Let it snow!

Aidan has thoroughly been enjoying his Christmas break as we have had lots of snow since he has been off school.

Needless to say the UPS man that we adore is looking to spring already. While driving home on Christmas Eve (in our blizzard)he turned the corner a block away from home and slid into the median. It smashed the front wheel, tire and undercarriage of his car :( ! Thankfully nobody else was around and he wasn't hurt. So a little time in the shop and the car will be good as new.

It snowed again last night another 2 inches. Aidan has been out playing all day, I can't seem to drag him inside even to warm up.

He built this snowman (while singing the tune to Star Wars at the top of his lungs, thankful the neighbors were all at work LOL) and now he is building an igloo with his buddy from next door.

I am so thankful that it is warm enough to play in the snow as the next 10 days look like they will be bitterly cold.

Alayna is doing really well and has recovered nicely. To look at her playing and in constant motion you would never know how sick she was just a week ago. Thank you for all the prayers on her behalf, we so appreciate them!

We hope you have a safe and happy New Years!

We will be staying home and enjoying the warmth of our home and the giggles of our children.

How can you beat that for a celebration?

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas,

We pray that you have a wonderful day today and take time to truly reflect on the reason for celebrating this day.

Happy Birthday Jesus! We are so thankful for you.



It is definitely a white Christmas for us...blizzard warnings through tonight. Be safe everyone if you have to travel.






She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

~Matthew 1:21

The tooth fairy even works on Christmas Eve!

For the past couple weeks Aidan has had a loose tooth. It had gotten so loose that all I had to do was touch it and it fell out yesterday.

Things were fine until later in the day when we realized that we left the tooth on the kitchen table and it obviously was knocked off because it was nowhere to be found...either I vacuumed it up or one of the dogs snacked on it!

Oh my then the tears began! The tooth fairy will never come if I don't have a tooth to leave for her! I did my best to console him and even dug through the vacuum bag with no luck (as I was digging through the bag he said thanks mom for loving me so much!)

I finally decided that a note would have to do so I explained to Aidan since he is so honest (to a fault sometimes) that I think the tooth fairy would understand and believe him if he wrote her a note to explain what happened.
He quickly agreed and sat down and wrote a note that said...Dear tooth fairy, I lost my tooth but it is now in the dog's tummy.

So funny.

Thankfully the blizzard they are forecasting didn't slow her down and she was working on Christmas Eve leaving money for him to find this morning. Whew! One emergency thwarted!

Alayna does have 5 new teeth instead of 4 as I thought over the weekend. I guess that tooth fairy likes just making one trip to our house. She drops them off and picks them up in one fell swoop. Alayna now has 8 teeth ~ 4 top and 4 bottom.

Alayna is doing really well. She has a cough and little congestion when she wakes up in the mornings but otherwise is doing great. She is even allowing me to suction out her nose with no fight. I was sure after a weekend of deep suctioning that she would never let me near her with a bulb syringe again.

One funny today...we always put our tree up the day after Thanksgiving and both our kids have always left the ornaments and packages alone. Well today Ms. A thought since it is Christmas Eve I will get into some trouble. She had ripped open one of Aidan's presents and was chewing on the wrapping paper when I found her. Stinker! I told you she is feeling better!

Dismissed at last...

Alayna did really well today, didn't need suctioning at all so was dismissed from the hospital this evening. She was so excited to leave the hospital (and so was I).

Aidan on the other hand was having a blast and didn't want to leave. The staff let him pick out toys for Alayna and himself to play with while we were there. As I am still nursing, they fed both Alayna and I so needless to say Aidan was happy to come in and clean up any left overs...he said they cook better than me! :)

Alayna was happy to have a nice warm bath at home. She wanted to check out everything in her room and play with every toy! Hopefully she will close her eyes soon and have a peaceful night.

Thanks for all your kind words and prayers. We are so very thankful to be home especially before Christmas.

Alayna update: Monday

Alayna is doing much better and slept most of Sunday getting caught up on that sleep she lost.

She still is needing deep suctioning especially at night. We are going to be here at least one more day but probably until Wednesday. She is still nursing well and ate breakfast this morning..she was SO excited when they wheeled in a high chair she HAD to eat right then. YEAH!
She has been playing, smiling and laughing so we know she is on the mend.

The tooth fairy was sweet to deliver Alayna's 4 new teeth here to the hospital they have all popped in since we arrived on Saturday . Wow you think that had anything to do with all the drainage?

Our nurse today has an 9 year old daughter with down syndrome. Isn't that cool how God just places people in our lives?

Jason is off today (and probably happy not to be out delivering on the busiest week of the year). His boss is very understanding and for that we are truly thankful too.

Thanks for all the prayers and support.

Hospital stay for Alayna

Alayna was admitted to the Children's hospital here in town on Saturday evening diagnosed with Bronchiolitis. She is having difficulty breathing, and maintaining her oxygen levels due to all the mucus build up in her lungs.
They are continuing to deep suctioning to clean out all the mucus.

She sounds better today although is still not keeping her levels up enough to be dismissed. Hopefully we will go home tomorrow.

Jason is staying home with Aidan and I am staying at the hospital with Alayna. She is nursing well so hopefully staying hydrated.
Please say a prayer for our sweet Alayna.

Sleepless in the heartland...

I know that God is always molding me but, does it have to be in the middle of the night?

Aidan has been struggling to fall asleep for weeks therefore is extremely overtired. He holds it together well for school then totally melts down in the evening when he gets home.

Last night hit an all time record of sleeplessness for everyone...Alayna woke up with a dirty diaper at 9 (but went back to sleep even with 5 teeth coming in and all the drooling and sinus drainage with that) but, Aidan was awake until after midnight then up again at 6:30am. AHHH!

We kept him home today so that he could catch up on sleep. Thankfully he did have a nap. We had to reschedule Alayna's PT because both kids had just fallen asleep when it was time to leave. Trust me I wasn't waking a sleeping baby or 6 year old.

Prayerfully tonight will be a better night sleep for all of us. We will take any and all prayers that you can offer us!

I pray that our words and actions will be pleasing to God as we raise our children.

Kaw Prairie JAM Christmas performance

Today at church the kids (preschool thru 5th graders) performed their Christmas songs and did a fantastic job.

They sang three songs, played instruments and did some readings.

Aidan, being the little organizer (wonder where that comes from?:) placed Grace behind him and was trying to arrange Rayne to be right in front of him so that they all would be in the pictures together. Good thinking son!

Aidan is on the 2nd row, left in the blue sweater vest & khaki pants, Grace (my niece) is behind

him in the pink sweater and Rayne (my niece) is on the front row in the red, velvet dress.

Rayne smiling for the camera!

It is amazing to see all the kids at our church. Five years ago our church began with about 70 people at our first service. We now have about 400 people worshipping weekly and my oh my look at all the kids... and this is just at the first service.

Yeah God for bringing these families and their wonderful children to learn about and celebrate you.

Snow day?

I can't say that we really had no school today due to the giant amounts of snow but, the wind chills were below freezing on top of the slick streets so Aidan had the day off. He wasn't really happy about it as he loves school and today was PJ day for his class. His class chose PJ day for their reward for their great behavior.

Unfortunately, there wasn't even enough snow to build a snowman or a fort (or cover all the grass for that matter!) Hence no pictures...my Yooper family members would be cracking up that we didn't have school today with the wee bit of snow on the ground! But, Aidan had lots of fun playing in it all the same. He, like me loves the snow and loves getting out in it. He was out for at hours today.

Alayna was very excited to have Aidan home today as she turned 14 months old. She thought having him home was a great way to celebrate the day. She continues to amaze us with her happy go lucky attitude and gentle spirit.

It was a relaxed day filled with games, giggles and good memories with my kids.

A visit from a cousin...

This weekend Alayna met her cousin, Leighton. He drove in for the night to attend the Chiefs-Broncos game (we love him even though he is a Broncos fan!)

Alayna watched him from across the room at first and kept smiling at him but, very quickly warmed up and was sitting in his lap, snuggling with him in no time. I haven't seen her take to someone so quickly.

Aidan, of course, never stopped talking the whole time Leighton was here.

Alayna even showed off her new creeping (crawling on all 4's) for him. She is still doing the inchworm sometimes but, this weekend we saw her crawling on hands and knees for the first time by herself across the room (chasing the dogs and Aidan).

Thanks for stopping in Leighton it was great to see you (Natalie we missed you!)

Christmas Program

Tonight the Lee Ann Britain Infant Development Center where Alayna goes to school held their annual, musical Christmas program. Each class came up and performed one song. (see the video above).

The baby class was a super hit! They played the bells Courtney made for them to "I was going to see Santa" while Ms. Erin, their music therapist sang and played her guitar.

After all the performances the kids enjoyed eating cookies and visiting with Santa. Aidan was so excited that Santa also included him with a present.

Alayna wasn't too sure what to think of Santa. She kept looking at him then looking at us Hmm...who is this strange guy with a fake beard?

As both kids were up at 5:45 am I expected them to drop right to sleep when we arrived home but, not to be so...Alayna was out about 8:30 thankfully but that brother...he didn't go to sleep until after 10. No more big cookies for him at nighttime. I pray he doesn't fall asleep during reading group today at school.