Adoption and Giveaways!

I'm not doing a giveaway, but a friend of mine is. She is currently in the (very long and expensive) process of adopting a little boy from Eastern Europe. His name will be Jackson. Bianca and family are excited to bring their little boy home! They are doing several fundraisers on their blog, including an iPad 2 giveaway! You should go over and check it out!

We Believe You Belong

Halloween 2011

Halloween was a success this year! The kids had a blast and got tons of candy! As you can see, taking pictures of my three together always poses a problem...they can never get on the same page! This was the best I could do!

Luke decided to go as Woody, for the second year in a row! He loves his Toy Story characters!

Sassy Kami wanted to be a princess. She picked Cinderella, her favorite! Like her little pose? :)
And there was no question that Gavin would be Batman! He's been planning his Halloween costume since last year! I think it's shaping up to be his favorite holiday! (He was not in a picture taking mood!)

I forgot to put my memory card in my camera, so these are the only pictures I got of the night. Thankfully, a friend of mine took tons of pictures and shared them on Facebook! If you are my FB friend, I'm tagged in them and you can check them out! :) What did your little ones dress up as this year?

Preschool Treats

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Gavin is now in preschool. He absolutely loves it. Each week, they have a letter of the week and a child is assigned to bring a "letter snack." This was Gavin's week to bring the "letter snack" so on Monday I took Skittles (letter of the week is 'S.') to the office for them to take to his classroom for snack time. When he got off the bus, he was not too happy with his mommy. He really wanted to bring so sort of cupcakes. But, cupcakes start with a C, not an S. So, I emailed his teacher and asked her if it would be ok if we sent another "letter snack" one day this week. She said that would be great. So, the hunt was on for cupcakes with an 'S' theme. This would have been much easier if I could make cupcakes, but everything must be store bought, with a label because of kids with food allergies. Anyway, I had previously seen Spiderman Cupcakes, Spongebob Cupcakes, and Superman Cupcakes, but yesterday, nothing! I searched high and low for some sort of cupcakes with the theme 'S.' Kami and Luke were none to pleased being dragged from store to store looking for cupcakes they wouldn't even be able to eat. That is, until we happened upon a store (Albertson's) with cars for grocery carts!
Finally, after some Facebook suggestions, I bought orange Halloween cupcakes and a pack of (100!) spider rings and put them in the cupcakes.

I think they turned out super cute, and best of all, the kids can keep their rings! Gavin was really excited to bring cupcakes to school today! I'm sure he'll have a nice orange stain on his (brand new) white, long sleeve uniform shirt! Temperatures were unseasonably cool for Louisiana today, so he wore long sleeves, with a jacket, for the first time this school year!

What about you? Do your kids get to bring treats to school? If so, what's their favorite? Gavin's is definitely cupcakes!

Boo at the Zoo!

Today we went to Boo at the Zoo at the Baton Rouge Zoo. It was crazy! But the kids had fun and were well behaved! (Shocker! lol) They got lots of candy and saw all of their favorite animals! Gavin wanted to see the tigers, Luke wanted to see the elephants and Kami want to see the fish. The best part? They got to wear their costumes!

In front of the bat made out of a bale of hay.

Gavin found a Batman pumpkin.
Luke is dressing as Woody again this year. No surprise there!

Kami all dressed up like her favorite princess, Cinderella.

And Gavin finally put his mask on for a picture, just as we were leaving the zoo!

Does you zoo have a fun halloween theme weekend? We love BREC's Boo at the Zoo! And now we are ready for Zoo Lights in December! :)

Home!

After a grand total of 18 hours in the car (round trip) with three kids, by myself, we are home from visiting Chad in Kentucky. We had a good time! We took the kids to Mr. Gatti's on Friday and then Chad took Gavin squirrel hunting! He loves to go hunting with his daddy!

Kami, Luke and I went shopping for Gavin some winter school clothes and had no luck! He's such a weird size (very disproportionate, 3t pants 4t/5t tops) so I decided I needed him to try them on! I did find two Christmas presents for my sisters-in-law. I start Christmas shopping so early so we don't go poor trying to buy Christmas!

Saturday we went for a walk in the woods to pick up acorns and hazel nuts for Chad to put by his deer stand. (Obviously he likes to hunt!) Then we watched LSU beat the Florida Gators 41-11! Geaux Tigers! :)

Today was spent mostly in the car, but now we're home and the kids are in bed and I'm watching "Kim's Fairytale Wedding." :)

Long Time No Post!

I've been a lazy blogger. Well, I guess I haven't been a blogger at all! January was my last post? Really? I Facebook a lot, but I do miss blogging. Let's see if I can sum up the last 9 months with for you! Gavin is four now and Kami and Luke are three! Doesn't seem possible! We went on our first family vacation in May, to Orlando. The kids loved Disney World! I really hope to go back sometime in the near future! We had so much fun. Chad is still working in Illinois and we are still staying in Louisiana. It's tough, but we're making it. We are actually going to see him this weekend and the kids couldn't be more excited!

Like I said above, Gavin is four now. He completed his first full year of IVIG infusions in June. He's had a nice little break since then. They recently had bloodwork done to check his antibody level, they were hoping his body would start making them on it's own. They didn't. But, instead of resuming IVIG infusions in a hospital setting, Gavin will start getting SCIG (subcutaneous immunoglobulin) at home weekly. Guess who the lucky candidate is to give him those infusions? That's right. Me. I'll have a home health nurse come to our house the first two weeks, but then I'll be on my own. Guess what else? He's in preschool now! He started this fall and he loves it! He also rides the bus and that is his favorite part of going to school, lol. While he's there, he receives speech therapy and he has made a ton of new friends. So, Monday through Friday it's just me, Kami and Luke. They miss their brother though. Luke still cries sometimes for Gavin to come back home. Their new favorite activity (all three of them) is coloring. They have so many Color Wonder books and markers and will sit and color all day!

Kami and Luke have entered the picky eater phase of toddlerdom and it's driving me crazy! Gavin is finally out of it and will try just about anything. Luke loves potatoes anyway you cook them. His favorites are baked potatoes (with butter and cheese) and french fries. Kami loves macaroni and cheese and would eat it for every meal if I'd let her! They both love grilled cheese sandwiches. That's where they differ from Gavin. He doesn't really like cheese, unless it's Italian cheses. He likes cheese on pizza, but that's about it.

Gavin likes to have things to look forward to. Today, he's happy his Aunt Sheila (Chad's aunt) will be coming to visit him when she gets off work. He's pretty good about getting her to come visit him two or three times a week! Tomorrow he's excited to go see his daddy! However, I'm not sure he remembers that nine hour drive! I sure hope they take naps! The next "big" thing he is looking forward to is Halloween. We've already bought all of their costumes. Gavin has been planning Halloween 2011 since Halloween 2010! He loved it last year. He is going to be Batman. Batman is his favorite character right now. He had a Batman birthday party and loves all of his little Batman toys! Luke is going to be Woody....again! He still loves his Toy Story stuff! Woody is definitely his favorite, but he loves all of the Toy Story characters. I joke all the time that we should have named him Andy! Kami will be Cinderella. She's the most indecisive of the three. She couldn't decide between Cinderella, a butterfly, a flower or Tinkerbell! Finally, when I made her choose, she picked Cinderella! She does love her princesses! She's so prissy and girly! She always has to have a bow on (which I don't mind!) and she always wants to wear something that sparkles! (Thankfully, The Children's Place has plenty of sprakly screened tees at affordable prices!)

I think that's it for now! Hopefully, I'll be able to continue blogging and get out of that major blogging rut I've been in for over a year now!

Away

Well, tomorrow I will meet my mom half way to let her get Kami and Luke so I can take Gavin for his IVIG infusion on Friday. Yes, he's still getting those. No word yet on when they will stop them, but I'm hoping around March or April after cold and flu season. They will stop them for about 3 months and then re-check his antibody levels to see if he can make an appropriate amount of antibodies to fight off infections with out the help of artificial antibodies. I'm pretty sure they won't risk him going unprotected during cold/flu season. If he doesn't show any improvement, then it will be right back to infusions.

This is Gavin at his last IVIG infusion. He usually does pretty well before and after the stick, but he knows when the IV poke is coming and he is one strong little fighter! It takes myself and 3 nurses to get the IV in him.

For those of you who don't follow me on Facebook, Luke broke his leg on Thanksgiving Day. Well, I say he broke his leg, but were not sure if it was broken or not. He was casted and couldn't walk for a month, so it might as well have been broken! It was x-rayed four different times, but we weren't sure what part of his leg/foot was bothering him and they didn't consistently x-ray his entire leg. The *think* it was a toddler fracture, but we still don't know. I found out during this whole ordeal that he has MAJOR stanger anxiety, especially when his brother and sister aren't around. I've always thought he was just a little shy and didn't warm up to people as quickly as they do, but man, he FREAKS OUT around people he doesn't know. When Gavin and Kami are there, he doesn't freak out, but he doesn't necessarily show a warm welcome either. But, I think seeing them interact with the "strangers" (usually doctors and nurses) makes it easier for him. I have no idea how to fix this problem, so I'm open for suggestions!

Here's Luke in his cast on the way home from the orthopedist.

Kami is very tender-hearted, y'all! She doesn't want anyone messing with her brothers. She was with us when Luke got his leg casted and she totally FREAKED OUT. I think she thought they were cutting his leg off! And afterwards, she would break down whenever she looked at his cast. She cried herself to sleep in the car on the way home and when she woke up and saw the cast, she started crying all over again.

Here she is totally upset that Gavin was having to get a breathing treatment in the doctor's office. She was more distraught than he was!

*Please note that these pictures were taken with my cell phone and lack in quality!