Our Halloween Celebration

We have had a fun two days..getting ready for our Halloween party. It has become a fun tradition to have our extended family over to T or T with us. I make dinner and the g-parents and aunts and uncles come over to see the little ones dressed up! This year we spent two days painting and making decorations. We made Halloween Jell-o Jigglers, a Jell-o eyeball, cookies and brownies. It was so much fun!
We walked through the neighborhood with a gang of kids...we have a TON of neighbor kids. One neighbor had games, prizes and hot chocolate. It was a great night with TOO much candy!
We are now glued to the tv watching Ghost Hunters Live...it is filming live from the Waverly Hills Sanitarium in Louisville. I love this becuase I do believe in paranormal activity, but also because my mom grew up on land connected to it. It was a TB hospital and over 63,000 people died there. I have friends who have worked there and have seen ghosts and have had strange things happen.
Oh and pictures are on the way very soon, I promise!!!

Bethany

Just another day...but a great one!

Today has been such an absolute joy! We began our day with a clean sweep of the house and finally made our way to the basement school room. We worked on our Evan Moor Literature Pockets, the nursery rhymes set. These sets are great for multiple ages. We worked on Little Bo Peep (which Madelyn thought was "AWESOME", since that is her Halloween costume). I was so shocked today when Madelyn cut out her own shapes!! She is left handed and we have tried every type of scissor and she has never mastered it...then today she did it!! We made homemade pizzas for lunch! Yummy! We also kept an eye on the fires in California and the space shuttle launch.
At lunch Maddee was saying the prayer and she said..."God is great, God ganks you for our food and our family and everybody in the world we don't know....and help make more water so we can put out the fires...Amen..oh and more wood to make them new houses"
Meanwhile Annie has potty in the potty all day with only one accident!!! YEAH!!

Okay...blessings huh?!?!

*Three HEALTHY beautiful children
*One HEALTHY hubby (and life insurance too...hehe!)
*A beautiful (but oh so messy) home
*Oppurtunity to homeschool my children
*Friends (even if they do make me blog!)
*my own laptop
*TiVO
*2 months until Christmas
*Finished scrapbooks
*Scrapbook retreats !!
*Canon Rebel (even if I am too dumb to work it!)
*6 Years cancer free
*No pets!
*Summer in October!
*Our new church home/family!

.....This list could go on and on!!!!

I need to start off by saying thank you to everyone who has sent beautiful messages of prayers, love and thoughts over the past couple weeks. It means so much for friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers to take the time to send a message of sorrow and thoughts ...even when not knowing what to say. It has meant so much to me!

We are doing good. Children are great like that....this week, birthdays and the baby are mere memories and thoughts have moved on to halloween costumes!! Although Carson was tickled while we were at our homeschool co-op on MOnday, we talked about our baby up in heaven playing with his friends baby (they lost their baby a few weeks before us)!

I scrapbooked this weekend from Friday until Saturday evening. I was able to complete 41 pages! I completed Annastyns 1 year album and our 2006 family album! It feels so good to mark things off the list!!

Oh yeah, Halloween costumes! This week has about killed me....all for the search of three simple costumes! Let me give you a brief history on this topic in my family...it is ALL about the pictures!!!! So yes every year I dress the children in a theme...that ^gasp^ I pick out!!!hehe I can on and on to defend myself...but who cares..right hehe!!!
So this year my 7 year old decides he does not want to be the tin man. * mom sobbing*...meaning no Wizard of Oz gang.:( So I allow him to choose what he wants to be...he picks Optimus Prime a transformer. Madelyn agrees to be "Little Girl Peep" (as she calls it!) and Annie is her sheep (she loves that she is in charge, as a middle child she rarely gets this!) So the search begins!! I travel to about 4 stores before realizing Little Bo Peep will have to be ordered online....4 hours later I choose one from ebay. Still no sheep or Optimus?? Several stores later and I find a transformer and guess what...MISSING PIECES!!! Two more stores (now keep in mind I am traveling in and out with 3 little ones!) and still only a very $$$ sheep is to be found. I stop by one last Halloween shop and guess what they have the $$$ sheep on clearance, YEAH!!! So tonight after boy scouts we hit one more Target and guess what still no transformer...so after stating that "he will jsut stay home and hand out candy if he cannot be Optimus Prime"...he spots the "Human Torch" costume and is in love.
So finally, 11 stores later, 36 grey hairs, 2 meltdowns, and $84 in gas we have our costumes...well as soon as the one off ebay comes we will!!

Oh in case you care..here is a run-down of what my children have dressed up as for halloween.
Zarek -(foster son)1st halloween -Pumpkin
Zarek - 2nd year Blues Clues
Zarek - 3rd year Cowboy/ Carson was a teddy bear (he was only 3weeks old!)
Carson's 2nd year-Piglet
Carson's 3rd year-Peter Pan (Mommy was tink and daddy was Capt. Hook)
Carson's 4th year and Madelyns 1st year - Raggedy Ann and Andy
Carsons 5th year and Madelyns 2nd year - Pirates
Carsons 6th year and Madelyns 3rd year, Annies 2nd year - We were The Incredibles! Mr Incredible, I was Elasti Girl, Carson was Dash, Maddee was Violet and Annie was Jack-Jack!
I will try to get pics uploaded!

Quincey

Throughout the first few weeks of this pregnancy, I had no symptoms, (I usually VERY sick with my pregnancies!). I knew that something was wrong and that I did not "feel" pregnant. I also spotted for two days around my fifth week. I was lucky enough to get in for my first ob appointment at only 6 weeks and 4 days. I explained my concerns to my doctor and she immediately suggested an ultrasound. The u/s showed a perfect 4 week pregnancy...and I was sent home. A follow up u/s was scheduled for 2 weeks later.
I was upset and confused and was trying to make sense of the different dates etc. Hubby is in Vegas for work conference and I am alone! Hubbys boss was nice enough to allow him to fly home about 6 hours early...which was nice. It also fell on Carson's birthday. My family and I took Carson to the Extreme Skate Park downtown and then to Tumbleweed for lunch. Hubby walks in to the restaurant and surprises the birthday boy!
So we are to Thursday and the waiting is killing me!! I call the ob and ask them if I can get my Hcg levels checked. My hcg on Thursday is 688 and according to the lab it should be over 1000. Saturday I had my blood drawn again. Saturday I begin to spot and then it is heavy red blood...so I am officially miscarrying the baby. Today is Monday and I still have not heard from the doctor, so I am not sure what my HcG levels were on Saturday and I am not sure if I will have a D&C this week or not.

Telling the children...I told Carson on Tuesday because he kept asking what happened at the doctor...and was it a boy or a girl. He is very mature for his age and I truly think that he was sensing something was wrong. At that time I told him that the baby might not live. He was quiet for awhile and then he grabbed my hand and asked if I would die if the baby died? So that discussion led to what will happen to the baby? So many hard questions from a not yet 7 year old!

So the days have followed with a question or so every day. At one point Carson said "That he was not going to pray for another baby, becuase he had already prayed so long for this one". He asked granny to hold his hand and told her that the baby might live or die. He has asked over and over again why the doctor can't fix the baby, and that if he was a doctor he would fix every baby.

This brings us to last night. We were watching Extreme Home Makeover and the little girl had cancer and was receiving chemo. He asks if the doctor can give chemo to our baby to make it better. (Remember,I had just begun heavy bleeding)I asked Paul to come upstairs and told him that it was time to tell Carson that the baby had died. Paul struggled for awhile and then explains to Carson that our baby will not ever live on earth with us....that it is going to live with Jesus instead. Carson had tons of questions..as you can imagine! So we answer tons of questions and we then offered the idea to the children to name the baby. After reeling off name after name of all their friends. Soon Madelyn suggested Cinderella...so considering the baby was given to us in Disney I tell them to go with the theme and try to agree on a Disney name. We go through Ariel, Cinderella, Troy, Gabriella (HSM), then we get to The Little Einsteins...Leo, Annie, Jude and Quincey. So it is, our baby is Quincey!

Yes I am alive!!!

I know, I know everyone thought we were stranded in Disney limbo!! Well a lot has happened in the last month. We were home from Disney for three days when we traveled to St.Louis to watch hubbies hometown team the CUBBIES!!!! We stayed in the same hotel and rubbed elbows with the team all weekend!! It was a blast!
We returned home and started our school year. Then that next weekend it was off for a 3 day scrapbooking retreat!!YEAH!!! I nearly completed my cruise album (56+ pages), wow!!!
On top of this we squeezed in our Monday co-op classes, Annastyns 2nd birthday party and Carson's 7th birthday party!! Don't forget the usual of gymnastics and soccer for MAdelyn...AWANA and choir for all three children...wheewwh!!

So would it be possible to squeeze ANYthing else??? How about a pregnancy?? Yeap I found out that we had returned from Disney with a souvenier!!!

We found great, cool, fun ways to tell everyone in the family and we were all ready for our new addition due May 23, 2008!