Promised Pix

I'll have more pictures later but here's a few of my aunt and uncle's house and the pool. I had better pictures on my other camera but forgot the USB cord so I snapped a few just to post on here.




The back of each group of houses has a big pond with fountains. The neatest thing is that when we're in the pool swimming we can feel a mist off the fountain in the pond beside the pool. It's absolutely close to heaven here.





I still need to get pictures of the entrance to the community and the gates you drive through to get here. They are beautiful. I'll post more later.
By the way, we had a good day. We went to the beach for a while but it was very crowded so we didn't stay long. We came back to the pool and stayed there the remainder of the afternoon which was much more fun than the beach in my opinion. We have finally started our vacation and we're having a blast!!
:)

Can We Start Vacation Now, Please?

Guys, bad news. We left Corbin around 6:30 Friday night. By 9:30 (we were only in Cleveland, TN) Kari was throwing up. We got a hotel room in Cleveland and spent a restless night nursing Kari.
By Saturday morning though, she was better. We drove all the way to Florida and got there around 1:00 am. Sunday morning, guess who woke up with the stomach virus? Yep. Yours truly. I'll be honest and say that I haven't been that sick in years. By this morning I was feeling better, just really weak. We took the kids to the pool this afternoon and I'm feeling much better.

So....some positive news. This place is unbelievable. My aunt and uncle live in a gated community in a town called Cape Coral. It's just gorgeous. There's a private swimming pool and guest house for the residents. Kari loves the pool and so does Malachi. There are little ponds behind every home and next the pool there's one with a fountain. So while we were in the pool swimming we got little sprays of water from the fountains. Absolutely paradise. I will post pictures as soon as I can.

Thanks for all the prayers. I think we can finally start vacation now. Please continue to pray for us that nobody else gets the virus.

Pictures to come......

Stats

Before I forget, I'm going to post Kari and Malachi's weight and height as of now. I know most of you could care less but I'm afraid I'll forget myself so....

Kari:

34 inches tall
28 pounds

Malachi:

31 inches tall
24.14 pounds

It's really weird that Malachi's lost weight. I guess it's where he's so active now and not on his bottle and all that. Anyway, both kids are healthy and I'm thankful for that!!

Florida Bound!!!

Folks, it's here. The day has arrived. I'm still at work waiting for 1:30 but at least it IS the day!!!
We're leaving for Florida today. Wow. Me, the kids, my mom and sister will be pulling out around 4:00 and I'm so stinkin' excited. We started planning this trip around the first of January and April seemed so far away. But now this day seems longer than the past four months.

Kari is very excited to go to "Flowida" and see the "osun" and play in the sand on the "beath." When we lived in Texas for 6 months, we went to Galveston Island for vacation for a week. That was Kari's first time at the beach and she was only 8 months old but Malachi hasn't been yet. It's going to be a blast. Please pray for a safe trip!

I'll be posting some pictures hopefully on a daily basis. We'll see how that goes.

:)

Take Heart!

Last night we (me, Chris, Lacey, David, Karen, Kari and Malachi) planted the garden. I'm almost embarrassed to say that I have never planted a garden before. The only thing I've ever been able to keep alive are petunias because you can hardly kill those. As I was putting corn and beans in the ground last night I prayed that the Lord would bless and multiply our little garden because usually most seeds that I touch decide to sit in the ground and remain seeds the rest of their lives because they don't like me. Not sure why.
We planted potatoes, onions, corn, beans, zucchini, squash, pumpkins, 3 different kinds of tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, cabbage....I may be forgetting some stuff. But this is going to be a really neat experience for us I hope. If the seeds will just be nice to me this once, maybe I'll learn a few things about gardening and taking care of plants and such and by next year be ready to roll with my very own garden! Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of us planting the garden. I'm slacking. But it was a lot of fun. Kari really enjoyed it as did Malachi although he kept trying to eat the seeds and dirt.

It also got me to thinking about "the old days." I made the comment last night that I wish life would go back to the old days where we had big gardens to take care of and women got to stay home with their kids and things were more simple. With a few modern conveniences of course. Like running water, washing machines and dryers, electricity and restaurants. And malls. And cars. And computers. And phones. That should be about it.
I guess the main point I wanted to make is that women stayed at home back then!! I was reading Jess's blog and feeling the heart break (is that supposed to be one word or two?) of having to leave your baby with someone else while you go to work. It's been on my mind the last week or two a lot. Kari says almost every morning on our way to Gammy's house "mommy, do you have to go to work today?" With my reply of "yes, honey, I do" she says "well, I hate it." This brings tears to my eyes, friends. Little Malachi cries after me and tries to follow me when I walk out the door. I hate this. Although it is easier than that first month of leaving Kari, it still hurts when you know your babies want to be at home with Mommy and can't be. :(
So, to all you mothers that can stay home with your kids please remember to be so thankful for that!! It's a gift from God. For those of us that still have to leave our babies every morning, let's take heart!! Maybe God has something in the making for us too. :)


By the way, has anyone noticed all the little changes I'm doing to my blog? This excites me and Jess even showed me how to add little things on the side and stuff. She's also going to add pictures on the little squares on the header. There's no telling what will be on here next.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MALACHI!

Today, my baby boy turns ONE!! Bless his little rotten heart, he's the sweetest thing EVER!! So, here's Malachi as a little baby.....


....and Malachi now!!!


Isn't he so cute? The first few weeks of Malachi's life were pretty uneventful. Kari was my sleeping baby, Malachi was the awake-every-two-hours-if-we're-lucky baby. Absolutely no sleep!! But one strange thing about him....he grunted ALL THE TIME. I asked the doctor about it and he suggested that he was just a loud baby and wanted attention. By 4 weeks old, he was spitting up so bad that he wasn't even using the bathroom much. I took him BACK to the doctor on a Wednesday and he switched us to Soy formula. Bad choice. By Saturday the poor little thing was puking so bad that my whole house smelled like Soy formula and he had no dirty diapers. BACK TO THE DOCTOR where I told them that it wasn't the formula and that we needed to be checking in to the worst case scenarios that they had mentioned in the first place. By Sunday morning, we were taking Malachi to the hospital for an Upper GI which confirmed the worst. He had Pyloric Stenosis. This is a situation where the stomach muscle is overgrown and they have to do a telescopic procedure to "shave" the muscle down to a normal size. The overgrown muscle blocks any food from passing through the stomach to the intestines and therefore causing any food or liquid to come back up. By the time we had rushed to UK, Malachi was dehydrated. My mother and father in law drove me and Malachi to UK Children's Hospital and we got checked in. My mom and sister kept Kari at home until the next morning. They quickly put an IV in him and did a few other preps to him.



He wasn't allowed to eat from that point on until they did his surgery the next morning. Do you know how hard it is to hold a sick, hungry baby for about 15 hours and keep it calm? Rough, friends, rough. I prayed so hard for my baby boy. Although they had assured us that this was a simple procedure and not life threatening since we caught it in time, it wasn't simple to us. I slept with Malachi snuggled in my arms all night and when we took him down to the surgery, I thought my heart would burst. They had to put him to sleep and that was the hardest thing ever. It makes me pray so hard for parents who have children with life threatening diseases.
Long story short (because I could turn it into a very long story, obviously) Malachi came through his surgery wonderfully! By the time we went for his two week checkup he was eating fine and sleeping better and everything! God was with my baby!

I also want to add a little note about when Malachi was actually born into this world. With Kari, my water didn't break on its own so I didn't really know how it felt. Well.....I learned how it felt in front of a waiting room full of people when I was in labor with Malachi. I went to the hospital because I thought I was leaking fluid and my doc told me to come pay her a quick visit. About the time I walked in the front doors of the hospital (which also housed the waiting room) the pipe broke. And I don't mean a stream. A gush, people. I was in sandals so I squeaked down the hallway to the bathroom to try to get myself together. Very funny situation here. I was cracking up.
Little Malachi was born at 7:55 am on a Tuesday morning without the aid of an epidural. Really funny story about that too but I'll save that for another day when I don't have anything else to talk about which usually doesn't ever happen because I always have something to talk about. But one of these days I'll share the epidural story with you. LOL.




Happy Birthday, Malachi David Noe. You are Mommy's little Prince Charming. :)

Our Weekend

We had such a good weekend!!! I actually got 8 hours of sleep Friday night, a 2 hour nap on Saturday, slept 8 hours Saturday night and 8 hours last night. I honestly feel like I'm flying off the walls. LOL!! What a blessing to get that much sleep at one time. My poor mother in law got the stomach virus and so I HAD to stay home with the kids yesterday because I didn't have another babysitter. What a shame. NOT!! We had a blast! Although I really hated it that my MIL was super sick, I did enjoy an extra day at home with the kiddos.

Sunday was Malachi's birthday party. He was the cutest thing ever!! I hate it that my mom and sister weren't there. My sister was still recovering so they decided not to spread the germs. Looks like the germs were already present though. :(
So anyway, here's some pics of the party.



Bless his heart, by the time he got to the cake he was so pooped he could hardly eat any of it! He made a mess though!! He opened a few presents.....


then out like a light on Pappy's shoulder.


It's really weird that my baby boy will be a year old tomorrow. I love him so much!! I remember last year before I had him....I was so scared to try to raise a little boy by myself in addition to a little girl. But God has been faithful and definitely knew what He was doing!!
My sister in law is going to love me for this picture.

Cool dude, Malachi!


By the way....did you all notice anything different about my blog? The problem wasn't me!! Imagine that. It was the computer! I went to my MIL's house and used her computer to fix my page. It literally took no longer than 10 minutes. I'm very excited about my new look. Hope y'all like it! Does anybody know how I can add pictures to the little squares on the header? I can't figure it out....

Thoughts at Random

1. I wonder what was under my porch last night that scared the daylights out of me and made Mrs. T hiss and throw her ears back?
2. I wonder how many pieces of pizza I'll consume tonight at Cici's?
3. Why are Fridays so stinkin' long and boring?
4. I lost another pound but I don't understand how because I've ate like a pig this week. Go figure.
5. Only 7 days until we hit the road for Florida.
6. If I could only convince my father in law and other members of the fam to move to Florida where it's warm 365 days a year and start a church. I would also have to convince our other church members to move because I would miss them.
7. My sister is so sick and I feel so bad for her.
8. I am still working on this blog for those readers who are constantly thinking about how drab it is. I can't download the backgrounds at work so I have to wait until I have time otherwise. Maybe I'll have a pretty blog page soon. :(

Last night after church the kids and I went to Taco Bell with Pappy and Gammy. By the time we had finished eating Kari crawled up in Pappy's lap and said "I'm going to sleep in Taco Bell, Mommy, cuz I seepy." How cute.
So,anyway, the kids fell asleep on the way home and as I was carrying some stuff in to the house from the van I noticed that the cat, Mrs. T, was hissing and growling at something under the porch. This scared me. I jumped back in the van and the thought crossed my mind to lock the doors and sleep in the van until daylight. Most critters go back into a hibernation somewhere when the sun is up. (okay, that's just my opinion but it may be true) Because I am absolutely terrified of snakes and that's the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw Mrs. T hissing and growling, I just knew that it would slither out at about the time I was stepping up onto the porch.
But I was so brave, friends. For the sake of my children getting a good night's sleep I carried them in really fast and locked the door (as if any critter could unlock my dead bolt) and turned the porch light off should the critter decide to take the bright light as a welcome to sit on the porch a while. I put the kids to bed and then I turned the porch light on and peeked through the door to see if I could see anything slithering around. Nothing. Ten minutes later I did the same thing and again, nothing. My mother in law sent a text message to make sure we got home okay. I relayed the scary info about the unknown slitherer that was lurking under the porch. She suggested a skunk.

Weird. Because I smelled fresh skunk when all the windows were open earlier that day and wondered where it was coming from. Dear Lord, deliver us.

This is a picture of Canaan and Kari. They were in Sunday school together for 2 years and now Canaan has had a birthday and moved up to the next class. They are such good friends and it is so sweet. Despite all the jokes we make about them getting married, it truly is just a JOKE. I'm very glad my kids have other kids at church to befriend and have fun with. My kids are to live with Mommy until they are at least 30. They're free then to start looking at the other gender.



Tonight we're meeting our dear friends Laura and Landon to eat pizza and play. Landon and Kari have a fabulous time so I'm sure I'll have neat pics of that on Monday. Malachi's birthday party is also this weekend so Mr. One Year Old will be the main topic of discussion on Monday.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!! :)

Scripture for the Day

Since our evening was so very uneventful (thank the good Lord), I decided just to post a few scriptures I came across today in my daily Bible reading.

Hebrews 2:18 (KJV)

For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.
When we are tempted to be disloyal to God and give in to sin, we should pray to Christ, who triumphed over temptation and now, as our high priest, promises to give us the strength and grace to resist sin. Our responsibility is to draw near to him in time of trouble; His responsibility is to give help in every time of need.

Hebrews 4:15-16

For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
Because Christ sympathizes with our weaknesses, we can confidently approach the heavenly throne, knowing that our prayers and petitions are welcomed and desired by our heavenly Father. It is called the "throne of grace" because from it flows God's love, help, mercy, forgiveness, wisdom, spiritual power, spiritual gifts, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and all that we need in any circumstances. One of the great blessings of salvation is that Christ is now our high priest, our mediator, who opens the way for us to come to the Father with confidence for all areas of need in our lives.

Well, hallelujah! :)



I can never resist adding a picture or two of my beautiful munchkins.

Stuff People Say

On Tuesdays, it's a given that we go to Fazoli's for 99 cent kids' meals. We picked up our food through the "dwive thu", stopped to get two loaves of bread to feed the quackers with, and headed to the park. Of course, going to the park to EAT of all things when there's about 10 million other things to do at the park....not good for a toddler. I tried several times, in vain, to corral the kids in to eat. Kari, bless her little heart, was pacing back and forth around the picnic table casting glances toward the pond and fountain to make sure the ducks hadn't migrated away from us and looking longingly at the swings. Finally, I figured we weren't accomplishing anything as Malachi has recently decided to force me to teach him to handle a fork/spoon on his own. It's either feed himself or he doesn't eat. That's serious business coming from the baby who will eat ANYTHING, including spiders (ask Gammy or Aunt Lacey that story). I loaded the stroller up with all of our mess (drinks, leftovers, camera, camera case, phone, keys, bread...and oh, yeah. My kids.) and headed to the pond.




Malachi liked eating the bread better than giving it to the ducks. :)


To speed this post up a bit, I pushed the kids in the swings for an hour and Kari did some sliding and climbing. We then decided to go to McDonald's right up the road and grab an ice cream cone and let Kari go to the potty so we didn't repeat the Monday night incident.
For those of you who have numerous children and have been by yourself ANYWHERE with them, you will feel the pain of my next words.

We walked into McDonald's and I took Kari to the potty. The restroom was clear of other customers (thank God) and I was able to let Kari potty, hold Malachi and get our hands washed and dried without incident. I know better than to feel like a "supermom" when stuff like that happens. Because I just know that in the next 10 minutes or less something will happen to completely tear down that assurance that I can handle this "mommy stuff" okay. Getting in line, I was holding Malachi and Kari was telling the guy that we wanted an ice cream cone. I also got a water....and an ice cream cone for me and Malachi to share. Walking over to the beverage machine, I began filling up my water cup but forgot that I was holding Malachi with the same arm that was holding the ice cream cone. He was making a nose dive toward it and was successful. LOL. It was kinda funny and I was trying to laugh in spite of the fact that I now had ice cream all over my shirt and neck and all that. I didn't care....we were playing at the park for heaven's sake. I was attempting to switch hands with the cone and balance the water cup too while all the time watching Kari to be sure she hadn't wondered off to stare at somebody's shoes. Starting to feel a bit overwhelmed I hurriedly grabbed some napkins and began frantically grabbing at cup lids. But then this man looked at me and said (just like this) "You sure have your hands full, Lady." I mean, seriously. Really? It touched a nerve or something and I said something to him that I can't really remember in an attempt to be polite. It was up for debate whether or not to smack him. The kids and I politely made our way to the door. But halfway there, Malachi again took a dive at the ice cream cone with his hands!! Of course, this coincided with "the man" behind us trying to leave as well. He laughed a little bit and said "let me get that door for you." Argh. I wanted to knock him out of my way, honestly. So after he reminded Kari to "walk with mommy away from cars" he got into his truck and left. Leaving me to balance the cones, the cup, Malachi, Kari's hand, and the keys to open the car door with. I mean, really.

On a lighter note, the following picture captures a half piece of bread laying on this duck's back. Kari is responsible for this and when we left the park I'm pretty sure the bread was still on it's back. Me and Kari thought this was so funny.

We also laughed at these ducks. I'm not sure why, but at the same time all the ducks in that little area started turning upside down in the water. They did this for about 10 minutes and it really was funny!!!


:)

Tuesday Post

Here's another really catchy post title. My creativity just really shows itself at times.

Last night the kids and I went to the park again with Aunt Lacey and Uncle Chris. Lacey, Chris and I played tennis and I will say that we all did pretty good! We also played a couple of basketball games using the FULL COURT. Heavens. What a way to exercise.
So, anyway, Kari found a pile of dirt to play in and I'm telling you the truth that the child never uttered a sound the rest of the time we were there. She had so much fun with that little dirt pile and it was so cute to see her all covered in dirt!

Until....she had an accident. Of course there are no bathrooms at this particular park so I guess she thought she didn't have a choice. Honestly, it was so funny and cute that I had to take a picture of it. 10 years from now (or sooner) she will be so mad at me for posting this picture but it's hilarious.


For those of you that have been following my blog, my children laid down last night and went to sleep with no rocking, no driving around, nothing.
So I'm going to the park every night. :)