My Three Sons

Prayers needed.....

2010-06-27T00:56:00.002-05:00

Hello all of my good bloggy friends. I just wanted to hop on here and give you a quick update.

Life has been really good this summer. Then June came. haha We had a lot of rain come down earlier this month and it ended up flooding the shopping strip that one of the salons are in. We were down for a day but that is lucky considering some business are still closed.

Carson has been doing really well without the feeding tube. We thought we would pull the tube and see if we can get him to eat orally BEFORE doing the permanent G tube. His asthma seems to be under control for the first time since April/May. But this week he has been running high fevers and throwing up. I took him to the doctor and he probably has strep so he is on a Z pack for 5 days.

Cody was at soccer camp Thursday and said that when he went to sprint he felt something pop in his hip. He has a fracture in his hip and the bone has pulled away from his muscle. So he will need to stay on crutches for 2 weeks and then put some weight on it after that. He has a doctor appt in 3 weeks to see if he needs physical therapy or worse case.....surgery.

Then if that wasn't enough, my mom called and said they took my dad to the hospital. He was later transferred to another hospital and is currently awaiting to have bipass surgery. He had a mild heart attack and has at least 3 areas where his blood isn't flowing correctly. So I have spent a lot of time at the hospital over the last few days.

Coltan, well so far so good! He has helped me in the middle of the night when I'm up with Carson and helped me today with the boys so that I could leave and spend time with my dad at the hospital. I'm so proud of him for stepping up and being responsible in a time of need.

If you could keep my family in your thoughts and prayers that would be sooooo wonderful.

I will hopefully have more info tomorrow on my dad. They haven't found a surgeon until Monday so he is in ICU and has a nurse with him 24/7 until then.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO ALL

2010-05-09T15:51:00.002-05:00

Happy Mother's Day to all of my great bloggy friends. I hope everyone is having the best day. I have had a great day so far. I have my three boys and were all hanging out, what more could I ask for!

Hello strangers....

2010-04-15T00:03:00.000-05:00

Wow, what a month. It has been a wild and crazy month in my household as usual. So where should I start?

We left town on March 28Th and I literally got my computer fixed and back the day before. My computer had over 45 viruses on it and thank goodness I had all of my pictures backed up except for Christmas, Cody's b-day, Coltan's b-day and few after that. But my computer guy is the best and recovered ALL of those and they are backed up as well! So with that said, that is why I haven't been posting for so long.

Me, just been hanging in there and keeping busy with soccer and Dr appts and trying to stay well. I have strep throat and when your taking care of others with it, no fun at all.

Coltan, well he has been driving a little bit and has probably added some grey hairs on my head. Thank goodness for hair color. LOL We were going to his soccer practice one day and I pulled over to let him drive and he did okay. Gotta work on his "going around curves" more smooth. After we pulled up to his fields, his coach was behind us and said to him, well that explains it, I thought I was following a drunk. I'm sure the more practice he gets, he will improve (I hope).

He has had 4 soccer games since my last post. They have won 2, tied 1, and lost 1. His next tournament is in a couple of weeks.

Coltan has also been out of school since Monday due to strep throat. Yup, we actually ALL have it so it has been fun.

Cody, he has also been out of school due to strep. He has been keeping me the busiest with soccer. We actually went to Dallas March 28Th-April 5Th. This tournament was the first international tourney we have ever played in. It was a really great experience. Our team really isn't healthy right now and we didn't advance but for having several boys out, we actually played really well. We currently have one out with a broken ankle and another boy broke his wrist in Dallas. We have one that recently had hip surgery and another that is only playing partial games due to an injured back. Then we had 3 more that flew home in the middle of the tourney because they had MAP testing at their schools. So by Friday our 18 man roster, we had only 13 boys playing. After the tournament, we drove to Ft Worth and spent Friday and Saturday there and ended up having lots of fun. We took in a rodeo, went horse back riding, and rode a steam engine train. Of course I have lots of pictures and will try to down load soon.

Cody was in another tournament in Kansas City last weekend and they played really well. We played a team from Topeka and won 3-1. Next we played the number 1 team from South Dakota and beat them 9-0. Then we played a very good team from Arkansas and lost 1-3. Although a boy was off sides on the second goal and our goalie really did deflect the ball on the third. But Cody got the ONLY goal and all I can say is MOMMY WAS PROUD. It was a sweet goal! We finished that tournament in 2ND place. Nice job boys.

Carson, well he just turned 4 on April 7Th! My baby is a big boy now. I cannot believe how the time flies. He ended up having a great week of birthday parties and we still have a few more things planned but waiting for him to get better.

We came back into town around 5:30AM Easter morning.....very long 8 hour drive with no sleep and a nice sunburn........and on Monday Carson was showing signs of asthma. So off to the doctor and back on prednesolone for 5 days. Now this makes it a problem when he is meeting with the surgeon on April 6th for his up coming surgery on April 12th for the permanent feeding tube. It is now off the books till we can get him ALL better. Oh and my mom is very happy about that.

So we celebrated his birthday last Wed at Waldo Pizza with some of the family. I had some other fun things planned as well but needed to wait til last weekend, and he is still waiting as well.

Friday Cody had a soccer game from the tournament and Carson's asthma was so bad that we ended up giving him a breathing treatment through the nebulizer in the car on the way home. Saturday his asthma was just as bad. Sunday we had planned to go to Chuck E Cheese, and to some stables for him to ride a horse and he ended up with 104.1 temp. He was really bad. I had to take all of his clothes off and lay cold wash clothes on him and he was so sick that he didn't even care. I finally got it down to 102 and we pretty much stayed up all night doing medicines and breathing treatments.

Monday I took him, Coltan, and myself to the Dr and yup, Cody gave us all strep as well. So he is doing breathing treatments with Combivent for the next 5 days 6 times a day. Then after that he will go down to Xopenex for 2 1/2 more weeks 4 times a day. He is also on a strong antibiotic for the next 10 days.

Carson also had his Pulmonology appt today at Children's and with everything going on, we are thinking about trying the Advair again. This is the inhaler that he took over a year ago and he started having the syncable episodes. So I told her that if I can't get a handle on his asthma over the next couple of weeks, I will call her and have her call it in. She also discussed with me doing the fundo-placation that I decided against. She thinks it would be a great idea to have that done as well because she feels that his acid reflux is probably a good part of Carson's problems where asthma is concerned. So now I'll be doing some more thinking about that. We will be scheduling another sleep study in the next 3-6 months as well as blood work to check his ferratin level and iron level again. Other than that, he looks great. LOL

So here is to another very long post but I think we are pretty much caught up now. I hope to catch up with everyone's blogs very soon. I miss reading everyone's blogs. Not having a computer for so long was like missing a lifeline!

Hope everyone has a great Thursday......

Long overdue......

2010-02-25T13:52:00.000-06:00

We just wanted to drop in and say hello to everyone. I have been without a computer for a while. My computer has a virus on it so it is in the shop getting fixed.

So what has been going on???? Well most exciting news is that Carson is POTTY TRAINED!!! I had a lot of errands to run Tuesday and went ahead and put him in a diaper. We were gone for over 5 hours and the first thing I did when we returned home was take his diaper off. It was DRY. He has been doing awesome and to reward him, we went to Wal Mart and picked out some new underwear. He choose Cars and Thomas the Train.

Carson went to the doctors a couple of weeks ago and we found out from the scales that he hasn't gained one ounce in 5 months.....sigh..... So they are really starting to push for the feeding tube through the tummy. I guess I have been in denial thinking that we would get over this hump. He did grow a couple of inches taller so he went from 20-25% to about 12%. So I have surgery scheduled for after his 4th birthday in April but it isn't 100% certain that I'm going to follow through with it. I just have a lot to think about and a lot of praying to find the right answer.

He also had some blood work done. The first one is for his iron level. The iron went up which was great news but his ferritan level was still very low. The way it was explained to me is that Ferritan is a protein that stores iron and releases it in a controlled fashion. 30% of your iron is stored in either your spleen, liver, or bone marrow. So we had a follow up and did a CBC to check out his counts. This has been kind of scary. This could be a sign of something very serious or something simple like a vitamin C deficiency or restless leg syndrome. So please keep Carson in your prayers over the next few weeks while we make sure his organs are working correctly and rule out the bad things.

His other blood work was to test the gases. I'm not exactly sure what this one was. I know that if he scored between 250-300 it meant his Nexium was working well. The good news, he scored a 268. So that means that we will probably rule out the Fundoplacation. YEA!!!!

He is still going to OT. We have missed a few weeks here and there because of snow, ice storms, and there was a couple of weeks where we were sick one week and the therapist was sick one week. Apparently the road Nancy lives on never gets plowed so every time is snows, she has to cancel because she cannot get up her street.

We have also just recently discovered that when Carson does eat, he is storing his food in his cheeks. We also discovered that he has a under sensitive gag reflux which doesn't help with the vicious cycle of his aspirating. So we are still working with his sensory process disorder as well as his oral for eating.

Coltan has been having a rough time with driving. He turned 15 in Jan and we have had a rough winter. I'm not ready for him to learn to drive, let alone, drive in crummy weather. He has done the simple going out to the parking lot and pulling the warm car up for Carson and I. LOL He hasn't been very active with soccer. They played futsol for the winter and he is just now getting into the Mon/ Wed practices.

Cody hasn't done a whole lot either. He has his indoor soccer league and one day a week practice. Thursday is the only day that I have all three boys and we don't have any soccer, so we try to have a nice family dinner or movie night or do something with all of us.

I have taken lots of pics and as soon as I get my computer back, watch out. Haha We did have an ice storm over the weekend and I took some pictures. It was a challenge to drive in but the next day the sun came out and the ice was still in the tree branches. It really was pretty to LOOK at. But again, this has been one of the worse winters that I can remember and I'm so ready to Spring to get here!

Meeting a blogger!

2010-02-07T07:56:00.003-06:00

Okay, I'm so behind on blogging but hey, what's new? Haha After the new year I was so happy that I got to meet a blogger buddy and her husband. Their names are Ryan and Lindsey Ebright. They are such a cute married couple and are always having fun.

I was googling something one day on a card game called Canasta and her blog popped up. Not only does she love to play the game, she also grew up in a suburb of Kansas City. I left her a comment about canasta and we have been blogging buddies every since. Her husband and her have actually relocated to Texas so I was really honored that they took the time out of their family time to come meet us.

So we decided to meet at my mothers house and have a Canasta showdown. My mother has played the game for about 30+ years with 7 other woman and currently they still have 6 of the original ladies playing. I have been brought in to sub when one can't make it. So just to be fair, we split up with Ryan and Lindsey and of course Ryan wanted my mom and her 30+ years experience to be HIS partner. It's okay cause we ended up losing but not that far behind.

I'm going to be taking Cody to Texas in March and we are hoping to all get together while we are down there. Oh and Ryan, be ready, we won't be so nice to you next time. LOL

So of course Carson felt the need to be in the pictures with us. Lindsey and I

Aren't they the cutest couple you have ever seen? And not only do they have looks, they have great personalities. You two had me laughing the whole time.

I was upset that for some reason the only pics with my mom came out dark. So here is the best of the 3 that I had. :-(

Lindsey and Ryan, you two are welcomed back to our house anytime. Thanks again for sharing your limited time with us. I had a great time meeting you guys in person.

Scenes around Chicago

2010-02-06T08:07:00.000-06:00

Here are a few more pics of Chicago. This was some of my favorite places to visit when I'm there.

This is the Navy Pier. It is a lot more fun in the summer when they have more outdoor things to do. It has a lot of specialty shops and unique restaurants. It is a great place to go to get a Chicago souvenir. It also has a very large ferris wheel and I thought I got a pic but did not. The all famous Hard Rock. I have eaten here but it was at least 5+ years ago.

This is a really cool McD's. It is 2 stories and has a oldies theme inside.

They have really good hot chocolate on a cold day.

The famous clock that my family stands in front of to get a pic.

This was inside the Navy Pier. This is the first time I have seen the Thomas the train there. It was 2.00 a ride and it lasted about 5 minutes. I should have brought a book because he stayed on there for a very long time.

All the times I have been to Chicago, I have never eaten here. But we had to take a pic cause of my little Pork Chop. Has anyone been here? Let me know if it was any good.

This is the famous Billy Goat's. It was always on Saturday Night Live because of their slogan. If you ask for fries with your burger they say "no fries, only chips".

I finally took a picture of Coltan.....Thanks Coltan. I wished I took more of him but he was never with me. He was shopping on Michigan Ave with my mom where it was a lot colder.

My two sweet boys. (Sorry Cody, you were playing soccer instead of shopping)

Thanks for taking the time to walk through our fun trip to Chicago. It is a fun place that we always enjoy going to. Hopefully next time I go, I have all 3 boys, and Carson has outgrown all of his problems. No tubes, no monitors, no oxygen......

Sky Deck AKA Sears Tower

2010-02-05T16:04:00.000-06:00

The last day we spent in Chicago, Carson and I went our own way after breakfast with the family. First stop was The Sky Deck. We walked part of it and then took a cab the rest of the way. It was really cute, every time we got into a cab, Carson would tell the driver to go straight, take a right, then a left....and so and. He thought he was giving directions to all the drivers. Then I would have him pay the cab fare and he just thought he was soooo cool. LOL

These towers here were Coltan's favorite. If you notice the bottom part of the tower is the parking garage and the top part are the condo's. Depending on what floor, these condos were 300-1 million. At least that is what a cabby told me. A quick picture of Carson and I.

Every time that we go to Chicago, we always get a picture of the building with the clock. There is a bridge you can cross and we take the picture with that building in the background. For some reason, I tried several different pictures and they all came out dark. :-(

This sign is a landmark. This was about where we stopped for a cab. Carson was getting to cold and I didn't want to jinx it.

This is a picture of the Shed from the Sky Deck.

This was the Chicago Planetarium. It was okay. Not really for Carson so we ended up not staying very long. I think it would have been better for Coltan. I thought it was kind of cool though.

Another view from the deck

We went to the Planetarium Sunday evening before heading back to KC and this was the view from the parking lot.

Shed Aquariam in Chicago

2010-02-04T11:35:00.000-06:00

Nothing really going on. I have been trying to get over a terrible sinus infection.

Coltan and Cody have just had soccer practice and nothing very exciting with them going on either.

Carson keeps having asthma issues. He was supposed to have OT yesterday and Nancy was out sick. So they rescheduled for today and she is still out sick. That is better for me so now I can nurse my headache from the comfort of my own home.

Here are a few pictures from the Shed Aquarium in Chicago. We went there just before Christmas. My parents took Carson, Coltan, two nieces, and myself. It ended up being very cold so Carson and I ventured off and did more sightseeing while the others walked up and down Michigan Ave.

Cody had a few soccer games in St Louis MO so he stayed back in KC so that he could go.

Here we were waiting for the water show.

This was the amazing view from the Shed.

Carson standing in the window in the cafeteria.

Those eggs were very popular. It was really sad because parents would try and grab them so their own children could play with them. I never seen anything like it.

On our way to the car. That is Lake Michigan behind us.

Prayers needed for Jaxson.....

2010-01-31T19:11:00.003-06:00

Please say a prayer for my little buddy Jaxson. He is currently in PICU and is really a sick kiddo. He has been struggling for a while with a virus and they confirmed he has a sister virus of RSV and also has pneumonia. I'm sure Lacey would love if you could hop over to her blog and leave a comment for her cute little guy.

Get well soon Jaxson. Carson and I are praying for you!!!

Easy Mac N Cheese.....not so easy

2010-01-25T17:00:00.000-06:00

A couple of nights ago, I made some baked BBQ chicken, stuffing, scalloped potatoes, and peas. When it was time to gather the boys, Cody was asleep. So after dinner, I put a plate out for him in case he would wake up hungry. So around 9:00 PM, Cody woke up and said he just wanted some mac n cheese. I was sitting in the living room which is next to the kitchen and started smelling something that was worse than burnt popcorn. I ran to the microwave and this is what I found. Did you know that even though it is easy, you still should add water in it? Cody proud of his straight A in Home Ec. I think the first thing the teach in that class is READ THE DIRECTIONS.

I ended up burning lots of candles because it was to cold to open the windows.

Carson has pigtails???

2010-01-23T15:03:00.000-06:00

We haven't done a whole lot this week. Coltan, Cody, or both were home everyday this week from school. Carson and I haven't gotten the flu yet (knock on wood) but Carson has had 2 asthma flair ups since last Friday night.

Cody hasn't had anything this week and he was sick on Wed and Thurs. He went back to school yesterday and is now at his dad's hopefully doing lots of homework because he has a full day of soccer tomorrow with the ODP MO state team. This is the team that only chooses 17 kids from the whole state.

Cody was in a soccer tournament last weekend and they won every game. One game the final score was 15-2! Cody averaged 3 goals a game and played awesome. They ended up taking first place.

Coltan guest played with a team from West Des Moines (yes we live in Kansas City) and Sunday night, he played one of the best games I have EVER seen him play. He ended up scoring 2 goals. One goal was right at the buzzer and he barely made it in. It was sweet! The team ended up finishing 3rd place and Coltan had a lot of fun.

Back to the West Des Moines team.....years ago, Cody and my neice Aspen traveled to West Des Moines once or twice a year. Their was a coach there named Bill who has a daughter who is Aspen's age and a son that is Coltan's age. He watched Aspen's championship game and asked her if she would be willing to play as a guest player and travel with the team. So he was coming to town to play in the tournament and called my mom to see if Coltan and Cody were available for the tournament to play on his son's team. The tourney lasted through Monday and there were a few parents that had to leave Sunday so they could work on Monday. So Coltan played 2 games Sunday and Cody played the last game Sunday. Cody was also responsible for Coltan's first goal. He got the ball to Coltan and then Colt just tapped it in.

Coltan of course turned 15 on Monday. We stayed at home and hung out. We planned on eating with the family on Tuesday. So at dinner Tuesday night, Coltan said he wasn't feeling very well. My dad didn't make the dinner because he was home with stomach flu and Coltan and Cody spent some time with them over the weekend.... So Coltan has been home since. He was supposed to have a game today but no school, no soccer.

Carson and I have been getting very serious with the potty training. He is really testing me. Last night he decided to aim in my floor vent in the kitchen and I had a really nice mess to clean up. I know Carson knows what he is doing. He has even taken off his diaper and put on a pull up to pee in that. So getting him to potty in the toilet, I'm not sure. We tried to potty train last summer and he was doing really well. He would earn a sticker and for every 10 he would get a Thomas the train engine. That worked for a while and then he just lost interest in earning trains. So I'm at a loss. Any ideas, I'm listening!

Carson ended up having a scary attack last Friday night. Thank goodness between all of his meds and having oxygen, I was able to keep him at home instead of urgent care. The weather outside was cold and it was so foggy you couldn't even see the house 2 doors down. So needless to say, I was really wanting to not get out in in. I ended up getting his left lung clear but still heard lots of wheezing in the right lung. I pushed him up to 4 liters of oxygen just to get his sats at 95. I stayed up most of the night giving him treatments every 2-3 hours just to keep the wheezes away and his sats up. I called the doctor and we have him on Prednesone. He still isn't 100% yet but we are working on it.

As for me? Well I have started seeing someone. We are taking it very slow but he is a super nice guy. I have known him for a while and he ended up moving last year on a job transfer. He decided he didn't like it as well and moved back up before Christmas. We haven't really went on a date yet but I'm always very busy with the kiddos. He stopped by after the new year and we are just kind of hanging out. He did ask me to dinner last night but you know, sick kid at home. We are supposed to go to his house today if Coltan feels better. He lives on a lot of acres and wanted to go 4 wheeling. We will also have to see about the weather. It was raining this morning and he is 1 1/2 hours south of me, so we shall see what happens. Coltan and Cody think he is cool. He plays dodge ball with them, wrestles with them, and even likes Xbox. Carson and him play trains together. Carson's eyes light up every time he walks into my house. It has been so nice to have a stable, well balanced, even tempered male in the house, even though it's every now and them......slow....baby steps. I just don't want to rush into anything and I want to stay very focused on the boys because no matter what, they come first.

So Carson and I were messing around a few mornings ago and I couldn't resist taking pics of his cute little face. He brought me two rubber bands and told me he wanted pig tails. He then went into the bathroom and laughed and said, mom, I look soooo silly. Then he brought me the camera. I guess this is a clue, he is ready for a hair cut.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Happy Birthday Coltan!!

2010-01-19T14:56:00.009-06:00

Yesterday was really Coltan's birthday so as usual, I'm a day late.

15 years ago I woke up at 4:45 AM and noticed my water broke. I woke up Chris and told him it was time. As we were driving to the hospital to deliver my first, I started getting worried wondering if I was going to be a good mom. So I started crying and told Chris that I changed my mind and really didn't want to have this baby. LOL

I was in labor for 24 hours and 10 minutes and out came my beautiful baby boy named Coltan Carl. He was a really chubby baby and always smiled. Coltan was 8lb 10oz and 20 inches long.

Coltan was always early with everything he did. Sitting, crawling....walking at 10 1/2 months. He was by far the easiest and quickest when it came to potty training (which was good since Cody was born 11 months later).

As Coltan developed a personality, I started to get a little worried. He is A LOT like his mom. Wants to have the last word and thinks he knows everything. We have had our share of ups and downs that come with the typical teenager but overall, he is a wonderful, polite, great kid.

So today is the day that I reflect back on how much you have grown up. You were once this little boy that needed mommy for everything to the man of the house. He helps me fix the broken things in the house and on occasion, helps out with Carson. Coltan is the first one to open doors for the elderly and has even been known to help them shovel their driveways when we have 15 inches of snow in about a two week span.

Coltan also helps with dinner and he is my HUGE helper when it comes to laundry. Coltan is also very sociable. He loves hanging out with his friends and loves playing soccer. Coltan made JV his freshman year which is really an honor considering our high school is very large. I enjoyed watching most of his games but as the fall continued, so did the decrease in the temperature and a few games were beyond freezing.

Coltan is a pretty good student and usually I don't have to worry about his grades to much.

Coltan's soccer team didn't travel but he still was able to go to a lot of fun places this year with me. We did go to Columbia a few times for his ODP and we had our family vacation in South Dakota last summer. Coltan also went with us to Chicago last Dec and had a lot more fun than I ever thought.

With all of this said, I'm really looking forward to this next year when I'm going to be his favorite person. Since he is 15, he is getting his drivers permit and only the parents can be with him. LOL We are going to have a lot of quality time together and I'm scared....but excited!

Happy Birthday Coltan! Even though your 15, you will aways be my baby. I love you!

Thanksgiving 2009
First day of school Aug 09

South Dakota June 09

Coltan and Carson acting like they are talking to the statue.

Coltan hanging out with NO hair earlier 2009. He was getting a physical for school sports.

Aren't they always an angel....when their asleep?

One of my all time favorite pics. Carson really loves his big brother.

St Louis Coltan enjoying some time with us.

Weekend update....

2009-12-28T23:54:00.002-06:00

Well it turned out to be a fun weekend for the boys and I. We had a really great X-mas and I had planned on downloading those yesterday but there were 9000 homes in my area that had a power outage and that made it impossible.

Friday of course was Christmas and I had the boys open gifts. My dad came over first thing in the morning and we made biscuits and gravy for the family. Everyone else came over to eat and then we took the time to clean up. Carson played most of the day with his toys from Santa.

We always go to a local casino on Christmas day for dinner at the buffet but we ended up with 7 inches of snow and the roads were terrible. So then I was going to plan B and go to my Papa Clyde's house and my dad told me to stay home due to the road conditions. So Chris had Coltan and Cody and Carson and I stayed home and built train tracks.

Saturday was Cody's 14Th birthday and he also had a soccer game. Chris kept the boys for the first part of the day and since the roads were so bad, they spent the morning at Grandma Ann's for Christmas. He brought the boys back by 2 and then Cody had a game at 4. Of course he won.

After the game, we left and drove what should have been a 10 minute drive to Kobe's Steakhouse for his birthday dinner. We ended up getting another 2 inches of snow and the drive took more like 25 minutes. I think I got up to 40 once the whole way there. My parents and 2 nieces and my boys all had a really nice dinner and then for Cody's dessert.......banana pudding. Cody didn't want a birthday cake.

Sunday Cody had two soccer games at 7AM and 7PM. My parents volunteered to take him to the first game since it was so early and mom didn't want me getting Carson out that early in this weather. So my step dad got up at 5:30 Sunday morning and took Cody to the game. Thanks Paul. He brought Cody home and we all hung out and the boys played with Cody's new birthday present. I got him an X-Box 360. Just before 5PM the lights went out. Carson started crying because he could no longer see his Thomas the Train engines. It was really funny. The more Coltan, Cody, and I laughed, the more upset he got. After spending 30 minutes in the dark with Carson's Thomas the train flashlight, we decided to head to my mom's.

As we were pulling out of our neighborhood, it was just pitch black. We got up to the main road and approached our first stoplight. Seriously folks, if the power is out, treat it like a 4 way stop!! I could not believe the traffic and the idiots that didn't know what to do. The next intersection...,.same thing.

So then we ended up at mom's safe and sound...and warm. Did I mention 9 inches of snow, plows no where to be found, AND the temp is 20?

After staying at mom's, it was time to take Cody to his game. They ended up killing the other team. It was 8-0 and Cody played great. We decided to go out for dinner since I wasn't sure of the status with the power. My next door neighbor would text and say LIGHTS ON, then Off again. By the time we got home, power was on but my house was cold. It's amazing what 3 hours without your heat can cool the house off that much.

So what did we do today? We kept busy catching up on cleaning and laundry. I plan on working on Carson's room and rearranging it because he got a Thomas table from Santa and it is totally invading my living room at the moment.

So here is my question. How long do the boys relax before it is back to organizing the house, getting their Christmas stuff put up and doing some light housework (taking out trash, taking dirty clothes to laundry room, emptying dishwasher, etc...) My boys think since it is Christmas Vacation, they shouldn't have to do ANYTHING. Anyone else having this problem? If your one of those "mean" moms that make your kids do chores on X-mas break, please leave a comment so my boys know that I'm not the only one who believes in a little help.

Well I'm off to bed now. Boys are all getting haircuts and we have a lunch date with a good friend of mine. Maybe after all of that, I can find some time to download my pictures of Christmas and Cody's birthday.

Happy Birthday Cody!!!

2009-12-26T12:24:00.007-06:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CODY QUIN!!!!! I cannot believe that 14 years today, you can into my life. I have truly been blessed. Cody you were my easiest pregnancy and easiest delivery. You have always been (most of the time) my easy going child. You mostly just go with the flow and have made me so proud. Thanks for being such a great kid.

You have always been a great brother to Coltan. Yes you two have your moments but for the most part, you have been good friends.

You are a great big brother to Carson. You know how to change his diaper, give him baths, feed him through the tube, give him breathing treatments, and just be a good snuggler or train builder. Carson goes into your room everyday and sits in your bed waiting for you to get home from school. Thanks for being so good to Carson.

Here is a rare moment that we stop and take the time to grab a picture together. I have always enjoyed watching you play soccer.

We have really been all over this year.

Jan your Grandma and Grandpa Hoffman took you and Coltan to Lincoln NE for a soccer tournament.
Jan, Feb, and Mar you were in Columbia for ODP
April we went to Springfield IL to only come home early due to a snow storm. That is where we got stuck in the mud hole parking lot. LOL
April, the very next weekend, we left Sat morning for Des Moines IA. Your first game wasn't until noon so we headed up that morning. You played the first game, went to lunch came back and played your second game. Then the blizzard warnings took place and we left and headed back to Kansas City in the sleet. What a long day that turned out to be.
May we went to Springfield MO for State Cup and you WON
June we headed to South Dakota for regionals. We didn't do as well as we wanted but it was a fun experience. Then we made our family vacation out of it and headed to Mt Rushmore.
July we laid low and just went to the Lake of the Ozarks and hung out for a weekend.
July you got on the bus and headed to Rock Falls IL for your ODP soccer tournament.
Aug was another slow (but needed) month. We had a couple of local tournaments.
Sept we were off to St Louis for a tournament
Oct we went back to St Louis for a tournament.
Oct we had another tournament in St Louis and they ended up with tons of rain. The whole tournament was flooded and we were notified on Fri at 2PM...same day we were leaving. By 2:45 we were told to head to Wichita for a different tournament and we kicked butt. We had 1 goal against us the whole tournament.
Nov we headed to Memphis for another tournament
Dec you had Grandma Ann take you to St Louis for a game and it was one of your best. You ended up scoring SEVEN goals.

Cody, we have had a great year with lots of fun. You have gotten the opportunity to travel to a lot of neat places. I'm looking forward to another fun filled year with you.

So now I hope everyone understands why my vehicle that is barely two years old, already has 68,000 miles on my car. Cody, I can't wait til you get a part time job and start helping out with the gas. LOL

With all of that said, I hope you have a wonderful birthday.

Cody is with Chris right now celebrating and then he has a soccer game at 4 so he is coming back here for his game and then my family is taking him to Kobe's. His favorite restaurant. Pictures later!

MERRY CHRISTMAS

2009-12-25T18:33:00.002-06:00

I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to all. I'm in the middle of boys, toys, eating, and family.

I will hopefully post some pictures later tonight. Hope everyone has a safe and blessed day. If your in the midwest like I am, please travel safely. We have been in blizzard warnings and it actually just lifted about 30 minutes ago. So with that said, we had a white Christmas.

See you all soon!!!

Oh Christmas Tree......

2009-12-22T05:35:00.001-06:00

We finally decided to decorate the Christmas tree. Coltan and Cody did most of the work and Carson tried to rearrange them. Oh wait, he is still doing that. LOL Here are a few of our favorites. Coltan made this in 1st grade

This is one that Coltan picked out when we at Disney in 05
Coltan's first X-mas

This one is the oldest on the tree. It's from 1978

The boys picked these out. Our tree at last.

Pumpkin Patch day 2

2009-12-21T16:00:00.002-06:00

Here is day 2 at the pumpkin patch. Since Halloween fell on a Sat, the patch stayed open on Sun Nov 1. Buddy gave us some passes for the train and after Cody played soccer (and won!) we ran back to Caroline's Pumpkin patch for one last day of fun there.

Look at that love! Carson really loves Cody. He is always trying to take care of him for me. I love the bond that these two boys have.I love this picture because Carson is wanting to hold his brothers hand.

This was the LAST train ride for the pumpkin patch in 2009 and we were on it....actually, we were the only ones on this ride.

Another visit to see the turkin. Carson really thought he was cool.

A quick spin around the track.This was our last picture on the way out the door. Carson can't wait to go back next year.

Pumpkin Patch in Black and White

2009-12-21T05:06:00.002-06:00

For some reason, I really love the black and white feature. Here are a few more from the pumpkin patch in B&W.

Pumkin Patch.....a little late

2009-12-20T17:05:00.000-06:00

I know, more older pictures that I'm just getting around to posting. I'm trying to put these pictures on here because when I get around to catching up on my scrap booking, I will use these as a reference.

Carson actually went to the pumpkin patch two days in a row. Caroline has a son Charlie who plays with Cody in soccer and I have gotten the privilege of getting to know this wonderful family. Carson has really taking a liking to Buddy as well. They were kind enough to give me some passes for Carson and this really is one of Carson's favorite things to do. He went last year and remembered all the fun things to do before we even got there this year.

We didn't do this last year because we showed up late and missed the last tractor. This year we had a lot of rain and I was surprised to see some of the small ponds that the tractor pulled us through without getting stuck. It was a little bumpy which was perfect for Carson. He loved the tractor ride. One quick picture of Carson with mommy before the tractor took us to the pumpkin patch.

Carson carefully checking out the pumpkins for the right one.

He was trying to pick up the heavy pumpkin. Last year Carson couldn't feed the animals without them tickling him. He did better this year and really had fun.

One quick picture.

This creature is called a turkin. Part turkey, part chicken.I have had more pictures of Carson and I lately. Now I need to work on Coltan and Cody. Haha

I wanted to get a picture of him in this wagon. I took some last year and thought it would be a neat place to take one every year and then compare the pics to see how much bigger he gets. So far, only in inches. LOL

Graceland

2009-12-20T11:00:00.000-06:00

Sunday after our last game, we headed to Graceland. I couldn't imagine being 15-20 minutes from there and just not going. I thought it was a little pricey. I had to pay $33.00 and Cody was $20.00. Carson of course was free. My mom and dad got a senior discount but I don't remember how much that discount was.

It was interesting to see. I have some fond memories of my Grandma and I watching all of the Elvis movies when I was little. My Grandma loved Elvis and years ago they would have a Elvis marathon on one of the cable channels when it was getting closer to his birthday.

Here is one of his two planes. This one is the smaller plane. You could walk in and look through it. It had a couple tables and then a couple of seats away from the table. Just like trains, Carson loves planes as well.

I didn't take any pictures of the larger plane but it was unreal! When you walk in, there is a sitting area. The next section was a large dining room table with chairs. The next section was his bedroom. Had the bed, and a nice size bathroom. Everything was done in blue.

This was outside by the car gallery. Elvis had tons of cars over the years and it was neat to see them all. What I found fascinating was that some of the cars had been sold over the years and they relocated them to put in the showroom.

Here is a picture for Carson. He also loves tractors....all boy huh? This tractor was actually used on one of Elvis' farms.

This one is for Cody. He LOVES the color pink. I think he wants this car for his birthday. LOL

Since I hunt and love to go shooting, I had to take a picture of Elvis' shooting range.

The house was really nice. I was a little disappointed that you could only tour the downstairs.

One last picture while we waited for the bus to take us back to the parking lot. Next stop, back to Kansas City.....arriving after midnight.

Beale Street

2009-12-19T18:30:00.001-06:00

I have had so many pictures from my camera that I wanted to share and here were some more from Memphis. After playing soccer Saturday, the whole team got together and went to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe on Beale Street. It reminded me of a smaller version of New Orleans. If I didn't have my kids with me, I could have really hit the town. LOL

This was a view from the end of the street. They have tons of police and fire on every intersection. We were told that they put more public safety in this district because it is a big tourist attraction and they want the tourist to be able to have fun and feel safe. I thought that was pretty cool since I was walking around with Cody and Carson by myself for most of the evening. Here is where we ate with the team. We had a huge section upstairs and it was very spacious, unlike some restaurants where they crammed us all in.

This was Elvis' costume in Jail House Rock. The upstairs where we ate had a really big Elvis section which was kind of cool.

Here was the table for all the boys. The parents had two other long tables to sit at.

Carson was showing me his "I'm mad" expression.

Hamming it up as usual.

Carson actually took this picture. Not bad huh?

One of the intersections we came along had this small vehicle. Carson went over and told the fireman he wanted to drive. They were super nice and let him play in there for a long time.

I had to laugh because he told the fireman that he wanted to be a fireman AND carry a gun. I guess if he finds the right Public Safety to work for he can have it all.

The famous B B Kings. I walked in there for a brief moment and they had some good blues players live on the stage.

We ended the night catching up with my parents and riding a carriage ride through the town. I was going to take a picture of Carson with the horse when we finished and to my surprise, he crashed making it a very long walk back to our vehicle. :-)

Soccer in Memphis

2009-12-19T13:05:00.000-06:00

Here are some pictures from the tournament we played in Memphis in Nov. It was a perfect weekend. The weather was in the 70's and it was nice and sunny. We played really well and won our first three games and then went to the semi-finals. We were then beaten by a very good team that ended up taking first place in the tourney.

Cody is on the left. Cody in white.

One of Carson entertaining all of our fans.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

The City Musuem in St Louis

2009-12-17T11:03:00.001-06:00

Here are some more of those pictures that I meant to post back when I was to busy to blog. LOL These pictures are actually from Oct while in St Louis for a soccer tourney. Cody wanted to hang out with the team so I took Carson to the City Museum. I couldn't believe that out of all the times we have been to St Louis we never made it here. Now we will be hitting this place again next time we make it here. This place was a really cool place. It is nine floors of different fun things to do.

Here is a view of the outside. The bus in on the ninth floor and you can actually go into it and look down. The airplane sits out in the middle on a post. It was really cool. This was on the lower level. It was a huge tree like play area.

This was an area that had lots of slides.

This was on another floor where it was for toddlers. Carson spent most of his time in this play area.

Carson's favorite part......the train rides.

This was our last ride and then we headed back to the soccer fields to watch Cody play some more.

Curious George comes to town

2009-12-16T22:00:00.001-06:00

Last month Curious George came to town and Carson was so excited. Charlie asked if he could get us all tickets for the show and he actually did very well. He got tickets that were 3rd row right in the center. It turned out to be a perfect night. Carson had so much fun.

I have always called Carson Curious George because he is always into everything and he climbs on my furniture like a monkey. Here are just a few pictures from the show. Before the show we waited patiently.

Curious George making some meatballs.

At the end of the show, Carson just wanted to go see George. It's to bad he didn't come out and shake hands with the kiddos.

Overall, the show was really cute and well worth the money. Carson is already hoping that he comes back next year. I just hope if he does, we can get those seats again. Hee hee

NYC Macy's Santa visits Carson......in Missouri

2009-12-16T02:30:00.000-06:00

Cody was supposed to have soccer practice tonight but then we found out a lot of the boys were not going because a lot of them have finals this week. So we decided that Cody could not go and he could do a little studying himself.

Then my mom called. She has been telling me for the last few weeks that the Santa Clause from the NYC Macy's was touring the US and was stopping at our local Macy's in Lee's Summit. It is one of the newest stores in the US so I guess that might be why they choose here. Well, if we wanted to go, it was tonight. So the boys and I jumped in the car and headed up. He was arriving at 5:30 and was going to read Twas the Night before Christmas and then you get to meet Santa. We got there and they sent Carson up front to sit and he read for about 10-15 minutes and really made the boys and girls entertained for the duration of the story. Then after the story was done, we all got in line and waited to see him.

It was really a neat set up. Renee from My Special K's....you'd be jealous. As we waited, Santa's helpers walked around giving out water, cookies, candy, kool aid jammers, candy canes, stickers, and pins. Then as you got to a certain point in line, there were more helpers making balloons for the children. Then when we got up there, no one taking professional pictures. Just the ones from our own personal cameras. I took a few with all three boys and then a few with just Carson. Santa even had me stop and check my pictures to make sure I was good with them before we left him. This was a very positive experience and Carson was so lucky that he saw Santa in Chicago and now back home!! It was cute, Santa asked Carson what he wanted and this time he said lots of toys and some small boots. He kept picking up woman's shoes while in line telling me he wanted these or those. So I guess my son now wants some woman's boots. Are these for his imaginary friends?

Here we are standing in line. Note the shoes behind him. Thank goodness for the Kool aid jammers he was holding. Coltan and Cody didn't even fight me when I asked them to take a picture with Santa. But I did tell them that I wouldn't put one on my blog so if you see this...shhhhh LOL

Look how lovable Santa is.

He was asking Carson what he wanted for Christmas and then made Carson promise to be extra good for mommy.

Santa told every child at the end of the visit that he loved them. Carson and I were sitting on the couch tonight and he looked at me and said "mommy, Santa LOVES me" then he smiled and went back to sleep. This Santa really made Carson's day

FYI Cody did have plenty of time to study for his one test tomorrow. They are breaking the finals up over the next several days so they aren't stacked up with everything on one day.

Carson and me today.....

2009-12-14T17:05:00.001-06:00

So I'm in my bedroom putting away some laundry and Carson comes in and is hopping on one foot and trying to kick a soccer ball with the other. I ask him what he is doing and this is our conversation.

M Carson what are you doing?
C I'm teaching my friends how to play soccer.
M Did Coltan and Cody teach you that move?
C No, I'm taught myself and now I'm teaching my friends.
M What friends?
C My friends over here (he walks into the hallway and lifts his hands up like they are right there).

M Ohhhh.
C Aren't you going to say hi to my friends mom?
M Hi, I'm Carson's mom
C (turning to his invisible friends), Don't worry, my mom is just jealous cause I have so many friends.

Wow, do you think these friends can watch him now so I can get back to work full time????

Here is a little pose of my cutie just wanting to say Happy Monday.

Weekend update

2009-12-14T00:15:00.001-06:00

Well it ended up being a pretty uneventful week for us. I ended up with Strep throat on Thursday and really haven't felt well until today. I think the older I get, the harder it is to recover! It was pretty rough considering Coltan and Cody had school on Thursday and then they were with their dad Fri-today. Carson did understand that something was wrong with mommy and he really did well considering. I did have to clean up a half gallon of milk on my kitchen floor. Bless his little heart, he told me that he wanted milk and didn't want to bother me......so I went in the kitchen and milk was EVERYWHERE. But the cute part, there were napkins all over the floor as well. He said "mommy, I tried to clean it up". I ended up laughing and we cleaned the mess up together all awhile Carson promising me that he would ask mommy for help when he wants something to drink.

My mom made several visits over here this weekend as well. She made sure that Carson had 3 meals and tried to feed me as well. She kept the jello, applesauce, pudding, and sprite supplied and kept going to Wal Mart to buy cough drops, and medicine for me as well.

So today was the first day that I wasn't running a fever or felt achy. I do still have the headache but not like it was. This was by far worse than when I had the flu last week.

Cody had 3 games over the weekend and he ended up scoring goals in all of the games. I didn't go but my mom took him today to 2 of the games and kept me informed throughout the games.

Coltan had a very uneventful weekend. He didn't have any games this weekend. He hung out with his dad and then we caught up on CSI tonight when he got home. We also kept Carson entertained by building him a really nice train track.

As far as Carson, he has been doing a lot better. I just pray that he doesn't end up with what I had. I know he had his tonsils out but I know that isn't any guarantees that he still wont get ill. I finally got his weight back up from the last illness and I don't want to see him losing that again.

Here are a few pictures of Coltan playing in his JV soccer. Their team is the white and Burgundy. Coltan is the kid in the far middle fighting for the ball. Coltan again is in the back middle fighting for the ball.

Okay, my camera rocks and I'm going to brag. Coltan is the kid OFF the ground and he just headed the ball in this picture and you an see the ball just floating in the air. Anyone want to tell me how cool this pic is? Go right ahead. Hee Hee

Coltan had a penalty kick here. Someone fouled him just before this pic.

Coltan is #30. Just one last shot of him.

Our first snow day!!

2009-12-09T20:33:00.000-06:00

Well we had our first official snow day today. We only had about an inch of snow but we had all the freezing rain last night so that made our roads slick this morning. Coltan and Cody hung out with me and we just stayed home and watched a little TV and did some laundry. Fun, fun. It is supposed to get even colder tonight....-2!! Now that is cold.

Carson was supposed to have an occupational therapy this morning but his therapist called and cancelled her morning kiddo's. We are supposed to go tomorrow morning if the roads are better. Unless the wind blows everything back on the streets, the roads should be okay.

This weekend was a lot of fun. Coltan, Carson, and I headed to Chicago with my parents and two of my nieces. We spent some time shopping on Michigan Ave and since it was cold, Carson and I did a lot of indoor things. I took Carson to the Shed Aquarium and the Planetarium. I have been to Chicago close to 10 times and this was the first time I ever went up to the Sears Tower...or the Skydeck. We have always gone up John Hancock in the past so I thought I would try the Sears Tower this time. I asked Carson what his favorite things were and he said riding the Trolley to the Navy Pier, seeing Santa, and riding in the cabs. He also liked the penguins and dolphins at the Aquarium.

Coltan stayed with my mom and got some new clothes, shoes, and a winter coat. Coltan has gotten so tall that most of his clothes are to short on him. He really had a great time shopping. I was surprised and figured he would spend most of his time with Carson and I but I was wrong.

Cody stayed in town because he didn't want to walk around and shop. Cody hates shopping. He also had a game in St Louis on Sunday and Grandma Ann took him. They played a really good team that just won a very hard tournament and they creamed them. Cody alone scored 7 goals!! Cody said he wasn't sure what the final score was because they stopped counting after 12 goals.

Cody had another game yesterday and they won 14-2. He played defender the first half and goalie the last. The two goals scored was when he wasn't playing goalie. He had two really good shots on him and I'm still not sure how he deflected them.

That pretty much sums up our week so far. Just trying to stay warm is the most important thing right now.

These pictures were taken a while back and I just downloaded them. Carson was hamming it up in my shoes.
Here he is dancing for me. Aspen taught him some Michael Jackson moves and this is some of them.

One more post before we go....

Carson and his new Spiderman Bike

2009-12-06T10:54:00.001-06:00

We have been having the typical Midwest weather. One day it is hot, next it is down right cold. A few weeks ago we were able to go outside for a bit and get some fresh air. This was Carson's birthday present from April. Other than riding it up and down my hallway, he hasn't taken it out as much as he likes. Cody is giving him a quick refresher course and he had a ball.

What a great big brother. Carson just loves his two older brothers!

Fun at the gun range

2009-12-05T11:20:00.002-06:00

A few months ago Charlie's sister was in town and they all wanted to go to the gun range. We ended up going with Aunt Celeste, Uncle George, Uncle Dan, Cousins Wesley and Cam. We ended up staying there so long that Carson got in the car and took a two hour nap. He really had a lot of fun and even got to shoot his mom's 22 rifle. The rifle I have came from my grandfather and it was given to him when he was about 10. He gave it to me and now I have officially had all three of my sons shoot it. It was typically given to the youngest child so I guess this one is really Carson's. It's okay though cause I have one for Coltan and Cody doesn't like to hunt.....just fish.

Here is when we first showed up. I told him to cover his ears til I placed ear muffs on him. Hanging out with Aunt Celeste. She lives in New Jersey so she only gets to see her nephew once a year.

Here Carson is shooting for the first time. He is going to be a great deer hunter!

Look how he is really focusing. He really did great. He takes the time to look down the scope and attempts to find the target. We put out pop cans in the middle of the range and he did shoot a few of them.

This is his cousin Wesley. He loved following him around everywhere.

Coltan and Cody

2009-12-04T05:18:00.000-06:00

I don't get the chance to take pictures of my older boys that often and I couldn't believe it, they both were willing participants!!

Coltan is my oldest. He is 14 and thinks he is going on 30. He loves to sit around and watch football. We sometimes have battles over the TV. Coltan is usually very good in school and loves to play soccer. He recently played on the JV team for his high school. I was very proud of him for making it and saw a huge improvement in his skills this season. We are now getting ready to get back on our regular teams for winter and spring. Oh and Coltan is already pushing 5'10". He will be 6' in no time!
Cody is my 13 year old. He has one of the attitudes that I sometimes love. He will wear pink and give me a hug in front of his friends and doesn't care. That is one of my favorite qualities about him. Cody is very big into soccer and makes his mom chauffeur him all of the USA. We have been as far away as Florida, Indiana, Illinois, and Tennessee to name a few. Carson travels with us and at the age of 3, Carson has been to 11 states with Cody just for soccer!

I think they were saying something like, "mom, hurry and take the pictures". Can't you tell they were excited to take some pictures for me? LOL

Oh well, I got it and now I will cherish these fond memories of my big boys.

Dr Johnson

2009-12-03T05:33:00.000-06:00

Yes, this is from Halloween. I know very late but oh well. We ended up going to the pumpkin patch during the day and then walked around the neighborhood. This was Carson's first time going out and he was having a huge problem with only ringing the doorbell ONCE. LOL He was pretty worn out by the time he got back to the house. I also took him to see Aunt Danita and before he sacked out for the night, I took these pictures.

This was actually his costume from last year. But last year he only wore it to the hospital and had a surgery. We ended up spending the night there so he never got to venture out in it. To my surprise, it fit perfectly. It is a 2T and the waist was just right! I'm hoping that by the time he turns 4 he will move up to a 3T. Hee hee

One quick picture with mommy. I love this little guy.

Coltan ended up going to a friends house who had about 10 boys there and they walked around the neighborhood and then watched scary movies the rest of the night. He ended up spending the night there. Cody wanted to stay at his dad's. Since Halloween fell on a Saturday, that is Chris' day to have the boys. They ended up going over to a neighbors and had a cookout. Then Cody went back to his dad's and handed out candy. He really doesn't eat a lot of sweets and so getting a bunch of candy isn't a big deal to him. I wish I could be more like him.

Double Rainbow at the St Louis Arch!!

2009-12-02T05:45:00.001-06:00

We were recently in St Louis and I have never felt more blessed to see this spectacular view! Cody had a soccer tournament and it seems like the theme in all of our out of town tournaments are cold, windy, or raining. We had a slight rain delay on this day and went to try and find some things to do that we haven't already. LOL As we were driving up I-70 towards downtown, this was the view. How lucky were we to see such a beautiful sight? We got off the highway across from the Arch and grabbed my camera. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. You have to look really close for the double. It was a lot brighter when we were on the highway but I could tell it was fading so we were trying to hurry. Time just wasn't in our favor.

One last picture with the double in it. Still pretty faded but it's there!

When I went to bed last night....

2009-12-01T13:58:00.001-06:00

This is where I left Carson. But when I woke up.....or should I say when he woke me up, he was holding a can of redi whip near my head. He had gotten up and went to the fridge and I guess thought I needed some whip cream on my head. Luckily, I was able to wake up and realize what was going on so needless to say, he didn't get away it. :-)

Happy Tuesday!! I'm pretty proud of him. For the most part, he has handled the nasal cannula well. He even takes it out of his nose to blow his nose and put it back in. Pretty sad that my 3 year old knows so much at such a young age.

Our recent hospital stay.....

2009-11-30T20:30:00.000-06:00

Last week we had a little scare with Carson. Cody had a tournament in Memphis and for the better part of the trip, there I was giving Carson breathing treatments. We managed to get home okay and I though I better take him to the doctor since I couldn't get a handle on it. Dr T took one listen to him and sent us straight to Children's. His sats were running 77-81 and he just wasn't acting himself.

Once I arrived they sent him straight back and the doctor was in there within minutes barking orders to the nurses. I have seen him sick and have a lot of issues with asthma but never at this rate. Before I knew what was going on, they had Carson on IV's, O2, and the respiratory therapist was giving him a very long breathing treatment. While on O2 and after an hour long treatment, his sats were still in the high 80's -low 90's. We were told immediately that he was looking at a 1-3 day admit so I was trying to prepare myself.

Once everything settled down a bit, Dr J explained that his whole right lung was completely diminished and it could have been 15 minutes or 2 hours but his lung was likely to collapse. She also told me that she was asthmatic herself and would be in no hurry to kick him loose.

Once upstairs, we hooked Carson up to some feeds since he had only about 16 oz of apple juice and nothing else. We put him on O2 and ran the rest of his steroids and another med through his IV. Respiratory came up every 3-4 hours at first for treatments and he had to hold his sats at 94 and have treatments spread out to 6 hours before we could be released. We got the treatments spaced out but his sats kept running 89-92.....not 94. So 2 days into the hospital we made a deal with this wonderful doctor. I was to report first thing to Dr T Monday morning and have Carson placed on home oxygen. So that is what we did.

I know that a lot of our kiddos have been in children's hospitals and that the personal is usually good or great. But I have never seen a doctor like this one. He came in and spent an hour here, hour there with Carson. Sat with him and had me go down to the cafeteria and grab some late lunch/ early dinner. He would sit with Carson and watch movies and draw with him on his etch and sketch. I asked him if he was new and he told me he has been with Children's for over 4 years. It was just a really great feeling to have such good nonstop care with Carson. I asked our favorite nurse Jessica and she said Dr C usually doesn't spend that much time with a patient. So I guess Carson just had a soft spot on his heart. He was also very informative. He had studied Carson's charts and even researched acid reflux, dysphagia, and asthma and trying to find a common denominator. So with that said, Dr C....you were wonderful and I was truly blessed to have such excellent care for my son.

So Monday we went to see Dr T and he already had all the charts faxed over. We went ahead and got an X-ray on his right chest cause is right lung was filling up again. He wanted to rule out pneumonia and that did come back negative. His lower right lobe is still congested and every time he coughs, it is like it settles back down there. So we are working on productive coughs and breathing treatments, and home O2. The doctors want to give his right lung a little rest but we also recently downloaded the pulse ox machine and Carson always rides in the high 80's at night so they want him on O2 until further notice. His script is for minimum 15 hours a day. He has so far tolerated it.

Here are some pictures from the hospital. I was absolutely surprised that Carson spent most of his time in the bed and really didn't want to get out of it. So he was really easy to take care of.

He was watching Thomas the train movies here. I couldn't even get him to look at me for a picture.
I brought my computer and thought I was going to update my blog but the wifi wasn't really working. So I spent a day downloading my pictures on CD's thanks to Cary at Dream Big, and Renee at My Special K's.....they had computer problems and lost a lot of pictures. It has always been a worry of mine.

Grandma bought Carson a couple of trains so we played with those for a while.

The second day there I was going stir crazy from staying in his bed and his room. So we went on a wagon ride. With Carson having his respiratory problems, they wanted us to not venture out to far with all of the flu and virus' going around.

He was happy that we were escaping the room as well,.

Back in bed and thankfully I have about 30 games on my phone so that kept him busy for a while.

He really got tired easily. That is when I know my son isn't feeling well. He is usually a ball of energy.

Peaceful baby....

We finally convinced the doctor that we didn't need to stay in the hospital a third day. But they were sneaky and didn't discharge us til almost 6. They would have liked it if we would have stayed another day. I felt like I could give him the perfect care at home with all of our equipment. There is just something about being home.

Thanksgiving Pics

2009-11-30T01:35:00.000-06:00

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We have been very busy with soccer, hospital visits, illnesses, and all the other things that goes along with the busy mom job.

Coltan has just finished up his JV soccer and they did very well. They won 14, tied 6, and lost 2. I think that is a pretty awesome season. I have seen him play even better this year with his new coach. He played mid and forward mostly and did a heck of a job.

Cody has been to St Louis, Wichita, and Memphis since my last post. He has been playing very well and we have moved up in our national and regional stats. I have some pictures for later posts to show everyone.

Carson has been keeping me busy with H1N1, impetigo, staph infection, and we were recently released from the hospital after staying for a few days with problems with his asthma.

I will post later on all of the above and wanted to keep this post dedicated to the things I'm thankful for.

First and foremost, I'm thankful that I have been blessed with three wonderful boys. I love them more and more everyday.

I'm also thankful for my parents. My mother has been such a backbone for me to help me deal with day to day problems associated with life. My stepfather has also been a huge help. He is always at my house fixing something or lifting things for me. They have also made it possible for me to travel with Cody on his soccer tournaments.

I'm thankful for the rest of my family as well. We have a large family. My aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews all live close by so there are several family members to mention.

I'm thankful that I have God in my life. I had quite the scare with Carson last week and I'm so glad he was looking over us and gave the medical personal the wisdom to know what to look for and treat him very fast. Carson's right lung was completely diminished and it was a matter of time before he was going to be in serious trouble. The doctor we had was asthmatic herself and took extra care with him. Then after being admitted, we had a doctor that spent several hours at a time in our room with us. I have never seen that before and was so thankful that he was willing to spend that extra time with my son.

Here are some of the pictures of the family. This first one is my sister, three of her five children, her boyfriend and his parents.

Here are two of my nieces. Emma and my nephew Geno went with their dad out of town to his family. Carson was so proud to take a picture with his Apie and Ali.

Here is Carson's favorite Grandma. She always brings him Thomas the Trains. He really likes his Papa as well.

Here is a 4 generation picture. My grandfather, father, sister and I, and 4 of our 8 kids.

My three boys and I. Not very often that I have all three of them with the Coltan and Cody's soccer and social lives.

Aspen spends a lot of time with us and I'm not sure if Carson realizes she is his cousin. I think he thinks she is his sister.

Pics with the grandparents.

Meanie Melana and Monster Carson

2009-09-10T21:45:00.004-05:00

These pictures were taken about a month or so ago. I met Rachel and Melana at our favorite Mexican restaurant and had a nice dinner. Carson did want to show off for the girls so he ended up eating his whole hot dog. Melana, well she ate about 10 packets of sweet and low. LOL

After dinner, Rachel bought the kiddos some suckers. Then it was picture time. If you look closely, they are holding hands. Aren't they cute! This is my favorite.....I don't know who is flirting more.

It didn't matter, Melana wasn't letting go of Carson's hand anytime soon.

Not much else to report. Cody came home from school and since they were all beat up at the tournament last weekend, they got last night and tonight off. So Cody and I spent the evening cleaning his room......I cannot believe how much stuff Carson sneaks in there! So we changed sheets, dusted and vacuumed and it is good to go til next week.

Coltan's team ended up winning their game last night to Blue Springs. The high schools are all in a tournament this week and he doesn't play again until Saturday. He only had practice and then came home at 4:30 and has been doing homework every since. He had homework for Social Studies, Science, and Math. I feel really bad for him because it is a lot in each subject. I guess I don't remember being piled with homework like that and I have only been out of school for 15 years. Does anyone remember having a lot?

Carson and I stayed home for most of the day. I had a ton of errands to run and ended up on the phone with CVS, the GI clinic, Occupational Therapy, and our secondary insurance. Wow, I got done with all of those calls and it was almost 2. So I only got half of my things done. Guess my day is planned for tomorrow.

Has it really been a month??

2009-09-09T17:30:00.001-05:00

My goodness, where does the time go? I got on my blog today and couldn't believe it has been over a month!

So where do I begin???

Coltan. He had been in some high school soccer camps and conditioning camps over the summer. It all paid off! He made the JV soccer team! So his first game was last week and they played and won 1-0. The next game Coltan played was the next day and they won again, 3-1! Since Coltan has been with this particular coach, I have seen a HUGE improvement in his playing. Coltan is really looking great! Then.......Coltan ended up with the H1N1 and pneumonia! So he missed last Wed and Thursday's game and didn't returned back to school until this last Tuesday. He had another game yesterday but didn't get to play because he missed all last week. So today is his first game playing since last week and I have chosen not to go because it is pouring down and I just didn't feel like keeping up with Carson in the rain. At last, I talked to my niece and she said he was playing forward and doing an awesome job. She also said that our school is winning 2-0! Go Bronco's!

Cody, well he has been very busy with soccer as well. We went to St Louis last weekend for a tournament and drove down Friday night in the pouring down rain. It finally stopped but started back up around 5 AM. So our 10 AM game was cancelled and we waited until 1:00 to find out if they were cancelling the whole tournament. At 12:45, they decided that the tourney was still on......but would start at 9:00PM. So we got to the fields Saturday night and waited and finally played at 9:30 and played a team that we tied to when we were in South Dakota and ended up beating that team 3-0! Cody scored one and assisted in the other. We were supposed to play 4 games this tourney but they only gave us 2 games.

So Sunday we played another team out of Illinois that we have never played before but were warned that they play very dirty. After taking out 4 of our players, we decided the rumors were true. We already had 4 boys not at this tournament (two had H1N1, 1 out due to a concussion requiring a hospital stay, and 1 because of another conflict), so losing 4 more good players wasn't helping matters. The other team ended up beating us 0-2. The worse part of it, they were so rude they walked away from our boys at the end of the game and wouldn't shake our hands. That's okay cause we will be back in Illinois in a couple of weeks and will have most of our boys back and will beat them using our skills!

So the interesting thing in all of this is one boy named Jordan rode up to St Louis with another team member. His mom stayed back in Kansas City because Jordan's sister Katie had a tournament back home. Jordan was one of the 4 players that was injured during the game. He went down and never came back up. Jordan is one of those players that if he does stay down, you know it is serious. No one wanted to call his mom and tell her but when they finally did, Lisa said great, I'm at the ER now with Katie, she was fouled at her game, fell and broke her wrist. So it was decided that because of the swelling (we have 3 doctors and 1 dentist on our team), to go ahead and get Jordan back to KC and take him to an ER there so his mom could also be with him. After getting to the ER, we were informed that Jordan broke his ankle in TWO places. I feel really bad for Lisa. She is a single mother of three kids and two of her children broke bones in two different cities on the same day. Please say a quick prayer for her and the kiddos.

As for Carson, well he is still his full of energy, ham it up self. He doesn't like that the boys are back in school. He sits in Cody's bed and watches TV waiting for him to get home. It is really cute.

He had a doctors appt with the GI and we are going to draw some more labs and if they are in good numbers, we are keeping him on the NG tube for another 6 months and go from there. If the numbers on the gases are low, it will be the fundo placation. So we should know in a few weeks.

He had a pulmonology appt and was rescheduled for Sept 23 because I was home with Coltan with his H1N1 and the clinic didn't really want Carson and I in there since we had been exposed.

GI said that Carson needs to be back in occupational therapy after seeing the results of his swallow study. We had that done the end of July and Carson failed big time. He aspirated on things like peaches, applesauce, room temp liquids, and fruit snacks. Carson has been getting worse in my opinion but at least the swallow study confirms that. (meaning it's not all in my head). We stopped with OT because my insurance only covers 42 visits a year and I took off the summer. The doctor seems to think that I need to not take such a huge break. He wants us to maybe go for 3-4 weeks and then take a week off. He felt because we took off the whole summer, it has caused Carson to go backwards. So we have the orders in, just waiting to get our schedule.

Carson also has follow up appts coming up with his ENT and the Asthma/Allergy clinic. I don't expect any big changes in medicines or procedures with them so not a big deal.

Carson is so funny. I wish I knew how to put videos up on this site. Anyone want to share, let me know. He always has something to say about everything. I cannot get over how smart he is. He is constantly asking questions with his favorite question....."why". We have been potty training and have a small ways to go. He has been pretty good at my house and at the sitters but when we are out, he doesn't always tell me until after he finishes. His overnights have been about 75% dry and 25% of the days wet. As far as #2....he would just rather go in his diaper. Baby steps.

For me? Well I had been super busy getting ready to have my first ever garage sale. That is a lot of work! I literally cleaned out every ones closets, every drawer, ever toy box, and anywhere else to look. I set it up and had it about two weeks ago. I did really well so it all paid off. I didn't even sleep Wed night while I was setting it up. My sitter kept Carson for a couple of overnights so I could constantly work on my sale. I ended up with enough money for a house payment and a couple of utilities! I told my mom if I could make that kind of money in three days every week, I would do it.

Other than that, not much exciting going on. I have just been enjoying the boys growing up right before my eyes! Cody has practice 3 nights a week and when Coltan doesn't have a game (or is very sick)he has practice as well. They even have practices on Saturdays and Sundays. So all I do during the week is drive around dropping off and picking them up. It's okay though, I really enjoy watching my boys play soccer.

Well that is about it for now, I think there is a lot of info to absorb, and I will try to be better about posting more often.

I do miss checking in on everyone and hope to get that caught up as well!

Back to Reality

2009-07-28T10:28:00.002-05:00

Well once again, I just wanted to say thanks for going down memory lane with us on our vacation. Now that I have posted all the pictures that I wanted, it's back to reality.

We were all lucky enough to head down to the Lake of the Ozarks a couple of weekends ago. My mom owns a place down there so we decided to head down and take advantage of a little fun. Coltan and Cody went tubing for a while and we went up to the strip and they rode go-carts. My mom actually went a couple of times as well. She took Carson once and then she got into a single cart and raced Coltan and Cody. Poor Coltan picked the slowest two carts on the track.

This past weekend Carson and I went to the Platte County Fair and man was that fun. They had a Truck and Tractor pull which I have never been to and I'm hooked! We sat there from 6:30-9:30 and Carson watched the whole time. He did get up and dance for the crowd and meet everyone. He became the fairs favorite little guy. Everyone was giving him lots of attention and my little ham ate it up! After the tractor pull, we went and rode the motorcycles, jeeps, merry go round, an elephant, and a big slide. We ended up leaving close to midnight and boy did he sleep good.

Some of the things I have been working on over the last few weeks are switching rooms, getting ready for a garage sale, and getting ready for a bunch of doctor appointments.

Cody's room was done in Green Bay Packers when we first moved in here. We did the top walls yellow and the bottom green with a Green Bay border down the middle. I will look through some pictures and see if I have one of it to post later. Carson's room was already painted in blue and I put up some sports bears for his theme. Well Cody hasn't really cared for the Packers since Brett Farve left and now he wants his room done in AC Milan Soccer team which is red and black. I have been buying things here and there for Carson for a John Deere Tractor theme. So what did I do? I switched Cody and Carson's rooms. This way the green and yellow are already up. Cody also had bunk beds in his room and we took those down and I swiped a bed from my niece that is actually really nice. It is the kind that has the drawers underneath. I also bought carpet for my whole house a year ago and we installed it downstairs, but never got the upstairs done. So while all of the furniture was out of the rooms, we installed carpet in Carson's new room, and in Cody's new room.

I have also been going through EVERYTHING in my house and taking a lot of stuff downstairs into the garage sale pile. I will be trying to sell some things on craigslist and some at the local consignment shops and then a lot in a garage sale. That is a huge project all in itself. It has been kind of fun though cause before buying the house I live in now, the boys and I rented a duplex for a year and when we moved, I lost a $400.00 Ipod and when I was going through some boxes, I found it! Never been used. Now the boys and I are fighting over who gets it since we all already own one. LOL

Coltan has been in soccer camp for the last 2 weeks. He goes from 7:00AM-9:00AM and then back again from 6:00PM-8:00PM. This is a conditioning camp that is put on by his high school. Then next week he will be trying out for the soccer teams. I still cannot get over the fact that I have a child starting high school. I'm only 34 and feel really old!

Coltan and I will be getting very busy in his room later this week so that we can unload all of the clothes that he has outgrown and put them in the garage sale pile.

Cody has been doing not much of anything. He is on a break until the second week of Aug and then it will be very busy for us again in the soccer world. Coltan will not be traveling like that this year until Spring. He will be playing high school in the fall and then back on his regular team in the spring. Anyways, back to Cody, he has been helping me a lot with getting his room done and going through all of his clothes and things to get rid of for the garage sale. It is hard to believe how much he has grown in just a year. I thought when they get older they slow down?

As for Carson, well we have earned two new trains this week. He gets a new engine from Thomas the train if he goes potty 10 times. So the first one he earned was Spencer and just last night he earned Molly. Toys R Us had a sale where if you buy 2 you get one free. So my mom was kind enough to buy him 4 and got 2 free. Carson has is next 60 potties covered! He is working on Fearless Freddy now. So hopefully he will get the hang of this. So far, he isn't telling me when he has to go. I have to just keep taking him to the bathroom. So we still have lots of wet pull ups. Any suggestions? I wanted him completely potty trained by the time the boys go back to school which is in a few weeks.

Well that is about all that has been going on. Carson has his swallow study on Thursday and we will see how well he has progressed since last year. Keep your fingers crossed because insurance doesn't cover Simply Thick which is about an extra $100.00 out of pocket expense for me every month. I would sure love to have that money and put it towards credit cards!

Well that about sums up our last couple of weeks. I have a few pictures from the lake, gun range, fair, and some others that I will try to post this week. Hope everyone is having a great week.

The Badlands, Part 4

2009-07-27T06:25:00.000-05:00

These are the last pictures of our vacation. Thanks for bearing with me but when I start to scrapbook, I will have all of this for a reminder to help me keep it all in chronological order. I just love the formation of the rocks. Some of these pictures really reminded me of Grand Canyon.

This picture was looking down a clift. See the green grass on top of the buttes? In the early 1900's, farmers would take apart their lawn equipment and have help putting it on a pully. They would lift it up and put the mower back together. They would bale it into hay and sell it. Man, we thought the economy was bad now??? Could you imagine having to go through all of that work just to make some money?

It started getting cloudy. There was supposed to be a storm moving in.

I thought this was a cool shot of the storm heading our way.

This was the last picture I took and it then started raining. So, it was time to head home. Luckily the storm was moving the other direction so we never really had any problems.

Well this concludes our South Dakota Vacation. Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoyed our memories as much as us. Tomorrow will be back to reality pictures. LOL

Badlands Part 3

2009-07-26T07:45:00.000-05:00

This rock here is the backside of the next few pictures. We stopped and Coltan and Cody climbed this rock. It was one of the smaller ones but still pretty high. Coltan made it to the top.

Cody keeping up.

They each had there own better way of getting up to the top.

Stopped for a picture.

He was asking what because he started climbing down the other side and I couldn't see him. You know, I was acting like a concerned mom!

Now they were heading back down the rock.

One last picture of them together.

Uh, are we heading back up again???

After we were done, we started driving again. This area was absolutely gorgeous.

Badlands Part 2

2009-07-25T07:35:00.000-05:00

I took over 400 pictures in the Badlands. So here are a few more for you to enjoy. I had so many favorites and it was hard to only choose a few.

The Badlands

2009-07-24T12:05:00.000-05:00

We decided to hit the Badlands on our way home. It was 45 minutes east of Rapid City (which is the direction we would travel to head home). The trip from Rapid City to Kansas City is about 10 hours. So when we got to the Badlands, I never thought we would stay til 7PM. It made it for a very long and exhausting drive home but I'm sure glad we got to stop and see this surreal place.

This was a picture I took from the highway. This was right inside of The Badlands.

There was a Prairie Dog Town area and there were tons of them. They are actually cute but there were signs posted everywhere about a plague that they carried. We sat and listened to them talk to each other. I wish I would have brought my camcorder for that.

There was another area where we saw lots of bison.

Carson thought he was very funny. He was rolling around to scratch his back.

Here was a cute little ground hog and her baby. It looked like she was scolding her.

Of course, there were antelope all over as well. This one was fairly close. You can tell they are very used to cars and people because we didn't even scare him.

Panning for Gold

2009-07-23T07:05:00.000-05:00

So after Bear Country and Custard State Park, we finally made it down to pan for gold. The place we were at closes at 7 and then they let you stay there and pan as long as you want with no one on site. We were ready to pan for lots of money and I'm not sure if we even found a nickels worth. LOL Before we started Carson needed a pony fix!

Coltan pretending he just found a million bucks worth of gold.

Now reality set in and Coltan is still broke.

Cody still trying.

Working really hard at panning.

Carson thought he could find the gold without using the pan. Now if you look over Carson's head, you will see a glimpse of Cody's cell phone....it is red in color. Well just after the next couple of shots, Carson thought he would throw Cody's phone in the water and pan it out. I'm not sure how, but I grabbed it and took the battery out and ran into the bathroom where they had one of those electric hand driers and the next day after letting it dry out, IT WORKED!

Carson helping out his big brother.

Beautiful scenery everywhere we were in this state.

After we left here we went to a little restaurant in town and had a great dinner. Then we got back to the hotel after 11:00 and everyone was exhausted.

CusterState Park Part 2

2009-07-22T06:35:00.001-05:00

This part of the park was very scenic and a lot of fun. We drove through tunnels and did some rock climbing as well. What a really cool place this was. Coltan and Cody climbing up some rocks and trying to give me a heart attack!

This was very similar to the areas that the boys were climbing. By this time, Carson was out and slept through all of the adventure.

This area here I gave Cody the camera and Coltan and him climbed up. Carson had finally woke up and I had no idea where the boys were. I would every once in a while holler for them and they would holler back.

You can see my white Yukon parked in this picture. The boys were actually on the backside of this rock that I was park in front of.

This rock here is called needle point. I'm sure you can see the "needle point".

This area was beside the needle point and Carson decided to climb through to see where it went. It was a dead end so he had to come back.

This area here you could rent paddle boats. We did not because we were still wanting to go gold panning after we left the park.

Another area where the boys did some rock climbing.

This was the last area before we left the park. Breath taking gorgeous.

Custer State Park

2009-07-21T05:45:00.001-05:00

This was the view when we first drove in. We weren't sure what all there was to do, but it ended up being a very fun time. Most of it is a drive through and look at animals, but man, it was worth it. This park only cost $20.00 per vehicle and we ended up spending about 7+ hours there.

This was one of the best parts there. The burrows were out and ready to be fed. I bet we stayed in this area for about an hour. Coltan was petting this one. It is amazing how close they let you get to them.

Cody named this one snowball and was trying to get him to come in the car. He wanted us to bring him home for a pet.

Carson chillin in the car for a while.

Other animals let you get pretty close as well.

We pulled off to a grave road and decided to stop for a picnic. Turkey sandwiches all around.

A view from the picnic area.

After our lunch, I let Coltan and Cody take turns driving my car. That was certainly an adventure. This was one of the stopping places to switch drivers. Gorgeous view all around!Some bison on the road.

Momma and her baby. Aren't they cute?

Bear Country USA

2009-07-18T11:33:00.001-05:00

Well we are finally on day 5 of South Dakota. I cannot believe how much we actually crammed in in the amount of time we were there. Wednesday morning we got up early and headed to Bear Country. When we were in Springfield MO a few weeks back, we went to a drive through zoo and loved every minute of it. We got to feed the animals and Carson giggled the whole time. Well this drive through zoo was not as fun but we did see a lot of......bears. LOL So the first part took about an hour and here are some of the animals that we saw. I thought this was kind of a cool picture. I didn't see him at first and the boys had to point him out for me.

I called this bear fatty patty and Carson started laughing and didn't stop for a very long time.

The bears were there first and the wolves came down and started marking their territory. The bear just looked at them and finally waddled off. Kind of cool to watch.

Ummm......don't give your 3 year old a BLUE sucker first thing in the morning.

Isn't Cody the best big brother anyone can ask for?

This was one of the last animals we saw in the drive through. There were bison everywhere in this state.

Coltan sat down and started talking to the statue. So Carson ran up and started talking to him as well.

There were several cubs in this area and I thought they were cute climbing and playing in the trees.

The very end was a John Deere tractor pull. Carson had a lot of fun. It went around the whole park which was almost 5 minutes. For 50 cents, it was well worth it!

Flinstones Theme Park!!

2009-07-17T15:30:00.000-05:00

I'm sure I'm going to sound like a big dork here but this was one of my favorite things to do while in South Dakota. I actually own over 80 episodes of the Flintstones and watched it all the time when I was growing up. So when I found out that the had this, I was super excited! Here's Carson, driving his first ever Flintstones Car!

The Bedrock City Bank was being held up.

Carson driving the fire truck.I took this picture since I own a day spa.

I got some great ideas for redecorating. Starting with the cool floor.

Carson being cute. I didn't even tell him to do that. He is such a ham.

The dentist.

Carson loves motorcycles.

This was the patty wagon. The inside of the police station wasn't very cool.

The butcher.

That is about as close as Carson would get to the real Fred and Barney.

Barney's house

a pic from the inside.

Carson hanging out with the girls.

Outside Fred's house.

Inside shot and if you look at the bottom right corner, you will see Fred's bowling ball.

This is a golf cart that is a suped up Freddie car. Carson loved going on this ride.

There was a huge playground there as well and Carson spent about an hour just running around and having a great time. It is so nice to let him have a fun time.

Day 4 Beautiful South Dakota

2009-07-16T19:15:00.000-05:00

Well it has been a pretty good week all around. Cody got back into town last night a little before midnight and we were all waiting for him to get off the bus. They ended up playing 5 games against other states and during the second game, Cody said he got leveled by a bigger kid and was hurt. He ended up hurting his arm and elbow from the fall but felt better the next day. This ended up being a wonderful experience for him and he said he had a ball.

Coltan spent a few extra days over at his dad's and finally came home last night. I ended up grilling out and had a nice dinner for him to welcome him back.

Carson has been hanging out and acting like a little ham. I'm trying to get this boy potty trained and we keep having set backs. I put a poster board up on the back of the door in the bathroom and told him that when he reached 10 stickers I would buy him something for his Thomas the Train. We got up to 8 and then nothing. He is still at 8 and my mother broke down and bought him the Roundhouse that he has been asking for. So now we are starting over and now he has already picked out the Spencer engine so wish me luck!

Here are some of my favorite pictures of South Dakota on day 4. You could just drive around and take pictures of everything here. What a beautiful state.

This was a shot of the crazy horse in the backgrounds. The day was perfect with vivid blue skies and cotton like clouds. I think the boys were getting real tired of me stopping and taking pictures. LOL Oh well, one day when they are older, maybe they will sit back and appreciate the beauty as well. This is a picture from the Horse Ranch. I took it while waiting on the boys.

I think I took this one at Mt Rushmore.

I'm not sure what this area was but I loved it. So I stopped, got out of my car, and snapped a few pics. Boys were loving it!

Day 4 part 2 South Dakota

2009-07-15T06:00:00.000-05:00

After leaving Mt Rushmore we wanted to go to the Crazy Horse Monument. When we drove up, we found out it was $27.00 to enter. So we decided to look at it from afar. This is another man made sculpture to represent Crazy Horse. The carving of his face began June 3, 1948. It is still a work in process. The face was reveled and dedicated on June 3, 1998, marking it's 50 year anniversary. This is claimed to be the worlds largest mountain sculpture and is a memorial of the legendary Lakota leader and his culture. So here are a few pics of it.

So then it was off to ride some horses. When we got to the ranch, I found out that you had to be at least 6 to ride. So Carson got a pony ride (I know, it's really not a pony) and then just Coltan and Cody rode the horses. I stayed back with Carson and took some pictures of the beautiful scenery.

Here is Carson's horse named Nugget.

Cody is peeking back at me.

Now it's Coltan's turn to get his picture taken.

Cody and his horse.

One more of Coltan

They ended up riding for over an hour and told me that this was one of their favorite things to do on the trip. Was it because it was a lot of fun or because mom and Carson weren't with them? LOL

South Dakota Day 4 , Mt Rushmore

2009-07-14T06:00:00.000-05:00

Well we finally got up and out of the hotel by 10:00 AM. (hey, I'm on vacation right)? So first stop? Mt Rushmore. It was a gorgeous day with bright blue skies and very mild temperatures..

Carson woke up and had a lot of blood in his port of his NG tube so a quick call to the doctor and they said not to worry. He was at a higher altitude and probably not used to it so since we were only going to be there for a few days, to go ahead and leave it out. So that is what I did. Luckily, I had some Prevacid left over in my diaper bag and figured that was better than nothing at all.

Here are some of my favorite pics from Mt Rushmore. Keep in mind that I took over 150 so narrowing down to 11.....I think I did a really good job!

It's always fun trying to ask perfect strangers to take pictures of your family. This is the only one of about 3 we had taken and all of them for some reason were right in the direct sunlight. So this is the best one.
Man I love my camera. This is taken from just on the other side of that archway you see in the picture above.
Another view with my lens out.

Aren't my three guys cute!

Carson went off the path and decided to do a little rock climbing on his own.

He had to take a break. Wore himself out. I didn't bring my stroller on the trip and was really surprised at just how much energy this boy has!

Coltan and Cody waiting on Carson and I. They were scheming the whole time.

The three of them rock climbed up this area and I of course, walked the path and eventually caught up with them.

Back to South Dakota....Day 3

2009-07-13T06:00:00.000-05:00

Day three we had Cody's last game. It was against the #1 team from Indiana. They were a really great team and they had played us once before in the championship game and we lost 0-5. So going into this game, we knew it was going to be tough. We ended up dominating the ball most of the game and they had an exceptionally great goalie. If I say we had 25 shots at the goal, I really don't think I'm exaggerating. So we ended up tying them 0-0.

After that, we loaded up in the car and it was off to Rapid City. We stopped in a town called Mitchel to get gas, grab some dinner, and stop at the Corn Palace. All the designs on the wall were made out of corn husk. This is one of those places that you only need to stop at once in your whole life. I think this is where they hold concerts and they have a basketball team but I cannot remember the name of the team.

After visiting here, we continued to Rapid City where we finally got in just after midnight.

The sun was right in Carson's eyes. So this was the best I got. This is what the walls were. Kinda neat. All corn husks.

Another wall.

Down on the court they had some retail shops. Carson was being cute.

Cody trying to one up his brother. I told Cody I was putting this pic on the blog!

I couldn't get Coltan to put on any silly hats, darn it. LOL

Update on Crystal

2009-07-10T23:08:00.003-05:00

Just wanted to say thanks to all of your prayers. Crystal was actually stabbed over 20 times and has been released from the hospital.

The story is horrific so be prepared. She was home and he came to the door. He is 6'4" and 220lbs. Crystal is about 5'3 and maybe 120. So after she opened the door, he threatened her about seeing their daughter. She tried to get away from him all while the older boys came down to see what all the noise was about. He took her by her hair and pulled her outside where he started stabbing her. The oldest boy was sharp enough to not freeze up and called 9-1-1. That is a very smart and brave thing to do.

Crystal ended up suffering wounds in her neck, head, arms, chest, back, and hands. She has many stitches but thankfully there were no vital organs struck. She is having problems making a fist with one of her hands and the doctors are unclear if the tendon damage in her hand is temporary or not.

The ex did get arrested and he is currently in jail without bail....Thank God for that!

All of the kids and Crystal are home with my aunt right now. My Aunt is already getting all of them into some type of counseling and she is wonderful enough to take a leave of absence from her job to help out.

So that is the latest on them.

As far as my home life, The boys and I didn't do much this week. I have been working and we are in the process of getting a new AC for the Salon.

Coltan has been in a soccer camp in the mornings to get him ready for try outs...... cannot believe my oldest is actually starting high school this year! Coltan has a season pass port to Worlds of Fun and has been trying to get his money worth with all of his friends.

Cody has been really laying low this week. He had a soccer meeting for fall and oh boy, are we really going to be traveling this season. We have St Louis twice, Hebron IN (sub of Chicago), Muscatine IA (I have no idea where this is even at), Rockford IL (outside of Springfield IL), Memphis, DISNEY WORLD, and a couple here in Kansas City. These are ALL through Thanksgiving. In the spring he will look at Springfield IL, West Des Moines, Jefferson City MO, and Dallas. These are some of the same we were in last spring except for the Dallas. Then next May is the MO state cup and then if we advance, we will head to Dayton OH for regionals. So I'm looking for a really nice couple who is rich and are willing to adopt us. HAHA

He is leaving tomorrow morning and heading to Rockford IL. He takes a bus and parents aren't allowed. This is a tournament for the State of MO kids. So wish MISSOURI luck. He will be back sometime Wednesday and I will pick him up. The bus actually leaves tomorrow at 4AM so daddy Chris was nice enough to offer. I will miss him but I know this is a wonderful opportunity for him.

Carson, well he still isn't eating much. (little stinker) But he is still actively involved with his trains. After Michael Jackson passed and his videos were all you saw on MTV, Aspen and Emma (my nieces) taught him to do some MJ moves. I'm going to put it all on camcorder and then figure out how to download. You will die laughing if you see it. He is due for some bloodwork and then he has a swallow study for July 30th. We are still waiting on Children's South to schedule him another PH study and then we go back to Dr Kaine in the middle of Aug.

That is about it for now. I still have lots of great pictures from South Dakota that I will hopefully get back to work on.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Please pray

2009-07-07T22:17:00.003-05:00

Well it has been a very busy week. I ended up having a great time with the boys. I still have lots of pictures to post but will try to post those tomorrow.

My cousin who lives in Florida was in an abusive relationship. She ended things with him and tried to keep herself and her children safe. She and her boyfriend have a baby together. I'm not sure all of the details right now but he came to the house and tried to take their daughter. Crystal tried to prevent this and he ended up stabbing her 18 times. Her older boys were all home and even witnessed the ending of this tragic event. He grabbed the infant and took off. She is in the hospital and is expected to have a full recovery. The boyfriend was later found and has been charged with attempted murder, unlawful kidnapping, and endangerment of a child. My aunt currently has all 4 children but as I cannot even imagine, the older boys are shaken and traumatized.

I will try to update more on her and other events in our lives tomorrow. I just thought that this blog would be a great place to have lots of prayers sent to my cousin and her family. This will be the beginning of a huge battle of the boys healing over what they witnessed and Crystal healing physically and emotionally.

Rock Falls Day 2 part 2

2009-06-30T07:25:00.000-05:00

Here are some pictures I took Sunday evening. This place was the coolest place in Sioux Falls if you ask me. They had a light show every night around 9:30 that flashed on the biggest part of the falls. They also told a little history of Sioux Falls. We watched the light show the night before.

This night was just Coltan, Carson, and I. Cody went on with his team to eat pizza. This area was very cool. They let the kids play out on the rocks and in the water but Coltan was too cool for that. He did walk around on the rocks and helped me with Carson so I could take some pictures.

This is just one section that we walked out on. This water fall and rocks was every bit of a couple blocks big. These pictures just doesn't do justice for the the beauty of this place. You could just sit there for hours and enjoy the view! This is how the area was all around the falls. A lot of people were out walking on it.

Coltan NOT smiling. He says it was because the sun was in his eyes....yea right.

Just the three of us. Wish Cody was with us.

This is my favorite one. That was a house that was built in the 1850's. I cannot remember all the history in it between reading a lot of history in all the places we went and keeping an eye on Carson.

This area here was part of the light show. The lights would change between blues, reds, yellows, to white. Very cool to watch. Now I'm sad I didn't try to take any pictures.

Another one of my favorites to look at.

This was at the bottom of the falls.

Day 2 of South Dakota

2009-06-29T11:11:00.000-05:00

This is actually day two of South Dakota. Day one we played Kentucky and for some reason, I forget to bring the camera. Knowing we had guarenteed three games, I wasn't overly disappointed that I forget it. So we ended up playing and tied Kentucky 3-3. It was a very intense game.

After that, we went back to the hotel. My funds aren't the greatest so we decided to buy lots of food for this trip and eat the free breakfast at the hotel, I made us lunches most of the trip, and then we ate out for dinner. So we went back and Cody showered and then we ate lunch. Because we got in so early/late, and the game was at 8:00AM, Carson and I took a very long nap.

This tournament in Sioux Falls was suppose to generate $9.9 million for the city. So I guess because of that, they had a 4 block festival for all the teams Saturday night in their downtown area. It was a lot of vendors selling food and drinks, few t-shirt stops, and most of the businesses kept there stores open for people to shop at, and they also had a band for the adults to listen to and on the other end they had a DJ with the kids. It was kind of cool how they set the event up, kids were on one side and adults were on the other. After that, we went to dinner at Valeninos. It is a really good Itialian Buffet. We ate at one in Omaha a few years ago and I was excited to see that they had one in Sioux Falls as well.

After that we went to the Rock Falls park that has a waterfall. It was a really awesome view. I thought because of the time of night, the camera wouldn't pick up the beauty in the falls so I decided to go back the next day in the daytime.

So then on day 2, our game wasn't until 2:30. We stayed at the hotel the whole morning and then it was off to our game against KS. This also happens to be my good friend Denise's son's team. Well it wasn't the outcome that we had hoped for but it did help KS finish in second for the whole tournament. So Alec, congrats from us!! We followed you through the internet when we were in Rapid City. My phone service was terrible in the mountains so when we text you on Tuesday, it showed back up in my outbox as unsent.

So back to this game, we showed up, and just before the game started, it started pouring....hard! It lasted for about 15-20 minutes of the game. I sent Coltan out to get our umbrella that I stole from my mom and guess what? It was missing about 24 inches of the pole. It was actually pretty funny. Looked like it belonged on the top of your hat. So Denise was kind enough to stand on the enemies side and share her great big umbrella with us. Carson however had different plans and got absoulutely soaked. Coltan was soaked as well. I was just glad I didn't spend the time straightening my hair. HAHA. After halftime, Carson decided to have a blowout in his diaper. So as I was walking back towards the car, KS scored their second goal. I took Carson back and took off all of his clothes, cleaned him up, and found a t-shirt that belonged to the boys and put it on him. By this time, I could tell he was tired so I put him in his car seat and waited for the game to end.

After the game it was back to the hotel for everyone to shower and change again and since Carson was still asleep, I took advantage of another nap! The team was invited for pizza for dinner later that night. So Cody went with his team while Coltan, Carson, and I went back to the Rock Falls Park for more pictures and for dinner. I will post those on the next post.

On a side note, my sister gave birth to a healthy baby boy named Kriasten. I think that is the spelling.....

So I will get some pictures as soon as I can and post them as well. Also, My Niece Ali just celebrated her birthday and my cousin Stacy just turned 40. OMG, are we really getting that old? HAHA

Also, I'm saddened to say that Charlie's dog Brigg who just recently moved back in with me passed away Friday night/Saturday morning. Carson would always open the back door and let him sneak in or would run outside and play with him. He would tell me that he was staying outside all day long with Brigg and wouldn't come back in. So with all the above, I ended up having a fairly busy weekend!

Hope everyone has a happy Monday! Here are the pictures of MO vs KS and I started taking pictures as soon as the rain stopped so you will see the boys soaked and muddy! Cody is #3 white jersey.

Can you see all the mud on him? Makes it for a very interesting time when your out of town and the hotel your staying in doesn't have washer or dryer for public use!

WERE HOME!!

2009-06-26T14:40:00.000-05:00

Well we rolled into Kansas City at 6:00AM this morning. It has already been a very long day.

We left last Friday for South Dakota and really had a great time. As you can imagine, I have lots of pictures so I will be spreading them out over the next few days.

Last Friday we left and headed to Sioux Falls for Cody's regional soccer tournament. His first game was Saturday morning against the #1 team out of Kentucky. We ended at 2-2. Sunday we played the #1 team out of Kansas and were beat 0-2. Then Monday we played the # 1 team out of Indiana and tied 0-0. The last team we played was a great team. We played them last year in West Des Moines in the championship game and they creamed us 0-5. So I think we have come a long way. We had lots of shots at the goalie but he was awesome and nothing got through him. This game, we really dominated the ball and just couldn't sneak past the goalie.

So Cody's team is as follows, we have moved up from #8 to #1 in the State of Missouri, #14 from #28 in our region (which consist of 12 states), and nationally we moved up to #104 from #218. So I think overall, we are doing great!

The rest of the month will settle down for soccer and then his ODP (which is the state team he is on) will start back up in July.

So back to our vacation......

After our last game on Monday, we left and started for Rapid City. It was about a 4 hour drive but we did manage to make a few stops on the way. We stopped off in Mitchell SD and went through the Cabala's and the Corn Palace. We then got back on the road and got in around midnight.

Tuesday we started out at Mt Rushmore and stayed there for a few hours. It was a gorgeous day and the sky was a clear, blue day so the pictures turned out great. We also went off the path and walked up a huge hill to take some more pictures. They have a path to walk to see the different angles of the presidents and of course, history of why they were chosen, how much it cost, how long it took.....

After that, we went to Crazy Horse. I was a little disappointed in this one. It was $27.00 to get in for our car and the exhibit wasn't that great. So then we left and headed over to some stables. The boys got to ride an hour and half trail while Carson and I stayed back. You have to be at least 6 years old to ride and putting him on my horse wasn't permitted. He did however get to ride a pony around and he loved it.

After that we went to the Flintstones theme park. I am a HUGE Flintstone fan and to this day sit around watching them on TV. I actually own every season made. (I know, I'm a dork). They had a train to ride, a golf cart decked out like Fred's, a little bedrock city to walk through, and a huge playground. Carson and I hung out there for about 4 hours. It was well worth it.

Then we went back into Keystone and had dinner and then drove back to the hotel and crashed.

Wednesday we woke up and headed to Bear Country. It is a drive through zoo and was okay. The one that Carson and I did in Springfield MO was so a lot more fun. After that, we went to Custard State Park. What a beautiful area. We ended up spending the rest of the day there. We drove around and took pictures, fed burros that were so tame, saw lots of wildlife, climbed rocks, had a picnic, and then Coltan and Cody's favorite part.....we went off onto a public gravel road where there wasn't any traffic and they took turns driving my car. Cody is very cautious which I like, Coltan....we really need to work on the brakes, my neck still hurts. HAHA

While leaving the park which was about 8 hours later, we headed back to Custard and mined for gold. I think we have about a nickels worth. I didn't get to do a lot of panning because Carson was being a little monster. So I took pictures and chased him. Then we headed back into town and shopped around the little strip and bought a few little souvenirs and then off to dinner. We ended up heading back to the hotel again after midnight.

Thursday we checked out of the hotel and headed to the Badlands. We stopped in Wall SD at the famous Wall Drug. It is a block long area with lots of little shops to go in. We bought a few more things and then off to our next destination. The Wounded Knee. It wasn't really what I thought it would be but it was a very sad story. It is really sickening what these Indians went through. I didn't get to go through the whole museum because once again, Carson was acting wild.

Then we headed off to the Bad Lands and didn't end up leaving there until 7:00 PM. Now keep in mind, I'm leaving there and driving the last 9 hours home. Well we stopped for dinner, gas, a few rest breaks, and arrived home around 6 this morning. I got the kids in the house and Carson even slept til almost 10:00AM! So I'm running on 4 hours of sleep after being up close to 24 but hey, that's what vacationing is all about right?

This is our little timeline and I will download the 600 pictures I took and post some later. If I can get to it, I will try to post some tonight....but no promises. LOL

Now that I have been pretty much lazy for the last few hours, I guess I should go and get the luggage in and plan on cleaning the car out. Anyone want to help???

EEG Pics

2009-06-20T11:02:00.004-05:00

This was from Carson's EEG that was scheduled in April. (I know, not really posting for two months got me behind in his pictures).

This test was to figure out why he was having the episodes where he was passing out. We had to keep Carson up til midnight and then wake him up at 4:00 AM. He was at the hospital by 6:30 to get started. They say when the kiddo's are sleep deprived they are able to see more on the brain waves. It turned out to be a very long and exhausting day.

This is where they were hot gluing wires into his hair. He wasn't very happy about it.
Trying to act like a brave boy.

Almost done with all of the wires.

He has about had enough here.

I got the test results back about a week later and they turned out fine. So the doctor's feel like the episodes are from his tube hitting his vassal nerve or the fact that his iron level was so low. Or a combo of the two. But the good news is.......no silent seizures!!!

Carson goes fishing!!!

2009-06-19T14:30:00.000-05:00

The weekend before Carson's EDG I took him up north to a friends farm. He got to see cow's, horses, go 4 wheeling, fishing, and just run outside and have lots of fun. It was a very relaxing weekend. I wanted Carson to have as much fun as he could before his procedure because I wasn't sure what was in store for him afterwards.

This is the pond that we fished on. It was amazing. Carson's very first cast ever and he caught a fish. We couldn't take the fish off the reel fast enough. He was the great catch! Stopped to pose for momma.

Looking very interested in his reel. He got it tangled and we were fixing it

He wanted to reel the fish in "all by myself"!

Finally it was getting to dark and a storm was getting ready to roll in. Very peaceful place to sit and do nothing.

Day out with Thomas the Train Part 2

2009-06-18T23:30:00.000-05:00

Here are a few more pictures of my little train obsessed boy.

They had a tent set up with tons of trains. Carson kept running back to this tent even when we weren't looking. He got away from me once and I ran into this tent and look where I found him!
They had a little petting zoo set up as well. There were about 10 different animals for them to feed.

Back to his favorite spot.

Carson with his favorite. This was the engine that took up for our 20 minute ride

Back in the car. It was over and I think Carson was asleep before we even left the neighborhood.

Day out with Thomas the Train Part 1

2009-06-18T01:05:00.000-05:00

A few weekends ago, Baldwin Kansas held a Day out with Thomas. Carson being such a Thomas the train fan, how could I resist? The day before these pictures were taken, Carson threw up and his tube came out through his mouth. So it was in in his nose, out his nose. It was certainly an unexpected site to see. Has anyone else had this happen to them?

So because of the trauma, I left it out til after we got home. Carson had a ball and weeks later is still asking to see Thomas! I have a lot of pictures so I broke them down into two days.

This is Carson sitting on the train. It went on about a 20-25 minute ride and he was in heaven!
Here is Thomas the Train engine.

I was out in the heat all day so I'm looking a little not so cute. Haha But look at the happiness in Carson.

Carson was hollering out the window "all aboard" and then he got a bunch of the other kids to holler it as well. He is such a leader. LOL

This is a picture of his tattoo. I couldn't take it off for like a week. He would constantly go to the bathroom and look at himself in the mirror to make sure it was still there.

Thomas the Train invades my livingroom!!

2009-06-17T00:05:00.000-05:00

Well it's been another boring few days with not much to report. But that is a good thing. Carson loves his Thomas the trains and I'm thinking he has way to many. I had to move my coffee table to put all of his stations, bridges, and tunnels together. Here is my happy boy playing with his trains.

Jamming with the boys....

2009-06-14T18:35:00.000-05:00

Nothing going on today. Coltan and Cody are with their father today. They have been with him since Friday but since we are going out of town next week, he is going to keep them a few extra days this week.

So I was going through some pictures today with Carson and he saw lots of pictures of "baby Carson". I showed him some pictures of his 4D sonograms and explained to him that these were pictures of him while in mommy's tummy. He looked at them and then to me and asked if he could see the pictures of him in daddy's tummy.

Then we were looking at some pictures of him from newborn to about 3 months old and he asked if we could have another baby Carson. I asked him did he mean another Carson and he said no, another baby. Uh, no sweetie, your the last from me!

These are some pictures that I took back in April. A lot has changed in just 2 months. Summer is here, Cody's hair is a lot shorter, I'm back to work......

That electric keyboard was mine so it is probably close to 25 years old. My dad found it buried in the basement at his house and put some new batteries in it and what do you know? It still works....great! Carson loves his new "piano" and Coltan and Cody were helping him out.

Um boys, could you PRETEND your having fun while I take some pictures? Finally, a smile from Coltan and Cody.

Cody with all of his hair.

Coltan only smiling because I told him he could go to the movies on the weekend.

Carson can also play horn real well.

Music to my ears...,,

My cute little ham!

Still no answers.

2009-06-13T18:11:00.003-05:00

Well we went to the GI clinic yesterday and it really didn't go as I thought. The results of the EDG came back and his stomach and small intestines looks great. His esophagus did have some damage due to the acid reflux but only beginning stages. He said he wanted Carson to have another swallow study done (which pulmonary was doing back in early May and then she said she wanted to wait to see the EDG results), some more blood work to check the Nexium level in his blood (to rule out that he has maxed out on being treated with medicines), and another PH study (where they take out his NG and replace it with a tube similar but has wires on it. The wires set on the stomach and read any acid).

So hear is the frustrating part, Dr K said that if you did the PH study on two different days, it could show results that are night and day. So it really isn't conclusive. He said the next step is three options; 1. Take the NG tube out and replace with the the G-tube (mickey button??). His thoughts on this is that Carson is choking because of the NG tube going down the back of throat. Which he has been a silent aspirator for over a year so I'm doubting this one. 2. Go ahead with the fundoplication which he said is only going to be about a 50/50 chance that it helps him, 3. perform both.

Our plan right now is to get the PH study, swallow study, and blood work done and meet back in 6 weeks to look at the results and discuss the surgery and tube. So I guess it will be another 6 weeks of the NG tube. I know it won't happen overnight but I just wish we could get Carson to eat and get rid of the tube.

Here are a few pictures of Carson in Springfield MO from last weekend.

Having fun in our "sunny" glasses

2009-06-12T13:00:00.000-05:00

Not a whole lot going on this week. We have been busy getting Cody to some extra soccer practices getting ready for South Dakota.

The boys and I were able to get a couple of movies in this week (gotta love red box) and had a few nice meals at home.

Today at 4:00 I will be taking Carson to the GI for his results and to see what the next step is. It will probably be the surgery for his stomach called fundoplication. I'm a little nervous but realize that if this is what needs to be done to get Carson pain free and want to eat again then this is a must. I'm sure that with God behind us, we will be led in the right direction to help my baby. It is so frustrating that he knows if he eats the acid reflux will follow and he then cries about his tummy hurting. I'm just ready for him to be healed and pain free. Keep your fingers crossed and say a prayer that after today, we will be going down the right direction for his healing.

Carson loves his "sunny" glasses and he is always posing with them. These are a few that I love.

Sleep Study

2009-06-11T05:55:00.000-05:00

These pictures are from Carson's sleep study that was done a couple of months ago. He was told to show up in his PJ's at 8:00PM and be ready for some sleep. Well as most of you know, Carson is a very poor sleeper and at this time, he wasn't even taking naps. I believe if we slept more than 6 hours in one day, we were lucky. So as most of you could guess, Carson never slept better than this day and I think I even got a lot of sleep as well. His results came back okay and then it was discovered through blood work that his iron level was critically low. Average is 50-80 and he was 17. Then there was another level and I cannot remember the name and it was supposed to be 80-120 and he was 27. It has to do with iron as well. So he is given iron supplement and he does seem to sleep a little more. I can usually get a nap out of him in the day and then he will sleep for about 8 hours at night. He still sits up and tonight he sat up and looked down the hall and said there were monsters down there. He was sleeping the whole time. He has been sitting up and talking in his sleep which is kind of cute. Anyways, here are some pictures from the sleep study.

This is where we were staying for the night. All of these wires are going on Carson's head......somewhere.

He was hanging out drinking his milk and watching Cars. I think this might be where his love for that movie came. We now watch Cars at least 10 times a week!

They would clean an area very well and when they got to his legs he was giggling because it tickled.

He didn't like it when they were messing with his hair. I think this might be from his sensory processing disorder. But none the less, he is still cute no matter what his expression is.

He calmed down and is focusing on his cool stickers

After all the wires are in place, they roll him up so they don't move

This is the end result. Doesn't he look cute???

More pictures to share

2009-06-10T04:30:00.000-05:00

These pictures were taken back in the beginning of March. This is my good friend Rachel from Love for 9. This is Meanie Melana and Monster Carson.

This one is Carson trying to give Melana a hug. I really tried to get her to smile and say cheese.....haha

Carson riding Melana's toy around and I'm not sure she knew what to think about that.

Melana watching signing time and getting ready to take her clothes off. It was so funny, after Rach put her PJ's on, she kept taking them off.

Finally the two of them playing downstairs nicely. They kept running up and down the stairs most of the evening.

Sharing a little meal.

There Rach, I know, it only took three months. Not bad huh?

WERE #1 IN THE STATE OF MISSOURI!!!!

2009-06-08T20:52:00.020-05:00

We just got home from Springfield Missouri and it turned out to be a hair pulling, nail biting experience. We went down there Friday night and the boys ended up going to Drury College and practiced one more night. Saturday we went to the fields and played another team from Kansas City and won 1-0 in about the last two minutes of the game.

Then I took Cody and Carson to a train museum and Carson loved it. It had an old steam engine that you could walk through, a box car, stage coach, and caboose. Carson even got to ring the bell. Then we met up with the team at Springfield Brewery for dinner. After that the boys and I walked around Bass Pro shop for a while

Sunday morning we got up and headed back to the fields. We played the #1 team in the state of MO and beat them 2-1. It was a very intense game but we did it!

After the game I took Carson to a safari animal park where you drive through and feed the animals from your car. Carson was giggling the whole time. It was a great time. After that we went to the Wilson Creek Battlefield. It was an area that the south and north fought in 1861. Then it was off to dinner and back to the hotel for some rest.

Today was the final game! We had to win to go on to regionals. We played another team from St Louis and they are ranked third in the state. We played a very hard game. We scored within the first minute of the game and we were all pumped up. Half time it was still 1-0. About 20 minutes into the second half the other team scored. We ended the game 1-1. So it was our first 10 minute overtime and no one scored. Then came the second overtime and still ended 1-1. So then we went into sudden death where 5 kids from each team take turns kicking for a goal. We scored the first, then they did. We scored the second, so did they. Then Cody took the third kick and scored. They missed! Our 4th player scored and theirs.....BLOCKED by our goalie!! Then we celebrated!! Our next stop is in just a couple of weeks and we will be heading off to South Dakota. If we win the regionals we will be going to Nationals in July.....oh and did I mention that Nationals is in Boston? Keep your fingers crossed.

Now for the pictures and I will warn you now, there are lots because I'm the proud mom that has bragging rights.

This is the first of many. Cody is in the blue Academy uniform and his number is 3. Another action shot.

Cody already slid tackled and pushed the ball away from the other team.

These next several actually go together. This is Cody fighting for the ball.

A little pushing going on.

All ball and still not giving up.

Now he is using his hands a little for some balance.

Still going for it as the poor kid is trying to get back up.

And he's off and if you look over the woman in pink.....the boy is back on the ground.....but Cody won the ball!

Cody got caught this time and got a foul called on him. Doesn't he "look" innocent?

Carson enjoying half time.

Cody's off again. He is fighting for the ball again.

After playing the ball and accidentally tripping the other kid, he wants to know why the ref didn't call it.

This is after Robert blocked the goal and we officially won.

Taking some pics of the team

Waiting on our first place medals and Carson is congratulating the boys.

Cody receiving his first place medal.

Two court dates and finally...a few pictures!

2009-06-04T01:11:00.000-05:00

Well so far so good......I think. Monday was my last day to spend at home with the boys before I went back to work. I ended up cleaning and doing some laundry. Nothing to exciting.

Tuesday I had court for my wreck. I showed up and the lady that hit me came in about 15 minutes late. When her name was called she went up without an attorney and asked for a continuous. The judge asked her what for and she said she hasn't retained an attorney yet because she didn't have money for one. So he told me to talk to the prosecutor and gave her another month, but excused me from having to go.

So I sat down with the city prosecutor and gave my statement. He is going to try and get me $558.00 from her. $250.00 for my deductible, $58.00 for my portion of out of pocket for my rental car and $250.00 for my inconvenience. So if he gets her to pay up, that would be really nice!

After court I went straight to work for a bit. It was nice to see everyone and meet the "new" employees that I hadn't met and just get my feet into my business once again.

After that I went home and relaxed for a bit and then took Cody to his soccer practice. Because of the rain we were rained out from our normal outdoor session and instead went to an indoor facility. The bad thing about that.....we couldn't practice til 8:30 PM and then it lasted til a little after 10:00 PM. So I came home and pretty much went straight to bed.

Wednesday morning I went to work for about 5 hours and then left to go to court again. This one was to testify on behalf of Lee's Summit for child endangerment charges. I don't know if you remember but a few months back Cody had saw a 7 year old upset and lost and brought him to me. After trying to find his mom's name in the phone book I called the police and asked them to help locate his parents. Mom shows up after the boy had been out for probably over an hour and got rude with the officer because he was holding her up from watching something on TV. She was something. So the scary thing is at court she had an attorney and the judge asked her why she continued this case twice and her attorney said because she thought this was something she could handle on her own but due to her being an RN, she could face losing her license if found guilty. Holy cow....she doesn't care that her 6 year old is wandering around and she is a nurse? I hope I never walk into our local hospital needing help and find her taking care of me.

After court I came home and relaxed some more. Nothing to exciting but I think I'll take these boring days any day of the week!!

Here are a few pictures from over the last few months. This one is a pic of Coltan with his sister CJ. This picture was taken just a little over a week before she turned the big ONE. Carson and his smiling face.

Showing me that he can drink from a big boy cup. His new thing is to walk over to the fridge and fill the cup up with water and then walk over to the sink and dump it.

Cody and Carson hanging out on the couch. Cody is on You Tube pulling up videos and Carson helps to choose them.

This is one of Carson's favorite toys. He loves his school bus!

Hope everyone is having a great week so far!

I'm a full time soccer mom

2009-05-31T23:50:00.002-05:00

I just had the urge to get on my blog tonight and holy cow, has it really been 5 weeks? The time has really flown by.....which isn't all that bad!!!

Carson has been battling his asthma as usual. We had 3 urgent care visits in the last 4 weeks and still can't get a handle on it. His Pulmonary doctor wants to try the advair again but as soon as we took him off, those syncopal episodes stopped from last Dec/Jan. So I'm really up in the air about it.

I have taken Carson out of Occupational Therapy for the time being. He has caught up and passed some of the three year old skills and it is 4 less appointments a month, so that is fine with me. I will wait til summer is over and have his sensory processing re-evaluated and we can go from there.

Carson also just had the EGD done last Friday. He was supposed to stay overnight due to his asthma. We arrived at 6:30AM and was scheduled for the first surgery of the day. The doctor scoped him and took biopsies of his esophagus, stomach, and small intestines. He said there wasn't any abnormalities and the lab results would probably be this Friday. On a good note, Carson did so well that we never had to stay! So we will see the GI clinic a week from tomorrow for the results. If everything looks good the Nissen is going to be scheduled. I have finally gotten Carson in the 28lb range but I also have added one ounce every feeding. He was getting 30 ounces a day of Pedisure and he wasn't budging. So mommy took it upon herself to add the extra ounce and I have seen him gaining little by little.

The funny thing is that Carson is 3 years and almost 2 months old and he is still wearing all the summer clothes from last year. I have bought him very little so far. Very sad. He is wearing 24 months. 2T's are too big for him in the waist.

Coltan and Cody finished school last Wednesday so now I have some company with me at home. The boys have kept me extremely busy with soccer. They practice Monday through Thursday and Cody's practice is three days a week and his practice fields are 35 minutes north of me. So that is one huge reason why blogging lately has not been an option. By the time I spend all day with Carson and then practice and back home for dinner and dishes, I'm pretty much spent. Then with Carson's asthma and feedings, I'm always up at least once throughout the night.

Since my last post, Coltan and Cody had a tournament in Columbia Missouri and they didn't do very well. We ended up going home before the finals. But just to let you know what a huge soccer mom I am, Cody had a game in Kansas on that Saturday. So I got up at 4:00 AM to pack and get us out the door. Coltan and Cody's first game was in Columbia (which is about an hour and half drive from my house) at 9:30. As soon as the game was over, Cody, My mom, step dad, Carson and I jumped in the car and headed back to Kansas. This field is 40 minutes southwest from my house. So 2 1/2 hours later Cody played his soccer game with his team. After that game I drove back to my mom's to drop off my parents and Carson. Cody and I headed back to Columbia which again is 1 1/2 drive. I was back at my hotel and in bed by 8:30PM!! But it was really nice to sleep ALL night without getting up and feeding Carson.

Then when we got back from Columbia, Coltan was in a tournament in Kansas. Same fields that Cody played at. So all of our games were 40 minutes away. Coltan's team ended up playing Saturday and then the tournament got cancelled Sunday due to the rain........this is becoming a pattern for me lately.......weather!

Last weekend Cody was in another soccer tournament and they swept the whole tournament. I ended up taking Carson out of town so my mom called me with the highlights.

So here is this weekend and guess what.....yup, a tournament. Coltan and Cody played in this tournament and again the boys took first. I'm very proud of them.

Next weekend......you guessed it, except two tournaments. One is in Springfield Missouri with Cody and the other is up north Kansas City with Coltan. So I'm not sure if Chris and I are going to split it or not. Springfield MO is about a two hour drive.

So can anyone guess what I'll be doing tomorrow? Getting an oil change!

That about sums up my last month. I hope you all will see that this isn't an excuse but the truth as to why my blogging is slacking. Hee Hee.

I hope all is well and everyone has a great week. My niece is going to watch Carson a few days a week for me so I will officially be going back to work this week. So I'm thinking that I will have more time to blog while there. HAHA

I will be working very hard to catch up on everyone's blog this week. Stay tuned because I have about 3 months of pictures that I will be posting!

Two blogs reports in one week?

2009-04-21T02:11:00.009-05:00

These pictures were taken a few weeks ago. After taking Carson to Occupational Therapy we went across the street to Crown Center. They had a Wizard of Oz exhibit going on and Carson really seemed to like it. They had a small display of Wizard items such as lunch boxes, shoes, X-mas ornaments, and books to name a few. They also had some hands on activities and tunnels and slides.

Well it hasn't gotten to be any smoother this week either. Saturday night around 6:40PM Coltan and Cody's grandfather peacefully left us and went to Heaven. He was surrounded by Chris and his brother, sisters, and mother. Services will be tomorrow and Wednesday. I'm not quite sure if it has really hit my boys yet and I'm hoping that they can understand. Grandpa Jerry was always at their soccer games, took them out of town this past January, and loved to teach the boys some golfing tips. I know that we have lost a few other family members but Jerry was by far the closest to my boys, so the impact of this will hit them a lot harder. I'm really sad for Chris as well. I could never imagine losing one of my parents and I know that these next few weeks/months are going to be very challenging for him.

Yesterday was Cheyenne's BIG 1 birthday. Chey is Chris and Jessica's little girl and Coltan and Cody's half sister. My mother went to Gates BBQ and bought them some food and we made a cake for her as well. That way the Hoffman family doesn't have to worry about preparing for the birthday and a funeral.

Today went kind of smooth. Carson and I did have to take a car ride and he was very upset during the whole ride. He kept asking me not to bang my car.....he is still frightened over the wreck and I hope that the more we get in the car, the more comfortable he will be.

Just like everything else in my life, this too shall pass.

Soccer tournaments, Birthday party,ER visits, and a car wreck

2009-04-18T23:57:00.000-05:00

Well a few weekends ago we went to Springfield IL for a soccer tournament and we knew going up there that it would be raining on Saturday and snow on Sunday. The drive there was just under 5 hours so I thought we better leave Friday night so we would have some time to rest. Saturday morning it was cold and windy and it was sprinkling on and off. The boys ended up winning that game 2-1. Carson and I sat in the car due to the weather. The next game was at 1:15 so we had time to grab lunch and come right back to the fields. This game......very wet. It poured the whole game and the wind chill was 28. Some of the boys were crying because they were so cold. We ended up losing that game and as we were driving out of the parking lot, it was a mud hole and everyone was getting stuck. So I put my Yukon in 4 wheel drive and we managed to get some traction "sideways" and finally hit some pavement. I had mud on my windshield and everywhere else.

We drove back to the hotel and because of the nasty weather, everyone decided to stay at the hotel. We watched some basketball and went to bed. When we woke up the next morning we saw around 5 inches of snow on the ground. Needless to say, tournament cancelled.

The next day we had Carson's GI appointment. He is scheduled now to do an upper GI and then we will schedule his nissen. That date isn't set. Carson did start battling his asthma again so I have been giving him breathing treatments every 4 hours.

The very next weekend it was off to Des Moines for another soccer tournament. I decided to drive up there Saturday morning since it is only about a 3 hour drive and Cody's first game wasn't until 12:45. We got up, loaded everything in the car and off we went. Cody's first game they won 4-0. We ran to the hotel and checked in and back to a 4:30 game which he won 3-1. So everyone was planning on meeting at a local pizza shop around 7:00 and we decided to head back to the hotel. While driving we saw message boards on the highway that said "BLIZZARD WARNINGS". Needless to say, tournament was cancelled at 7:05 on Saturday. So we checked out of the hotel and rushed back to Kansas City.

Carson turned the BIG 3 on April 7th. I had friends and family go to Godfathers pizza for his birthday and he just loved it. It was like 3 Christmas' all over again!

Then came Easter. Easter is my holiday for the family so we had turkey, ham, potato casserole, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, homemade breads, and pie! It turned out to be a very nice time. Since it was raining we held a Easter egg hunt inside my house.

Then came Carson's asthma again. I took him last Monday to see his primary and we put him on steroids. Went back Tuesday for his asthma and Dr T sent us for a chest x-ray just to rule out pneumonia. They X-rays came back negative. So we went back home and I started giving him more breathing treatments and put him on the pulse ox monitor. He was running in the mid 80's and he his heart was racing at 160-170. So I called his primary and told him I was taking him to Childrens. After spending 7 hours there, he was finally opening up enough that we could be discharged. The doctor was leaning towards admitting him but decided I could handle him at me since I had all of his monitors and knew what I was doing.

Wednesday we went back to his primary at the request of the ER just for a recheck.

Thursday, I ended up having an allergic reaction for an unknown reason and had to go to the hospital where I stayed for several hours. After my breathing slowed down and my throat didn't feel so tight, and I could swallow in front of the doctor, he said he would discharge me. So now I'm also on steroids and he placed me on an antibiotic because he said my white blood cells were elevated and he didn't want me getting worse.

Friday, Carson and I were on the highway and was in the far right lane. A car was getting on the highway and for some reason didn't see my HUGE vehicle. I slowed down to about 40 miles an hour because he was getting ready to hit my front end. I looked to see if I could change lanes and there was a semi next to me. So just as the car cleared me another car was getting on the highway and she never saw me and was looking over her shoulder so she could merge on and plowed right into the back of my vehicle. Carson screamed a sound that I have never heard before. The police showed up and moved us off the highway. The officer came over to me and placed his hand on my shoulder and said I know your not going to be okay with what I'm about to tell you. I said okay, please tell me anyways. He stated that the lady that hit me......NO INSURANCE! I just about lost it. Carson was complaining of a headache and my shoulder and collar bone were killing me so I drove both of us to the ER. Carson is fine and I didn't have any broken bones.

So today, the boys are in another tournament and my mom took them so I could rest up. I have bruises on my shoulder and it goes down diagonal where my seat belt is at, my neck and lower back are hurting and I have a bruise on my jaw and my elbow. Carson has been extremely clingy today and keeps crying for mommy's white car.

I'm sure most of you can read this and tell that I'm not only ready for this week to be over but this month.

I promise I will try to get some pictures posted in the next couple of days. The hotel we stayed in at Springfield IL was so old and they did not have Internet in the rooms so I wasn't able to download any. I did however get to read over 100 pages in my book so that was a plus

Oh.....Where to start????

2009-03-26T21:19:00.002-05:00

Hello everyone. I just wanted you to know that at the request of EVERYONE, I thought I better get on here and post before the search party comes out here.

I'm not sure where to start considering it has been over a month since I have posted. I would like to start off by saying THANK YOU for all of your e-mails, comments, and even phone calls. I have been trying to deal with a lot of info and every time I think things make sense, they don't.

I will start off with and update on Coltan. He is doing well in school. His report card looked great. Soccer for outdoors has already started and he is currently on two teams again. He practices every Monday and Thursday night. He is also in track in his middle school so he leaves for the bus every morning at 6:55 AM and gets home around 5:15PM. So as you can tell, he is usually very tired.

Cody has also started full swing of soccer. He also is on two teams (one of which him and Coltan play together on). So he practices Monday night with Coltan and then Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday on his other team. His practices are about 40 minutes away so we are going to start racking up the miles again on the car.

Coltan and Cody's Great Grandfather passed away on March 17th. That week was also spring break for the boys so thankfully they didn't have to miss any school. Chris and Jessica came and picked them up and left for Kentucky to arrange the funeral. Jessica said it was a very nice service and that a lot of the small town residence showed up to pay their respects. She also said she couldn't believe how well the boys were for that time while out of town.

Coltan and Cody's grandma and grandfather were not able to make the trip from Kansas City to Kentucky because Jerry (their grandfather) is still on hospice. He is still at home and has had problems with fluid in the lungs and stomach. He has been put on oxygen and has been having a decrease in appetite. The boys and I continue to pray everyday for Jerry to have fulfilled days and no pain.

Now on to Carson, well he still keeps me very, very busy!! He had an appointment with his GI Dr back in Feb and Dr K thought most of his problems with not eating was due to acid reflux. So he switched him from Prevacid to Nexium. We went back three weeks later and he was down another 8 ounces. So now we are giving him Nexium through his NG tube. We actually go back this Monday for a follow up but Dr K is pretty sure that he will end up with the Nissen. That is a patch that goes over the hole from his stomach to his esophagus. It will prevent the acid to go from his stomach upward causing all of his pain. So this will be another surgery that I'm really not looking forward to. I took him to the Dr and was really hoping that we would get the NG out and found out surgery was a very strong possibility. I did however talk to Pam from Rhett's blog and she said it was the best thing for him. So with that info, I'm keeping a positive attitude.

Carson also did the sleep study and actually passed!! They are looking at his iron level and testing him for lead. We went today and drew blood for it and would you believe my strong big boy was actually laughing with the nurses while they were poking him? I couldn't have been more proud!

We did the heart monitor for 30 days and wow....that was exhausting all in itself. The doctor contacted me several times for his bouts of bradycardia (meaning he has events where his heart beats to slow). He did order a pulseoximeter for my house for his nap times and sleeping at night. That alarm also goes off a lot as well. I'm not sure when we are getting rid of the monitor. Dr A has tossed around the possibility of giving him some oxygen at night but we haven't moved forward.

His sleeping hasn't gotten much better at night. We still go to sleep anywhere from 10:00PM -3:00AM, but on average around midnight. So I'm still trying to work on that with him as well.

Carson also still goes to Occupational therapy every week and has improved on so many of his motor skills. He still uses all of his sign language and Spanish and now talks in sentences with 7+ words in it. He is also amazing me by starting to write "some" letters and numbers. He is able to write A, C, H, I, L, O, T, U, V and write 1, 3, 4, and 0. He tries to draw cars and remembers to put on two wheels. He also tries to draw stick people and triangle and squares, and circles. He had an appointment the other day with the Behavioral Medicine for his eating and possible autism ( which he does not have) and the evaluator stated that he is one of the most intelligent two year old that doesn't have autism she has ever seen. She even went as far as saying that a lot of the things she tested him on, he was above a 4 year old. I'm not quite sure where he got those brains but hey, I'll take it!

I have a months worth of pictures to download and start posting and will get to that hopefully soon.

Cody has a tournament this weekend in Springfield, Ill and according to the radar, they are expecting rain on Friday, Saturday, and Snow on Sunday. So I'm thinking there is a very good chance that Carson and I will be spending most of our weekend inside the hotel. My plan is to spend some time downloading some pictures of Coltan, Cody, and Carson and try to catch up on EVERY ONE'S blogs. I know that I have about a month to go back on but if I take a few a day I'm hoping to have everyone caught up by Monday. Coltan will stay in town. He has three soccer games this weekend as well.

I just wanted to say thanks again to everyone who has tried to communicate with me and make sure we are all okay. I will also try to update later some of my life issues. I knew this post would be very long so I was thinking just update the boys today and start with me later this weekend??? I feel like my long break is now over and I'm feeling like blogging again and following along with everyone else. You all have been such a huge support system for me and there had been so many nights that I wanted to jump on and vent but for one reason or another just thought it would be best to be silent. Overall I'm getting stronger, healthier, and happier everyday. I just had to clear my head and make sure I was keeping focused on staying away from certain negative behaviors.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Friday and a great start to the weekend.

Carson's new blankie

2009-02-19T23:27:00.004-06:00

Well I have been battling some new challenges this week so I have remained silent. I will hopefully be able to clear my head and move forward.

Coltan and Cody have been home every night this week and their Grandfather is in need of some huge prayers. He has been battling cancer for the last few years and now it has come to a dead end with his treatment. I have been very upset over the latest news. I'm not only praying for him but Coltan, Cody, their dad Chris and his mother, wife, and three other children. What they will endure over this journey is going to be extremely difficult on all.

Carson has had a better week. He is eating a little better which is a huge step forward in my book. His heart monitor still goes off several times a day so we are calling those strips in. Baby steps right??

Now for the pictures. My dear friend Lacey from Jaxson's Fight was thoughtful enough to take the time and make Carson this awesome Thomas the train blanket. Carson LOVES it. He is a very big blankie boy and he always has to sleep with one. Also he carries one around the house and likes to sit down and put it over his lap and then play cars on top of it. When we got this in the mail, you should have seen his face....it was priceless. So Lacey, THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART! Carson has even named it. He calls it his "Choo Choo" blanket.

Here we are showing off our new blankie. Still being a ham with his blanket.

Look how sweet he is. I can sit up all night and watch him sleep. He is such a blessing.

Carson's date on Valentine's Day

2009-02-16T12:20:00.000-06:00

Well it happened to be another busy weekend. Chris ended up getting the boys on Friday so I didn't up having them all weekend like I first thought. So Friday night I ended up going over to my Grandpa Clydes house and also met my father and niece. We spent most of the night over there and took him out to eat. By the time I got home which was around 9:30PM, Carson had fallen asleep in the car and I took him straight to bed.

Saturday morning I went to bed around 12:45AM because of his last feed and then Carson woke up with an event around 3:00AM. He woke up and was holding his chest and crying. I recorded the event and called it in to the company. I finally got him to go back to sleep around 5:00?AM and then I was back up around 7:30AM. So Carson and I didn't do much of anything all day until it was time for our Valentine Date! We met my dear friend Rachel at a Mexican restaurant and wouldn't you know it, Carson had to show off and eat, and eat, and eat. It was unbelievable. But then to think about it, he only ate a 1/2 cup of Fruit Loops earlier so I I'm glad he did so well. It sure seems like every time pretty Rachel is around, Carson will eat.....hmmmm.

After dinner I was heading to the boys 9:00PM game and my mother called and said the tournament was 2 games behind. I looked back and Carson was just about out so I decided to head home and not stick around and watch. The boys team is average 13-14 years old and they played up on the high school level which were 15 -18 years old. They ended up losing their first game 3-5. But my mom said they did hold their own and Cody did sneak in and score 2 of the 3 goals. The poor boys didn't get home til 12:30 AM and Chris and Cody were back up at 5:00 AM for his 6AM game. Chris didn't work until 8:00AM on Sunday morning so he said he could take Cody to his game!!

So Sunday Carson and I went to church and I had Coltan and Cody stay back so they could sleep. Carson and I then went to eat breakfast with the family and Carson ate almost one pancake and some ham from my ham and cheese omelet! I was thinking maybe the medicine is really starting to work. (unfortunately that was ALL he ate all day). We then went and got the boys and they played their next game and tied 4-4. Cody again was smoking and got 3 of the goals! Coltan played very well in the back. Then they went to another game and played and they tied that team as well. 'The final score was 5-5 and Cody once again had 3 goals! Coltan played in the back again and played hard. Because of their 0-1-2 they did not advance to the finals. Overall, they did play very well considering the boys they played against were 1-3 years older than them. I was very proud of them. Some of these tournaments we play up like this. It isn't about winning, but getting a good challenge to make them stronger players.

Today All we plan on doing is go through all of Carson's toys and downsizing his very full toy box. That is probably going to be all of our excitement for the day.

Here are a couple of pictures of Carson's date Rachel on Valentine's day. I think she had the best date ever!!!

My early Valentine

2009-02-13T00:20:00.000-06:00

We had another busy day. First it all started when the boys woke up late for school. So I had to get Carson up and load him in the car and guess what? The car wouldn't start. So I had my neighbor come over and help me jump it. Thank goodness just a dead battery but my car isn't even two years old so I'm hoping this is an isolated problem.

After dropping off the boys it was off to Occupational Therapy. Carson as usual had a wonderful time. He worked on his motor skills by cutting some things out and then we worked on oral skills. He blew some different whistles and that is always fun for him. Then we ate some different textured foods and he really only wanted the cookies. Shocking. So Nancy saw that once again, Carson didn't really want to eat. After that I met a friend at Fritz and Company and Carson did eat almost a whole hot dog and a few french fries.

Crown Center had a Wizard of Oz exhibit and we went through that as well. I took some pictures and will post those over the next few days.

Then it was off to go back home. The boys had their usual soccer practice and Carson fell asleep in the car so I just sat there for the hour. It was kind of nice to have a little peace and quiet.

I was supposed to have several family members come over tonight for my homemade chicken and dumplings but we ended up postponing it until tomorrow since a couple of the members are sick. I'm also wondering if Carson isn't coming down with something because he ended up sleeping for three hours. I hope he isn't.

Oh and I forget to mention that the heart monitor finally showed up yesterday so he is attached and did have a couple events tonight. His strip was forwarded on to the cardiologist on call so we are currently waiting to find out if any action needs to be taken.

I had to take out Carson's NG tube tonight because it was going on 30 days and needed to be switched out to the other nostril. He actually did fairly well considering. But we did have another event and it was forwarded on as well.

I talked to Jessica (Coltan and Cody's step mom) and it sounds like the stomach flu is going through all of them so I will probably plan on keeping the boys with me all weekend so that they don't catch it and bring it back to Carson. So with that said, we are in for a very busy weekend. The boys are in another soccer tournament this weekend and we have a 9PM game Saturday night and then I will be the proud soccer mom and get up at 4AM on Sunday morning to get ready and get them to a 6AM game. We will then go home and sleep for a bit and then be at church by 10:30AM. Then we have two more soccer games scheduled for Sunday afternoon as well. I already told Coltan and Cody that I plan on eating breakfast and lunch in the vehicle. But we will be home in time for dinner. I will probably put a roast in the crockpot so I'm not cooking anything.

Monday of course in Presidents day so the boys will be out of school. Depending on how well we do in the tournament, if we advance to finals, they will play it on Monday. So if anyone wants to chauffeur us around so I can sleep, the job is open for any takers! LOL

I will try and get some pictures of the boys this weekend as long as Carson cooperates.

That is about it for now.

Here is what Nancy and Carson worked on. He got to fold the paper in half and cut it out for me. Yup, I'm a nerdy mom, it is on my fridge! Here he is showing off his work. I think (with a lot of help from Nancy)he did a great job.

He is cutting a straw. It is funny because it is supposed to be fun to watch the piece fly and Carson is more worried about picking it up and throwing it in the trash.

Working on our oral skills with pary favors.

They were getting each other.
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He is soooo cute.

Now it is swing time. He loves to swing on these.

One last smile for all of the Carson lovers.

HAPPY FRIDAY EVERONE!!!

Brotherly Love

2009-02-11T19:00:00.000-06:00

These have always been some of my favorite pictures of the boys. Carson LOVES his two brothers. I watch Coltan and Cody everyday with Carson and I can tell how much they love him! Thank goodness for his two siblings. He gets to play basketball, soccer, get chased around, go for walks around the block, play cars, and watch movies with him. Carson loves to wrestle with them as well. He thinks it is super funny when he tip toes up to them and tickles them.

Coltan and Cody also help me with Carson's baths, diapers, breathing treatment, and feeds.

Thanks boys for all of your help. I love how big you two have grown up for our family.

Another Beautiful Day

2009-02-10T23:35:00.000-06:00

Well we hit 70 again today but tomorrow is supposed to be back down to the 30's and possibly have snow. How crazy is this midwest weather?

The heart monitor didn't arrive again today but we have OT tomorrow so I will stop by the cardio clinic and see if they can try to track it. I want to get the 30 days of home bound over BEFORE spring!

I'm sure as most of you could figure out, I took Carson outside again today and we had such a great time. I took him walking and we walked just over two miles. That is twice this week I have been able to get OUT and exercise. It really feels great. After that Carson got to play outside in the backyard most of the day. He was soooo silly today. First he played in the kitchen sink and got drenched, then he got a hold of a marker and drew on his leg so I put him in the bath and he didn't want to get out at all. Then he kept running in and out of my house and he was taking a plastic cup and would fill it up with water and then pour it over the railing on my deck. He had a very odd obsession with water today. But he kept me entertained.

So then the boys got home from school and Carson got to play a little b-ball and soccer with them. I think he whipped them but Coltan and Cody would never admit it! LOL

So here is the interesting part of my night.....So I'm sitting in my house folding a load of towels and Carson keeps running in and out of the house with Coltan and Cody comes in and says to me "Mom, I found a lost kid", so of course I'm thinking they are ready to give Carson up and I say "okay". Cody then says "no mom, really". This does sound a little different , so I turn around and look and here is a little boy standing in my doorway and I have no clue who he is. He has a cast on his right arm and looks pretty shaken. So I ask him where he came from and if he was supposed to be at a friends house and a hundred more questions trying to get some sort of idea who this 7 year old named Tyler is. He is holding a bag of gummy worms and I asked him where he got it. He told me that he got it at the gas station (which is just a little over a mile from my house). I ask him how he got there and he told me he walked. Okay, I'm really getting no where with this child and felt it was best to call PD and request them to send out an officer.

So while we are waiting I ask him about his arm and he is very vague in answering. All he would tell me is tha he fell. Couldn't tell me what he was doing, where he was, or when it happened. So the officer arrived and I told him everything I knew and Tyler wanted to keep walking away from us so I finally put my arms around him and held him there so we could get some answers. The officer decided that he would drive the boy around and look for a "brown truck" parked in a driveway. As they were heading to the vehicle a lady pulls up and gets out and very calmly says "Tyler, where have you been"? He starts to bolt out onto the very busy street that I live on and the officer grabs him in time and helps him across the street. This mother then looks at me and gives me an evil eye like I'm burdening her. I apologize and tell her that I had no idea who this little fellow is and I thought it would be safe to call the police department since they had more ways to figure out where he lives. I then turn around and the officer told me he needed my info after he was done with this lady. So he talks to her for about 10 minutes and at no time is she looking stressed, frazzled, scared, or whatever else when your missing a child. She tells the officer that she saw him walk out of the house about 30 minutes to present and when she decided he wasn't going to come home, she got in her car and started driving around the neighborhood. She at one time asked the officer how much longer he planned on standing there asking questions and lecturing her. He then asked her for her name and address for his report and then asked her "oh by the way, how much longer were you going to wait before you called us to assist in looking for your son:? Now keep in mind it is close to 7:00 at this time and she repies that she would have called by 8 or 9!! Okay pardon my french here but WHAT THE HELL????

Who in their right mind lets their 7 year old out of the house and wander around a neighborhood and doesn't show concern???? So come to find out they actually live another 1 1/2 miles further away from the gas station that Tyler walked to.

After the lady left, the officer came over and he was just ticked off and how this lady didn't really care. He was so angry and suspects there is more to this story that he is issuing her a citation for endangerment of a child and he will contact DFS and also wants this boys broken arm looked at a little closer. He told me that he didn't want to give this child back but couldn't prove any immediate danger.

So what am I proud of most about this whole story??? Cody saw this little boy walking alone in the dark across the street and MY BOY got involved!! Who knows where this little boy would have walked to next. There are several streets between my house and his house and he may have walked up and down several streets or worse yet ran into bad person as well. (yes I live in the 19th safest city in America but have a registered sex offender that lives about a mile away).

Cody, you have made me proud today. You saw something that didn't look quite right and you were able to get this little boy to talk to you and establish that he needed our help. These are the very moments that I'm feeling wonderful as a mother and realize that I am raising you right.

Coltan, I'm proud of you too. You helped me ask this boy questions and you tried to find out his last name and were just as concerned as the rest of us. I'm also very proud of you that when the officer did arrive, you knew it was best without me asking to take Carson away so that I could talk with the officer. It is nice to see you step up and help out. Thank you for that.

Carson on the other, he is way tooooo friendly. He knows that his dad drives a police car so he thought he could run over to this officer and give him hugs. The officer at one point picked him up and he gave him a really big hug. Carson has such a great personality. The officer has a little soft spot for him now.

one more day

2009-02-09T23:11:00.001-06:00

Well yesterday had it's ups and downs. We started off getting up at the wonderful time of 3:00AM and since we were up, I decided that we would get ready and go to church. Since it was my mother's birthday, we decided to go with her to her church and not mine. It was really cute because Carson is really excited when we do go to church and when we got there he looked at me and said "mommy, new church"? I told him that we were going to Gra Gra's church and he kept saying different church. So he knew we weren't at "HIS" church.

After church, my step dad, aunt Tammy and us took my mom out to an early lunch at Cracker Barrel. Everyone seemed to have a great time. Then my mom was off to watch my niece play some soccer.

Carson and I were on our way home and since I live next door to Lake Jacomo and it was still fairly nice day, we decided to drive around the lake and see if we could find any ducks or geese to feed. We didn't see any but did find a slide and Carson really got excited so I thought what the heck. We went to the playground but it was a little windy so we only stayed for about 15 minutes. While there, I could tell Carson wasn't feeling well and he told me he was sick. I asked him what was wrong and he pointed to his head. I then felt him and he was burning up so off to the house we went. He ended up going to sleep by 3PM and then woke up around 1:00AM. That much sleep......I know the kid is sick!

He went back to sleep around 8:00AM and then woke up around noon . I didn't do much today just because I'm still exhausted from our "fun" sleeping schedule. The boys came home from school and played outside for a while. I ended up making Beef Stroganoff and now two of my boys are in bed. Anyone want to guess which child is still up???

Last bit of news, I just wanted to tell my dear friend AMY from Kaden and Angel Ava congrats on her newest arrival. I know that Nate, Amy, Kaden, and Baby Brody are all doing well and I'm just so honored to get to know such a wonderful family and get to watch her beautiful journey. Amy, I'm so happy for you!! I cannot wait to see him.

Here is the view from the playground of Lake Jacomo. I can't wait to go back in the spring and take some more pictures. Very peaceful.

Another view.

As you can see, we were the only ones there. Carson had the whole area to himself.

Wanted to give me a ham smile.

Going down the fun slide.

Stopped to say hello.

He couldn't decide which slide to go down. Decisions, decisions...

He was playing peek a boo with me.

70 Degrees in Kansas City....in February???

2009-02-08T20:46:00.001-06:00

The most important thing that I would like to post about today is HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!

I will post more about today a little bit later since I wanted to share the great pictures of Carson yesterday when we had wonderful weather.

Yes everyone, it made it up to 70 degrees yesterday and it is February!! How lucky were we? Carson is supposed to get his heart monitor Monday and we are supposed to stay close to the house as much as possible since it goes through my phone lines. So we thought we better just get out and do something fun. First we went to a park with a great walking trail and I walked for a while as I pushed Carson in the stroller. He had a ball and this park had lots of people walking their dogs so Carson decided to do a lot of barking. (yes, we don't get out that often). As we were strolling, I heard someone yell my name and long behold, here comes my friends Jimmy and Denise and they were walking their dog. So they walked with us for a few and then they were off to get back home (which really was a ways from this park).After the walk, we went over and played at the playground. Carson got on the swing and didn't like it at all. So we stuck with the slide and he ended up playing on that for 30-40 minutes. After we packed up and were getting ready to leave, I thought I better call Denise and Jimmy and make sure I didn't need to pick them up and help them home. LOL I called the home phone first and holy cow, she answered. Way to go Denise!!! You two are my heroes walking all that way. For real, how far was that? I'm really thinking over 5 miles????

So here is one of our first pictures. I know this is my child but he is so beautiful. I can just stare at him all day long.

We had to sit down so mommy could tie his shoes. I snuck another picture in before I did it.

Getting ready to go down the slide.

He stopped to say hello.

I love watching his hair in this one. He got done and said "mommy, I slide fast". He loved it~

Peeking out and telling me he was going to go down the bumpy slide.