Jackson turns 6!!!

Way back on November 19 (I am playing catch up) Jackson turned 6!  I can't believe our Action Jackson is 6!!  That kid grows like crazy though, so he definitely looks it!  He is the tallest one in his class (both school and primary) and is smart as a whip.  Love this kid so so much.  He is an amazing big brother and a stickler on following the rules.  His only struggle is his tendency to talk back every now and then because sometimes he thinks he's 16 instead of 6.  Classic oldest child.

In October we finally had some free time and free space while in Glide to teach him to ride his bike without training wheels (we unfortunately don't have a lot of places to ride his back right outside our home right now).  I've been dying to teach him for a while, but it has been SO SO crazy with Morgan and everything else going on.  So, while in Glide we took off the training wheels and within a few trys he was riding no problem.  He picked it up so fast, it was amazing! By the end of the weekend we were able to go on a big bike ride with him around Glide.  I am so proud of him!

For his birthday, I took him and some of his best buddies to Pump It Up that day after school and then we went with The Jensens to Red Robin to celebrate together!  He had a very fun day and was smiling from ear to ear.

The wind tunnel

He requested Spider man cupcakes.... this is what I came up with on limited time and limited free hands.  He loved them, and thought they were so cool, so I lucked out on that one! Good thing kids are easy to please!!

The weekend before we took him to Chuck-e-Cheese, as requested.  He's been wanting to go for a long time.  It was our first time.  John and I are not a fan of that place, but a las, we caved for his special day and it was actually pretty fun and not too crowded when we went.

Birthday masks from Grandma

Just a few thoughts on Jackson at 6 years old:


He is one of the sweetest kids you'll ever meet.  When he gets in trouble, he almost always writes me an "I'm sorry mom" note and draws a picture and leaves it on my pillow.  He also cleans my room for me as a surprise all the time and leaves hearts all over.  He is just always so kind.

He is an amazingly patient friend.  He has always had this gift of accepted others, differences and all.  He will make friends with the kid that is a bully or the kid with special needs or whatever.  Nothing bothers him about other kids.  He honestly just wants to play and be friends with everyone.  It is a true gift and makes a mama proud.  He gets notes sent home all the time for play dates and birthday invitations.

He is on fire with reading right now.  It took him a while to get into reading, but now that it's caught on with him he cannot stop.  He wants to read everything.  Every sign, book, symbol, movie title, etc.  We got him the BOB books a while ago and he has already read them all and moved on past them to reading Dr. Seuss style books.  He also loves being able to read his own versus (with a little help, obviously) when we read scriptures as a family instead of just repeating after us.  It has been fun!

He LOVES learning spanish in his twin immersion program.  He can count to 59 in Spanish, knows a few songs in spanish, tons of words and even speaks with a spanish accent! He corrects us when we say a word without the right accent.  It is awesome!

He is a total math/numbers guy, just like his daddy.  He does 1st and 2nd grade math books that his teacher sent home for him and does them well!

He love, love, loves sports.  Just this past week he got to go to his first professional basketball game to watch the Blazers play with John and his best buddy, Jack and Jack's dad, Tom.  He thought it was the coolest thing he's ever done.  His dream is to play a sport in the Olympics, except he can't decide between basketball, running, swimming and biking, so he said he's going to do them all :).

Love watching this kid learn and grow more and more everyday!!

Morgan's 4 month Stats

Way back in November Morgan had her 4 month appointment.  Here were her stats:

Weight:  13 lbs 11 oz. -  61%
Height:  24" -  50%
Head:  16" -  59%


Even though she was a whole 4 pounds lighter than Baron was at this age, we were excited to see that she was continuing to gain weight and was at the 61% since she had struggled with keeping food down the entire first 4 months.  In fact, at this appointment, she was just as bad as ever with eating.  She really really struggled to be able to nurse without gagging and throwing all her food right back up.  The pediatrician suggested giving her rice cereal to help her keep it down, but with her super sensitive gag reflux, she had a hard time taking that. She was on her acid reflux medicine, which helped a little, but not a whole lot.  It was still a daily battle to feed her at this point, she still was not sleeping well at night, couldn't be laid on her back hardly at all, especially after eating, and she still had tons of gas 24/7.  The one thing she finally did overcome was her nightly 2-3 hour straight colic crying! That was a huge relief with John working so many late nights now.

She absolutely hated being on her tummy though (most likely because of all of her tummy troubles), but at 4 1/2 months old, she learned to roll over from her tummy to her back!  She loved bath time and started smiling a lot, even sometimes while she was crying if you smiled at her.  She loves her brothers and they absolutely love playing with her.  They still die laughing every time she passes gas :).  She could stand up on her legs/feet really well too.

It sure has been a rough few months, but we still love this little girl to pieces and are so grateful to have added her to our life!  I just really hope she can overcome all of these health issues soon so she doesn't have to be in pain everyday!

Halloween 2012

The weekend before Halloween we had a spooky dinner party with The Jensen's.  Lisa, who is one amazing creative woman, made some fabulous Halloween themed food and decorations!  We ate dinner, watched a movie and carved pumpkins together.  I think we have carved pumpkins with them for the past 4 or 5 years!  Later we put all the kids to bed and watched a non animated movie :)  Love Halloween traditions!

Since I flew down to CA on Halloween, costume and trick-or-treating duties fell to John.  He came through big time!  He did a better job with the make up than I could have ever done! Jackson was a skeleton and Baron was a pirate.

Colby's Brain Surgery

Less than 2 weeks after John started back at Vestas and just a few days before Halloween we got a phone call from my dad at night.  He told me he was on the way to the hospital because they had just found a big tumor the size of a peach in Colby's brain.  WHAT???  That is something you NEVER expect to hear.  It was totally out of the blue, completely unexpected. This is a perfectly healthy and active almost 16 year old boy.  They weren't sure what type of tumor or much of anything that night, but would be doing an intense surgery the next morning.  That night was the most sleepless night I think I have ever had.  Between all the worrying and praying and still getting up to nurse a 4 month old a few times, I hardly slept at all.  I'm not even sure how I was able to get up, get ready and get Jackson to school the next morning.  I definitely felt like I was in a state of shock.  On the way home from dropping Jackson off, I stopped at my really close friend, Kim's house.  She knows me so well and could tell something was seriously wrong.  She sat me down and listened while I cried.  Then she did the best thing ever.  She hugged me and told me that I needed to go down to CA to be with my family and that she would watch my boys and take care of everything back here.  She even right then and there found and helped me buy my flight and make the needed phone calls to everyone.  I don't know what I would have done without her! I needed a steady mind and hand that morning to help me figure it all out.

The next day, Halloween, I found myself and Morgan on a flight to California.  My older sister Shannon picked me up from the airport and we went straight to the hospital where Colby was recovering from surgery from the day before.  The surgery went as best as it could have gone! When they got in there they discovered it was a cavernous angioma and not a tumor.  They were able to remove it all just in time.  He is expected to make a full recovery.  He came so close to dying, but he is going to be just fine, thanks to many prayers, fasting and divine intervention.  I won't go into too many details about what he had and his recovery here because while I was down there I started a blog for just that:

colbybaron.blogspot.com

I am so grateful I was able to go down there and be with him.  All of my siblings were able to make it down there within a day of his surgery and be together.  It was a difficult, yet miraculous time.  It was such a blessing to be able to witness the outpouring of love and support from all of our family and friends as well as the miracles that aided in his recovery.  I will never forget that week I spent down there.

Colby really enjoyed seeing Morgan in the hospital.  He brightened right up when he saw her and wanted to hold her, even if he had a hard time remembering her name at first.  This is my favorite picture I was able to capture during the visit:

We are all feeling so happy and blessed that Colby is now doing so well!!

Pumpkin Patch 2012

I love Fall in Oregon.  It is so beautiful!  We especially look forward every Fall to the pumpkin patches. They are always a blast and this year was no exception.  We went with the Janeways this year as in year's past and had a great time!

John's Job Situation

Just wanted to get this down in our family journal to remember and explain.  The company John works for, Vestas, is based out of Denmark.  The European economy crashed big time this last year and Vestas has not been doing so well ever since.  They have made a TON of cuts every few months.  Sept. 27th they cut a whole floor full of people- enough to have to lease out part of their brand new building they just renovated.  We were so grateful to make it through all the cuts the other months, especially with a baby coming soon and with all of John's health concerns and testing going on.  We got all our major medical bills and tests and hospital trips in just in time too.  On the 27th, John was finally let go.  His boss had fought hard to keep him, but the big heads in Denmark said someone in their department had to go (there is only 3 in the tax department- John has been there the least amount of time, so they axe fell on him).  We were obviously devastated and very freaked out right at first.  I could not stop shaking for a few hours.  John was heartbroken.  But then, we both felt that quite peace and confirmation that this was all for a reason and that everything was going to work out for the best, and soon.  After just 3 stressful weeks of job searching and interviewing, it all did work out, for the time being at least.  His former co-worker at Vestas decided just 2 weeks after they let John go, that she no longer wanted to stick around and went ahead and accepted a job offer from another company.  That very day she put in her 2 weeks notice, John's boss from Vestas called him up and told him he wanted him back.  He even offered him a promotion in both pay and title.  We both felt like this was a good solution for the here and now- probably not for long term, but to keep that paycheck coming in again for a little while until we can figure out what we really want for our family.  It has been a tremendous blessing to have those paychecks as well as the health insurance and we are very grateful things did indeed work out so quickly.  Unfortunately, John has worked far too many stressful hours since he has been back.  He is the only one doing all the grunt work that has to be done now.  He even had to work through most of our Christmas vacation in California. So, while we appreciate the work, we are hoping to make some positive changes for our family in the near future.  And that about sums it up!

Elementary School Shooting

I have so so so many blog posts to catch up on.  I plan to do that over our Christmas break when every minute of the day is not taken up by work and our crazy life.  But for now, I just had to document the happenings of today.

Today there was a shooting at an Elementary School of all places in Connecticut.  20 kids and 6 adults were shot and killed.  Horrifying. Absolutely horrifying.  There have been way too many shootings in general lately, including one at a mall just over the river here in Portland a few days ago.  It is scary the world we live in today. So much good, but also so so much evil surrounds us.  This shooting was by far one of the worst.  The gunman, a 20 year old man, went into the school and shot and killed the principal, the school psychologist, then went into the kindergarten and first grade rooms and killed a few teachers and 20 children. 26 victims in all.  He also shot and killed his mother at their home before hand, and killed himself at the school. Jackson is in kindergarten right now.  I have been so heart broken and emotional over this today, as I'm sure many parents and anyone with a heart has been over the past few hours.  I watched the news in horror and in tears and counted down the minutes until Jackson got home so I could hold him and Baron and Morgan tight.  I cannot even imagine the pain and shock the parents of the victims are going through.  It is 10 days before Christmas.  There will be way too many unopened presents under those families trees and a huge void in their lives during the holidays.

The boys had a Dr. appointment today for their 4 and 6 year old checkups.  I have been feeling extremely overwhelmed lately with all of Baron's food allergy issues.  It has increased our monthly expenses drastically with all the special and expensive cheeses, milks, GF bread and special vitamins and pro-biotics.  There are days where I am just at a loss on how to keep up on it all with such a busy life.  After the shootings today though, I feel so blessed to have my children still here with me, that I will gladly take on any challenge they may come with! We were at Costco this afternoon and there was a kind lady we kept bumping into around the store and checked out right behind.  Then as we got to our car, we noticed she was parked right next to us as well! I laughed and made a funny remark about her not being able to get rid of us.  She responded that it was a pleasure to see such a happy cute little family.  She told me how good the boys seemed to be and how happy of a mom I was around them.  She then offered to take my cart back and we exchanged Holiday Greetings.  I am usually so sensitive about how others perceive me as a mom because of my age.  I get tired of the whole, "Who's kids are those?  Yours?? But you look so young!"  It was such a joy to have this women, a mother of a now 24 year old, share her insight to what we really looked like together.  She never once mentioned my age or questioned my ability therefore to be in charge of these 3 young kids. What she saw was our happiness and that we have it together just fine.  I needed that today.  It reminded me how blessed I am to be a mother and how much joy it brings me each and everyday to learn and grow and be together.

I am so grateful for all that I have! I know I hugged my whole family tight tonight as I am sure many others around the country have as well.  May the Lord comfort and bless those families affected by the shootings today. I hope they can find peace and feel of the Lord's love for their sweet children and loved ones.  And may all these crazy shootings stop.  I want my children to feel safe in this world!!


Cannot get enough of this little blue eyed bug

Or this smoothie mustache/bearded face

And this excited big boy

 who drew me this the other day, of which I am going to frame

And can't forget this good looking guy who's been working his buns off for us!

LOVE THEM ALL!!