MAX

Sammie was given a gift card from Mr. Winston and Mrs. Kim to build-a-bear for her birthday. I wanted to wait a bit to go so the newness of her other gifts would have worn and this would be the new fun. I was able to let her pick whatever animal she wanted, I vetoed the Jona's brothers bear, but she didnt mind too much. She found this lovely Jack Russel Terrior instead.

Getting ready to stuff the bear.

I think the machine kinda scared Sammie a bit.

Picking the heart to put in the Puppy.

At this point we have named the dog, Max. Max is a girl. Now it is time to give her a bath. Sammie was a bit nervous and didn't want to do it.

But that didn't stop Dash from having fun doing it.

Dash has done it and so now Sammie is interested.
Dash and Sammie working together to give Max her bath.

Clean Max

Oops, we missed a spot....

....or two.

We have Max all dressed and ready to go for a walk to the birth certificate computer.

Typing up Max's birth certificate

We are ready to pay.

Sammie was able to get Max, 2 skirts, 2 shirts, a pair of undies, and a leash all for $57. Her gift card was for $50, so I could handle that. She is very very very proud of her dog.

This morning, Sammie had to get Max dressed in his clothes and out of his Jammies.

Sammie and her buddy!

Recalls

I am soooooooo sick of the number of recalls in our country. From food to baby products. As a matter of fact, with the latest toy recall from Fisher-Price, we have one toy on the list. We have the Go Diego Go trike. Why is this item recalled? Is it because the wheels could fall off? NO it is because the key that turns like you are turning your motorcycle on, could cause genital bleeding. (When sitting on the bike properly, there is NO WAY that this could happen on accident. Actually, I am not sure what the individual was doing that caused this to happen!)

I mean come on, this country deserves to be poor and taken over. The fact that we can't be held responsible for making sure we have our children ride their bikes right that we need to have a company have a recall so to protect themselves from MILLIONS of lawsuits! That is really what this comes down to, protecting their hinders from us consumer, money hungry, you owe me mentality. I will not be caring about the recall and I will not be taking measures to "fix" the key. As a matter of fact, if the kids were to hurt themselves so badly that they start to bleed on the KEY then they must have been doing something they should not have been doing to cause that injury. I would not hold Fisher-Price responsible, I am the parent, not Fisher-Price. It is my job to teach them how to act. If I were to sue the company, I am just teaching them that they don't need to take responsability for their own actions!

USPS

I am so erked with the USPS right now!

I had ordered my brother books from a seller from amazon.com. They shipped the books no problem. However, the mail man had deceided that Jimmy had filled out a forwarding request to a differant address. However that is not the case! So it has been 3 weeks since they tried to deliever the package and I called today trying to locate this package.

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Dear Jesus,

The kids have been "practicing" to pray at meals. We have been doing this for awhile now and ocasionally I ask them to pray on their own as I am finishing making my meal or Ali's meal. So the other day the kids had prayed on their own. Dash's was pretty good, and this was Sammie's

Dear Jesus,
Help Dash to don't make a mess!
Amen.

I am not so sure where that came from, but there it was. Beth and I belted out in laughter.

Bob The Builder

Dash is waiting for Bob The Builder to come build us a bigger house(all on his own thinking), so that he can bring everyone here that he loves. Cuz he loves EVERYONE as he likes to tell me.

Family Photo

Our Family Today!

I love you

Dash has been telling me that he "really loves me" a lot. It is so cool to hear you big boy say that.

Sleep Study

Well, Sammie was a AWESOME sport if I do say so myself. Actually the nurses told her that she was the start patient of the night! She didn't fight getting the equipment on. The poor girl had a tube up her nose and because she is a mouth breather, she had something dangling from her nose covering her mouth. It actually was the microphone so the Drs could listen to her breathing. It took her a bit longer than normal to fall asleep, but who wouldn't need extra time to fall asleep.

We did normal bed time routine once everything was attached properly. It was lights out. Attached to Sammie's finger was a pulse ox monitor. Unfortunately they glow in the dark. She is a girl that needs complete darkness to fall asleep. So she laid there twirling her finger playing the red glow in the dark ET style finger. When I had gone in the hall to ask if we could do anything about that there was a nurse that came in to fix that and in conversation we ended up getting a white noise machine~which was very helpful. She was almost asleep when her hat fell off causing another nurse to come in and fix it. This was Sammie's last straw. She started to tear up. After the nurse left, she started to tear up. I held her on my lap and she was out within 5 minutes! I could tell by her breathing that she was out. So I laid her down and left the room. I was out of the room by 8:30pm. I went to bed at 10 and I am not sure what time the nurse came in during the night but I believe she only needed to come in once to readjust the wires or stickers. I just rolled back over and went to sleep. I slept pretty well I guess. We were woken up at 5:15. Sammie woke up pretty easily as the nurse opened the door. Then they pricked her finger to run her blood ox. So at 5:30 we were ready to leave~however we didn't know that til 6am. When we got home, I gave Sammie a shower and then I got ready for work. The poor girl was allergic to the sticky tape used. It didn't show up really until 4pm. Nothing some hydrocortizone cream couldn't try to fix. You could see on her face exactly where all the stickers/tape was. It was gone by Sunday. Now we just sit and wait for the results. They should be back within 7-10 business days.

Sleep Study

Tonight is the night! Sammie has her sleep study!I guess we'll see how it goes. Please be praying for her, myself, and the doctors tonight. thanks

I need it messy

Today after school we went to the zoo with Grandma Cohan. I made it a point to pick up the back hall way before she got here. I am blessed with my washer and dryer on the main level. I am cursed with my washer and dryer on the main level~always laundry blocking the back entrance way. This weeks laundry was an enormous amount because I am getting ready for the fall season so I had extra clothes to wash. Therefore the entrance way was even more messy with dirty laundry. Today you can see the floor and I moved the laundry basket so Ryan's mom could get through the door way. I did this while Dash was at school today. When we got home he noticed it was clean....
Dash: Who cleaned this?
Me: I did
Dash: What?!?! I need it messy!!!! OH Man.

Proud Moment

Today when I picked Dash up from school, Ms. Jessica made this comment to me~ "Oh my word, Can I have a whole class of him(in reference to Dash)? I love him!" That made my heart so happy.

Grant

I know it has been quite some time since I have posted on this subject. As a matter of fact, not much has changed other than we are going to have more hoops to jump through. I just received an email from Lori, the lady in charge saying that we are in a unique situation. Our house is now on a floodplain and the dollar amount of the renovations is more than 50% of our property value. So we have an 8 step process we get to go through :) If nothing else God is using this to teach me patience and perseverance. Quite honestly I am sick of persevering. I am tired and I don't have enough hours in the day to be working on the project. I am still trying to get all of the bids required for the work that is to be done. I thought that this past Thursday was going to be it, but I was wrong, he doesn't do the masonry/foundation work on the interior side of the exterior side of the walls(if that made any sense). So, I guess all I have to say for now, is please keep praying with us and for us when I feel like giving up!

Puppy

That is Ali's latest word. She can say it very clearly and calls all animals a puppy. She spent the weekend at a friend of mines and they have a puppy so she got really good at saying it. She was been working on it for a few days now, but this weekend really solidified it for her.

She also popped a new tooth this past weekend! That makes #9 Top right.

Mr. and Mrs. Corrao

Well, my computer is still down so I dont have pictures of my princess and stud from the wedding last night. But I do want to say that the kids were AWESOME!

Dash was the ring bearer and took his job very seriously! Sammie was the flower girl and she was very good. She LOVES her flowers and at the rehearsal made sure to pick them up and if any other kid touched them, WATCH OUT!. We were going to leave it up to the kids if they went down together or separate. At the rehearsal they tried together but ended up going alone. So the day of Dash went first, surrendered his pillow to Adam and sat back down with Daddy. Then it was Sammie's turn. My job was to tell everyone when to go so I was at the back of the church with the kids sending them off. I told Sammie it was her turn several times but she was not budging. A girlfriend from work who was sitting in the back said you could just see her face change from happy to scared. After a few grunts from her I knew she wasn't going down by herself and with Molly's song starting to play I knew I had to take her. So I asked her and she said yes. She still would not take her flower basket so I "dump/sprinkled" them down the aisle and got her there and flew to the back of the church! Everyone loved her! WE then did pictures and Ryan got some AWESOME shots of Dash on the church stairs while I was inside. After that we went to the Rotunda(reception hall) for some more group shots, in which the kids were involved. There are some cute ones of Molly and the kids but when it comes to a full group shot the kids are not the best behaved. Now it is time for dinner. It was a fancy sit down dinner. So the kids had to learn some fancy etiquette, either way they did awesome. Sammie nearly fell asleep at dinner time on my lap around usual bed time, however she went by someone else to go for a walk and that woke her up. Post dinner was dancing(mostly the kids). Just as we were about to leave, the bridal party was introduced. The rule was you had to come in dancing any way you wanted. Well Dash "won" the dance off! He has some nice moves! We finally left the wedding around 9pm. I am so PROUD of the kids for doing an awesome job at the wedding and reception. They really were troopers and they really blew my socks off!

1st Day of School

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures right now because my computer is at Winston's house getting fixed.

Today was Dash's first day of school. I did pretty well I think. I did almost lose it when it was time for me to leave while he walked to the table with his journal and crayon box. Today he had cheerios and milk for a snack. The letter of the week is K and the number of the week is 1. He went in just fine and was glad to see me. He was kinda extra snuggly while we were at Molly's house after school, but I'll take it. What I could see gone is the crabbiness he has/had. He was not in a good mood until 5:30 and he was done with school at 11:20! He did sleep for 2.5 hours today! This is a learning experience for all of us, so tomorrow I will bring a snack for all 3 kids to eat in the van. When I told him tonight that he needed to go to bed because he had school in the morning, him and Sammie simultaneously said "AGAIN"