Party of Five

I hope that everyone had a great Christmas holiday. We have been busy, busy, busy, so busy that I have not updated the blog with all the fun things we did this month. So here is a quick wrap up of some things I don't want to forget.....

OK, I know all my relatives in Michigan will laugh and roll their eyes at this post, but snow here is a really big deal. The weather people had been talking about it all day, and then around 4 it finally happened. I got the boys dressed in the warmest clothes we have (still not warm enough) and we ran outside. Brandon was soooo excited. He ran around trying to catch snowflakes in his mouth and then ran inside to get a bag to catch the snow in (he thought he could keep it and take it inside). Ryan checked out the snow, declared he was turning into an icecube and then ran back in the house. So even though none of it will stick or even really make it the ground, it was quite the sight to see big white flakes falling from the sky, and I am glad that we took the ten minutes to run around and enjoy it!

We had quite the weekend, and feel like 3 days passed and we never sat down. Joey and Laurie came in town again to visit and we went to Breakfast with Santa. It is at the local country club, and it is always a huge hit. This year especially all the kids had so much fun, they visited Santa as many times as they wanted, they saw a magic show, Ryan got to eat as much bacon as he could stuff in his mouth, the adults actually had time to have a conversation. I wish they did this every weekend, we might go.

OK, does anyone else have a love/hate relationship with these things? Both of the boys were soooo attatched to them, and being the somewhat pushover mommy that I am, I let them keep them until they were both about 3 1/2 years old. So, we finally took Ryan's away last month, which was traumatic for all of us. We told him he was a big boy and he didn't need it anymore, and we took it away. He had several very hard nights and would ask for it constantly during the day. He calls it his "baby" and he was always wanting it. The requests started to come with less regularity, but he still asked for it, and then last night we were talking about what he wanted for Christmas and he looked at me and said, "My want a big boy baby, they make those for big boys." I couldn't help but laugh, he still misses it and knows he is a big boy, but he still wants his baby. Poor thing. So, the plan is with new baby, the pacifier is going away much earlier (talk to me in 4 years when he still has it and remind of this statement) but it seems like if he can make a rational thought, like "big boy baby" we waited a little too long. Love/Hate, no other way to describe it.

I am sure you have all heard the joke that a pregnant woman's belly button is like a turkey timer that pops up when the kid is done cooking. Well, apparently when you are working on cooking your fourth kid, it pops up when you are about 12 weeks pregnant. So for the last month, my belly button has been popped out. Well, today, Chris told the kids that it was a microphone for them to talk to the baby (that is a new one), and they all took turns telling the baby "hi" and who they were and how they were related to the baby. It really was so cute and so funny too watching them all walk up to me, pull my shirt up, "talk" into my belly button and just giggle. I hope that they don't try this with any other pregnant women, they might not think it is so funny.

On another note, we had a great Thanksgiving, filled with many of our favorite things. Chris went golfing, I took the kids to see a movie, they played at the park, and the food, the never ending food, and then, more food. Of course, being the pregnant woman that I am, I ate waaaaay to much, and then instantly got heartburn and have not been able to even think about desert, so sad. But, we have so many things to be thankful for...a great family, a new sweet baby on the way, amazing friends, an incredible church, the list goes on and on. I hope you all are enjoying full tummies, warm houses, and family and friends right now too. Happy Thanksgiving!!

Well, the ultrasound confirmed it, we are having boy #3. WooHoo!! As someone at church pointed out, 2 more and we have a basketball team. Yeah, thanks. Obviously that won't be happening. After this, the shop is closed and any other children will not be coming to us biologically, meaning we will have some say over whether it is boy #4 or a girl that will hopefully stick around longer than Avery did. Needless to say, this is not what we were expecting, but the idea is growing on us and we are excited to have another newborn in the house, they are just so cute and kissable. Laurie was in town this weekend and we went out for some serious retail therapy. Nothing like some cute new baby clothes to lift the spirits. We are also getting a new diaper bag and something called a hotsling. I figure I need a way to carry this kiddo a little easier since he will be hauled everywhere because we just don't like to sit around at home. So much fun new baby stuff!! And we do make incredibly cute boys, and I am sure this one will be just as cute. We got a good profile shot yesterday and he looked a lot like the boys. Ryan came with us to the ultrasound, he is always asking how big is the baby, what does the baby look like, so we thought he might like to see. He was not very impressed, but I guess black and white, grainy ultrasound wouldn't do much for me either if I was 3 and I had been promised a picture of the new baby. Anyway, that is the news for the day, no names for sure, but we will let you know.

I could sing, but I won't, you wouldn't want to hear it, but this is a blog, so you really can't hear anyway....moving right along... The greatest thing has happened, we finally got a cleaning lady. I know this may not seem like a big deal to many of you, but if you read my previous post about how my house is actually usually worse off when I try to clean thanks to two small boys, this is a huge deal. Three ladies showed up yesterday, I left my house for many hours, only to return to beds with all clean sheets, picture frames that had been dusted, clean ceiling fans, and the microwave free of the glob of unidentified food that I had been unable to remove no matter what I tried. Also, my shower, which is 23 years old, was sparkling, who knew it could sparkle?? These women and their chemicals are magic. I am so excited, I could just burst, and Chris is even more happy than I am. We obviously are pretty boring people since this is one of the more exciting things to happen to us in recent memory. Is it wrong to love a cleaning lady?? Now if I could just maintain what they did until 2 weeks from now...who am I kidding, it will never happen.

OK, just a little funny story (Chris told me I needed to post this). We were having a snack yesterday when we got home from the zoo. I was eating some Hummus on pita bread and Brandon kept swiping bites, so he finally asked for some of his own. I got him a little plate and some bread. Ryan then started complaining that he was hungry so Brandon offered him some of his Hummus, because "hummus is soooo goood, Ryan." Well, Ryan walked over to get a bite, turned his nose up and came running into me to tell me, "Mom, Brandon is eating poop!" I guess if you look at hummus it doesn't look very appetizing. But, it sure tastes good, just ask Brandon.

Today we hit the zoo again, it really is one of our favorite places to go. And because the weather has been so cool and the sun so warm, it was a perfect day. A bunch of us from church went, and we are quite the stroller brigade when we go places. I think we had 10 kids 5 and under between us all. We made it to all the boy's favorite spots, the bats, the wild dogs, the reptile house, the playground. We even got to see them giving the elephants a bath. Also because it was so cool, the animals were all very active. I guess they don't like the 95 degrees and 100% humidity either. My friends were asking if I thought I could do this kind of stuff with 3 soon. I hope so, I love getting out and going places, so baby number 3 may just have to be along for the ride whether he likes it or not, and Brandon will be old enough to "help," right? Just kidding about that last part.

Today I decided I should clean the house up a bit. It has been a while since I dusted and mopped, etc... Well, the boys decided they wanted to "help" me. Maybe I should ask for dustbusters and little tiny mops for them for Christmas. Anyway, after fighting over the one kid sized broom we had, I got one of them sweeping and one of them using the swiffer thing to dust, and I started to mop. Well, again they wanted to "help." Brandon got some paper towels out and put them on his feet and walked around the kitchen "drying" the floor. Ryan realized that wet tile is pretty slippery so he went running and sliding into the wall, which is apparently pretty fun, so he did it again. Then he wanted towels to help dry the floor too. Needless to say, the mopping came to an end, and I am not really sure if my house is any cleaner after the whole thing. And you wonder why I don't try to clean more often. These sweet silly boys make me smile, but they sure do make a big mess, even when they are trying to clean.

I am going to leave out the person who voted puppies and say that 12 out of 13 of you were wrong. Thanks for having such great expectations, but really, I never allowed myself to believe it. So whoever you are that voted boy, you win the prize. While I know this will risk sounding ungrateful and sacreligious, please, if you choose to comment, I would prefer to not hear that God has a plan or that this baby was meant to be. I know all of those things, and really they don't make me feel any better. I am just beyond disappointed and a little more than confused. But there you go, an end to the suspense.

OK, still nothing, this is getting a little old. I have contemplated having my sister call and saying that she is my doctor and she needs my results. It has worked before. When we were at Texas Children's with Avery, she would call and say "This is Dr. so and so, I need to speak to Avery's nurse." They would connect her every time. She was calling from a different state and had nothing to do with her case, obviously, but the respect just from saying, "I am a Dr." was so funny. When we were getting discharged with her, Kelly had come to Texas to help us, and she instantly starting bossing around the nurses and the interns telling them to hurry and call this person or that person. It still makes me laugh just thinking about it. However, in this situation, I will probably just wait and pray that we know the results before the weekend. Please pray too!! And thanks for being so interested in what is happening with us.

So, I am sorry to keep you all in suspense, trust me, I am more sorry that I am in suspense. But, the lab and genetics office are being quite pokey, and we have no news. I know none of you care about the gender and you are all just waiting to hear that the baby is healthy, right? Well, we are eagerly anticipating both, and man, I just want to know. So, let's all pray that they just hurry up a bit and post the dang results already. Ok, that sounded very patient didn't it. Sorry everyone, I will let you know when I know.

(Oh, and for the person who voted for puppies, thanks for making me smile. And whoever voted for boy, if you are right, will you help me pick my next set of lotto numbers?)

OK, I promise to post some pics of Disneyworld soon, but there are just too many to choose from and I don't have the energy to sort through them right now.....but on to more important things. I had an appointment today for some early prenatal screening. With our history, it seemed like a good idea. Everything looks great, the baby was soooo active. Every time the poor tech would get the shot she wanted the baby would roll away or jerk away, or as Ryan said, walk away. Anyway, this is a huge relief and answer to prayer, but again, still too early to see on ultrasound what the gender is. However, this clinic does a special gender screening through a blood test that is 99% accurate at predicting the sex of the baby, so of course we asked for that test to be done. So, in about 1 week, the mystery will be over and we will know one way or the other, for better or worse, what this baby is. But, just for fun, I put up a poll so people could guess what the gender is. Don't answer with what you think I want to hear, vote what you think. I will post as soon as I know. Let the voting begin!!

Well, we are back from our 10 days of Disney magic. We had soooo much fun, but we are soooo tired. Ryan just put himself upstairs for a nap, not the usual kicking and screaming we get when it is naptime. The boys had a ball, Brandon tried all sorts of new things, Ryan got to see lots of characters, I got to experience Disneyworld during my first trimester of pregnancy, Chris got to golf, good times were had by all. I have a million pictures to post, but they will have to wait, just wanted to say hello and we are happy to be home. Ryan has said that about 100 times now, "mom, my so happy to be home." We all are sweet boy.

So today we walked to the store to pick up stuff for dinner, this was a brilliant (read stupid) idea. We were pretty active today, so maybe not the best choice at 4:30 to walk to the store, but the boys had some energy, so I thought, why not. Well, about half way there, Ryan decides he needs to go potty and just tries to undress right in the middle of the path. I tried to convince him to wait, but we still had about a 10 minute walk ahead of us and maybe the same amount back home and I knew he couldn't make it, so we found some trees, and I let him go. I am sorry if any of you were driving down the street at that moment only to see a half naked 3 year old relieving himself in the trees, sometimes these things need to be done. Anyway, we finally got to the store, got what we needed and then some, and then I realized, hey we have to walk home with this stuff. By this point the kids were done with the walk and I had arms full of groceries, see brilliant idea. Anyway, we made it about half way home, and Ryan parks himself in the middle of the path crying because he wants to see the tree where he went potty. So we find it, and move on. We finally made it home, and I got dinner started, but it will be a while before we walk to the store again in the middle of the afternoon.

Which leads me to the next part of this post...I bought spaghetti for dinner and had it almost ready, the sauce was done, the water was boiling, and I poured the pasta in the pot, when I realized there were *many* small black things floating in my pasta. Guess what they were? Yep, bugs, all in the pasta. GROSS. Ok, now I am well aware that these things are acceptable in certain quantities in the food supply, but it is not acceptable when they have full bodies with legs floating in the water around my noodles. I told Chris I think the universe is against me cooking at home. Two nights ago, I got shish-k-bobs, only to have our grill run out of propane while cooking, and now my noodles are full of bugs. Anyway, I fortunately had another bag of noodles in the cabinet so dinner could be salvaged, but those were definitely unwelcome guests before our meal. Anyone want to come over for some spaghetti??

Well, this last month has been eventful.....Our Vietnam adoption officially came to an end, we researched about 20 more programs, and we were on our way to signing up for a new program, when we found out, drumroll please, that I. am. pregnant.

Yes, as Chris said, "I could have woken up this morning with my face sewn to the carpet, and I wouldn't be more surprised than I am right now." We were all speechless, well, except for my Dad, who had, by far the best response of anyone, and really summed up what we all were feeling, but again, being a family blog, you will have to ask him to repeat what he said. Let's just say, I always love my Dad's uninhibited enthusiasm.

I won't go into all the details about why this was really something that was impossible, but let's just say, the likelihood of being in this situation was slim to none. You might remember my post a while back asking to pray that God would do the impossible in our Vietnam adoption. I really believed that the impossible would be that we would get a referral and complete our adoption, but God had a different plan for our family. I wonder if he was up there laughing at us all this time, knowing what was coming as we worked so hard to try and figure our our next step. Trust me, there were many tears shed over this process. But, His idea of impossible was allowing me to be pregnant again. Now that we have all had a chance to regain our composure about the whole thing, we are very excited. I went to the doctor this morning, and there is definitely a little bean in there with a little heart beating away, and in case anyone is wondering, it is too early to tell if it is a girl or not.

My sweet friend Alicia gave me a card after I told her the news that I think sums this whole situation up in the best way I have heard.

Sometimes we laugh at God's sense of humor.
Sometimes we shake our fists at the sky.
Sometimes we just have to let the joy of it all overtake us.

I jumped the gun a little on the previous post, we HAD power, but then it got turned off after about 10 hours. The funny thing was that most of our neighborhood had power, but about 20 houses didn't, and we were one of them. We had an extension cord running across our yard to our neighbors garage so that we could have a light on at night and turn the tv on. The boys did very well for 3 days without power, but we were all exhausted and ready for it to be back on. And guess what, yesterday, it came back on, and has stayed on. Ryan was running around the house saying "it's a miracle." He is so cute. Anyway, we feel very blessed, even without power, the house stayed cool thanks to the strange cool front that followed the hurricane. Our neighbors had power and let us "steal" some, and they kept milk and stuff in their garage fridge for us. So, hopefully this is for real this time, and it won't go back off again. About half of Houston is still without power with no end in sight, so we are lucky. Keep praying for those people and all the workers!

That is right, I guess 5 days is similar to 2-4 weeks. I am not complaining, we have power!! We are heading home today and can't wait. We still might have "rolling blackouts" as the power comes back online, but we have power!!

So, we are still safe, dry, and with electricity. We evacuated to my sister's house, and it was a great decision. They never lost power and the wind was nothing compared to what we would have had in Houston. I even got to work for a few hours today. It was sooo sad, the first maybe 10 people were all from Houston, and most didn't have any idea what condition their homes were in. I could obviously commisurate with them, but thanks to some of our great friends who stayed behind, we knew that our house had weathered the storm pretty well. So hopefully we can go home tomorrow and see our house for ourselves. After that, we have no idea. We have no idea when we will get power back or when downtown will be reopened so that Chris can go back to work. But, the most important thing is that we are safe and there is not a tree fallen in the middle of our house. Thanks for all your prayers. Will update again when I can.

Well, we did it, we left. We didn't have too, but we figured hurricane force winds and no power for an extended period of time was not what we wanted to do. We picked up Brandon from school and headed to my sister's house. We won't escape the wind or rain, but at least it won't be as bad as it would have been at home. The kids are in heaven playing with their cousins. They think we came here just for fun. We are praying for everyone, be safe, stay cool, stay dry.

I am a soccer mom. With the exception that my kids don't play soccer. But, I drive a suburban, I live in a perfect suburban community, and all I do all day long is drive my children back and forth to school and acitivities. The boys started preschool this week, and they go at different times, one in the am and one in the pm. So, my day goes something like, drop Ryan off, go pick him up, go grab lunch in the few minutes off, go drop Brandon off, hope Ryan takes a nap, oh well, he didn't, go pick up Brandon. Fortunately the preschool is only a few minutes from our house, and next week will be better because they will have more regular hours, but man, how to people with more than a couple kids do this?

They have really enjoyed their first week of school. Brandon was so excited to be back, and wants to be there all day long, maybe we should have started him in Kindergarten. Oh well, this year will be good for him. And Ryan is so funny, he is in the Robin class and got to be the "pet helper" this week, so all he has talked about is feeding the mouse. I love their school, so I am happy to have them back to a little bit of a routine. Oh, and less than 6 weeks until Disneyworld!!!

So we went to Ikea this weekend, the boys were so happy. They love Ikea, as we were driving, they spotted the big blue sign with the yellow letters and got all excited, there it is, there it is. I have no idea why they like Ikea so much, but they do, Ryan used to ask to go there when he was only 2. So, if you want to entertain my boys, tell them you will take them to Ikea, they will love you forever.

Our friends Joey and Laurie are in town for a little "hurication" as they call it. They evacuated from NOLA on Saturday and came to Texas. There have been many tense moments of watching the Weather Channel and the news waiting for the worst case scenario, but thankfully, it looks like the storm was not enough to damage the city. It is funny because before I knew them, we didn't know a single person from New Orleans, had never been there, just didn't know any different. So when Katrina hit, of course it was sad, but I didn't have any connection to the city. Now that my good friends are back there and I have been multiple times, I have come to love that place, and was so worried that something really bad would happen again. I am very thankful that this was not the case, but I am glad my friends had a place to go this time and ride out the storm. We had a big party last night with several friends and some other folks who also evacuated from NOLA, it was nice to see every here laughing and relaxed.

The weekend has not been without incident. Amelia fell on the table in our living room and split her cheek open. They then spent the next 7 hours in the ER waiting to stitch it up. I told Laurie she did it on purpose so she would stop worrying about the storm, but I felt really bad that she got hurt. Five stitches later, all is well, and Amelia is showing off her "bobo" to anyone who gets near her. What a weekend it has been. I hope you all are enjoying some good grilling and fun on this Labor Day Holiday!!

So we have been totally sucked in by this technology, it is so fun. And, it has magical powers...it gave Ryan the motivation to go poo in the potty, and Brandon the motivation to cheer him on. It can instantly change a mood (in a good or bad way), it can also cause us to lose alot of sleep while we stay up late playing it. Well, now we have a new way for it to suck our time, Wii Fit. Oh My, this thing is cool. I am sure you have all heard of it, so I will spare you the details, but it was worth the $100. Let me just say, there are few things funnier than a 5 and 3 year old trying to exercise. Have you ever seen a 5 year old trying to do yoga? Neither had I until tonight, and he was determined to hold his pose and get his points. He also played a hula-hoop game where you swing your hips around for 2 minutes. Chris and I were trying so hard not to laugh at the cuteness of it all. It was difficult to find, we were in Dallas for the weekend and got to a store 5 minutes after they had sold their last one, but they called the one down the street that happened to have 2, but they wouldn't hold them, so we practically sprinted out of the store with the boys to get to the other store before they were all sold. So if you are looking for a magic video game, I definitely recommend the Wii and get a Wii Fit for the extra fun!

So the last post seemed like too much of a downer to leave as the first post on my blog, so I wanted to share some of the happy things in our life right now....

**Ryan is potty trained!!!! I am soooo happy, I figured it would not happen, but he just figured it out, and now even when we are out and about, he runs to the potty, so cute.

**We have our Disneyworld trip booked!! Flights, resort, park tickets, all taken care of. We have been talking about it with the boys non stop, so we are really excited!!

**The Olympics are on, which we love. Brandon is really into them too, he will repeat everything the commentators say, "We won't see that one again" "OOO, The Chinese" "Look at that form." It is so cute.

So many good things to be happy about!

So finding our way to the next baby has not been so smooth. I thought that I would give everyone a little update on what we have done so far...

So we investigated about a million countries (there are a million right?), including Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Philipines, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Guatamala, and even The Marshall Islands. Each program basically was a no for us, whether it was cost, time in country, time waiting for referral, not allowing gender selection, program not open, not qualifying for program, you name it, we considered it. OK, so it would seem that for now, international adoption is not really in our future (barring some huge change in some country or program). This was a pretty big realization to come to, as we had always thought that even if Vietnam didn't work out, we would just change to another country, but these are strange times in International adoption, and we just have bad luck when it comes to timing, so there you go.

We thought we had this all figured out and thought that the next child would just be "home grown" well, one embarrassing trip to the doctor later, we realized that is not very likely. (This is a family blog, I will not go into detail) But just know that it is unlikely that I will be huge and pregnant any time soon.

So what is left?? I won't detail you on the completely random ideas I had to solve this (the people with the straight jackets and padded rooms might come and find me) and, no, it did not involve anything illegal in case you were wondering, but it does show what ideas come to you with desperation. Anyway, enough of that, we have now landed on the idea of domestic adoption. Which really has some big plusses. The kiddo will be a newborn, no post institutional things to deal with. I don't have to be on a plane for 30 hours. And the wait is not typically as long as some of the international programs we looked at. So with that in mind, we began to investigate agencies. Well, wouldn't you know, the first 3 I contact won't work for us. One turned us down because we have biological children, the next doesn't allow gender selection, and the last one requires a workshop that we cannot attend until February of 2009. After I heard that, I just started to laugh. My friend Amy said, "well at least you know where you are not supposed to go." Seriously, why is this so hard. Anyway, we will persevere, we are nothing if not determined. So that is the update, we are open to suggestions, really they can't be any stranger than some of the things I have come up with.

I read this quote on someone's blog yesterday, it seemed appropriate....

Brick walls are not there to keep you out, they are there to show us how much we want something.

OK, here it is, if anyone makes fun of me (or my double chin) I am taking it down. You have been warned......Enjoy!!

OK, so there will not be a coherent train of thought in this post, just some minor updates and stuff about our life....

I got addicted to the Twilight series while on vacation in Alabama. The fourth book and final one of the series came out this weekend (book just ok by the way, not great like I was expecting), anyway, just to show how dorky I am, I preordered the book and went to the midnight release party this weekend at our local Barnes and Noble. Chris came too because my Dad was in town, so we just left him and the boys sleeping. Anyway, it was quite the experience, about 1000 15 year girls, shrieking and screaming, some dressed up in prom dresses, some like vampires, some with homemade t-shirts on....but, we were not the oldest ones there, but Chris was one of maybe 10 guys in the whole store. Someone needs to tell some teenage boys that this is where the ladies are. Anyway, we had fun, and my obsession with reading these books is over, so back to my normal reading free life.

We also went to see John Mayer this weekend in concert. My Dad came with us and was a good sport about sitting in 98 degree weather in the grass for 4 hours listening to music he had never heard before. It was really fun, the concert was great, John Mayer was not wearing a shirt???? I guess he felt like clothes were just too hot. This was my birthday present from Chris and our good friends Amy and Brian came with us, and helped scheme to keep it a secret from me until my birthday. We had a great night, even if it was super hot.

Ryan is potty training like a champ. It finally seems to click with him, so we are in pull-ups now most of the time when we are out and underwear at home, and he is doing great, so maybe he will be potty trained before kindergarten after all.

The tropical storm/hurricane is actually going to hit us this time, it shouldn't be a big deal, just a lot of rain, and maybe some wind, but it adds to the excitement around here a little bit.

I took the boys to the zoo today with some friends, we went as early in the day as we could, and had a great time, but right around noon, the heat could be tolerated no longer, so called it a day and headed home.

So, those are random tidbits of our life at the moment. Just in case anyone was wondering.

Well, we have thought long and hard and the only sure thing we can come up with is that we need a vaction, so .........

We Are Going To DISNEYWORLD!!!

Yes, a little Mickey Mouse therapy is just what our family needs. We have been wanting to go, but have been saving our pennies for the adoption and vacation time for traveling. Since we obviously won't be traveling this year, we had lots of time to use up, so we are going to Disneyworld!! I can't wait, we have already started making our plans and should have our resort booked by the end of next week.

As far as the adoption/next Topf child, we still have no idea, please keep praying. It really seems like so many doors have been shut for one reason or another, but we are going to keep trying to find what God has for us. Until then, we will have Disney dreams!!

1. It is over
2. Stop picking on us
3. We just really, really want a baby girl

We found out this week that our adoption is not going to happen. Vietnam is closing down and we were informed by our agency (only because I asked outright) that we will not be getting a referral. Yesterday, I opened a fortune cookie that said "You will enjoy a trip to Asia," which would have been funny if I had opened it 3 months ago, opening it yesterday just made me think someone is messing with us.

So now what?? Well that is the $64 million question. We have no idea. We have many options, none of which feel right at this moment. We could pick another country, go domestic, try to get pregnant again on our own, or just do nothing at all. We can't decide between all of these options each of which has its own drawbacks. So we are in wait and see and pray mode.

We are obviously pretty disappointed about all of this and can't really believe that this is the way this has all played out, but it is what it is and we can't change it, so we will go on. To all of you who have supported us on this journey, thanks for the prayers, the calls to congress, signing petitions, I wish I could say that your efforts made a difference, but it doesn't look like it at this time. I know you all will be on the edge of your seats waiting to hear what we will do next, so stick around, when we figure it out, we will let you know. In the meantime, hopefully my boys will do something cute or say something funny so I have something to post.

So, I was part of a commercial today, that's right, for those of you living in the Brazos Valley, you will have to see my face on a commercial for the clinic during the Olympics. It was pretty funny being on camera, not my favorite thing at all, but we had fun. Oh, and I am going to be on TV, how funny is that.

So we went to the local Methodist church today, they have a huge indoor play area that the kids really like. It doesn't open until noon, and we were a little early so I thought I would feed the boys lunch there before we played. We went to their cafe and Brandon said he wanted soup for lunch. Well, the only soup they had some crazy name like spicy sweet potato and chicken. Ok, well, let's taste it and see if he still wants it. The lady gives us a little sample cup and Brandon is eating it when all the sudden the lady says, "Good, isn't it, you would never guess there is peanut butter in it." Um, What, excuse me, did you say peanut butter? So I give the soup back, let her know my child is allergic to nuts, and then try and calm down my screaming 5 year old who thinks I am about to shoot him with an epi pen and take him to the hospital. When he finally calmed down enough to talk to me, he shows me his bottom lip that is now looking more like a huge bubble than a lip, so we leave the church, and run home for benadryl. So who puts peanut butter in soup at a church with hundreds of little kids around without even mentioning that there is nuts in it??? I know, I know, most little kids don't eat soup, but mine does, he can't be the only one. I hope they have learned their lesson and put a little disclaimer on the menu the next time they serve that.

All's well that ends well, we gave him the benadryl, his lip went down, and we went back to the church and played. But from now on, I will be asking about secret ingredients in foods that I am offering to my child. And I thought this day was going to be boring.

Hello, my Dad pointed out that I had not posted in a while on the blog. Since we are back from our trip and just enjoying the lazy days of summer, I have nothing to post really. I did break my toe at the pool this week, good times. I was trying to climb down the cargo net thing to catch Ryan at the bottom of the slide, and lost my balance and fell, my little toe got caught in the net and the rest of my body kept falling, it felt really good. So now I have a black and blue and purple little toe. I x-rayed it at work over the weekend and it is actually broken, guess that explains the multi-colored toe. My sister thinks I need to be wearing a special shoe, but it is just too hot for that, so it will have to heal on its own.

The pottytraining is not going well, Ryan just doesn't care. He wants to sit on the potty when he wants to, not when he actually needs to go. I really got spoiled with Brandon essentially training himself, so I am not really sure what to do with Ryan. Those of you who know Ryan know that the child will do ANYTHING for candy, well, he won't sit on the potty for candy. Bummer. Well, we will keep trying.

My dad also suggested letting everyone know that the hurricane that is coming into the gulf and is going to hit Texas is not going to be anywhere near us, unfortunately. We need some rain, really, really need some rain, but the hurricane will be about 500 miles from where we live, so no evacuation or boarding up the windows for us.

So, I think that is all the updates in our boring little life. Hope you guys are having a little more excitement than we are.

Aren't you glad you decided to look on my blog today, isn't that the news you were hoping to hear? Well, it is the first time it has happened in his 3 years on this earth, and it is darn exciting to me. He has on big boy underwear and everything. His shorts are falling off though, he is a bit of peanut and without a diaper, his 2T shorts are riding pretty low. Oh well, we will figure that problem out, but soon, maybe in my life, no more diapers for Ryan!!!! I am so excited!!

Hoorayyy!!! We made it home, it was a long drive, but we did it! We got up this morning, let the kids swim for about an hour to get some energy out, and then we were loaded up and on the road by 9:30. We did not let the kids out of their carseats until 5:45 when we arrived back home. I don't know how we did it, but somehow it worked. There was also minimal crying, even when the DVD player stopped working. I think the boys were also anticipating being home and just settled in for the ride. When we got home, Chris unloaded the truck, I ran and got dinner and then the boys spent the rest of the night playing the Wii. I feel a little guilty how well our trip went, the drive for our friends Brian and Amy was a little more drawn out, but they made it home safe too. So now, we don't know what to do with ourselves, our vacation is over and we have no big plans for the rest of the summer, I am sure we will fill our time, but our trip sure was fun. I do hope we all sleep until 8am tomorrow.