GWL

This past weekend we went to the Great Wolf Lodge for Dennis's Dad's birthday. We had all of his family and it was a great time.

 



Mollie, Will, Tenley, and Hadley

 

I did NOT get many pictures at the Great Wolf Lodge. When we got there we went straight to the pool and when one parent is chasing a 3 year old and the other is holding the 1 year old, you just don't get the camera out. They both LOVED it though. Before we even got into the swimming area, Lillian was laughing.

We swam until about 5 the first day and went up to get some supper and relax a bit. Will and his pain tolerance will forever amaze me. We got to the room and I notice his toe is bleeding all around his toe nail. I said "buddy, your bleeding!" And he looks at his hands trying to figure out where... This is probably when we should have tried to get Will down for a nap. He does not do well without naps yet. He NEEDS them or he NEEDS to be in bed, asleep at 6:30PM. End. Of. Story.

Lillian got to sleep pretty much on time, with only a morning nap she was falling asleep at 6:45 drinking her bottle so she went straight to bed and was doing great. The rest of us stayed up and chatted, watched the game and just had fun.

 

I am a person who does not do well on less than say 7 hours of sleep. I do best with 9. So at 10:00 I said Good-night and headed to bed. Will stayed up for a bit longer but I finally got him to bed at 10:30. Around 11:30 is when the fun started. With so little sleep, Will was a bear! He screamed for Mom, his Monkey (that we so happened to have forgotten) and that he wanted to go home. We were all in one room so his screaming proceeded to wake Lillian up. She screamed. He calmed down for a bit and then started to scream again. She woke up, and screamed. This was the pattern for the next 3 1/2 hours. I *think* we had about four hours of sleep. That might be stretching it some.

 

Woke up around 6:45 with more screaming and that was when we gave up and got up. Everyone else got up and went to church while we decided to stay and try to get the kids to nap a little more. Lillian got another 30 minute nap until Will woke her up. See a pattern here?

 

As we were both exhausted it was a toss up to swim again or just go home. We opted for the swim as this is our vacation. Left around noon and silence the whole way home! It took Will a good FULL day to catch up on sleep. He took a 3 hour nap the next day and I even had to wake him up.

 

This was Wiley. He was at story time that night and Will wanted to give him a hug until time came to hug him and he wouldn't go near him. I even tried to go with him, so cousins, Sadie and Sawyer took the picture with him.

Easter fun!

We started the weekend with Easter on the Deters side. Will had a hay day and actually picked up more than one egg at a time this year. Last year he would pick one up, eat it then go to the next missing most of the eggs.

 

 

 

Cousin Burke helping the boy out. Lillian was taking a nap during the egg hunt so she missed out. She wasn't feeling the greatest so we let her sleep.

 

 

Look Mom!

 

 

Grandma and Grandpa Deters with all (minus Lillian) of the grandkids!!!

 

 

Easter morning I JUST got off work so while Dennis did chores I let them tear open the baskets. I did miss the stalking openings on Christmas because I had to go to work, so I didn't feel too bad having Dennis miss this. ;)

 

 

Will was excited about his pool toys for this summer. He was funny with his tractor and dump truck.

 

 

 

"Mom take a picture of my tractor"

 

 

"And my dump truck."

 

 

Lillian and the actual twins of the family. We have always called Will and Kaydence 'the twins' but now that these two cuties are around not sure we can actually do that...

 

 

Egg hunting! Again, Lillian was sleeping....

 

 

'The twins'. Will loves Kaydence so much. It's so funny, the second he sees her he grabs her hand and off they go. She's a smart girl too, look at her having him pull her around in the wagon! That's love!!

And now there's snow!

It was amazing a week ago! We went to the park for Will's birthday and really didn't even need jackets. In fact, he took it off shortly after this.





 

When we got home, Will refused to go inside and so did I since it was so nice out. The only way to keep Lillian from eating rocks, stick her on a ridding toy she cant get off of, unless she falls but that's another story.

 

Saturday, the cold front came in and hasn't left since! So we had a little fun experiment thanks to my sister for the idea! We started with the eye dropper and ended with....



 

Yep, that's what I thought would happen :) But he had fun doing it so oh well!

 

Stay toned for some snow pictures, because in Kansas, that's what you get 80's one day and snow the next!

Birthday Party Photo dump

Thank you to everyone who was there to help us celebrate! The kids had a blast and went away with a bunch of new goodies!

Happy 3rd Birthday Will!

It's a day early but I won't be able to post this tomorrow, so William Leroy, thank you for being so amazing. Thank you for letting us love you so much and for being such an awesome, sweet little boy!

Looking back at all the photos from when we had Will, I realized we didn't have any of Will and me. I think the best reason is I had a crappy camera back then. My photography increased dramatically about Thanksgiving after Will was born! This is a pretty fun picture of Will though, with new Daddy looking over his pride and joy.

It wasn't until we were home that I realized we hadn't taken a family picture yet. Hows that for a first family pic?! HA, you can tell we were lacking something pretty important.

Will's first birthday was cowboy themed. The little baldy has loved cake from the first bite!

I don't have many pictures of Will's second birthday either... I wonder why? Maybe I was busy with a new born too? Na, can't be it. Oh well, he had a puppy dog themed birthday for that and it was great. A party that was just for him after a new baby came in and took the time away from him.

 

Happy Birthday Buddy! We love you more than you can imagine! I love it when you tell me to kiss your hair, and then your cheek, and then your ear, and your noise. You make me laugh so much. We can just look at each other and start laughing so hard we have tears running down our faces. I love how you do anything in your power to make your sister laugh. You LOVE the outside. With summer coming soon you are wanting to play outside more and more.

A year ago today...

I will never ever, ever forget the day before Lillian was born. The debate to induce or not was constant before noon. Dad saying do it and us saying "We'll see..."

 

He went into surgery around noon and then we waited. My amazing doctor gave me her cell phone number to call to let her know how things were going as we knew so we could decide to have a baby the next day or not. After hearing the news that he got out of surgery well and was so far doing well I called Dr. Glynn. I told her I still didn't want to commit because the risk of something bad happening after such a huge surgery was still high. She told me if we wanted to plan on it but if something were to happen, just call her again and say 'never mind.'

 

A sight I hope to never see again is my Dad hooked up to all those machines and a breathing tube. We got to spend the next 6 hours buggin the crap out of Dad telling him to try to steady his breathing when he had that tube down his throat. Some of the motions he was making I think was him flipping us off saying 'you try to breath with this ****** thing!'

 

Leaving him was the last thing I wanted to do. He was out of the woods as he was awake and mostly breathing on his own again. We decided to go for it since he insisted on going through with the induction. I told him "Dad, your doing so well and your vitals are so good that I think we will go a head and give you another granddaughter."

 

That thumbs up make me start bawling.

 

We left the hospital around 11 and got home and to bed around 1:30 in the morning only to get up around 4:30 to head to the hospital.

 

 

I stalled out for a long time and the talk of a c-section was getting getting louder. I did not want to be recovering from a surgery myself when all I wanted to do was have a healthy baby girl and get back to my Dad ASAP!

 

Things finally progressed and she was born at 8:02 P.M.

 

Fun fact: She was actually born at 7:59, it was the weekend of time change and when the nurse changed it, it was 3 minutes fast. Dennis and I both noticed. Oh well...

 

 

Will fell in love with her from the start. He still is a big protector and loves her like crazy. I think his favorite thing now is to make her laugh. He is constantly doing silly things just to make her laugh. Jumping on his bed is a biggie!

 

 

This I think will always be my favorite picture of Lillian. Words can not say how blessed we are to have a cat for a dad, with 9 lives!

 

Happy Birthday Lillian Margaret, you are one special, happy girl. Even though you have been sick most of this winter, you still smiled, laughed and have enjoyed the family God gave you. We are blessed to have you and thank you for joys you bring us.

 

Happy Anniversary Dad! You are the best Dad we could ask for and we love you so very much, and so glad we have had another year with you!! Here's to another 40 years! (not saying your age but that does put you over 100 years old.)

Tubes

 

Friday, Lillian had tubes put in. We had our appointment at 8:15 to decide if she would get them or not. Having not been through this before I had no idea what to expect and thought she would be in surgery by 9 or so. Well, I was wrong. After her appointment we then went to surgery waiting room and waited, and waited, and waited. All while not being able to feed our baby girl. We were not really prepared to wait until lunch time! I was more upset because we hadn't fed her anything but water since the night before. I've had surgery around noon and remember being able to eat that morning but that was it. When she woke up at 5 wanting food, it was hard not to feed her!

 

She did great under the terms though. She took a short nap and chased a balloon around the hall ways and in the room we were in. Once she went back at 12:05 we grabbed a drink and waited. Only 15 minutes later they came back with her trying to wake up. After her vitals were taken she downed a 9oz bottle and I'm sure she would have taken more but I didn't want her to get a tummy ache after not eating that much so we didn't give her more. We got home around 1:15 and she slept until 4:15. Then I fed her what she wanted and had 2 7oz bottles! We picked up brother from daycare and made doughnuts at home.

 

The doughnuts were 'healthy' and pretty yummy.
3/4 c. whole wheat flour

1/2 c. sugar (I used splenda but if I were to do it again I'd use agave nectar because it had a spelenda taste)

1/4 c. cocoa powder

1 Tbs. baking powder

1/2 c. milk

1 egg

4 Tbs. coconut oil

 

Mix together and bake at 450 for 6-7 minutes.

For the frosting, I mixed dark chocolate with coconut oil and un-sweetened coconut flakes and topped it.