Busy Bees

Well school is back in full force, and I am still trying to adjust to my schedule! Carter has been going to aunt Karen's house and loving it. She is getting him on a schedule, although he tends to buck it quite often and do what he wants. Shocker, I know! He has been quite an unhappy camper lately because his mouth is bothering him a lot. Which of course means little sleep for me, not good right at school time! He slept through the night all summer and then began waking up at all hours the week before in service! It is starting to get better, so hopefully he is getting some relief. His pal Brycen cut a tooth last week, and he is a month older so maybe Carter will get one soon! The last couple of weeks have been crazy busy, and it doesn't look to slow down much anytime soon. I love my new class though, we actually have a lot of sweet new kiddos in the school this year. This past weekend I went to the baby shower for my former co-teacher Amy McHugh. She is due to have Maggie the end of October. It was so good to see a few of the Vista girls from last year that aren't there anymore. I miss them so much! After that Christiaan and I went to the Ranger game with Shane, Kasi, Brad, Bri, Jason, and Chelsea. Mercy Me played a concert before the game. We had a great time, except that the Rangers played horribly and lost. Christiaan decided that I was the bad luck charm since every game I ever go, the teams lose! Grandpa also agreed with him. Uh like its me that is coaching. Then they would lose for sure. While we were at the game, Carter went with my parents and Micah and Aly to the Mesquite Rodeo. They said that it was a little loud for him at first, but then he spent a lot of time watching the horses, and even took a short nap! The most exciting thing that happened this weekend was that Preslie finally came! She made her debut at 12:40am Saturday, at 38 weeks just like I predicted! I haven't gotten to meet her in person yet, but she is so dang cute with a ton of black hair and kissable cheeks just like Carter had! I can't wait to see her! Congrats Meagan and Adam! Love you guys!

Still haven't thought to take any pictures of my classroom, but hopefully I'll remember soon! Here are a few pictures from the last couple of weeks.

I got Carter this new bath seat and he wasn't too big a fan. I think he is still too little for it!

Rigged up seat in the bassinet so he could watch a movie in my room

Awesome. My kid is already beating up his friends! I love how it looks like Carter is telling Brycen, "Dude, quit hoggin' the camera space!" and Brycen is like "Why is this kid so mean?"

Aw, they made up and are holding hands! They are going to hate us for these pictures someday!

The boys. Christiaan, Shane, Brad, Jason

The girls. Me, Bri, Kasi, Chelsea

Taking in the rodeo!

See how natural that looks? :)

Vista girls! Gerri, Sarah, Amy, me(with jacked up hair), Deanna, and Katie. Love these girls!

The next 2 weekends Carter and I will be in Waco with Christiaan. Football season is officially here, and Christiaan will not miss his beloved Bears play! We haven't been there in about a month, and I am excited to see his family!

5 months old!

Carter turned 5 months on Saturday! I cannot believe how fast he is growing. He is working hard on cutting teeth, although I think it will probably be ahwile before any actually cut through. We spent the weekend without Christiaan, the first since before Carter was born. Christiaan is finally starting to recover from mono, and I think staying home helped that greatly even though we missed him terribly! On Saturday Carter and I went to Brooke's house to visit with her mom and the boys. Patsy was in town to stay with Jack and Brannan while Matt and Brooke got to take a vacation. This was the first time Patsy had met Carter! Jack starts kindergarten next week, and THAT I cannot believe! I would love to be a fly on the wall of that classroom! Brannan is very close to taking a few steps on his own, and Carter was watching his every move trying to figure out how to get down and move around. After that visit we went to Chay's 30th birthday bash. It was baby galore there! Their friends all had babies recently or are pregnant now. Miss Preslie is getting so close to making her appearance! Poor Meggie has reached a point of misery that only a woman who has been through it could understand. I hit that point during the week that Carter ended up being born! Sunday we went to church and had a great service and lunch with friends and family, then I spent the rest of the afternoon working in my classroom. I feel like that is a neverending job. I am still working to get it prepared for the students to come on Monday! Carter started going to Aunt Karen's house on Monday. He has been enjoying being spoiled and loved on over there. I am so glad that I have such awesome family that I can leave him with and not have to worry about what is going on while I'm at work! It has been good getting to know all the new teachers and new principal at our school this week. Looking forward to a great year! Tomorrow night is meet the teacher at my school, and I am excited to see all the kids. Still have a busy day of preparing! Hopefully I will be able to take some pictures of my room and post this weekend. Christiaan will be here this weekend so I can't wait for Friday!

These are blurry, and the ones with the flash give Carter crazy eyes, but they were too funny not to share. I gave him a biter biscuit for the first time, and well, see for yourself!

Yes!

Gimme another cookie or I'll hurt you

Needless to say, we took a bath after that. Yes, both of us.

The toes have successfully made it to his mouth

Five months old!

Grandma and Grandpa came by, and Grandpa and "Carter Roy"(as Grandpa calls him!) were dressed in the same green. You can really see how bald Carter has gotten with the exception of the center strip of hair!

Looking snazzy for church. This was the first time wearing his "Sperrys," which we actually found at Old Navy. I thought he was dressed like Christiaan!

One year

Never in my life did I think that so many changes and crazy things could happen in just a year of a person's life. This last year has certainly proved that! A year ago yesterday Dad was diagnosed with leukemia. When the doctor told us that day that he was to be admitted to the hospital that night and chemo was to begin within the next day, and that we were looking at a minimum of a 6 week stay in the hospital, I saw my world closing in. Tying my seemingly healthy Dad to a hospital bed for the next 6 weeks was something that was so far from my realm of thoughts. As I would quickly learn, this was just the start to a whirlwind year of highs and lows. Just the day before that we had learned that Mom needed major surgery for a large fibroid, and I had only known for 2 weeks that I was pregnant, and hadn't told Mom and Dad yet. It had only been a month since my great Aunt Mac died suddenly. Also, I was scheduled to start inservice for my first year of teaching the following Monday, and my classroom was nowhere near ready. I wanted to only be in that hospital room and not leave, regardless of the obligation. Eventually over the next few days, the bleak outlook we had been given on that Wednesday began to look ever so slightly better, and we tried to move along with the new reality that our lives were going to be. I made the decision to move back to Mom and Dad's so that someone would be at the house. Mom and I both began school for the year and she made preparations for surgery at Thanksgiving. Just before she had surgery my Uncle David, my Dad's brother, was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia and had numerous complications along the way. Mom had successful surgery and began the healing process. Dad continued treatment for a week every month. My Aunt Karen continued the last of treatments for the lymphoma she had been diagnosed with previously. Days before Christmas were tense because Dad had begun experiencing spells of illness that led to brain scans to find some bleeding on the brain. This only delayed the last round of chemo that was supposed to be given the end of December. Fortunately this setback was yet another miracle in that it ended up clearing itself up. So Dad finished the last round of treatment in January, and we began to make preparations for Carter's arrival. Then just before he was born Dad's cousin Phil, who has been close to our family, was found dead of a heart attack. Carter's arrival was such a light at the end of the tunnel for all of us, such a sign of a new start, and then the night we came home from the hospital my Grandpa was admitted to the hospital. Within 2 days he was in multiple organ failure and we were preparing for the worst. No one was ready for this. And all the sudden, in true Grandpa fashion, all his organs began to revive themselves. He was released from the hospital less than 2 weeks after he was knocking on death's door. His and my Grandma's health has been a constant battle since then, but they are both doing better. I always thought that God gave you struggles for a reason, and couldn't figure out why he would allow our family to go through all this. I mean, its not as though we are not a close family that needed to be brought back together, so why did we all have to suffer so much, especially in such a short time period? Only He knows why, but what I am grateful for is all the good that we can celebrate on the one year anniversary of such horrible news. Dad is done with treatments and doing well, Karen is done with treatments and doing well, David, Grandma, and Grandpa are continuing to heal, and Mom is healing especially after another surgery last week to remove scar tissue from the previous surgery. Christiaan came into our lives. Carter was born and now Micah and Aly have one on the way. There are so many other things both good and bad that I can't even list them all, but that doesn't matter. If you would have asked me year ago what I thought the next year of my life would have looked like I would never have come up with any of this! It makes me super excited to see where we are a year from now! We have so much to look forward to coming up. Sorry if this post is a little lame, but it is something that has been on my mind a lot this past week. But if you were bored by it, here is what Carter has to say about that....

To da beech, mon!

Ok, so we didn't go to the Bahamas, but we did go to the beach! We have been gone for a week and a half now, thus the lack of blogging. I can't for the life of me figure out how to type a blog on my snazzy iPhone(any suggestions, anyone??). So this post is likely to be a long one. I'll start when we left...

Friday 2 weeks ago Carter and I headed to Waco, after a jaunt around town to find house keys after a mix up with my parents during my girls afternoon. We finally made it there and relaxed the next couple of days with Christiaan, spent Sunday with his mom for her birthday, and then loaded up his truck Monday morning and headed for Crystal Beach! We took Christiaan's nephew Julius with us to play with Chandler. We were meeting my aunt Karen and uncle Drew, Hayden, Miranda, and Chandler there at a beach house that Christiaan had found. We spent Monday through Thursday there, and did a whole lotta nuthin'! The guys spent a lot of time fishing on the beach, and the little boys did some fishing and playing in the water. I got a little bit roasted while we were there. We tried to make a whole little set up under a beach umbrella with a fan for Carter, but true to himself, he was not a fan of the heat and humidity so we rotated turns staying with him at the house. It was really interesting to see all the new houses being built and all the blank slabs where Ike took out basically the whole of Crystal Beach. The first afternoon that we were there Hayden got stabbed in the foot by a sting ray! Even though it was pretty painful for him, it was pretty comical. I mean seriously, who does that happen to? Besides the Crocodile Hunter I guess....

Thursday we hosed off the sand, packed back up, and headed back to Waco. It seemed like it took FOR-EV-ER to get there, especially long to get through God-forsaken Houston. Not enough money in the world could get me to live there. Anyways. Poor Christiaan coughed the whole way back. He had begun having low grade fever and night sweats the week before, and by the time we got back Thursday afternoon his temp was getting higher. I convinced him(with a lot of nagging, sorry baby!) to go the the doctor Friday morning, and they found nothing wrong but did blood work. He continued to get worse, and Saturday morning had the doctor call in a Z-pack. I suspected that he had mono, and it was finally confirmed Tuesday when the bloodwork came back. Poor guy! Definitely did not want to leave him so sick, but I HAD to come back and get some work done on my classroom. Ugh. We did get to spend some good quality time with Christiaan's sister Kristi, who moved to Ft. Lauderdale, FL shortly after Carter was born. This was her time visit back to Texas, and she probably won't make it back until around the holidays.

On a good, no AWESOME, news note.....

I'M GONNA BE AN AUNT!!!!

Friday night I got a text from Micah that said "call me" with a picture of my mom holding a baby onesie that said "What happens at grandma's, stays at grandma's." I am so uber excited! Carter and his cousin will be almost exactly a year apart!

So back to the grind and into the classroom I go! Since I had to move rooms so that Kasi and I can be close to each other, I decided to start fresh with all new decor. Its going slowly, but it will all get done and I will post pictures later. I am not ready to leave Carter all day every day and I have loved being off with him this summer, but at least he will be with aunt Karen. They are so looking forward to having him and Cole there every day!

Enough talk, on to the pictures!!

Eh, he's not so much a morning person
First cracker

I think he looks like a little man in the new jammies!

I'm sorry, but have you ever seen anything cuter than this??
Watching TV at Nana's with Julius

At the beach! This lasted about 10 minutes
Miranda dug a pond and the boys stored the tiny catfish they were catching, like these...
While Drew caught this.....
And Christiaan caught this....

Chandler and JuJu were inseparable the whole trip
Christiaan got a giant flag pole and wanted to fly a tiny TCU flag underneath his huge Baylor flag, but we didn't really know where to find a TCU flag, except at the campus store, and, um, no.

Christiaan gave Carter some driving lessons
Oh my lord, the rumors this picture started on Facebook! Christiaan and I went for a walk one evening and I took this pretty picture and posted it on my Facebook, and the engagement rumors began swirling! We thought it was quite hilarious.

We took advantage of the pretty scenery to take some family pics

The ferry boats to get back to Galveston Island from Crystal Beach

JuJu, Carter, and me on the top of the ferry boat

Back in Waco, we spent a few days with Christiaan's family. Nana bought Carter a Jumperoo, which he thinks is the coolest thing ever, but unfortunately it will have to wait for Christiaan's next trip here, as the only way it would have made it back with us was tied to the roof of my car. No thanks! If I could ever figure out how to post a video on the thing, I would put one of him jumping in it because its hilarious!

Aunt Kristi hadn't seen Carter since he was about a week old!

Uncle Jason

Well that about wraps up the week! I am already behind on blogging about the current week, but hopefully I will find the time to catch up this weekend. Does it take everyone a million years to write one stupid blog post with a few pictures?? Good grief, it frustrates me! I was thinking about having a class blog this year, but I'm seriously reconsidering that idea.