First Tournament!

I should have posted this several weekends ago but I have been busy and really I have the hardest time blogging. I’m no writer that is for sure and when I read other people blog I just think how eloquently they write. But this is not for everyone else. This is for me and my kids so I need to be better.

All that being said here is a post on Jayci’s first softball tournament. It was March 17th and 18th.

Here she is at practice…She is actually pretty good at hitting the ball.

Of course K man LOVES softball. Although he doesn’t hang out in the stroller much he is much too mobile for that now.

Now onto the tournament!

Well okay a little dancing and booty shaking before the game…

Such concentration and ready to bat!

Team chant after the first game…

My FIL and K

MIL and Jayci watching the big girls play.

Let me stop right here and tell a little about the tournament. This was the first time most of the girls even stepped on a softball field. That being said you can imagine how all of these games went. We lost the first 2 games really bad. The third game the other team actually forfeited. So that actually led to us being in the Championship game. Which of course, we lost. But we still ended up getting 2nd place. So the girls were so very excited with their medals.

Jayci and her friend M with their 2nd place medal. They are also in Kindergarten together!

Team Aftershock!

2nd Place!!

I have to say I was a nervous wreck the whole weekend. Jayci struggles really bad with some social anxiety. If it is new and different she takes a while to adjust. She does great at practice but when it came game time it was a whole different story. She cried every single game. She was so nervous. She didn’t like the other team, people in the stands, the coaches yelling. I was so sad for her but stayed strong and made her play. I don’t know if that is wrong or right. But we have spent a lot of money on everything. Plus, I dealt with the same issues growing up and my parents would always pull me from whatever it was. I do not want to do that to her. I want her to stick with stuff and hopefully help her overcome her fears and anxiety. However, I pray I do not scar her for life. HA!

Either way she was so excited about the medal that it made up for all of it.

~Kristen

A Very Long Update

Oh where to begin….It has been over a month since I have blogged. I like to blog okay and it is a good way for me to keep up with stuff but I am not very good at it at all.

In the last month Korbyn has turned 10 months old. Some new things he is up to: he can crawl very well, pulls up on everything, has 2 bottom teeth, eats everything in sight, wears a size 3 diaper, weighs about 19lbs, and is the best  baby around! I think he might have said his first word tonight. Well he always jabbers “da-da” but hasn’t ever said it to Jay. But tonight I was telling him “night night” and it sounded like he repeated it. It was SO CUTE! Now if he says it again I will count it.

We have had several fever viruses in this house this season. Well this week was no different. Korbyn woke up on Tuesday and I noticed he felt a little warm about 10ish so I took his temp and it was 103. He had no other symptoms so I figured just another fever virus and started on the Tylenol/Motrin regimen. Well Tuesday night his temperature got up to 104.7 which concerned me a little bit so we headed to the pediatrician. She looked him over and did a flu test (which was negative) and determined he had a fever virus.

We went home and kept up with tylenol and motrin. When I put him to bed Wednesday night his temp was 104.4. We gave him some tylenol and I put a cool rag on his head while I was nursing him. Well when I woke him up to give him some motrin I checked his temp again and it was 105.3. Which totally freaked this mommy out and let me just say I don’t freak about fevers. So I called the on call nurse and she of course said to go to the ER. I called work and asked how many were in the ER and when a co-worker said 50 something I about changed my mind on going. But I was worried about a)the fact that it had gone up and b)seizures with it being so high. So we went to the ER got checked in and lucky for us I knew one of the triage nurses! However, that still did not shorten our wait any. We got to the ER about 10:45pm and did not leave until about 6am. And we didn’t even get back into a room until around 1ish and didn’t see a doc until about 2:30.

Let me just say I knew what the wait would be and choose to go there anyway. I work there and I trust them. Anyway, he got some blood work, an IV, a fluid bolus, and a chest x-ray. And when we left they still figured he had a fever virus. Oh well, it made me feel better to go and they at least got his temp down by the time we left.

Here he is trying to figure out his IV in his hand…Poor baby!

Okay so what else have we been up to?

OH my computer got a virus on it. Luckily we were able to get to all the files and back them up. Then we had to take our computer back to how it originally came. So all that pretty much sucked!

The weather has been BEAUTIFUL so we went to the park.

Just a cute picture of my blue-eyed babe!

Tonight Korbyn was feeling better and I had to go to Babies-R-Us for a shower gift so we decided to go eat at this fairly new restaurant call “All Aboard.” It’s a fun place where trains actually bring you your food. Both kids like it a lot!

Miss conductor!

Jayci also started softball this month. She is playing on a 6 and under coach pitch team. She likes it and is pretty good so far. I am kind of excited for games to start.

Well I guess that is pretty much it. Not a whole lot going on around here. Probably the main reason I have a hard time blogging.

~Kristen

A Skating We Will Go!

Last Friday (Jan. 27th) we celebrated Jayci’s 6th birthday at a local skating rink.

I had her invitations done by a girl on Etsy. I really wish I could do stuff like this. I just don’t have the software.

Because we invited SO many kids. I mean really so many like 40+ kids, I think. We decided to collect books for the library of the school that Jayci attends. She goes to a small school plus they are building a new library. Oh and the sheer fact that I didn’t want to have 30 some odd little toys that would get thrown away in a week laying around. I mean she JUST had Christmas. Anyway, she was happy with this idea. Plus she did get birthday presents from her grandparents and aunts.

Oh and just so you know never and I mean NEVER invite 40 kids thinking that oh maybe half will show up…nope 36 showed up!! That’s A LOT of kids. Which we were so happy and blessed to share Jayci’s birthday party with. I’m serious! She had the best time and I would do it all over again! A collage of some of the skaters. The one in the corner of Jayci cracks me up. After Jayci got out there she warmed up to the skating thing. She was so brave and just took off. Needless, to say she fell more than she actually skated. We are still finding bruises…

I mean it’s not really skating without at least one head injury…Right?

Cake time! My sister, Carrie, made this wonderful cake. It was so pretty and tasted REALLY good as well. Of course Jayci wouldn’t know she just wanted to go skate!

Red-faced and attempting to blow out the candles. 

  I only counted 30 kids in this picture but I am sure that some may have left early or didn’t come and get their picture made.

Oh and the party is just not complete without dancing to the “Cha Cha Slide” Oh and yes I did get out there and skate and do the “Cha Cha Slide” with them. There will just be no pictures posted to prove it. HA!

I absolutely love this picture. They were all running to slide on there knees and I just caught it at the right time!

We had SUCH a fun time. We are so blessed to have to many friends and family to be able to celebrate with! We also were able to donate over 30 books to the elementary library!

Next on the to do list…Planning Korbyn’s 1st birthday!

~ Kristen

My Girl!

Jayci,

   Today my sweet girl you turned 6-years-old. My how time flies! I can remember you birth like it was just yesterday and now you are growing it to this beautiful thriving little girl. Well, let’s be honest I guess you are not all that little anymore.

You started kindergarten this year and you are doing so well. Your teacher raves about how good you are usually (we all have our moments). You are doing wonderful at your spelling words and learning to read. You can count to 100 and have learned to tie your shoes. You have also made so many new friends.

This is your second year of dance. And while you are not the most graceful person you seem to enjoy dancing. You also love cartwheels and handstands, which you are quite good at. At the beginning of this month you made us take your training wheels off of your bicycle and did very well at it. It has been kind of cool here so you have not got a lot of practice but spring will be here soon enough.

Another thing you love to do is sing.  You definitely get this from your daddy. You love music and could listen to it all day.

You are a wonderful big sister. You love Korbyn so much. You always want to hold and carry him. You make sure he is safe. You also make sure nobody gives him any food that he is not supposed to have. In fact, you told on Grammy for giving him a donut the other week at church. HA!

I cannot believe how much you have grown and matured over the past year. You have your moments and you still like to whine a little and hate cleaning your messes but again who doesn’t have those bad sides. You are an amazing little girl and I love you so much!

For your birthday this year we are having a skating party! But to celebrate as a family, Daddy, me, Korbyn and you all went shopping at Justice for you some clothes. Actually, Mimi sent you a gift card so we had to go and spend it!

After clothes shopping we went to Toy's-R-Us to pick you out one toy. Several years ago I signed you up for there birthday club. Every year they send you a 3 dollar coupon  inside of a birthday card. Well we have never actually gone. However, this year I thought it would be really fun to take you. They gave you the crown and a balloon (you picked the color blue). After that they made an announcement over the loud speaker saying something like, “Everyone we have a special birthday girl her name is Jayci and she is 6 years old. Be sure and tell her Happy Birthday.” It was so fun. You ended up picking out 2 new cd’s for your karaoke machine you got for Christmas.  

After Toy’s-R-Us we let you choose where to eat. Of course, you choose none other than Purple Cow. You love that place. We split a milkshake and they put whip cream, sprinkles, and a candle on yours and came out and sang you Happy Birthday. I think you had such a special day!

 

We did all this on Tuesday night because on Wednesday (your actual birthday) you have dance and we usually have church so it is kind of a busy day.

Here you are before school in your 6-year-old birthday shirt!

I have to admit I have not taken your annual birthday pictures yet. That is on my to do list for this week but I wanted to post this collage of you in all your birthday shirts. The last photo is obviously from my phone. Once I take your pictures I will try to redo it. Obviously we like zebra and pink since we did it 2 years in a row…Oops. Oh well this year we threw in a little green too.

Jayci, your daddy and I love you so very much. You are so special to us. I hope you had a very special birthday and have a great party on Friday!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

~ Kristen

I Almost Forgot…

I almost forgot to show off our wonderful family pictures we had done back in November. Krystina Bullard at K. Bullard photography did them. She is on maternity leave right now but you should definitely give her a call, if you live here in central Arkansas, when she comes back.

Without further ado….

We actually had these done for Christmas presents for Jay’s parents. Here is all of us. I think she did a really good job, especially since we had 5 kids to wrangle together.

~Kristen

The first week of 2012

2012 has proved to be a very exciting year for us thus far, especially for Jayci. Christmas break came to an end on January 4th and Jayci headed back to school. Well the previous Saturday Jayci discovered that she had a loose tooth. Well wouldn’t you know the first day back to school her teacher pulled her tooth! I know they are probably very experienced at the tooth pulling business and it probably saved me a lot of drama but I was still quite disappointed. In fact, I almost cried.

Not the greatest picture but her teeth are so little that is the only way I could get it.

The rest of the week we have just kind of hung out. Korbyn has had his first real sickness. He had a small fever virus back in December but this week he was really sick. He has had a fever, congestion, ear infection, and just plain feeling bad. Today he is still snotty but feeling much better.

Korbyn turn 8 months old on Friday. I didn’t do any monthly pictures because he is so snotty and still a little cranky. Some things is he doing now:

• He is up to 17 pounds
• He is crawling all over the place. Not very fast but he is definitely mobile.
• He can go from being on his belly to on sitting all by himself.
• He can pull up in his bed for sure. But other places he’s not quite so sure about.
• He loves his sister SO much. She makes him smiling all the time.
• He is still eating baby food but has started eating table food too. He loves all food except for peas. He pretty much refuses to eat those.

A pictures of my blue-eyed-babe!

And for the biggest excitement of the week. Jayci decided to try riding her bicycle without her training wheels. She did a great job! Still have lots of practices but she is still doing good. 

A video of her riding. Notice she always goes for the grass. She has no idea how to start or stop yet but those will come eventually…I hope. Oh and it’s blurry. I got some better videos but I either talked or made some kind of weird noise in them so I chose not to post those. HA!

Here is a picture of her too.

Now off to get ready to go to work….Hope you all have a great weekend!

~Kristen

Christmas 2011

This Christmas I was excited and sad all at the same time. It was Korbyn’s first Christmas and of course Jayci is so fun right now at Christmas so both of those had me excited. However, I had to work both Saturday and Sunday night so that had me a little bummed. I knew going into the field of nursing that would always be a possibility. However, it still sucks when it happens. All that being said my poor little patients that were stuck in the hospital on Christmas didn’t want to be there either. At least my family and I were all healthy and not spending Christmas sick, in a hospital none the less. Oh I do want to say that a plus side to working at a Children’s hospital on Christmas is that I got to play Santa and deliver some nice presents to the kids in the middle of the night.

Okay okay enough about work…I really did not get a lot of pictures at all of Christmas. I hate that but I kind of just enjoyed spending the time that I did have with my kids.

Here are a few pictures of the kids Christmas Eve (well our Christmas Eve on Friday).  We have a tradition to give new pajamas on Christmas Eve. This year we just got them for the kids. Aren’t they just the CUTEST! (Yes, I’m a little biased)

 

Christmas Morning (actually Saturday) we woke up about 7ish with Korbyn. Fed him breakfast then shortly after that Ms. Jayci work up and was ready to see what Santa brought. Before we let her dig in we read the story of Jesus’ birth. Of course, is kind of like torture for a 5-year-old so we might start doing that on Christmas Eve.

Of course, life wouldn’t be complete without a Angry Bird shirt…

We should have just bought him a box…

And a crowd favorite…The karaoke machine…Thanks MIMI! 

We went other places on Christmas Eve but I forgot my camera at home and again was just enjoying family that I didn’t really even care I had forgot it. Sunday I woke up a little early so we could go eat dinner at my in-laws and spend sometime there before we went to work.

My mother in law made an amazing dinner. I pretty much had to eat and open presents then run to work. It is so hard to leave when my kids are having fun and during family time.

We have one more place to go tomorrow! The festivities are never ending. HA!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

~Kristen