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I figured I should also write a quick blurb about how we are doing and what's going on with us right now, since my kids are being good and everything. Ha. Yeah right. Josh is sitting here screaming, so it'll be quick.

We are still in Bagdad, obviously, Dave is still working in the same job, and not much is new, but I'll go youngest to oldest...

Josh is growing like a weed and is chubby and wonderful and cuddly. He is almost 9 months old now, but still doesn't sleep through the night. :) Fun for me. He loves his older brother and they have so much fun together. He is a total mama's boy, by every explanation. I leave the room, he cries. I put him down, he cries. But it's okay because I love him. :) He is so cheerful and happy and fun and probably the most photogenic baby I've ever seen. He has his first tooth on the bottom, which has been fun for me dealing with his extra grumpiness. He has his next checkup in a week, so I'll report stats then.

Sam is doing new things every day and is becoming so grown up. He is very smart and defiant and starting to get a sarcastic sense of humor. :) He is also very stubborn and can be a REAL pain in my butt, but then a second later he can turn around and be the sweetest boy I've ever seen. He started "preschool" with Christa a couple months ago and is LOVING it (though it will probably not continue anymore). He loves learning and interacting with other kids and is GREAT for other people. :)

The only new thing with me is that I finally finished my book--the final edit and everything! Woo hoo! So, I'm working on my grueling query letters and synopsis, mini synopsis, etc. etc. etc. so I can start researching agents to send it in to. Writing the book was definitely the fun, easy part. This part feels like homework--homework that I actually care about and want to be perfect. LOL. Anyway, thanks to those of who who currently have copies of my final manuscript and are reading them. I started reading it to Dave the other day, feeling SOOO lame because he isn't in to romances, but I have been very very pleasantly surprised that he actually really likes it so far and is anxious to know what happens to the characters.

Anyway, Dave had a health fair a few weeks ago here in Bagdad that he ran, and in that process, he had his blood taken and it was high. He always new it was high, but this time worried him more. Thinking about his dad and seeing his life go in that same path gave him a brutal wake-up call, so for the past few weeks he has been EXTREMELY strict with his diet, determined not to end up that way. I have been sooo proud of him. He is eating smaller portions (and still always starving), eliminating as much carbs and refined sugar as possible, and he is working out every single day--even when we are out of town on the weekends, he'll get up early enough to run. Anyway, he's been taking his blood every morning and the results have been extremely depressing. He finally has an appointment today to see what the deal is, though the numbers we see scream diabetes. We are still hoping for something more positive, and praying, but we wont know till we go in and get checked for sure. We will keep everyone updated.

Our prayers go out to everyone in our family (and outside of it) who are struggling. It seems there is a lot of that going on right now and the list of people to pray for just grows each day. I just thank the Lord for our blessings and hope everyone else can receive the same kind of blessings we get.

We are excited to be going to Colorado for Christmas! And we were excited that Braxton and Cindi might be coming for Thanksgiving, but Brax lost his job and we aren't too sure it's gonna happen anymore. :( We are praying for you guys and hopefully you still can come!!

Halloween was great. We spent it with the Stewarts in the valley and went trick-or-treating with the kids, had a little shin-dig, the usual. Unfortunately, Brand was sick, but still made an appearance as Darth Maul so that their Star Wars family could be complete. They all looked so amazing! Tiff did an amazing job sewing the costumes and they found killer masks. Dave still didn't know until that day what he would be but through together a last minute viking costume that actually looked pretty amazing. I was a witch, thanks to Tiff having the things on hand, Sam was a cowboy, and Josh was a monkey. It was lots of fun, but now Sam wont stop asking for candy. He will randomly say things to me like, "Mom, I love candy."

Bad News

Gosh, this whole blogging things seems foreign to me now because of how long it's been. I got outta the mode and then events started piling up and blogging seemed a chore to me because of how much I'd have to update everyone on. But I need to start anew. I just wanted to express my feelings at the moment.

I can't even thank the Lord for how blessed me and my family are. We complain, and especially lately because of Dave's health (we go in today to find out whether he has diabetes for sure or not...we are pretty sure he does, but I'll let you all know when we know for sure), but yesterday changed our thinking completely. Our good friend, Christa Johnson (Miss Christa, as Sam calls her...she's his "preschool" teacher), was diagnosed with breast cancer yesterday, and possibly lymphnode. I feel overwhelmed with sorrow for her. She is such an amazing person, so willing to give of herself and her time, and she deserves a life full of great things! I love her and my heart aches for her and what she is going to have to go through now. I feel as though I can't pray enough for her, and I hope the power of prayer is strong enough to lift some of her load and make it possible for her to get through this with as much ease as possible!

We love you Christa and you will be in our prayers!

Pics Again

Here are a few recent pics. Oh, and nothing new with Josh. Still has diarrhea a bit, so I'm going to give it a couple more days and then I'm thinking about starting him on the prevacid again because I don't think he would still have diahrrea after 9 days of being off of it. Argh. It's all so frustrating...

Sam found a pen...

I just loved this picture of my beautiful boy.

The boys watching a Brainy Baby video.

Hahahaha....this one is just funny. I'm not sure what he was scared of.

This Weekend...

...was great! Dave and I actually got to go on a date on Saturday (with the baby of course...)! Thanks again so much to Christa for watching Sam! What we thought would only be about a 5-6 hour babysitting job (we were just planning on driving to Prescott Valley and seeing a movie), turned out to be an all day thing. We did see a movie, but we ended up thinking of all these other things that we had to get done while we were there. That's the thing about living so far away from town. When you're there, you have to take advantage of it and get everything done you can.

Anyway, we saw Wolverine, which I absolutely loved and it made me want to watch the first and second X-Men movies when we got home. So we had a good time out, and as he always is, Joshua was great in the movie.

Yesterday, Mother's Day, was good, but not really any different than any other day. I wanted a laptop, but we want to wait until we find the perfect deal, so instead Dave (well...I guess it would really be from Josh and Sam) got me 2 movies I love: P.S. I Love You and 27 Dresses. He also got me a really funny Michael Scott card that plays sound of him talking about children. Except it's kind of annoying now that I have it memorized, because Sam opens it plays it all the time.

On Friday night Dave took Sam to the Father and Sons, though they didn't camp over night. It's just too difficult and not worth it for Dave to camp with Sam at this age because of how difficult he can be. But they had a lot of fun! And I got to hang out with just me and Josh. You know what I did? I watched Twilight with the comentary by Catherine, Kristen, and Rob (yeah....I know them so well that I refer to them only by their first names, haha). Yeah, don't make fun. I usually would never sit through a movie while listening to a boring comentary, but the the Twilight one is actually pretty funny...actually, pretty hillarious. There were parts where I was laughing out loud by myself. It was just funny to hear them all talking about stuff and getting a feel of the experience they had making the movie. And Rob Pattinson is actually pretty darn funny. He kept making fun on himself as Edward and I got a kick out of it. Anywho....

So Joshua hasn't changed much. He still has diarrhea, though not as bad as before, so I don't know if it was actually the Prevacid causing it or not, since it's now been 6 days since he's been off of it. It's so hard to say. I'm still not sure whether I made the right decision or not. He had one really good eating session at church yesterday, where he ate for about 10 minutes on each side, like a normal baby, and I thought that would be a positive turn, but it was only a one-time thing. I'm still not sure what to do. He has an appointment on June 11 with the G.I. doctor (I'm going to have them put us on the cancellation list though) so we'll see how that goes.

That's it for now!

Sam's First Sentence

So yesterday at church I started to smell something gross - something that smelled just like Sam when he's poopy - and I leaned over to him sitting next to me, and whispered, "Did you poo?" Well, usually he doesn't answewr me more than a "no," or somtimes not at all. This time he looked up at me with his beautiful big blue eyes and big pouty lips, and in his sweet sweet voice replied, "No, I didn't poopoo. I just farted." Haha...it was pretty funny....

Picture Post

Last months combined YW/YM activity...Human Foosball:



Cutest Boy!


Taking the boys out for a walk...and Josh cried the WHOLE time. He's definitely not like his big brother. Sam loved car rides and walks.

Dave and Sam on the new porch swing Dave got me!


Two naked boys...

I just had to take a picture of Sam in the snazzy tie Will-Will gave him...

And finally...asleep. I had to take a picture to document it, because I knew if I didn't, Dave wouldn't believe me that he was actually asleep in his swing, it being such a rare occasion and all...

Joshua's Reflux

Well, I thought I'd give an update on my Joshie (Dave hates when I call him that, by the way. He thinks it's too feminine. He would rather call him "Shua"...as in, the end of his name...yeah, I don't know how it came about either.). First off, I never got to tell my fun story about the last straw I had with his and Sam's pediatrician. So, the day I had Joshua's follow-up appointment, I was running extremely behind and rushed to get both me and the boys out the door and by the time I was driving into Prescott it was 3:45 on the dot - the time of my appointment. Well, the dr. office is only like 2 minutes from the spot I was at, so I decided to be nice and call them to let them know I was still on my way. Well, when I did, they told me there was no way they'd see me and that I'd have to reschedule...even though I was literally only going to be 2 minutes late!! I apologized and told her I was running behind, could they please give me a break because I drove an hour and a half JUST for this appointment...with two screaming kids (yeah...Joshua HATES being in the car), and Dr. Green didn't even care. He had his rounds to do at the hospital and didn't want to wait. He knows my story and that I live out of town, and he didn't even care. So after arguing with her about it, I said, "Fine, I'll just turn back around and drive an hour and a half home!" and then I hung up. And that's exactly what I did...after I pulled over and nursed Joshua, of course. I was so incredibly LIVID. That was the biggest wasted 3 hours of my life. And I had to listen to two upset, mad kids the whole way. I don't blame them for crying the whole time.

Anyway, I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that a dr. would care about his patients that little. That was the last straw for me and it totally wiped out my wishy-washiness of switching doctors. I decided then that, even if he did call back and asked me to reschedule (which he never did!!), I wouldn't. I refuse to ever take my kids there again.

So, after listening to people's opinions, we switched to Dr. Sipes. I took Josh to her and I absolutely LOVE her! She was so good with him and you could tell she really cared. I also didn't feel stupid for asking questions or trying to get more information about things, unlike Dr. Green, who would always make me feel like an idiot for wanting to know things. I'm sorry I want to know what's going on with my child...

Anyway, she was great and her office was nice and clean and bright (SO unlike Dr. Green's) and her staff is great. So about the medicine...he was on Zantac about a week and a half and it helped a LITTLE bit. It helped so he wasn't throwing and spitting up all the time, but that's all it helped. His food would still come up, just not all the way (he'd swallow it) and he would still hiccup and burp all the time, still couldn't eat well, etc. So Dr. Sipes put him on Prevacid, which I have heard works better most of the time anyway. This has started to work, but unfortunately it's giving him REALLY bad diarrhea! I looked it up and it is a side effect...but only in 3% of people!! Of course, he has to be in that 3%... And it's not something I just want to deal with because he's miserable because of it and has constant diaper rash. So unfortunately, I have to take him off of it.

So I don't know what we will do. I'm tired of it though, and I'm sure he is too. I wish we could find something that worked. I might just have to put him back on the Zantac, because a little help is better than none at all. He also has a referral in to see a G.I. specialist at Phoenix Children's, but that probably won't be for a while since the wait is so long. I guess I'll keep you updated...