Randomness

• I took the boys to the library for story/craft time yesterday. This was the first time I have taken all of them anywhere in the car by myself. I avoid it like the plague. With the 2 youngest in the stroller that still leaves Jason free...a bad, bad thing. Surprisingly yesterday I saw signs that he is growing up just a bit. Praise God!!! I thought it would never happen!

• Our rabbit, Napoleon, died. He was just fine being his normal bunny self one day. The next day he was kind of quiet. The next day he died. We don't know what happen. We do know that we have no luck with pets.

• Jason pushed over a big chunk of the rock wall dividing our yard from our neighbors. We have a little Hercules living amongst us...those were some big rocks. Anyone have any rock wall repairing tips?
  

• My due date is February 6th. I am 12 weeks along.

• My sister, Heather, arrives on Wednesday for 3 weeks. I can't wait to see her!!!

• We've had some warm, sunny weather this week. I got caught up on laundry and we've been to the beach twice.

Wordless Wednesday

Update on Dad

I was finally able to talk with my dad today. It was nice to hear his voice and he sounded really well. He was able to go home just this morning.

They kept him longer then they said because his heart beat had been irregular so they were watching it. Two days ago they put him under again to use the paddles and give his heart a bit of a jump start. It's amazing what we do to medically fix people these days. Well, it worked and his heart started working right.

So he is home. The pain is pretty good, just has a few sore spots. He will be recuperating for about 2 months with walks to build his strength. They've started his new diet. Yesterday was his birthday and they had angel food cake, which is apparently heart friendly. I am so glad God allowed him to live to see 55 and that he was here to wish Seth a happy birthday today.

And Seth was right, Dad. Fifty-five candles is a lot of candles. :)

Birthday Boy

Happy Birthday, Seth!!!

The pastor's teens from church wanted to make Seth a cake for his birthday. He loved it! Loved the animals. Loved the chocolate bits. Loved the whole thing. He was quite impressed. :)


He really enjoyed today. He has been looking forward to being 5 for a long time now. 5 is a magical number for him. He was showing me this morning how much taller he is now that he is 5 and told me he can run faster now too. lol!

Next week after my sister arrives we will have a small party for him and invite a few of his friends over. So he gets two birthday celebrations...what a special boy! :)

Final School Days

Yesterday was the last day of school for the summer.
Over the past 2 weeks Seth has had several fun school activities.

"Oliver"

The play was a huge success raising over £800.00!!! I think everybody was shocked by how well the play went over. The kids worked hard and did an excellent job.


Seth was part of the choir. All of the children in the choir were also the orphanage children in the "asking for more food" scene.


They preformed the actual songs from the movie, but they were all translated into Welsh. It was pretty neat. I, at least, knew most of what what going on since I've seen the movie before. :)

The Zoo

The whole school took a bus and went to the Chester Zoo. For days before hand Seth was talking about how he was going to take pictures of the animals with his camera. He was so excited!!!


So on the day of we pack him off with his lunch, some spending money, a rain coat, and his camera. Well, apparently the teachers confiscated his camera as soon as they saw it saying they would take pictures for him. And being the good little boy that he is he didn't say anything about it...to them.


But he did burst into tears as soon as he saw his dad. Crying because he didn't get to take any pictures of the animals. I felt so bad for him, because I knew how much he was looking forward to that. He did have a lovely time, although a bit shadowed by his lack of camera.

Sports Day

Seth came in second place in the bean bag toss and won himself a blue ribbon. Yeah!!!


He also enjoyed a sack race...


A bean bag balancing race...


A 50 yard dash...


And an egg-in-a-spoon race...


His downfall in the races against the other boys was having so much fun looking around watching the other kids he wasn't concentrating on what he was doing. That's OK...he has plenty of time to develop his competitive nature later. He won a ribbon and that's all he cared about. He had fun and was happy! :)

Update

I talked with my mom last night. The surgery went well. He was awake and asking to see them. They were going to have him up and walking sometime last night and he should be home tomorrow or Friday.

I'm sure it will be a while before he is feeling wonderful, but things are looking good. He will be having some kind of physical therapy and it will be 4 to 8 weeks before he will be able to work again. With the diet and exercise they will be discussing with him he should be much healthier then before.

Another blessing is that the heart attack he did have did not damage his heart. Normally after an attack like he had they would have done emergency surgery, but since they were able to stabilize him so well the surgery was able to be put off until the morning. So he was the first one in the OR and the surgeon was at his freshest. :)

Thank you for all your prayers. I and my family truly appreciate it.

Prayer, please!

My father is in the hospital. Yesterday instead of going to work he took my mom for her cataract surgery, which went very well. When they were almost home she woke up and he said that when they got home they needed to call for an ambulance. He was having heart attack symptoms.

I'm not sure of the time table or even if I've got my facts straight, but sometime after he got to the hospital he had a heart attack. He had what they call a "widow's heart attack". It's the kind you don't survive, because there is only about a 10 second window of time to get help. Fortunately he was in the hospital. They used the paddles on him and his life was saved.


God's hand was in the whole situation. Had it been a normal day and he was at work he would not have lived.

This morning he went for open heart surgery. As far as I know he is still in surgery right now. The doctors see no reason for him not to pull though just fine. It is hard to be so far away during a family crisis. Good thing is I'm one of six so there are five others who are there to gather at his bedside and be there to support my mother. God is in control. I know I am not the first to experience this, nor will I be the last.

Please pray for a quick recovery.

Still Growing

Happy 10 months, sweet boy!

New to You:

• You can cruise around furniture with ease only falling occasionally.
• You have 3 new teeth making a total of 6 chompers. I would appreciate if you would stop using them on me!
  
• You eat rice cereal every afternoon. I tried mixing in banana but you didn't care for that so much.
  
• You learned how to do your hands and knees crawling in reverse. I wish I had a video recorder...you look so cute doing this.
• You've finally won Paul over. I think you are becoming friends, except Paul is reserving the right to push you if you try to take something from him.
  
• You will now sit on your own by choice. It's nice to be able to just sit you on the floor to play.
  
• You are ticklish under your chin and your giggles melt my heart.
  

Trash or Treasure

This little fellow has a love of treasure hunting in the garbage can. He finds all sorts of wonderful things which I tell him are yucky and eww! He happily parrots my words, but then at the next opportune moment will go back to see if he can find any more goodies.

Yesterday I think his quest in trash picking was reaffirmed.

What did he find much to his delight?

Two lonely marshmallows leftover from our holiday marshmallow roast. Sigh. You should have seen his face. He was so pleased with himself. He learned that his mommy and daddy don't know everything. He was right. There are untold treasures to be found in that forbidden place beyond the fridge.

Oh, joy.

**July 4th **

We packed up the food, the boys and their bikes and took ourselves to the park in Caernarfon for the day. We really had a nice time. Sometimes when we do these family outings we go through all the trouble of getting ready, then because of whining and moody children we come to the end of the day and think "That was so not worth the effort!". Twas not the case yesterday. The weather was perfect (64 degrees) and the boys were well behaved.

Morgan got his first go on the grass. He didn't like it touching his knees, so he crawled on his feet. He looked so funny!


Caleb manned the grill.


Since we were celebrating an American holiday we did our best to have an American meal, although these hot dogs kept being called sausages by Seth and Jason.


Even Morgan got in on the food. I normally would not have given him a hot dog at this point in his life, but I forgot to bring him anything to munch. When all the others are eating he is not content to be left out of the action anymore.


The boys rode their bikes in the skate park.



Much time was spent running up and sliding down the ramps. Although I did not try it for myself, I assume it was great fun.




We also had the normal park activities of jungle gyms, slides, swings and ball playing.


After leaving the park we took the boys for their first trip to McDonald's in 2 years! We got them ice cream cones which were a big hit!


I was going to look on U Tube to find a fireworks display to watch, but we watched the July 4th episode of Little House on the Prairie. And wouldn't you know it in the last scene there were...fireworks!!!

Woo! Hoo!

Fan Fun

The creativity is just killing me.


Good thing he doesn't know how to turn it on....yet. :)