Poor Little Huddy

Hudson has had trouble with asthma since he turned one. It has gotten progressively worse each year. Tuesday night, it got bad enough that I had to take him to the ER. For those of you that know me, I don't freak out very easily over sickness and injury. Unless you have a bones sticking out somewhere, a band-aid can fix almost anything. So Huddy had been doing breathing treatments since Sunday, but by Tuesday night, he was struggling for every breath. His poor little chest and stomach were retracting so bad and he would just cry like every breath hurt. So at 10:30, I packed a little bag, and we headed to Cook Children's. WE got there and it was PACKED, and I thought we were going to have to wait forever! But as soon as we signed in the nurse listened to him and said "OK, that's really bad, you'll be the next one back". Sure enough, as soon as we set down, they called our name. We only had to wait in triage long enough for me to tell them what meds he was on and then they got us to a room. Have I mentioned how much we love Cook! If you live in the DFW area, they are the BEST! So after a few hours of breathing treatments, steroids, and a couple of movies, we were given the all clear to head home, at 3:00 am! Luckily, we already had an appointment with the Pulmonoligist on Thursday, it took us almost four months to get into him, and it came just in the nick of time. So after a three and a half hour appointment with all four kids in tow, we are now on Symbicort,a steroid preventative inhaler, twice in the morning, twice in the morning, a rescue inhaler, and steroids when needed. He hates the inhaler, and screams every time he has to do, but I'm hoping it will get easier the longer he does it. He is already feeling a million times better. And last night, for the first time in months, he slept through the night! Usually he is up every two hours, and is cranky through out the day, and the more upset he gets, the worse his asthma gets. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that on Wednesday, Huddy had an appointment with the ENT. His right ear has been giving him trouble for a month or so. It bleeds really easy, its smells absolutely terrible, and he screams if you get close to it. So basically what has happened, is his body rejected the tube he got back in May, is pushing it out and a mass has formed around it, so it is half in, half out. So now we have drops every night for four weeks, and then we go back and get it checked. And Charlie needed to make a pit stop at the doc for a fever and suspected sinus infection. So needless to say, by Thursday night, I was done, I had a bit of a meltdown, but I've pulled it together and think we are all back on track. Hopefully this week will be a little smoother, and everyone is on the mend!

My brave little Hudster

You think we would be fat

With four growing kids in the house we consume alot of food, although you wouldn't know it to look at them So as I was making my weekly grocery list, I got to really thinking about how much food these four little monsters take in. Here is a list of just the staples. These are the things I buy every week without fail. And keep in mind, this is not lunch and dinner, just snacks and breakfast stuff.

Drinks:
5 gallons of juice
1 gallon of lemonade

Breakfast:
2 gallons of milk
3 boxes of cereal
24 cinnamon rolls
30 biscuits
20 pancakes
20 bananas
1 lb of butter

Snacks:
1 bag of grapes
1 can of olives
2 bags of "Nutter Butter"
1 box of "Mini Vanilla Wafers"
1 box of "Goldfish"
4 lbs of yogurt

Add on to that lunch and dinner and you would think I would have some "chubbies" walking around. But nope, they are skinny minny's! I can't even begin to fathom the amount of food that these four will be able to put away when they are all teenagers, plus they are pretty cool so I'm sure they'll have friends over eating our food too. YIKES!

I mean c'mon, wouldn't you want your kids to hang out with these dorkos?!

Birthday Pics - Pt. 2

I figured if I didn't want to be still talking about the kids' third birthday when their fourth birthday rolled around, I better get on this thing!

So the night before HEC's birthday, Jake and I put together their big gift.

A kitchen! And yes it is manly enough for the boys, it has a grill!

All night I kept thinking of how excited they would be. I had visions of them coming around the corner, shouting and running over to investigate. Jake had the video camera at the ready, I manned the still camera. I was prepared to capture every glee filled moment. But alas, I quickly realized I was filled with delusions of grandeur. They come around the corner, look at it, and walk right over to it and start playing with it like it has always been there. No shrieks of excitement, no hoots of joy, nothing. They played with it all morning before school, they still play with it everyday, they LOVE it, but is it to much to ask for a little excitement?! I joke of course! I know they are three and don't really get the whole birthday thing yet. But I vow to one day buy a present so awesome they totally fall apart when they see it!

Carter man grilling a burger

Big E giving her bear a bath. The ketchup is shampoo, obviously.

The whole crew makin' breakfast

One more birthday post to come!

Birthday Pics

In all the craziness of Christmas, I totally forgot about the kids birthday. Well we didn't forget it, I just forgot to post about it. Charlie's was Thanksgiving day so his kind of got smooshed in with all the other holiday festivities. We did do a combined "party" for all four of them at my parent's house the day before Thanksgiving. They got to open all of the gifts from our family. Here's some pics from our little celebration.













I'll put more up of the big kids actual birthday and the stuff they got from Mom and Dad, that's right they call us "Mom and Dad", aren't they supposed to be like eight before that starts?!

Christmas Catch Up!

So it's been over a week since Christmas and I'm just now blogging about it. And what's even worse, I only took TWENTY pictures the whole time we were up in OK! We were there for four days! The kids actually understood it this year and it was fun to watch them and see there reactions. I got caught up in all the cheers and hoots and hollers, I just forgot about pictures. We had an awesome Christmas, TERRIBLE weather, and I promise to catch up over the next couple days. The kids start back to school this week, and we are finally caught up on everything so hopefully I'll have more time! So here are a couple of the pics from Christmas morning.

Our traditional family Christmas PJ pic

A pic of the kids patiently waiting to go into the room with all the presents

Sweet little Charlie baby

Live and Learn

So I lived and I learned. Santa was a disaster last year so, we've been really talking alot about him this year. Every time we go to the mall, or any place Santa might be, we go and check him out. We stay a safe distance away, but talk about him,how he is just a guy, probably someone's Poppa. We look at him, they love his red hat. And watch the other kids sit on his lap, they always get a candy cane after they see him Hudson was instantly on board, Ella was tentative, and Carter wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. So after seeing him about fifteen times, I quickly realized that there was no way these kids were going to sit on Santa's lap. Charlie baby included, he really, really likes me! And it's not as if this man can hold all of them down, I mean there are four of them. So I decided the easiest, most painless, least traumatic way to get this done, was to be in the pic with them. So as opposed to the Easter bunny pic last year where they were all dressed up and I was in my jeans and t-shirt, I decided to get up and do my hair and put on something decent. And I'm happy to say, the kids did awesome! Carter was still a little leery of him, but he ended up doing OK. After we got done, they asked for their candy canes, but all they had were suckers. Ella asked where the candy canes were, and Santa told her that Wal-Mart was all out when Mrs. Clause went. She said, and I quote, "Oh you shop at Wal-Mart too! We love Wal-Mart. That's so awesome! Oh, I want a pink doggy toy, Carter wants a dump truck and Hudson wants a motorcycle". She kills me! So here's our pic with Santa and some pics of Christmas' past! And yes it's the same Santa, and yes he does remember us, he even said "No crying this year Mom!"

2009

2008


2007

Back by Popular Demand

I've had a special request (Aunt Leann) for a video of the kids dancing. So your wish is my command! Here's a quick clip I took of the kids while I was cooking dinner tonight.
A few of my favorite things about this video:
-Huddy at the beginning. He is by far my biggest music lover. I love driving in the car and looking in my rear view mirror and seeing him with his eyes closed just bobbin' his head. The brother just has the music in him!
-Carter yelling "It's Tricky". This old school Run DMC song is Carter's favorite!
-Big E, finding a way to boss the boys around even when we are trying to have fun and dance. "Stop running Cotter!"
-Some of our moves include, raising the roof, the sprinkler, Beyonce (All the Single Ladies), Frank the Tank (from the greatness that is "Old School") breakin' it down, and each of the kids own personal made up dances, along with much more!

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

And extra special thanks to blog buddy Feris for the new awesome blog header!! Isn't it too cute!