Happy New Year!

Update on Cooper: since I haven't posted since the Christmas post I thought I would do a quick update on Cooper's illness. I would say that Wednesday was the first day that he was finally feeling better. Up until Tuesday he didn't eat more than yogurt and oatmeal (and that was only on occasion) and he hardly said a word to anyone until Tuesday night either. We kept him pretty doped up on Tylenol and Motrin up until Wednesday morning. Thankfully, we are pretty much back to normal and doing fine now! We're pretty sure that he had hand, foot and mouth as that was going around my brother and SIL's church and we were there the Sunday before he came down with this, so we're assuming that's where he picked it up and what is was. We'll never know for sure, but whatever it was, I hope he never gets it again! Anyway, on to the New Year's post...

Happy 2010 everyone! We brought in the New Year in such a very unexciting way last night. :) We let Kaelyn stay up late and we watched Pirates of the Carribean (the first one) with her. She was SO excited to watch it and although it scared her a little bit her words were, "I LOVED it. When can I watch it again?" Of course, we told her probably not any time soon since she is not allowed to watch it at all when Cooper is awake and its such a long movie that watching it when he is napping is probably out of the question too. Anyway, I'm sure she'll see it again soon enough. It was kind of fun though. We drank and toasted some sparkling cider, then Kaelyn went to bed and I made the horrible mistake of staying up until 2am. No idea why I did that.

Today, however, we had a great day. Kaelyn slept in until around 9, Cooper got up at 7:30, but allowed us to stay in bed (with him in between us watching TV) until after 8. We got up and watched the Rose Parade and played with trains. Jeff went to my brother's house to help him with some things and then came home just in time to have some fun family time. Well, I guess technically it was "girl time" and "boy time" but it was fun nonetheless. Jeff took Cooper to Jack In The Box because that's where he wanted to go and I took Kaelyn out to coffee and then we went to Michael's to get some beading stuff. Kaelyn and I came home and worked on our beading project (we made a necklace for her birthmom) and then we all sat down and vegged while Cooper finished his nap. When Cooper woke up we all loaded in the car and went to Toys R Us for Cooper to spend his birthday money on trains. I've never seen a child SO excited to go spend his money. But he talked the entire way to the store about which trains he wanted and what he was going to do when he got to the store and how we could order the trains he wanted on the 'puter if the store didn't have them. It was really cute. We accomplished our goal and came home with two new Thomas trains (Henry & James). We all (ok, Jeff, Kaelyn and Cooper) spent the entire rest of the evening until bedtime playing with the huge train setup we have going on in our family room. They all had so much fun going around and around and around. It was really fun to watch them. And then everyone went to be and here I am! It was a good start to what I pray will be a good year!

So, Happy New Year to each and every one of you! I hope its is wonderful for you!

Christmas 2009

Well, its been another eventful Christmas here at our house. Not quite the "eventful" that I thoguht it would be, but eventful nonetheless. Celebration started on Christmas Eve with some time opening presents at my parents house. Kaelyn got what we call the holy grail for 8 year old girls - an American Girl doll. It was the ONLY thing on her Christmas wish list this year. Thankfully she has a grandma who can deliver. :) Since opening this present I can actually count on one hand how many times this doll has actually come out of the box - and each of those times was to carefully comb her hair, occasionally change her clothes and to just stare in awe at the beauty that is an American Girl.

After Christmas at my parents house we went to the Christmas Eve service at our church. After being perfectly normal all day long, Cooper came down with a fever at the service and quickly fell asleep while listening to the quiet carols. As you can tell from the picture below he didn't feel better after his little nap at church. But, despite the illness, here is the yearly picture in front of the tree in their matching jammies.

We woke up Christmas morning to a still sick little boy. Thankfully he slept in a little bit and we were able to rest up for what became a long day. My mom and grandparents came over for a very quiet and relaxing day at our house. The kids opened their presents and the rest of us grazed on food all day long. Around lunchtime I noticed that Cooper had a couple blistery type things on his tongue. No wonder he hadn't wanted to eat anything all day! We called the nurse hotline - without getting any answers - then we called his doctor (who I hated bothering on Christmas day) without many answers there either. The general consensus was that no matter what he actually had it wasn't going to be treatable with antibiotics and would probably just need to run its course, so we just needed to make him as comfortable as possible.

Needless to say, the rest of the day (and ALL of today) was spent like this......

By the end of the day, the entire inside of his mouth was COVERED with blisters. He ran a fever all day (even with a constant stream of Motrin and Tylenol) and hardly slept at all last night. We are suspecting either Herpangina (http://www.drgreene.com/21_1113.html) or Hand, Foot and Mouth. We are leaning more towards the first one although we saw a few little dots on his hands tonight when Jeff was reading some stories to him. We'll see what the next few days bring. Another friend suggested it might be the first initial outbreak of what causes canker sores, as that can be a horrible outbreak to begin with. But who knows really. If its still bad by Monday (which I sure HOPE it isn't) we'll take a trip into the drs office.

As for how Kaelyn spent her Christmas.... she spent it playing her new Leapfrog Didj. I was really shocked at how much she loves this thing. It was a last minute purchase on my part as I found a really good deal on it. But man oh man, does she love that thing! I'm glad I went with the more educational video gaming system. :-)

Christmas pageant

First off, I have to start by saying that my kids are DARN cute. I mean look at this picture of Cooper. Such a handsome boy...

And, let's not forget Kaelyn. She is getting WAY too grown up looking for her own good!!!!! I'm not ready for her to be quite so grown up.

Of course, when they are together they are as cute as can be. :)

So, a couple weeks ago we had our church's christmas pageant. This was Cooper first year doing a performance and he did an excellent job, just like I expected! I was a little worried at first because when I dropped him off at his class he was crying and did not want me to leave. But he seemed to settle down and once he came downstairs he was ADORABLE. His little 2's and 3's class sang "Jingle, Jingle Happy Bells" and "Bells are Ringing". They are just so fun to watch.

Kaelyn was an angel in the pageant and did a great job singing all the songs that they sang throughout the morning. She looked great up there and performed beautifully! She even said she wasn't really nervous this year. :)

Sick computer again

Well, our laptop has taken yet another hit to it. Thankfully, it wasn't actually the computer part this time. The cord shorted out and our battery won't hold a charge, so I'm typing this entry on our big old desktop computer upstairs. But, because our laptop is out of commission that means no new pictures as we download them all to the laptop to keep them in one place. But I promise, once that new cord arrives in 3-5 business days I promise I'll have lots of updating to do! :)

The Christmas Spirit

Since Cooper's birthday party was over, we went out on Saturday afternoon and cut down our Christmas tree. Even if we don't do any other decorating for Christmas, this is the one thing that has to be done. I love the tree we got. We decided that we would be "smart" and put the stand on the tree before standing it up this year. This was the result.... ...we laughed so hard at the result and decided that from now on we'll probably just put the stand down and then put the tree in it like we've done every other year. LOL Here's the kids and Jeff trying to make the tree look a little better. Can I tell you how hard it is to take a picture of both a tree and people leaning sideways and trying to get SOMETHING straight? :-)
Needless to say, we did fix it. Here is the final result. I love Christmas trees. :-)