Forced Fun

So we had another "forced fun" activity. All the residents went rafting at the Chatooga river in South Carolina. It was pretty fun...except for the helmets. I wasn't real thrilled about the helmets. Our raft was the 3rd years plus to 2nd years.I guess the helmet wasn't a horrible idea...but I still didn't like it.

Nate is on the go

Nate is so happy to be getting around these days on his own. He is just figuring out how to slowly crawl, but when he really needs to get somewhere, he scoots.

Sadie is trying to teach Nate how to ride her scooter. How did two of our kids get blue eyes when both of us have green?

The girls are showing off the hail they picked up from our yard. The other day we had the wildest storm. I was seriously worried for our roof as the hail pounded down so hard. A few were a little smaller than a golf ball...but most looked like marbles. It dumped buckets full of hail in about 5 minutes and then moved on and that was that. It was a very odd weather day here in Georgia.

Dave rescued this tortoise (and one other) as it was about to get hit on the road the other day. Ashlyn was having fun balancing money on its back.

Sadie loves to serenade anyone who will listen. She will usually make up a song about your birth and life. It's pretty entertaining. Nate was her audience this day so she was singing a song about Nate being born.

Nate will never know...

...the days of his daddy being in school. So we took this picture to prove it. This was at the Medical College of Georgia's graduation where Dave got his Master's in oral biology. Most of Ashlyn's pigtail was out by the time Nate was done pulling at it. Nate has 3 heads full of hair that he LOVES to get his hands on. Way to go Dave!

If you look carefully, you can see Dave's right cheek is a little puffy from a root coverage surgery he had done just 2 days before graduation. I think if you look close you might even be able to see a suture (not that you want to look close).

This picture sums up Mother's Day. The girls busily prepared my throne to sit in while they gave me presents. I think the highlight of Mother's Day was sitting in church with Nate tight in my arms, watching Ashlyn and Sadie beam at me during the primary's M-day songs. I think Sadie had trouble focusing on the songs because she was so busy smiling at me...and I loved it.
This sums up how we feel this week. Nate just finished his first avacado and LOVED it. He is so happy eating regular food again, although he is my most picky eater so far. As long as it is a banana, avacado or sweet potato, he's happy. We are also smiling because we have a contract on our house here! That "under contract" sticker slapped across our "for sale" sign is a beauty! We are relieved to be able to leave here without a house to still make payments on.

And last, but not least. Today was the big "Bookworm Party"!! A while back the girls wanted to do reading logs where they could earn things for reading a certain amount of books. So together we made a plan, but I let them pick the prizes they wanted to earn. Their big prize after reading their goal of books was to have a book party. I secretly hoped they would forget, because we sort of have a lot going on right now, but they didn't. So today was our party.
They invited just a few girls and had the best time. Ash and Sadie made bookmarks for everyone that we got laminated so they looked "professional". We played "book-walk" (like a cake-walk) and each time someone won, they got to pick from a pile of books we got from the bargain sales at Border's. We played "name that book" where I quoted a book (I did some homework ahead of time), and they had to say what book it came from.

For a snack, they made a "bookworm treat" with dirt dessert and bookworms hiding inside.

"Food, Glorious Food"

Nate went to the doctor this morning and got the ok to eat solid food again! I could hardly wait to feed him real food! As soon as we got home, I shoveled his favorite food, sweet potatoes, into his mouth as fast as I could. He loved it. I don't have a picture of it, because I was busy feeding him on my lap because we don't have the highchair out yet. But, I just had to let you all know (those of you who have been anxiously awaiting with us for Nate to be able to eat again)!!

Something I DO have a picture of...Smoothie Sadie


Yesterday I made our first summer smoothie (it's been in the 80s here and it is smoothie time). Sadie was up on the counter helping me. The blender was a little too full and I wanted to add a few more things, so I put a little bit in a tupperware to make more room in the blender. Well, Sadie wanted to do some of her own mixing, so she sort of put the tupperware lid on, but it wasn't tight. She started shaking full force and the smoothie went everywhere. You wouldn't believe how high berry smoothie flew in the kitchen, on the fridge, counter, walls. It was quite the mess. We all had a good laugh over it and had to take a picture. The girls were in their swim suits ready to take their smoothies outside and run in the sprinklers.

A week in the life of Nate...in the hospital

The girls went to the playroom down the hall and brought all sorts of noisy toys for Nate to play with. You can't tell in this picture, but he loved it.

The girls decorated a "celebration chair" for Nate with balloons tied to it, toys and books to celebrate his surgery being done!
Nate's face would light up when his sisters came to visit.

The boys got lots of snuggle time.

Nate's eyes were pretty puffy after the surgery (this was the next day). Sadie wore her pink glasses so I would recognize her when she came for a visit.
I love the look on Nate's face. It was a happy day when he got that awful NG tube taken out!

Any votes on who Nate looks like? To sum up what we think...a nurse came in and said "Nate and Sadie look exactly alike." About 1 minute later a guy walked in said "Nate and Ashlyn look exactly alike." I suppose he's a mix?

Home Sweet Home

Boy, does it feel good to be home! No time to put any pictures up - but just wanted to give a quick update that we got home from the hospital tonight. We are beyond tired, but so glad to be back together as a family. I don't even want to know how much Nate weighs - he is a skinny bean, and we hope to get some weight on him quickly. He still has to wait 10 days before he can have solid foods. His recovery has been amazing to watch. He has been off any pain meds for days now and seems to be feeling great. The only problem, is that after NOT being able to nurse for 5 days, he is having some issues now that he is allowed to nurse and wants to nurse 24-7...and that is no exaggeration. He has started to throw quite the little tantrum if he wants to nurse and can't (because it will have only been 20 minutes since the last feeding...). Hopefully he will adjust soon. We are so happy to have this week over with - and even happier to see Nate poop all the day long!!!! Never thought I'd be so happy to smell a messy diaper. Our doctors are amazing and we are so grateful.

We had a close call on our house. Friday and Saturday the same family came to look at our house. We later heard that the wife wanted our house and the husband wanted a different house...and the hub one. BUMMER!

Thank you for the many prayers and well wishes for Nate. We felt them and appreciate them so much!