Oh!...did you know that hole goes all the way through?!?

That would be the first thing I said to our pre-school director, Pam Nichols, after they handed Callen to me after bringing him from his class at VBX (Vacation Bible Extreme) and told me he had bit his lip a little. A LITTLE? Not so much. :-) I can smile and laugh about it now but at the time it was the furthest from funny. One of his teachers is a nurse practitioner and she had looked at it and said he would be fine but I'm pretty sure the reason she didn't realize it went all the way through is because Callen didn't want her to look at it, he wanted Mommy! So once he was in my lap and let me wipe it off good (because his mouth was full of blood and chin covered), I noticed that it was open in the front as well as inside. My gut (meaning I fealt this way but kept it inside, thus hidden from Callen) reaction was 'Oh my word, his lip is never going to be the same!' Of course within seconds when I came back down to reality and really got control of my momentary whigging out, I thought 'we will for sure have to have this glued (with dermabond) shut because he is SOOOO active he will surely continue to open this up. I continued to wind down though for another couple minutes and decided to just watch him for a bit and was reminded of what my mom (a former nurse) has always told me...'if you can get the bleading to stop and it sits shut then it should be fine'. Whithin 20 minutes we had the bleading stopped and it was not open on the outside at all...not to mention he was runnin around playing like it never happened, of course! So I decided to just let it heal on it's own. It's not a huge gash but it's about the width of your little pinkie nail on the inside and out, so not tiny either! So that was almost our 4th trip with him to the ER...Sweet child is just active, has no fear and loves to have fun...actually, I think a chair got pulled out from underneath him this time and he hit the table in front of him but again, things happen. I praise the Lord that it was not worse!!!

Trip to the Ft. Worth Zoo!

So below is a slew of pictures we took on our trip to the Ft. Worth Zoo a couple of weeks ago. I know some of you may not want to look at all of them but this post of mainly for our family that doesn't get to see the boys all the time. Enjoy! We really did have a great time! God was so creative when He created all of the animals and it is so fun to go and enjoy His creation!
That boys cheeks just make me want to eat him! :-)
First ever train ride!
Do you think he is excited?!
Tired! But excited!
We've been waiting to ride the train all day!
So excited!!!
Kevin, Grammy, Kallie and MiMi
Ok, so Cade washed his hands after petting the animals and went to dry them, only to figure out that there was COLD air coming out of the dryer. Well, he was no dummy, it was a hot and humid day so what did he do? That's right, he stepped right up underneath it and cooled himself right off!!! With a big old grin on his face the whole time as well! I love that little guy!
Brushing the goat.
Petting a snake!
I wanna touch it too!
Wheelies in the stroller!
I'm not afraid of you...any more that is! A year ago, we couldn't even go into the bulding with the snakes! :-)
Learning to walk is so fun!
I love the zoo!
I really just want to eat that boy up he is SOOOOO cute!!! I'm not a proud mom though! :-)
Yay!!!
Watchin' the penguins.
Maybe surgery made her more limber? Who would've thought!
Callen feeding a bird.
Cade holding and feeding a bird.
Corbin holding and feeding a bird.
These animals are seriously fascinating!
I'm up high Mommy!
King of the authill!
Lookin' at the huge catfish...at least I think that's what those huge orange fish are but that's really just a guess! :-)
At one point I turn around to see Micah in Callen's lap, they had so much fun together! (Micah is Isaac's cousin)
This is what Cohen did 1/2 of the time! Hard for a baby to see the animals unless they are moving around and putting on a show! He had fun though just riding in the stroller and being outside!
What are those big pink birds Mommy?
Corbin deciding where we needed to go next.
Cohen deciding where he needed to go next...
and then moving out!
Stephen and Cohen...if you look closely, Stephen has a hold of Cohen's hat so it looks like he is laughing and saying "hehe, I got you!"...sweet cousins!
Kevin and Corbin pondering.
LeAnn and Isaac.
Cade next to the Gorilla...which he does a great impression of but did NOT want to go and stand by it for a pic, I had to smack the glass a few times to prove to him that the gorilla could not hear him or come through there! :-)
Cohen, on the other hand, had NO fear! He was talking to them and just smackin' that glass, trying to get their attention or make them more or something!
Kevin and Cade...buddies!

It's Summertime...we'll see you at the pool!!!

Swimming is one of our most FAVORITE things to do as a family so when it gets hot, that's just what we do! We have a pool in our neighborhood that we can go to any time so we go several times a week all summer long and the boys just love it. Cohen is having fun, this is really his first summer to swim. The boys have been asking me ALL winter long when the pool was going to open again so of course the FIRST day it was open (on Memorial Day weekend) we went. It had been raining a ton that week and really had just not been that hot yet so as you can imagine, the water was still REALLY cold. The older 3 boys don't care but sweet little Cohen was not sure how fun that was to be in the cold water. Now that it is getting really hot outside consistantly and the pool has warmed up a bit he LOVES it. Below are some pics from our first couple visits to the pool!
Playing with Mommy!
Not sure about the cold water but doing his best to have fun!
Cohen's first day to swim didn't go so well...the water was FREEZING!
He had more fun just crawling around and watching everyone else swim.
My youngest brother Kevin kept the older boys entertained! They LOVE Kevin!!!
Cohen did let Kallie, my youngest sister, hold him some in the pool, still didn't want to be in the water much though!
These boys had no issues with cold water!!!

My first ALL nighter in years!

So a few weeks ago I was preparing to do a garage sale the next day with a friend when Cade started getting fussy that night. He had been asleep for a bit so I thought maybe he was having a bad dream or something. He screamed pretty hard and for a while but I was finally able to settle him down and get him back to sleep, so I thought. I went back to getting my stuff done for the next day and sure enough, he started screaming again. Now at this point many of you would have probably already been thinking ear infection but my kids don't get ear infections hardly ever (I think we have had 5 total in almost 6 years among all 4 of them). And when they have actually gotten one, I have always found out at a check up appointment or something because they have never fussed about them. So this was breaking new ground for me and it took me a while to figure out what was going on. I guess it was around 2am or so that I finally noticed him pulling on one ear and ask him if his ear hurt and of course he said yes. So, in spite of the fact that Chris and I had just paid off our biggest lump of debt in one week and had next to NO money (Satan loves to set us back when we are taking steps of faith right!), I headed off to the ER with our sweet boy to try and help him feel better. The doctor and nurse were great, he had what they call impacted ear wax next to an infected each which was making it hurt even worse, so they cleaned both ears out and gave him perscriptions and sent us on our way. I stoped to get meds and got home around 5am, just to have to shower and load the car to leave for the garage sale at 6:15am. WOW, how did we do lock-ins when we were kids...oh wait, we slept 'till 2pm when we got home! I didn't get to do that neadless to say so I think I'm still trying to catch up! Praise the Lord our God is faithful and He not only helped Cade get better and gave me energy to survive the next several days but he also provided the money (from the garage sale if nothing else!) to cover the ER trip and meds when we didn't think we had it! It's so cool to me how God showed us once again how He knows everything way ahead of time and works things out in ways we could not have ever planned on our own...i.e. the very weekend we were having our garage sale to make some 'extra' (at least that's what we thought it would be) money to help pay off our last bit of debt, we ended up needing it for this ER trip because we payed off our debt earlier than planned. God knew we would need that money to cover that extra expense and He made a way for us to get it! Isn't our God awsome!!!
This was not too long after we got there...we didn't even get home until almost 5am!
In spite of being sick and screaming a bunch that night he was still just as precious as ever!!!
This is the position he stayed in while the doctor cleaned out his ears, he never even opened his eyes he was so worn out by then, poor little guy!

Finally getting rid of the infant car seat...

after only using it for all four boys! Actually, it will not longer be a legal car seat as of this coming December, what a blessing that we never had to buy more than one! And thanks to such AWSOME friends and God providing through them we have only had to buy 1 out of 4 of our big boy car seats!!! We just moved Cohen to his new seat a couple of weeks ago and he LOVES it! He is facing forward now so the pics below are from his very first time being able to see Mommy and everything else from that perspective. I couldn't help but post them because his face was so sweet and he had so much fun! He's just getting so big!