Happy Birthday Maddie Mae!

On this day 6 years ago at 8:38a.m., my beautiful little girl Maddie was born.

It's so amazing that 6 years have flown by! We decided not to find out when I was pregnant with her if she were a boy or girl. I wanted to be surprised. I was SO SURE that I was having another boy! So, when she came out, I will always remember Josh saying: "It's a Girl!" And according to him I looked very shocked, but I think the shock went away very fast when I thought of all the cute little dresses I'd be able to put her in! (ha ha)





I have to say I'm pretty lucky to have such a fantastic daughter. Maddie is so smart, funny,sweet,thoughtful, and caring of others. She has always been like a little mother to Eliza and Wyatt.


She's also very creative and I love seeing what she will come up with in her drawings and what she'll write next. I look forward to seeing her continue to grow and blossom. We were lucky my parents were able to come and celebrate, so we celebrated a day early and had cake (although it didn't turn out quite how we planned) we blew out the candles and opened up presents!


Today it was Maddie's turn for their "snack" so we brought in glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts!
Tonight we're doing it low key by going to see the movie "Up" and going to dinner somewhere (we haven't decided where yet!).

The pictures

Pictures from when we saw Wicked
Our little group was: Me, Jenn, her mom Karen, Jenna and Brooke. The show was fabulous! I would most definately go see it again!






Visiting my sister Marilyn

Here's a picture of Maddie and my niece Molly


My other Niece Emma


My Nephew Josh and Jonas were pretty much either playing nintendo games or playing on the computer together, or playing with the nerf guns. So we saw a lot of this:


Wyatt definately loved all the attention! I think Molly liked him too!


And here's me and my sister Marilyn



Then my parents came to my sisters and we left on Sunday after church and headed to North Carolina. We spent some time in the Outerbanks. We had a lot of fun! I forgot how much I love the beaches there, and all large seashells we collected. I think that was my kids favorite part. They also enjoyed the swimming pool at our hotel!
My parents are still there until tomorrow and then they will spend a few days here with us before returning home. So here's some pictures of our time there

Wicked/American Idol

I will definately be posting more pictures of our night but wanted to post that on Wednesday night the same time as the American Idol results show was going on I was seeing Wicked, and it was Wicked awesome!!


As for American Idol I feel I need to post a comment about this. My friends and I are watchers of the show, and have discussed every week who we thought would stay and go.
First I have to say I would've been happy with whichever person

won because I liked them both. I wasn't a big Adam fan at first, but I grew to like him. Although, I did get tired of hearing from the judges how they LOVED Adam, and there were times that I didn't think he was all that great. He always got the praise, never any pointers or criticism. By the end of the season I got tired of his screaching and the thing he does with his tongue while he's doing it! I've been reading things about why they think Kris Allen won, a lot of them say it's because America thinks it's the "safe" thing. He's not doing crazy things with his looks, wearing nail polish, or earrings like Adam Lambert. I really don't think it's his style though. They think America went with the straight guy over the "maybe" gay guy. For me, it didn't have anything to do with his sexuality, it had to do with his singing, and would I buy his cd? Would I listen to Adam, or Kris? It came down to that for me, Kris is definately more my style. Sure a little Adam will add some spice when I'm in the mood. When it comes down to it though, he's the one I could and would listen to. I think he's very talented, and wouldn't have gotten that far if he hadn't been. either way, I'm sure both guys will do well. Okay that's the end of my rant... I'll post more pictures when I return home from my trip to see my sister in Maryland!

Sometimes you just have to slow down..

This is apparently a lesson I needed to learn to slow down. As I was looking at my week ahead I had a list of things that I needed to get done, and places to go everyday, but that definately got thrown out the window.

It all started Saturday night Wyatt woke up and was crying and had a really barky cough. My first immediate thought was it sounds like Croup. (prounounced Cr-oo-p) None of my other kids had it, so I thought well it's probably nothing because he hadn't been sick when he went to bed. Sunday I could tell he wasn't himself, he was running a fever off and on, and had a runny nose and cough. Yesterday though he was wheezing, and by the afternoon sounded like he couldn't take a deep breath, was very lethargic not wanting to do anything except be held. It took me to go to my friend Jenn's house for her to convince me to take him in that night to the ER instead of waiting till this morning to go to the doctor. I called the nurse told of his symptoms, and told me to get him to the Children's hospital immediately. We didn't have a long wait in the ER either because I think of his symptoms. So we got in a room, and they said he had Croup, and he had Riders which is when you when they just wheeze and difficulty breathing without being active to have the symptoms. I hope that makes sense. They gave him some steroids, and some epinephrin that he had to breath through a mask, and they said if had to do it again then he'd have to stay the night. So, of course he had to do it again so we were admitted to the Children's Hospital. The worst part of the whole thing was when they tried and failed to get an IV in him to get fluids, his little veins weren't cooperating, and after 7 attempts they didn't try again. He eventually took fluids on his own and his fever was gone before we even left the ER room, and by this morning he was acting more like himself and wanting to walk/crawl around. So we were able to come home around noon. I'm so grateful to have wonderful friends that at a moments notice would come and help me out in this situation, even ones that found out after the fact I know I could've called. I am blessed to have great friends, and Jenn thank you again. I didn't move back to Norfolk thinking I'd have any situations like this, but I'm sure glad I was here when it happend. Wyatt is on the mend and doing much better. He's already up to his old tricks of finding things he's not supposed to, and is thankfully finally walking at 15 months! (which I was going to write about this week, I'll have to update with a video!)

Happy Birthday Jenn!

My wonderful friend Jenn turned 35 yesterday.
So to celebrate we took her to one of her favorite places... Busch Gardens in Williamsburg,VA.
There were 6 of us girls, and we had a blast! We did get some rain.. but it didn't put a damper (pun DEFINATELY intended!) on our fun.


We made her wear this t-shirt that Nicole made. (great job on that by the way!) We also made her wear lots of goofy looking things as you'll notice in the pictures!








Because of the rain, the crowds of people left the park. So,some of us rode the Griffon 4 times in a row. For some (Jenn the birthday girl and Holly) the excitment was too much on their tummys which later caused some vomiting to occur. That though, still didn't stop us from going to IHOP after the park closed and spending time eating, talking and laughing. By the time I crawled into bed after I dropped the babysitter off and put the kids back into bed, it was 2:30a.m.
This morning came too soon, and I realized I don't function well on 4 hours or less of sleep.
My kids were very thoughtful for Mothers Day, they brought me my usual Special K with straweberries cereal, and a Mountain Dew. I guess after last night they thought I needed the strong stuff first thing in the morning! They also all made cards (even Jonas!) It was so sweet, and they did it all on their own this year since Josh isn't around. I was pleasantly surpised. It's just too bad Wyatt doesn't know how to let me sleep in until 8a.m. I could've used the extra hour and a half of sleep!