Yes, It's True...

The "news" I posted a few days ago is true! (If you caught it!)

This is how we told family (and some didn't get it!) They thought it was just a cute picture of Gracie. Funny. Or some thought she was the big sister to Jack the dog. Even funnier. He's almost 13 so he is by far the big brother!

Yes, it's true. God willing, a little Gauger will be here this April! We are excited but it's been an up and down 11 weeks already. Some day when I am back into the land of the living, I'll come back and share our story. It's a good one, that's for sure. Right now I've been just barely making it day to day. I've been pretty sick- physically- and just feeling not so great pretty much all day and night. Right now I"m recovering from a bad headache that I had almost 48 hours and nearly went to the ER for. So things are rough. I'm hanging in there. Prayers would definitely be nice right now. I keep thinking I"m going to pass this awful phase but it took about 12-13 weeks when I was pregnant with Gracie- many, many, moons ago. I have certainly aged since then! Thank you in advance for your well wishes and prayers :)

Gracie Says...

 

(Read her shirt!) 

7 Years Later...

Today, July 10th marks our 7 year wedding anniversary! You'd like that a lot would have changed for us in 7 long years but really the only 'big' change is having Gracie. We're still living in the same house (even though we're trying to sell and NO ONE seems to want it!), in the same town, still teaching, and both teaching at the same school. Crazy stuff. I'm sure in 7 more years thing will look a lot different :)

We spent our 7 year anniversary sleeping in until 6:30 (thanks Gracie), running around cleaning like crazy for our early am showing and afternoon open house. We also watched our wedding video this morning and cracked up!! I got all nervous all over again! Gracie liked watching it too.  We had to be gone all day for the showings and open house. We happened to be dog/house/pool sitting for GG and Pop while they are away for the night. We spent the afternoon in the pool, took naps, took pictures, did more swimming, swam with the dogs, and had the best pizza around! Not too bad!! I sure wish we were jet setting off to Switzerland like we were 7 years ago around this time :)

Some pics we took to remember today!

We tried for a pic with Jack and the one above is as good as it got! With a 3 and 1/2 year old, an 11 year old dog not wanting to 'look' and a Daddy that was ready to get in the pool! Still some good ones. I forgot my remote at home so I had to set up then run back and forth for each shot. Here are some outtakes because I think they are super funny!

I actually like this one above, just wish Jack was looking more!

think they were done?? they were.

Here's to 7 great years and Many, Many MORE to come!

2010 in Review

I can’t believe we are wrapping up 2010! We had a busy, but good year. Here are some things we did this year.

We ‘officially’ attempted the starts of potty training, YUCK!

We had mild temps in January and Gracie enjoyed riding her tricycle.

    Kelly and I attended a fun kid-free wedding in Vegas!

Dallas got a record snow fall (7-8 in) and we got to miss school!

          We had beautiful March weather and visited lots of parks.

             

       We got another 4-5 inches of snow!

Grandma and Grandpa came to visit

            We took Gracie on her 1st zoo trip

          The weather turned warm and we stayed outside a lot.

 

The bluebonnets were gorgeous this year!

Gracie got 6 inches cut off her hair (1st BIG cut!) and she the Paci Fairy came to our house and took all of her paci’s away for good.

    Gracie took her first swimming lessons and became a little fish.

A new fountain park opened up by our house and we spent a lot of time cooling off there!

        Gracie saw her 1st movie at the theater, Toy Story 3

Kelly and I celebrated 6 years of marriage and got away for the night!

We went to Nebraska and Gracie played with her cousins.

Family Beach trip to Galveston

school started and Gracie started at her new school in the ‘older 2’s class’

           She finally was fully potty trained

                          She turned 3!!!

          Skeleton Girl for Halloween

Grandma came for a visit

Not a fun memory but I got Mono and Pneumonia at the same time and missed lots of school…

           We put our house on the market

        Celebrated Thanksgiving in Nebraska

     Kelly was named 2010-2011 teacher of the year at our school!

We wrapped up 2010 spending lots of time together as a family. We had Christmas here and made so many memories.

We’re excited about 2011 and can’t wait to see what’s in store for us. Hopefully we’ll be in a new house soon!!!

We wish you a happy and healthy 2011 from our family to yours….

Blog Book

I have been meaning to post some  pics of my awesome blog book I made. It’s the volume 4 book of our blog and it is only for 6 months!

I accidentally got a bigger size this time. I think it’s a 10 X 12? So it’s bigger than the others but still nice.

 

 

Cover and Title page

Sample Pages

Dedication page…

This was hard work though. It may not look like it but it took A LOT of time to do this and I’m not even a perfectionist. Blurb (Book smart) has a pretty nice program to use but still has it’s frustrations. Many, many, MANY hours went into this. (It’s costly too) So this is a strictly hands off to Gracie for right now. I would just die if anything happened to it right now. It’s safe spot right now is on our mantle so it’s sorta on display. Next up, volume 5 which will be july-dec. 2009.

What We’ve Been Up to…

We’ve had a busy, busy first week back. The students don’t come until Monday but we’ve been in back to back meetings and trainings the whole time.We have “Meet the Teacher Night” Friday night so it has been a long week. My feet hurt and my head hurts from all the new stuff :(

Little Gracie is really enjoying her school. It makes life so much better knowing she is happy and safe. She doesn’t really say too much about it but every time we pick her up she is smiling and playing nicely with the others. The teachers just rave about her. Maybe they do this with everyone but her morning teacher just can’t get enough of her. She just goes on and on about how wonderful she is. Makes me feel good anyways :) The hardest part right now is getting her to eat some breakfast. She’s usually not very hungry when she first wakes up but I try and get her to eat something. We eat in the car so right now these are working pretty good: dry cereal, waffle or pancake tacos. (you fold the pancake or waffle up like a taco and put butter or jelly inside. she loves it!) I’ve tried breakfast bars and they either just crumble all over the place or get too sticky. I’m still on the hunt for easy breakfast we can grab and go with.

She loved her pancake taco so much she requested it for dinner too. Love that, easy dinner!

Poor Gracie has been battling a Urinary Tract Infection. It started last week. I was working on potty training with her and she would cry/yell every time she peed. She’d say her bottom hurt. I didn’t take any chances and called and took her into see her Dr. The worst part was that they wanted her to pee in a cup. I tried/begged/pleaded/cried for her to but no luck. I TRIED EVERYTHING. So they had to do a catheter and let me tell you how horrible that was. I can’t even talk about it, it was that bad. I was crying too. It took 2 nurses to hold her down. I didn’t think it was ever going to end. When it was over she looked at me all teary eyed and said “Well, that was a big bummer.” It sure was. What a mess. Her first culture came back negative but they sent it off over the weekend and it was positive.

Luckily her Dr started her on an antibiotic for just in case. She also recommended doing 2 pretty intense tests. One involves her getting sedated and dye injected in her. We looked it up and have decided to wait on the tests. The research I found said that getting one at her age was uncommon and further testing would rule out obstructions or abnormalities. It just seemed like a lot to do after only 1 infection. Plus she is almost 3. I feel like if she had an abnormality it would have showed up before now.  If it doesn’t clear up or comes back then we’ll look into it further. I’m happy with the decision we made. I hope and pray this is it and we don’t have to deal with this again. No fun at all.

 

I’ve been telling her when she goes tt she needs to “let all the tt out!” Hopefully it will work :)

Would you believe these are the 1st pictures I’ve taken of her since Saturday????