Brotherly Love

I really needed my camera tonight but....it was at home. Just picture it in your head!! We were out running errands, by the time I get to the grocery store, Porter has had enough and wanted to stay in the van and watch a movie. Matt agrees to stay with them. He gets the cartoon going and after a few minutes looks back at the boys....they are each sucking their thumbs...Porter his right and Dixon his left and they are holding hands with their free hands! Isn't that so adorable? AHWWW....I sure do love my guys!!!

Holiday Fun

Before Christmas we had a great family fun day with Jason and his family at Stone Mountain Park. This is us on top of the mountain at one of the overlook sites. I will come out to this area up top. While looking to the right you can see the skyline of Atlanta. If you look straight down, there is a HUGE home....it rumored to belong to Puff Daddy. Did I mention, it was HUGE!! It was a wonderful day. Porter loves to spend time with his cousin Amelia. Sometimes they bicker back and forth as if they were sibblings but he always asks "When can I see Amelia again?" The weather was great....not too cold (unless you're on top of the mountain). We visited with the Snow Angel, Ms. Claus, Tiny the Elf, Santa, plus took in a show and rode the train. The favorite part might also be the yummy hot chocolate with mountains of marshmallows!

Matt, Jason and Jay took the kids to the other side where you actually walk on top of the mountain....that is NOT for me!! They quickly returned when they realized it is much colder and horribly windy on top!

Porter enjoyed chatting with Santa. Dixon was not so excited for the opportunity so he got to stay in his warm, comfy stroller.

We were getting tired at this point. We still had the moonlight train ride to go plus the Snow Angel was going to make it snow and fly off into the night.

Porter Has a Great Imagination

Several of you know that Porter has many imaginery friends...a whole gang of them really. From the time he was about 3 years old he has had a friend named, 'Pooey'. We learned of him one night when we were trying to have family prayer and Porter got up and ran away and said we couldn't pray without Pooey. We thought he would come back with a stuffed animal. When he returned empty-handed, we tried to start the prayer again and he said that Pooey wanted to pray too. We were lost for a few minutes then he told us again that Pooey wanted to pray. We finally caught on that Pooey was his new friend and we couldn't see Pooey. From that point on we had to make lunch for Pooey and remember to buckle his carseat etc.... From Pooey the gang was formed...there is Fa, La, and Lee. When I was having Dixon, there was briefly Baby Pooey. Next came Zuco. This week...we have added 2 dogs. I honestly can't tell you there names...I do know that one is a German Shepherd (in honor of Graham). Porter refused to get on the school bus until he could feed his dogs and make sure they were okay! The funny thing is...Porter is terrified of dogs in real life!

I love this little guy and treasure all of our wonderful times together!

Here are a few pictures of him playing. He really does have a great imagination and is very creative. The firetruck is supposed to be an ambulance carrying a new baby. (This was in honor of Shauna's new baby.)

Ground Breaking for Stake Center

It has been almost 5 years since our stake was formed. We had the privilege to attend the ground breaking ceremony for our stake center. I am so excited for the new building. Since my callings are Stake Activities and Ward Activities Director, I have big plans for the new space! I am overjoyed with the idea of picnic pavilions! I wonder if we get round tables? Hmmmm...all the things I would like to do....maybe even Stake Roadshows....who knows....our own version of field days....

Here is Porter playing in the dirt after the ceremony ended.

Dixon gets his 1st Haircut

Well, I waited a longer than a year....but the time had come! Dixon got his first haircut this past Sunday. We had waited until Nanny was available for this time honored tradition! He is no longer a baby....he is all toddler!

He decided about half-way through that he didn't much care for getting his hair cut. Matt came to the rescue...or so he thought. Matt held him and turned him as needed so that Nanny could finish the haircut.

Here is my new boy....doesn't he look so grown? He loves lolly-pops!

Black Friday Shopping

For the past month, someone in my family has been sick in some form! It has been very frustrating...2 of us are back to coughing and now Dixon is getting another runny nose! I am ready to pull out my hair.

This is important because Dixon had not been eating well but sleeping lots during our visit. So about 1 am on Black Friday, he wakes up and is not comforted to go back to sleep. I get up and try to feed him and he finally eats a decent amount of food. This wakes him up completely and I realize he isn't going back to sleep so I decided to check out what it means to shop on Black Friday.

Thanks to my handy dandy GPS, I was able to locate a Kohl's and Walmart. We ventured to Kohl's first and waited in the van until the store opened at 4 am. We made our few purchases and were waiting in Walmart's parking lot by 4:30 am. Once 5 am came around, we left our car and went to get in line at the garden center...it had a shorter line....about 50 yards compared to 350 yards...no kidding!!! About 5 police cars later, the doors open and I experience the madness of this shopping adventure for so many people.

I was able to make the main purchase I was hoping for and after waiting 1 hour and 15 minutes to checkout....we were on our way home....just as most everyone else was waking up. Jason had ventured out before us....he is an old pro at this shopping adventure and had a game plan clearly mapped out...including snacks!

The sunrise was beautiful. It is hard to tell but the parking lot was completely full. These are cars driving up and down waiting for someone to leave.

Here is proof that Dixon was wide awake and completely enjoying our shopping adventure. They even had a McDonalds in the store so he ate pancakes while we waited to check out. That was a good thing too since it took forever!

Fun at Marbles (Childrens Musuem)

One of our fun trips was to take the kiddos to a children's musuem. They had a blast and we were all exhausted from the fun and excitement of the outing.

Thanksgiving

I am so grateful for the many blessings in my life. One blessing in particular is great friendships! We have the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with our dear friends, The Millers. Now that they are living on this side of the country, we have never missed this holiday except for when Dixon was being discharged from NICU last year. Matt and Jason work on home projects at the hosting home. Mary Mike and I catch up and watch the children play.

We had a wonderful visit and the children enjoyed their time together just as much as we did.

Matt and Jason worked really hard and accomplished a lot being manly men!

Here is Porter and Graham, having a blast together as new best buddies! Mary Mike and I quickly learned that 2 boys can get into lots of MISCHIEF!! We still do not know how they came up with their many 'great ideas' !

Porter, Graham and Easton....thinking up new plans!

Henderson Thanksgiving BBQ

For the past 20+ years, my family has had a tradition of getting together on the Saturday before Thanksgiving at my father's home for a BBQ feast. Dad starts cooking days in advance...Mom cleans for days before and after!! It is a treat for everyone and one of the family get-togethers that I look forward to all year long! I think the best part of this tradition is visiting with our cousins, aunts and uncles.

This year was a special treat because Cousin Kathy and her family was stopping over in Georgia from Minnesota and my cousin Elizabeth and her husband Richard were able to come from South Carolina.

We missed spending time with Jennifer aka Scooterhead and Jared and Carl! Maybe next year....

I did get to play games and almost won....those darn dice wouldn't land properly for me...I think Jason spoke a hex on them!!!

Dixon's First Year (in pictures)

My week....the very long version

Well, you may remember that Dixon started getting sick while we were out of town for Aunt Myrtle's funeral. That was on October 30th. I know that due to his age, there is no cold medicine for him. I just waited it out hoping that everyday he would get better. A week went by and he was not getting better then suddenly on Saturday afternoon the poor little guy started having green gunk all over his eyes! I felt so bad for him....called the answering service for the Doctor on call....he said we needed to take him to the Emergency Room!! I was totally shocked and perplexed! He suggested St. Mary's would be faster than ARMC and that he would call ahead to let them know we were on our way. I still was not pleased with the thought of waking up Porter (who had started with a stuffy nose) and taking Dixon to the emergency room for several hours to pay $100 to hear it was a sinus infection to go home. So, I spoke to a friend who gave me peace of mind that all would be okay and just wait another day. (Whew...who wants the emergency room on a Saturday night?)

By Monday morning, Porter had a sore throat and off we went to the Doctor for both boys. I should have gone myself but....I was going to 'fight' it off myself!!! Dixon had started having less runny nose and no more eye gunk so we got a prescription but waited to fill it. Porter was checked for strep throat since his throat looked so bad but had pharyngitis with a cold. I have felt bad for about a week now at this point. Still wanting to trudge forward and knowing that getting to the Doctor would be a huge headache with trying to rearrange babysitting around a work in appointment I chose to try one more day.....that was my problem!!

Tuesday night driving home (very late) from BUNCO, I realized I was having eye gunk now!! My contacts kept getting covered up and were totally hurting me. On Wednesday, I called my doctor desperate for medicine. They are good to me and called something in. My next dilemma was that I couldn't wear my contacts and thus not see. I needed my glasses adjusted...they are only about 8 years old and at least 3 prescriptions back but work for seeing the clock in the middle of the night. When Matt got home from work, he was taking the truck up to Sam's for someone to look at it and think about buying it. We all went to Sam's in case he sold the truck and I would need to sign the title and drive him home so I was going to have them adjust them adjust my glasses. The lens folks did the job and as I was walking back out to the car I quickly realized that I couldn't see faces on people in the distance. I knew then that I would have to get new glasses immediately. This totally depressed me because glasses are totally not in my budget plan this time of year! I went back in to Sam's to get my prescription from file. I normally use LensCrafters for all of my vision needs but last time they didn't have appointments available when I had time available. They gave me the prescription and off we went to LensCrafters. By this time, Sam's optical was closing.

Once at LensCrafters, I looked at the prescription and thought it was wrong. I thought I wore -2.5 contacts and the prescription was for -3.5. I voiced my concern to the employees and they said that glasses can be stronger than contacts and I could trust Sam's. I still felt uneasy but picked out glasses. (well, the employee picked them out and then I chose between 2 pair....remember I can't really see at this point.) As we were putting in my order, the office employee from the doctors office is leaving and so I stop her, explain my problem and ask her to check my file. (They have about 8 years of records for my vision exams on file.) When we looked it up from 2007, my contacts were -2.75 or -3.00 and my glasses was -2.75. She told me that -3.5 was a huge jump and thought it unlikely that I had changed so drastically when I had remained the same for about 4 years. We decided that -3.5 would be too strong and then changed the order to the 2007 prescription. So, $300 and 30 minutes later, I have beautiful new trendy glasses and I can see.....or so I thought!!!!

Yes, you read that correctly!! The -2.75 was so much better than the old glasses, I thought everything was great as I left LensCrafters at 7:52 pm. As Matt drove us home, I quickly realized that I had made a mistake. These glasses were not strong enough and I had difficulty seeing and reading at distance. By the time we got home, I was sick to my stomach. I was so bummed out I started crying....I had just spent $300 on glasses that were no good to me. I knew that LensCrafters offers 90 days to change a prescription but that is 90 days from date of eye exam not 90 days from day of being made. I had such a horrible headache from a day of not seeing well and then the stress of the whole $300 that I just went to bed and Matt dealt with the boys and cleaned up from dinner. (Have I mentioned lately that I am married to the best husband ever?? WELL, I AM!!!)

Thursday morning, I was waiting for LensCrafters to open at 9 am. The gentleman who was working had been there the night before for part of my saga. He asked what he could do for me and I quietly explained that I had the glasses made using the wrong prescription and that they were too weak for my eyes. I sincerely apologized and told him that I had not realized that my prescription had changed. He did look a bit frustrated but to my great pleasure, he asked for the correct prescription and ordered them to be remade. He smiled and did not give me any grief whatsoever!! I was so happy , he did not charge me for new lenses!! In case you don't wear glasses, the lenses are what is expensive not the frames! My lenses alone would have cost $325.00. They are running a special right now so that lenses are 50% off when you buy frames....thus my new Ray-Bans! Now, I can see perfectly and I am so relieved that I did not have to buy the second set of lenses. Thank you, nice LensCrafters Man!!!!

Dixon and I are getting better thanks to our antibiotics. Porter is feeling better with just an occasional cough and now....Matt comes home with a sore throat!! TGIF....

Welcome to my world!!!

Happy Birthday Dixon

Wow!!! It has already been a year! My baby is now 1. We try to forget those first 2 weeks of NICU and celebrate his wonderful year! He is walking and climbing and jabbering constantly. We are even giving him whole milk now. He doesn't seem to react to milk but he still reacts to cheese. If he has to have one or the other, I prefer milk so that I can stop nursing and not have to buy formula. (You know he does have 6 teeth!!)

He is doing great and LOVED his cake! Matt had been trying to teach him to blow out a candle but Porter was ready and waiting to take care of that job for him! Due to the funeral, we had to cancel the Ehlers' family party so we had a quiet dinner at home on his birthday and then we had some pals over for Sunday dinner to celebrate a little bit.

I will put together a slide show...if I get that figured out. In the meantime, here are some pictures of the dinner.

Trick or Treat

My brother, Jason, and I had a great plan....since we would be in South Georgia for Aunt Myrtle's funeral on Halloween, we would take the kids trick or treating at Aunt Mary's. Sounds like a good idea....we packed the costumes and pumpkins and off we went on our trip. Imagine our surprise when we learn that the town held Trick or Treating on Thursday night so that folks could go to the high school football games on Friday night! What a complete bummer for our little ones!!!

In an effort to save the day, we decided to create a 'Halloween Hunt'. We bought candy to stuff in baggies then hide them around the yard. The kids dressed in costume and off they went in search of candy.

Whew...that was close!!!

Porter went as a fireman and Amelia as "pink" tinkerbell.

Porter was all about finding those candy bags.