February

Tris - in the outfit she picked out ;)

Once again I have found myself out of the loop in the blogging world, but hopefully I will get back to my regular scheduled programming ;) The past several weeks have been rather busy, so keeping up with the blog has not really crossed my mind. 

Happy Birthday Daddy!

We celebrated Josh's birthday at the farm house during the beginning of February. We spent several weeks in January up there helping Uncle G remodel the basement and turn it into a nice living room. We took over our old entertainment center and big screen tv and it fit perfectly. We are thankful to have it out of our garage. We also took some other pieces of furniture that we had stored in the garage. I am happy to see it all be put to a good use instead of collecting dust in our already over crowded garage. We enjoyed our time at the farm very much. The kids just absolutely love being there and playing outside with the dogs. In January we celebrated Josh's brothers birthday, which turned out to be a very fun night catching up with old friends. It seems as though Josh and I were constantly on the go for the past several months, so we decided to take a time out and spend a few weekends at home, just us. It was very nice to just relax, spend all day in our pajama's and catch up on rest and relaxation. There is nothing that makes me happier than spending time with my family and taking a break from the busyness of life every now and again is definitely a much needed refresher. 

More Birthday Fun!

Tristyn has been doing great in her two day a week preschool. She absolutely loves going and spending time with her teachers, Miss Sarah and Miss Katherine. One of her oldest friends is in her class and she tells me they always play together and sit next to one another during snack time. She has learned a lot in the past several months and it still amazes to watch her constantly growing into a well mannered little princess :) Josh and I have both been rather stressed about where to send her for pre-k and actually registered her at the school she is in now, however it is not looking promising for her to return again next year. She is going to be heartbroken because she absolutely loves going, but right now it is just something that is going to have to be dealt with. We are up in the air about what we are going to do, but she may end up staying home for the next year until she starts kindergarten in 2010. 

Last week I rescheduled Tristyn's surgery for March 19th. I did some asking around and it turns out that several friends and neighbors have used our ENT for their own children's surgeries, which comforts me. I have been paying more attention to Tris' sleep habits and I am 100% convinced that she has sleep apnea, so I definitely want to get it taken care of as soon as possible. We originally had to cancel the surgery because they were going to schedule us at the surgery center where you had to pay your deductible and 10% of the surgery upfront. There was no way that was going to happen so we decided to hold off until they could get us in elsewhere. At the moment it looks as though Josh will attend the surgery with us and then head on to work. I am hoping that we will find someone to keep Jackson during Tris' surgery so we will not have to take him with us. Luckily, Josh will be off for the two days following the surgery and then my mom will be off the following two days. It seems like we will have plenty of helping hands to take care of our Princess during her recovery. From what I have heard it is a pretty miserable two weeks of recovery!

Jackson has officially hit the terrible two's! I have never been one to believe in such, but my toddler is a little terror these days. Maybe not so much a terror, but a little turkey indeed! His personality has transformed into a loving yet spunky and cocky 100% B O Y. All things related boy you can imagine, he does with greatness. First and foremost would be the intentional torturing of his sister with actions such as taking her slip-slip or favorite stuffed animal and hiding it. The other evening Tris had misplaced slip and he kept telling her that "slip went bye-bye verrrrrry far away" even though he had no idea where it was. He just wanted to get at her and I find that it is absolutely hilarious that they already have that brother-sister rivalry. Despite all of the wrestling, tattle-tailing and name calling, they love each other more and more each day. At times they can be very loving towards one another, especially when one of them is upset or hurt. I love watching them interact with each other in the so many different ways. Not ever being able to experience the sibling bond for myself, I find all of it so very special. 

Jackson had done so well with the potty training but has since been regressing and not doing as well. He has really good and bad days, however I cannot pinpoint what the problem is. I am sure in time he will completely get the hang of it and we can ban the diapers for all of eternity. Until then we are not rushing things, but instead taking it one day at a time and trying our best to encourage and support him. He has not been sleeping in his room at all over the past two months. Instead he has been crashing with his sissy in her queen sized bed. As long as they are sleeping in another bed besides mine, I am fine with it! They love to snuggle together and be close to one another. I almost wish that we could put them in a room together, but I am sure as time progresses they will both need their space. So for now we will just let them sleep in the pink flowery room. Hopefully that will not negatively affect our boy, haha!

Josh has orientation at Shorter College on Wednesday. He was accepted into the Professional Studies Program last month, something we have been praying about for a long time now. The program allows him to finish his BS in 22 months, only going to school once per week, during the evenings. It is really a blessing that we found out about the program through some friends of ours. I am definitely very thankful for that. We are looking forward to seeing how it all plays out over the next several months. Ironically, Josh's work schedule went from a normal 5 day work week to a 4 day work week. It was a little weird how the timing worked out. The work switch came about two weeks ago and he starts school this week. Speaking of his work, he just celebrated his three year anniversary with them. It is hard to believe how different life was just three short years ago. 

We have a lot coming up in the next few months, mainly wedding events for Josh's brother and one of my best friends. Once the wedding is over I will be related to both of my best girlfriends, how funny huh? Alea will be my sister-in-law and Tasha will be some sort of cousin-in-law. The girls and I designed and printed the wedding invitations last weekend, although we still have to finish the RSVP cards and addressing the envelopes. We have a date on Sunday to go dress shopping for our bridesmaids dresses and we are still in the works of finding a cabin in Helen for the bachelorette getaway. The boys have decided to head off to the races at Talladega for a weekend of camping and "redneck-ness"... Josh is "SO" excited seeing as how he loves racing so much, NOT! hehehe. Everything seems to have fallen into place rather nicely over the past few weeks. I have enjoyed being able to help Alea, as it's really been the first wedding that I have had a hand in. I never realized how stressful it all can be, which makes me grateful that Josh and I did not go through it all. I am much happier to be on the outside looking in :) Once the wedding is over we are planning on taking off for a week to visit Pa and Mimaw in Florida. We hope to take the kids to the beach on several occasions and look forward to relaxing in the sunshine. After that who knows where we will be or what we will be doing! 

On an exciting note...we are looking forward to a new addition to our family...a "baby dog" as Tris likes to say. We have been waiting to hear from our family in WV about the birth of our soon to be new family member, but we've yet to hear anything. The pups should be born anytime now and we are all very excited about it. Mom and I are planning on making a short weekend trip to WV once the "baby dog" is ready to meet us. Tris says we are going to name her "Cupcake" but Josh and I have different ideas :) We cannot wait to have our furry faced friend in our arms.