Another busy week!

It is hard to believe that there are only 4 weeks until Christmas break!  This is a very crazy four weeks.  At school, the kids are bouncing off the walls.  At home, we are trying to get our house put back together so that I can decorate for Christmas.  We will also be traveling a lot.  Thursday, I am actually heading with my family to North Carolina for my uncle's funeral.  It is not the best of circumstances for visiting, especially around the holidays.  Our prayers have been with my aunt, cousin, and her daughter this week.

The following weekend is the Greiner Christmas (here in town).  Then, we go to Cincinnati the next weekend and Columbus the weekend after that!  That takes us up to Christmas.  I really don't mind because I love this time of year and seeing everyone.  I have been busy shopping (also a task I love).  Hopefully, our playroom will be put together soon so I can post pictures of it and our Christmas decorations.


**Have pictures to post, but blogger is saying I have reached my photo limit and need to buy space.  Anyone know about this?  I will post when I figure it out :)

Thankful!

It is hard to believe that this is Thanksgiving week.  I know your parents tell you this as you are growing up, but time does seem to go faster the older you get.  I have had a couple of moments this week that have really made me stop and relish in the moment.  My ever so sweet, but very sensitive Lily asked me last night, "What does eternal life me?"  I guess in our moments of doing the rosary this week, she may have heard this.  I explained that this meant, if you lived a good life and believed in God, that when you die, you get to live in heaven with him and all the saints and angels.  She started crying and said, "Except for you and me mom.  We won't die."  What do you say?  I told her everyone eventually dies, but I hope we stay around for a long time.  The truth is, it does make you stop and think about how our time is limited.

With that, I must say that I am thankful for all that I have been given.  Wonderful family, great friends, a good job, a nice home, a loving husband, and two of the most precious children ever!  I certainly do my fair share of complaining and am not always as grateful as I should be.  So, I am trying to stop and enjoy the blessing I have been given.

After this "deep" start to my blog, I will leave you with some pictures.

Parker is just too stinkin' cute :)  He has his dad's passion for all things SWEET.  He loved cinnabons one morning.  (I haven't noticed too much difference in his hemagioma these past two weeks of medicine.  I guess time will tell).

I was able to spend time with my niece and nephew Friday night.  Parker and Evan were funny together!  I think they had every toy out!

I was also able to spend Saturday and some of Sunday in Indy with my sister.  We went early Saturday and shopped 'til we dropped.  Lots of Christmas gifts purchased.  My brother Stephen, who celebrated his birthday on Saturday, met us for lunch.  Then, we went to his restaurant, the Northside Social (http://northsidesocial.com/) for dinner.  My brother, Aaron, met Sarah and I there.  It was DELICIOUS!  I am already trying to plan a time to take Jeff.  After dinner, Stephen had a fun birthday party next door at the lunch part of the restaurant.  It was really fun to go out!  It was also fun to sleep ALONE, with no one kicking me or crying, in this hotel....

AND finally-playroom progress...slowly but surely!

On pinterest (of course) I found a cute project for spicing up toy baskets.  Can't wait to show you them in the room.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Who needs a vacation? ME!

I really do want to be blogging more, but every post would say the same thing: Life is extremely hectic right now!  There is really no time to catch my breath, let along write about it.  I am stealing a minute here (and disregarding the dishes and laundry and picking up and class work that need to be done) to say hello :)

Nothing too much out of the ordinary going on.  Just chasing after kids and working.  Jeff is hunting quite a bit (how lucky for him), so I play mom and dad right now.  However, he is paying me back by redoing the playroom!  I am SOOOO excited for this project.  It just feels awesome to put our stamp on the house.  Slowly but surely, we will make the changes we want and make this our dream home (although Jeff told me the other day this was not his "dream" home.  I said it was our realistic dream home!).  Here are a couple pics of how the room looked before and the mess it is right now.

Playroom when we moved in.  Very thankful to have this extra place for the kids.

Empty room=lots of room to run!

We are big into taking out walls and opening up rooms.  Jeff is also opening our dark stairway up into the playroom.  This will be so nice!

The main reason for the project was to put in overhead lighting.  Poor Jeff had a fun time fishing wires through a small space between the first floor and second floor.  Good news is we now have 5 lights!

I am looking forward to seeing my sister for the third weekend in a row!  We have been to Dayton the last two weekends.  She will be here tomorrow.   Last weekend we got to go house hunting with them.  It was so much fun, and I am grateful they let us be a part of it.  I am happy to say they sold their house and had an offered accepted on one of the houses we saw last weekend.  It is beautiful and will be a great home for them, and a fun place for us to come and stay!  We definitely owe them help with a move since they did so much for us last August during ours.  I have to say this is such an exciting time in our lives, and I am thankful everyday to have a sister that I am so close with and whose life is in a similar place as mine.

Speaking of siblings, I am excited for a weekend away with Sarah (just to Indy but who cares? I will get to sleep an entire night without interruption!).  We are going to shop Saturday and then go to my brother's birthday party that night.  Hopefully we can stay up past 9 pm!

Happy Friday!

Hemangioma

Yesterday, Parker visited DermatologyInc. in Carmel for a visit with a pediatric dermatologist.  After he woke up one night with blood everywhere, I thought it might be good to get a referral to specialist.  The doctor was great-very confident and knowledgeable. 

Here is a progression of the growth...

After measuring it and squeezing it and checking it out, she explained some things to us.  First of all, if you didn't know, a hemangioma is an abnormal build-up of blood vessels.  The blood vessels continue to pool blood in that area because the brain isn't signaling it to stop.  Many hemangiomas will eventually shrink in size on their own.  Since Parker's is right on his forehead, we have been worried about it getting hit and bleeding.  She also explained what kind he had (his was described as "focal" which is good-nothing else is going on internally health wise).  She also said his is a combination of superficial and deep, meaning part of it is growing under the skin and part above.  The under the skin part is what has caused it to raise.

After talking about why surgery isn't a good option right now (thank goodness), she prescribed Timolol.  This is a liquid that I rub on the hemangioma twice a day.  It is actually a treatment for glaucoma, but it has been shown to reduce the size of the hemangioma significantly in a pretty safe way.

So, we started today.  He goes back to the doctor in 2 months.  I will post update pics of any progress.  I am crossing my fingers that this is a easy solution and we can avoid surgery.

Happy Halloween

I know that Halloween is a child's dream holiday-walking around, collecting tons of candy in a fun costume.  It was no different for Lily!  Actually, last night while we were trick-or-treating she told me it was the best day of her life.  Despite the awful weather and freezing temps, Lily and I went across the street to the close neighborhood.  She collected all kinds of goodies!  Jeff stayed home with Parker because I didn't want him out in the cold.

She knew she wanted to be Doc McStuffins (unless you have a young child who watches Disney Jr. 24/7 you are probably unfamiliar with this character).  This was a pretty easy costume to accomplish, and she has been able to wear it to several different parties.  She does have a cute skirt to wear, but we had to go with sweatpants last night because of the cold weather.

I found the devil costume for about $7 at Menards.  I thought it was fitting since Parker is a handful these days.  Here he is pulling Lily's braid!

Poor Lily was a champ in the cold!

Somebody was tired after walking around!