Monday, September 29, 2008

A new bed for Big Boy!

Change is a coming...slowly but surely. The kids are growing up doing more things big kids do. In fact Boopy found that she grew this summer and can officially pedal her big girl bike all herself now that her feet fully reach the pedals! Big Boy has gotten to where he can almost get himself completely dressed on his own. He sometimes struggles with his shirt and occasionally gets the underwear on backwards, but hey at least he tries! As we prepare for them both to be bigger kids and less and less the toddlers and babies that they were, we been working towards the great room switch project. Our upstairs is still in a complete state of disaster, but slowly and surely looking more and more like a nice livable space.
This weekend, we finished the trim paint half of our bedroom, enough to move in the furniture (3 bookcases and a futon) from the guest room. There are still boxes of stuff to go through and books to organize but it's really getting there and looking quite nice. I took "in progress" pictures but haven't loaded to the computer just yet. What I do have though, is Big Boy's new room/bed as of last night. We managed to get the new bed, which is a twin/twin loft bed put up as well as the air hockey table he was gifted from Big Anne's son, Russell. The bed is one bed up top, one trundle in the bottom drawer, a pull out desk, built in dresser and cool storage/hideout in the back. I have better "in progress" pics of his bed with my room pics that I'll load this week. Below is the quick cell phone picture I took to share of the kids already enjoying the bed.

Next weekend we'll work on moving Big Boy's stuff over to his room and maybe getting Boopy's new bed up in their current room. We still need to get paint for Boopy's room which may have to wait until the following weekend depending on time and money. Whew....one little idea and we've got a project that may just take us the rest of the year.

Hope you all had as productive a weekend as we did!

Friday, September 19, 2008

Been working...

I've been working on more picture sets. Slowly starting to catch up. Check out the latest on my photo blog. Other than that, the kids and I are going to my mother-in-laws company picnic in Los Gatos tomorrow. Sunday will be spent on pictures, painting the trim in Papa's and my room and picking up a new bed for Boopy. That's right the great room switchero has led it's way to getting new beds for the kids. We picked up Big Boy's bed Wednesday night. Thanks to may friend, "Mother" Michelle, we got a super deal through craigslist! We pretty much saved nearly $700 on each bed! I'll be sure to share pictures of the beds in their rooms once we get to that point in the room switching.

So, go have a wonderful weekend, think of my parents as they go out to support the Deckers tomorrow. Be safe, kiss and hug the ones you love and praise God for all the blessings you have in your life!

It truly is a small world

The other night while taking a brain break from editing photos, I browsed through my usual reading list of blogs. Through one I found a link to another post telling updates on a sad story of a husband and wife recovering from 3rd degree burns due to a plane crash. In a post the sister to the wife wrote, she shared requests for prays for another mother who recently suffered a trauma. So, of course, I followed the link to her story and suddenly found it very familiar. My mother had just recently shared a story from her town about this mom! The mom, Carol Decker, was diagnosed with a Streptococcal Pnuemoniae infection immediately after an emergency c-section for her 2nd child. Due to the strong medications she was put on she tragically lost her sight and had to have both legs and one arm amputated.
This family is obviously dealing with a lot aside from the financial hardship this has brought. What is wonderful to see though, is that my parents found out about this family due to a local fundraiser they will be attending this weekend. It's amazingly wonderful to see communities gather together to help people when they really need it. And what amazes me even more is the way blogging and the Internet have helped to bring people together, regardless of their faith, to share their requests for prayer for any hardships as well as their blessings in their lives. It truly is a small world.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Boopy's 1st Dentist Appointment

Having learned the hard way through our experiences with Big Boy, that it is wise to have a first dentist appointment at a young age, even as early or earlier than 2 years old, we set up an appointment for Boopy on Friday, Sept 12. Big Boy had a small cavity to be filled on one of his top molars so Boopy's appointment was immediately after his. Thankfully having "teacher" Sam helping us out now, this appointment set up was ideal because I could still go back with Big Boy for his treatment and then take Boopy back for her first visit. The dentist understandably wouldn't let Boopy back for Big Boy's treatment as we wouldn't want to scare her from any regular visits.

Anyway, my poor big buy suffered through a very easy procedure to fill his cavity, fighting every step of the way. He went in initially for his new x-rays without a problem but wanted nothing more to do with the dentist after that. Not that I really blame the poor kid. It's just that if he had settled down, it would have been a much faster and easier procedure. I did take a couple pictures of my tough big kid since I'm trying to make up for not having anything but my cell phone at his first actual dental appointment. Oh, don't worry, while it looks like Big Boy is having a smoke after his filling, it's really just some gauze he had to bit on.

The kids had a moment to play together before Boopy's turn.

She was REALLY excited for her turn. She kept saying "My turn! My turn!" Seriously - it's anything that big brother can do, she wants to do regardless of what it is!

When I asked her how she was going to show the dentist her teeth this is what she did!

She was a real trooper for the x-rays. She sat very still on my lap, opened her mouth as asked. She was really really good.

Then we went back to the exam area which is really fun and kid friendly, since it is a pediatric dentist office. Anyway, after A LOT of coaxing, all we could get her to do was to sit on the chair barely by herself. I laid down on it with her, sat her in my lap and put her head on the chair. Nothing would convince her that it was okay to sit back and let the hygienist clean her teeth. Dr. Pacheco would have been thrilled if we had gotten that far but didn't have high expectations as not many two year olds manage to cooperate that far. Considering how good the x-rays went, I had hoped we'd get a bit farther without force. Oh well. We did have a brief exam with Dr. Pacheco where she counted Boopy's teeth and added some fluoride on them. Overall Boopy's teeth are in great shape and we're hoping for a smoother exam in March.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Save a life - Become a Bone Marrow Donor

A while back Papa Vaughn's cousin was in need of bone marrow transplant. Papa Vaughn and his sister, Aunt Kathlea, have frequently discussed becoming registered donors. One of the problems for doing so has been that it initially wasn't very easy and it costs $50+ to cover the testing and typing to put the donor in the registry. And while it's a great cause, these days $50+ are hard to part with. Well, I've stumbled across a great way to make things much easier for them and hopefully encourage you as well to officially become a registered donor.

A blog I read pointed me to the website for The National Bone Marrow Program and to the fact that from Sept 7-22, 2008 anyone who signs up to be a potential donor will have their fee waived due to a sponsor. This is connected with the 2008 NASCAR Foundation Blood and Marrow Drive. So, I encourage you to check out this site, it's safe, secure and won't cost you anything. I just signed up painlessly and am now awaiting my testing kit. What they do is have you fill out a health questionnaire to prescreen you, then if you meet the requirements they will mail you a kit. This kit, from what I understand, is simply a cotton swab set up that you do yourself and mail back to the lab. From there they test your tissue and type you and establish you in the registry. It's only when and if you become a potential candidate to donate that they will do a further health screening, etc. So, do think about it seriously. Take advantage of registering with no fees before the offer expires. You never know who's life you can help save.

Always playing catch-up!

So as usual, we've been staying busy. This past weekend, as noted earlier, we went back over to Vegas with the intention of helping Guya & D move. Papa Vaughn was already there for the Photoshop World Conference so the kids and I left Friday night after I got off work. They did pretty good for me. It helps that we now have the use of a DVD player which our neighbor bequeathed us when she got a new car with built in ones. Thanks Shannen! Anyway, we rolled in around 1:00 am got to sleep and I headed out to a quick photo session at 9:oo for Guya's friend. After that it was all about playing and hanging out since Guya & D didn't end up getting the keys for the new house due to more paperwork to be done. Gotta love the troubles of buying a new house. I'm sure it will all work out and I hope we can make it back over to help paint and decorate. As for Sunday, I had another photo shoot in the morning, then we had lunch all together at the outlets and heading on our merry way home.
This week we officially started our fall schedule. The weekly neighborhood bible study I attend started back up last night. The kids had a ball hanging out with neighbor, "Grandpa" Randy, since Papa had to work. Today was Big Boy's first day at speech class. He's going to a local elementary school every Thursday, 9:00-10:30am, to attend a preschool class with the speech therapist. The curriculum will be especially designed for kids like Big Boy, who are delayed in their speech to help them work on expressing themselves with words everyone can understand. He's currently in the class that works with learning words and speaking them but may get moved to the Monday class that focuses more on the phonetics if he seems to be need more work that way.
While I was bummed I couldn't take and pick him up on his first day, I did get to get reacquainted with the speech therapist in charge a couple of weeks ago. Denise was his therapists when we started out getting him help 2 years ago. I loved her energy and way with Big Boy then, so I know this will be a good experience for him. For now, I know "Teacher" Sam, our nanny, who has helped make it all possible for Big Boy to take advantage of this class, had fun taking Big Boy to school and having some one on one time with Boopy. For the sounds of it, he had a great time, walked right in and started playing like a big kid. I'm sure he's going to love being back in a setting with other kids, even if the session is small and limited to 6 kids.
As for the rest of the week, along with friends "Mother" Michelle & "Big Anne", I'm hosting a bridal shower for Auntie Jenn at our house this Saturday. We're looking forward to spoiling Jenn and enjoying the fact that the long awaited wedding is right around the corner. We need to get Boopy practicing for being the flower girl. For now if you ask her she tells you she's going to be in Auntie Jenn's wedding and carry flowers. And that she's going to be happy. I'll be there camera in hand to catch whatever she decides to do in October.
That's about it for now. Bridal showers, lots of pictures to edit and continuing in on project "Operation Room Change" will keep us busy through the weekend. Oh by the way, I did get Five and Kathie's family session finished. Hop over to my photo blog to view more than what I put in the trip teaser. I'm still working on Guya & D's as well as the plethora of snapshots throughout the week.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

We took LABOR day seriously....

There are times that my life simply makes me tired. Tired when I think about all we try to squeeze in, even if it all sounds like a good idea at the time. Labor Day week was no exception. Papa Vaughn ended up with the entire weekend off, only to work Monday night. So...I got the great idea that we should start in on "Operation Room Change". We've been talking for some time about switching the upstairs rooms around and giving the kids their own rooms. To do this however, we need to clear out what is currently the guest room, the first room at the top of the stairs.
Our upstairs consists of 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and our laundry room. The guest room currently houses 3 bookcases, 1 futon and misc items. These will all move into the master bedroom. We are blessed enough to have a very large bedroom, one that in the original floor plans could have been divided to be a master and smaller bedroom. In order to move the guest room furniture into our room however, we realized that we needed to redo the layout. So, we started "Operation Room Change" by overhauling our room. This is a good thing as it has been long overdue. Our room has our home computer in it and has become the room that things get put in and the door shut. This said, we really needed to reorganize and clean up old unnecessary papers, etc. While starting in on our room clean up with took all day Saturday, we realized that since we were rearranging why not go ahead and paint too. Yeah, let's just make it a really big project!
So, Sunday, after I did a photo shoot for Ashyln's 7 months pictures in Madera, we grabbed lunch and went to Lowe's to pick out paint. The rest of Sunday was spent moving furniture around and prepping for painting on Monday. We did take some time to rest and had Big Darren, Carolyn and her sister, Kelly over for dinner. They then stayed at our house with the kiddos put in bed while Papa Vaughn and I skipped out to see the 9:30 pm showing of "The Dark Knight". Which, by the way, we both loved!!! It definitely lived up to my expectations.
Monday, I had a photo shoot for baby Ryan's 5 month pictures in Clovis, then went home to paint our room. Of course we had big helpers who were really excited to paint. They didn't do too bad. Boopy ended up with the most paint on her body, which thankfully I had decided to strip her down to her pull-up beforehand and put her hair in a pony-tail. Papa had to go to work at 5 which left me to finish the trim at the top of the wall and the second coat. We ended up sleeping on our mattress on the floor that night.
At this point in time, we have our room mostly put back together. We've flipped where all our furniture was to opposite sides of the room and I'm really liking it thus far. We've haven't moved any of the guest furniture in yet as we still have the ceiling to paint, which we'll get to in a couple of weeks. This weekend we'll all in Vegas again. Papa's there for a Photoshop Conference and I'm going to help Guya and D move as well as 2 photo shoots. Yes, our life is tiring, but never boring!!!

Enjoy the pictures below!