The rest of the night

Our trick-or-treating was much longer than I had anticipated. We have a halloween ritual with some of our very good friends, we trick-or-treat and then we sit around a bonfire at Tony and Hannah's and pass out candy to everyone. This was our 3rd year. It is lots of fun, but with four kids our night was cut short after 1.5 hours of trick-or-treating. We didn't even go very far, it just takes a long time with our entourage. We had the 6 of us, plus Nana and Poppa, and Uncle Chris. So, it took us awhile to make our way down the street. Here are the rest of the pics!

Halloween Preview!

Thought I would give you a quick peek into our Halloween with 4 children. The baby is napping, but here is a peek at the other 3. I'll post more later!!

Christmas Art Giveaway

My friend Hollie's Mother-in-law is starting an Etsy store. And to get it up and running she is having a giveaway on her site! Check it out!!! The pictures above are of the item up for grabs!

Sick...

So, as you all know I am just about recovered from surgery, but now I have some viral crap. I have been throwing up all day. I hate being sick, hate it. I am not good at being sick. I cry when I throw up, I can't get out of the bed, and with 4 kids, that just isn't acceptable behavior. I had to get out of the bed, I had to play mom still, in fact, I even had to take the boys for their 1st court date. Throwing up all the way there. It was great fun, really it was. Anyway, to update you on the boys, they are both doing very well. The 7 month old finally pooped after 5 days! YEA for poop, and the 3 year old has settled in quite nicely. He and Aidan are buds. Anyway, I will add some quick pics! We are having lots of fun, I'll post some pics tomorrow of all the kids in their halloween costumes too!!!

Recovery, a new baby and Disney on Ice

Well, what a day we had. It started out pretty dang rough. I woke up at 4:30 am, and told Emory you cannot go to work today. I hadn't slept a wink, and my abdomen felt as if it was going to bust. I think I had accomplished to much with our new addition the day before. So, I decided that I was going to take it easy and let Emory put out all the fires. HAHA!! For those of you who know me really well, you know that I am too controlling to let that happen. SO, once again I did too much. In addition to doing entirely too much, we also gained yet another child. Yes, we are crazy, but we love shocking the pants off of everyone. So, at 3pm our social worker dropped off the infant brother to the one we had already received. We will call them MM-3yr and CM-7 mos. They are precious and they will be staying with us for a week at least, and maybe longer. They came with nothing but the clothes that they had on, and as you know we are poor so we are praying that our church family and foster family comes to the rescue. The little one needs diapers, wipes, formula, clothes, sleepers, bottles, etc. The 3 year old needs undies, socks, and clothes. Please pray that we are provided with the things that we need for these little ones. I will be taking them to the ER today for a physical as well as to check the nasty cough thay both have. I think the little one may also be a little dehydrated, I am a little worried. He has only had 4 ounces since yesterday at 3pm, and no wet diapers. YUCK!! Please pray for healing.
Then to top off our long day, we drug 4 kids to Disney on Ice. It was really a lot of fun. Mina of course really got into it, but the 2 boys and the baby enjoyed it as well. I was so worn out, we only stayed for the 1st half, but it was fun and we had great seats. I will post pics from my other computer as soon as my hubby fixes it. They are so fun though, and then you can see our 2 additions.

Surgery and A new child

So, I am laying in bed bored out of mind. What better to occupy my time than to blog. For those of you who don't know I had surgery today. Emory and I have been trying to get pregnant for 3 years to no avail. So, after I had a major cyst rupture in July, I decided it was time to try and find a new ob/gyn. And I did just that. She is fabulous. On my first visit she said that she felt pretty certain that I have endometreosis, and that she felt like I would need surgery to relieve my pain. So, I did it. She said that it turns out I have endometreosis pretty badly. She was able to laser some off, but a lot of it was too vascular. She was unable to zap those in fear of bleeding out too much. I am glad she elected that option. She hasn't told me the likelyhood of getting pregnant, but my guess would be it isn't great. But on a happier note: We have a 3 year old little boy. He is great. He came to our house while I was still at the hospital, and seemed to really like Nana (Emory's mom, she was here with Aidan and Mina). Then Mia dropped me off at home and also spent some quality time with him. He may be here longterm or it may be for 1 night, we will no more tomorrow. I will keep you posted. In the mean time, please pray for him. He is a happy boy, but scared a little as you can imagine. Pray for a speedy recovery for me, seeing as I have 3 children now.

PS- He has a 3 month old sis, and if he ends up staying with us, we will probably get her too! Pray that she is safe, and is brought into DFCS custody quickly.

Picture Fun!!

Fun with pictures! Just thought I would show you all the fun I had tonight, playing with pictures!!

No training wheels.....

Soooo, Mina will be a whopping 6 years old in like 1 month! We are hitting one milestone right after the other, the latest one was quite a surprise! We were playing across the street at our neighbor's house, and Mina decided to pick up a bike without training wheels and attempt to ride it.. Much to my surprise she rode that bike without training wheels. I was shocked. She hasn't ridden her bike with training wheels in so long, that I thought she would never learn to ride without them. However, SHE DID IT!! She is so proud of herself, so on Saturday daddy will be taking off the training wheels. Here's a little video of her new found mad skills on two wheels!!! (Emory wrote the last sentence)

Home with A!

So, I have been working so much lately that even on my day off I have had to go to work. But, today I got to spend a lot of time with Aidan. It was really nice. He had a lot to say, of course. Most of the day we sat on the front porch and just hung out. It was great. I really enjoyed just watching him play, and being himself. Noone else around to occupy his attention, just me, Aidan and the puppies. Here are some pics of Aidan the Artist.

Soccer is over....

So, this past weekend was our last weekend at the soccer field. I must say I am ready for a break. This waking up so early on Saturday's was about to kill us. It was a great season though. Both kids played this season, and they played well. They both learned a lot about how to play and really enjoyed it. We will definitely continue soccer. They also made some really good friends that I know we will keep in touch with. Check out these cute pics:

Respite Care...

Last Wednesday Emory and I received our first call about a "frosted kid" aka a foster child. Aidan prefers to call them frosted kids. Anyway, they needed an emergency respite home for a 12 year old boy. Soooo, we said YES. Of course, did you actually think Emory and I would be able to tell a child NO. Definitely not. So, Thursday afternoon they dropped of the sweetest 12 year old boy you have ever met. He is cute, sweet, polite, well mannered, soft spoken and just plain great. He fits in very well, and we have enjoyed every second with him. I think Aidan probably drives him a little crazy, but other than that I think he has really enjoyed the stay. He will be leaving us tomorrow, and we are very sad. It doesn't take but 1 second to fall in love with a child. We would keep him forever if we could. Anyway, I can't tell his name on a blog, but we will refer to him as D. And he really needs your prayers right now. Please pray that God will place a hedge of protection around him, and show Himself mightily to D in the next few weeks. Before coming here, he had never heard of Jesus Christ. What an awesome opportunity to share Jesus with this child. This is why we chose to do Foster Care, to show Jesus' love to children that need him so desperately. Please continue to pray for his salvation, his new foster family (as of tomorrow), and his new school. We will keep in touch with him, so I will keep you updated.

The school bus

So, I forgot to mention that as of yesterday, Mina is a bus rider. Scary, huh? I said I would never let her, but I had a change of heart. She has been begging since last year to ride the bus, so I finally gave in. She sat with a friend from the neighborhood, and the bus drops off and picks up in our driveway. You can't beat the curb-side service. So, I must say...Never say Never. She is really enjoying it, and it really gives her a sense of independence.

My crazy life...

So, I was at work yesterday. Because I am always at work, and I was thinking about how I never talk about work on my blog. And now that I am spending so much more time there than I use to I decided it was time to talk about my other full-time job. The one when I am not taking care of my 2 beautiful children, husband and dogs. I am a veterinary technician. I have done this since I was a teenager, in fact, I went to Auburn University with plans to attend vet school. That did not happen, I'm not really the stay in school for 8 years type. Anyway, I decided to stick with what I know and love, and practice my technical skills with animals on a daily basis. I work about 7 minutes from my house, at a very large practice. It is a 3 doctor practice with a support staff of over 25 people. I am now the manager of most of those 25 people. My title is "Clinical Manager" or the bad guy. Which ever you prefer. I am responsible for all clinical tasks and staff. If something goes wrong I get blamed for it, always!! Anyway, I really love my job. It is a lot of work, and I am really worn out after 50+ hours a week, but it is very rewarding. I love animals, and I love being such a large part of the team that keeps them healthy and often times saves their lives. I took pics of some really cool things at work, so you could see what I do. I will post them this weekend. I am typically responsible for making sure surgeries are ready to go, I check them in, get their vitals, calculate doses for drugs, place IV catheters, start fluids, induce anesthesia, clip, prep, clean area for surgery, monitor anesthesia as well as the patient, and then finally I recover the patient. Techs do everything, except the surgery! :) That is part of the reason I am a tech and not a Vet, teching is a lot more hands on. Anyway, just thought I would share about what I do all day, I will post pictures this weekend. I have pics of a chewed up pit bull, and another dog that was hit by a mini-van TWICE. The dog that was hit by the mini-van had a really cool knee surgery, so I will show you pics of the busted knee. Alright, gotta go to bed. I have to be at work at 6:45 am!!!

Hayrides and Pumpkins

Saturday night we took both kiddos and my littlest brother, JI, to the Cagel Dairy Corn Maize. We didn't actually buy tickets to the corn maize, but we did take a hayride, roast marshmallows, make s'mores, get baby punkins, and jump on the jumping stings (that is how Aidan says things). We had a great time. We started out on the big jumper, but after the first 2 falls I decided we really couldn't afford a hospital visit and we moved to the little jumping sting. Loads of fun!!! Then we made our way to the punkin patch, picked ourselves out 3 of the cutest pumkins you ever saw. Of course it took us 45 minutes to pick out these perfect pumkins. But, we did it. Then we made our way to the hayride. We waited in line for like 20 minutes with I swear two hundred teenagers. Then we rode the hayride with 200 teenagers, down to the bonfire. We had our own private bonfire, and we roasted marshmallows and made s'mores. The kids loved it. I don't know that JI had ever roasted marshmallows before. He loved it. He didn't like the way they tasted, but he enjoyed setting the marshmallows on fire. Then we rode the hayride back, and made our way to the car. What a night!!

Waiting in line for the hayride!

Daddy and Aidan

This is JI!!
Isn't she cute?

Aidan on his tractor, JI was too busy jumping for a tractor ride!!

Mina driving her tractor!!

Fun on the "Jumpin' Sting"

More fun!!