house. There adds on more and more people every year, and before long we'll have our own group and lots of people to celebrate with. We're off to a good start too - we've been here 3 years and we've got about 20 family members so far: dad and his wife, Sherrie; Jason, myself, Joshua and Jenna; my sister, Jessica, her husband, Shon, and their little boy, Elisha; Shon's sister, Mary; my sister, Vanessa, her husband, CJ, and their daughter, Caitlyn; Sherrie's brother, Monty, his wife, Letty, and their kids: Jessica, Joey, Jacob and Megan. This year we were even blessed with Hana, a foreign exchange student from South Korea that has been staying with my parents for the year. There's a lot to be thankful for, that's for sure!!!

Here are some pictures of our fun time together:

Jenna's first Thanksgiving meal! She loved it!!

Joshua playing with baby Megan (7 mo)

Monty with baby Caitly (5 mo)

Joshua playing underneath the table

Shon's sister Mary, Elisha, Jessica, Shon, Jessica, Sherrie, Hana


Vanessa, Caitlyn, and C.J.
Jason and Joshua during the prayer

Jenna chillin' on a chair

Thankful Tree

So this is the first year that Joshua is "aware" and can conciously remember things and traditions, so Jason and I are working on starting cool little traditions with our own little family for holidays and stuff. Since Thanksgiving is tomorrow and I grew up with such a strong family tradition of being thankful for my family, I thought it would be nice if Joshua made a "thankful tree" that he can have as our centerpiece during the dinner.

I wrote our immediate family's names on each leaf and put some glue on the back and let him stick the leaves wherever he wanted to to make the tree. As we put glue on each leaf I read it to him and we said a little prayer for each person whose name we came across. We thanked God for putting them in our lives and for them being special to us. When it was all put together I told him - "See, all together we make this tree - we are all a part of a family and we all fit together and support each other. Each one of these people love you very much"

We haven't figured out what we're going to do for Christmas yet, but we have some time still for that one.