Summer Fun!

 

We are missing our pool, but finding other ways to keep cool and stay busy this summer….

This is what we do with water balloons now!

Another week of swim class.  The kids both did great!  We held off on putting Grayson on swim team again this summer for my own selfish reasons…. wanted them to have the same schedule and Colbie wasn’t quite old enough.  Next summer they will both be able to join & do some meets!

Took the kids to several movies this summer.  I think we made about five this year!  I was a little anxious about taking all three, but quickly got the hang of it.   Grayson & Colbie are my little helpers with popcorn & drinks and they know to sit tight in their seats when Mama has to excuse Mr. squirmy worm to take a walk & settle down.  This is another new smart aleck trick he’s picked up.  If his fingers aren’t in his nose, their in his ears! 

Brutus had an eventful few days!  When Blaine was away on his fishing trip, a neighbor contacted me about finding a wandering tortoise.  After seeing the picture and hearing her describe him, I felt awful and knew it must have been him.  They delivered him for me and he went right back in his hole without any hesitation.  A couple of hours later, Grayson comes home after lunch with Buddy and I asked him to go check on Brutus, as I’m not near brave enough to climb down his dark, smelly bunker.  Moments later, Grayson comes running inside, eyes ready to pop out of his head, saying, “Mama, there are TWO tortoises!”  What are the chances?  Long story short, we kept the new guy for a few days till we finally found the owner.  Thank God because Brutus was not happy about this outsider and definitely showed him who’s boss.  Several tortoise brawls took place to the point where Brutus had flipped the other guy on his back.  Good thing Grayson found him when he did!

Brutus is the big guy on the left.   Blaine’s crazy enough to crawl down the hole!

This is what we’re doing with Sissy when the house is eerily quiet!

Although we do miss our pool, we’ve had so much fun at our lakefront property once a week!!  Haha!  The water gets so deep when they irrigate, the kids dig in the mud, paddle around on their little raft and just have a blast!  Chase loves it too!

Skyler even comes out for all the excitement!

We are finally off on vacation!  Well, Blaine & the kids are at least.  I got to spend a couple nights last weekend and then had to come back last night for work.  One more day though and then we have two full weeks off!  I head back up to camp tomorrow, where we will spend this week in the mountains and then we’ll head to the beach after that!  Then it’s off to school again!  I can’t believe how quickly this summer flew by.  As busy as these kids are, I’m not ready for them to go off to school again :(

This is our view from the trailer.  We are camped just up the road from where we stayed last summer, about two miles from Woods Canyon Lake. 

Grayson found the biggest dandelion I’ve ever seen and a horny toad all in the first day!  We named him Spike.  Grayson has the craziest luck.  The camp host told us that Grayson’s was the first horny toad he had ever seen in the area; however, this was Grayson’s second year in a row finding one.  He was a pretty little guy.  They named him Spike and made him a little house out of a Corona box.  Even though he seemed pretty content, Grayson felt bad and let him go after a couple of days. 

“Hey Mama, look what I can do!”  Yep, he biffed it right after I took this picture!  Grayson learned how to split wood.  The bike hats were a requirement of Jed’s.  He’s pretty insistent and Grayson is an amazing sport!  And splitting wood is not as easy as it looks!

Painting rocks and pinecones… and shoes and hair and whatever else they get their hands on!

Coming back to a quiet, and I mean QUIET house last night was not as incredible as it sounds.  As much as I should enjoy the peace and quiet at night, I miss them terribly already.  Even Chase is in the mountains :(  Can’t wait to hug them again tomorrow!

Happy 4th of July!

We had another great fourth of July weekend in Laguna with family and friends.  Unfortunately Brittney & the gang as well as my brother and Kim were unable to make it this year. Although it was a quieter year and a quicker turn-around for us due to Blaine’s work, we still had a blast while there and made more great memories with the kids.  We took them to baby beach on Friday and then Salt Creek on Saturday for the 4th.  Two awesome beach days with some adorable little beach babes!

Jed really enjoyed the beach this year.  Last year he was just a baby and only crawling. This year he was running and digging in the sand, splashing in the water and trying to keep up with Sissy and GG!  You’ll notice his hat is on backwards in most of the pictures.  That’s just how he rolls now.  In addition to being obsessed with shoes, he has a new love of hats worn gangsta style!

The Friday before last, we took this little guy to Phoenix for a routine check up with his cardiologist.  While we are doing our best to stay positive, Blaine and I left this time around feeling a little down.  I will start with the good news.  About a month ago, we received a letter stating that Dr. Stock, Jed’s cardiologist was leaving Phoenix Children’s.  We were totally crushed with this news, as we absolutely love Jed’s doctor and have so much faith and confidence in him.  After meeting with him at this past appointment, we learned that he is not retiring or leaving Arizona, but will be opening his own practice in the Phoenix area. This was a huge relief for us!  The other good stuff is that Jed’s oxygen stats remain in the high 90’s and is overall growth and appearance look great!  The not so good news is that the reading from his echo tell a different story.  In non-medical terms, his heart is working much harder than it should to compensate for his continuous growth.  It’s at a point where another ballooning of the pulmonary valve should happen.  Dr. Stock wants to see him back in November and reassess after another echo.  We will be hoping and praying things turn for the better on their own.  If not, it looks like Jed may be having another ballooning before the end of the year. 

Every time we go to these appointments, it’s such a slap-in-the face reminder to Blaine and I to let go of all the little things and to enjoy every moment that God gives us.  It’s amazing how quickly we forget to do just that and get hung up on negative thoughts and insignificant daily stresses.  Deep down, we know this journey isn’t over for Jed, but I think that we’ve both been a little too hopeful, believing that he was done and wouldn’t need anymore intervention for a long long time.  Having to hear Dr. Stock revisit another ballooning so soon and discuss possible open-heart surgery down the road were not words we wanted to hear.  Nevertheless, this is the path God has chosen for our little man and we know He is watching over him always.  Our blue eyed dimpled smile bundle of joy is a constant reminder of how precious life is and how lucky we are. 

On the evening of the fourth, the Andersons had us over for such a fun an delicious clam bake!  Although I do enjoy some fish, I get a little squealy when it comes seafood that’s still in the shell!  Well, I was pleasantly surprised and not only found myself enjoying it (dipped in gobs of butter!), but I was super impressed with how many clams and mussels the kids devoured! 

Poor baby had a major booboo at the party, doing a face plant into some broken glass.  We felt like horrible parents, being that our little grown up, Grayson had warned us all not once, but a few times that Jed was carrying around a glass.  Of course he ended up dropping that glass before any of us got to him and sliced the lid of his eye pretty good and is still black and blue today.  We are just SO grateful, as it definitely could have been a much scarier scenario.  Here’s our little boxer wolfing down some homemade peach cobbler after his accident!

On Sunday, Blaine took Grayson out for a boys fishing day on the pier.  Blaine either has amazing luck or expert fishing skills or maybe a little of both, because they managed to catch a handful of fish in just a few hours! 

Colbie and I stayed back an had a fun and eventful girls day.  We headed to the mall, got some hot chocolate, hit up the candy shack and the Disney Store and then I surprised her at Claire’s with REAL earrings!  She’s been wanting her ears pierced for sometime now, so I thought, why not today?!  Well, I should have thought that through a little more and waited for the assistant so that she could have had both ears pierced at the same time.  I thought, “Colbie’s tough,” she was super excited when I told her & I had no idea she would cry and get herself so worked up the way she did after the first piercing.  We were seriously moments away from leaving with one ear pierced.  Thanks to a ton of patience from “Miss Erica” and over an hour of walking around and convincing Colbie to go through with it, we finally got the other ear done!  Of course she didn’t cry at all after the second piercing and her mood immediately changed from fear to ecstatic!  She loves them and wants to show everyone her new permanent fashion accessory!  I will post pictures soon.  Unfortunately, since returning to Yuma Sunday, my phone broke and I lost tons of pictures and videos.  So glad I took my other camera this trip, so at least I had some pictures from the fourth.

We’ve also adopted another family member!  Meet Brutus!  He’s just a small little six year, 75 pound African Sulcata tortoise!  Yep, he will most likely outlive all of us and over double in size! What the hell were we thinking?!  Well, in addition to learning that his previous owners were moments away from turning him into “turtle soup,” we learned that 75% of his diet is grass (which we have a lot of) so we figured he should be a relatively low maintenance pet.  Ha ha!  That’s what they told us before we realized we had to build him a six foot deep, five by five foot wide brick sealed “bunker!”  I’m so bummed I lost all the pictures of the building process & the finished underground castle we built for Mr. Brutus.  The kids are loving their new pet and so far, he seems to enjoy his new home and gets along great with the rest of the funny farm!