I knew when I started this blog that I had too much on my plate and was probably not going to keep up with it. And here we are four months of NO blogging. Everyone has probably given up even looking and I can't say that I blame you one bit. I would give up too! But here I am again, attempting to update my blog. I wonder how long it will be between posts this time?

So here are a few updates:

Dimitri: Most of you already know. He is much better now. He had a surgery in June to repair what is left of his colon so that he does not have to live with the colostomy bag. He is still having bone marrow issues and I think that he will end up with a bone marrow transplant. But for now he is fine and enjoying his life.

Aaron: Aaron's company, like many, have been facing lots of financial challenges. They laid of quite a few people, stopped pay raises, and cut back on other "perks." He is pretty lucky that he still has a job, however, with the work force being soooo small, he has been put into the position of doing his job and other jobs. He comes home extremely exhausted. His job is pretty physical, so he comes home drained. And emotionally it is a lot for him to carry. But he has been a trooper thru it all and I am extremely proud of him.

Me: Mostly the same ol' stuff for me. I got a Wii fit for my birthday and love it. I am attempting to lose some weight but not doing a great job at it. I am still working from home and soooooo grateful to be doing so. It is great to be with my kids. I love getting see Audrey's firsts. And being with Payton is so rewarding. Although, for the next two weeks I will be helping out in the office while the kids get watched by Auntie Trisha one week and a neighbor friend the next. I am sad just thinking about it. But it is only two weeks. So really I can not complain, or I can, but I won't.

Payton: He is growing up so fast. I can't believe that he will be starting 2nd grade already. Didn't I just have him? I miss him being a baby. I miss his innocence. I miss when he could not talk back to me. But alas, he is growing and I have a great little boy on my hands. Even with the talking back. Whenever I feel frustrated by him, I just go out somewhere and see other boys his age acting out and realize the I really do have a great kid. He has excellent manners. He is very smart. He is soooo cute. I am one lucky mom.

Audrey: Talk about growing up fast. WOW!!!!! A year has already come and gone. My baby is a toddler now. Well, almost. She is not quite walking yet but really, really close. She, like Payton, has lots of words at an early age. This actually scares me a bit because that means she will want to talk allll of the time, like Payton. This will make road trips quite interesting. Hmmmm.....I wonder when I will get those DVD's put into my car? This week has been a rough week for she and I. Since I am going to work next week, I decided now is the time to get her off of breast milk and onto whole milk. Also, we developed the bad bad habit of letting her sleep with us. So we are also working on sleep training. It will make it much easier for others to watch her if she is on a schedule. I have been lax on this because with us being home together, I felt no need to have her on a schedule. But truly, it does make life a lot easier for everyone. So, she has been a bit cranky this week. But she is sleeping in her bed (last night she slept allllll night), and she is drinking out of a sippy. I am sore right now but just keep thinking this to shall pass. I will miss her lots in the next two weeks but geez, how can I complain, I will get adult time and it will only be 5 hours each day.

Well, that is about it for now. I'd say that I PROMISE to be better about getting on here and updating but we know that would be a false promise. So instead I leave you with goodbye for now. Maybe I'll be back soon.

Soooooo far behind....

Wow! How easy it is to get behind on this thing. I can hardly keep up with life let alone a blog. Oh well, I guess all I can do is try. So here I am.
Since the last post Dimitri is out of the hospital. Been back in and back out since I was down there but currently is out.
Audrey is growing quickly. She will be 8 months old in a couple of days. I can hardly believe that. She is now getting on her hands and knees and rocking back and forth. She also can go from a "crawling" position to sitting up on her own. And then back again. She has face planted a couple of times and fell back and bonked her head one time too many but she is learning quickly. Her personality is really shining thru right now. She likes to throw herself backwards and if you are not paying attention....well, let's just say she's come close to falling to the floor a few times. When she sees dogs she says "ohhhh!" She says the sounds dadadada, nananana, nininini, but only has said mamama once. Which I am A OK with. The longer it takes her to say Mama the better. Just like the longer it takes her to crawl the better. She is breaking two teeth right now. I need to take a picture. It has made sleep difficult but really what is new. lol.
Payton is doing well too! He has decided that he would like to have his birthday at an ice skating rink this year. So tomorrow I will be calling to make the reservation. He is still doing exceedingly well in school. His spelling words are far above the first grade level. His communication skills are excellent. Unfortunately they are a little too good sometimes and he likes to argue with me about lots of things. We are working on how to not argue and to talk to me, not whine to me. He is learning how to solve personal problems on his own without the aid of adults. I can not believe how fast these kids are growing.
I am still working from home. It seems to be working out really well for everyone involved. I love being home with the kids but also like getting the income. Aaron's plant was supposed to be shut down for two months. He was asked to do some maintenance type work during some of that shutdown time and he said yes. Well, while he has been there most of the guys have been working, cleaning, some light production, etc. So we are not really sure why they bothered with the shutdown at all. But we are not complaining. At least he is working and was not one of the people who was laid off. Other than that we have just been living life. Hopefully I will be back on again soon to keep everyone updated. And pictures will be posted soon.

Trying times....

I got a phone call the other day that my brother is back in the hospital. I have three brothers, this one is the youngest of three. At 21 years of age he found out that he has a disease called Wilsons Disease. Basically it is a disease that keeps copper in your body. Normally we realease what we do not need, his body could not do that. So he started to turn yellow and his liver started to fail. He ended up with a liver transplant. Life started to look better. Then I got the phone call. D is back in the hospital. He has a bad infection. They admitted him and started him on antibiotics. Then he started to act weird. Saying bizarre things. Then his blood pressure started to plummet. So bad that he had to be put on life support. Next thing I know I'm getting another phone call that I need to come down right away and that he may not make it. I hopped on the first plane that I could. With the kids. I got to the hospital to find my mom, step dad, sister, middle brother, uncle and aunt sitting in the surgical waiting room. They had taken him in to remove 90% of his colon. His colon was so badly infected that it was contaminating his blood supply. In the process of this contamination his kidneys started to fail. So here is my little brother with a tube breathing for him, a scar from a transplant surgery, a new wound from the new surgery, machines filtering his blood thru his kidneys, and tubes and tubes with gobs of medications going into him. The good news is that the infection is out, his vitals are coming back up, he is looking better and better by the second. It looks like he is getting better. By no means is he out of the woods yet. My mind is all over the place as is this blog. I am not sleeping well thanks to baby and stress. To top things off my family is falling apart. Not my husband and I, nope, that is perfect!!! My mom....and step dad....I just don't know what to say. My family is out of control. I am glad that I was able to come down here to be with my brother. I love him very much but I will be very happy to be home and away from this stress. Sorry for this very disorganized way of writing, it is totally due to lack of sleep. Bye for now!

Happy Holidays!!!

I had every intention of keeping up on this blog on a regular basis. But I guess I had also intended to write in Audreys and Paytons journals, and scrap all my pictures, and keep in better contact with my friends. LOL. Better late than never??

Well, Happy belated Christmas!! We had a good holiday. We were concerned that we would not be able to spend time outside of the house for christmas with the roads being as horrible as they were from the snow. But we decided to give it a go. On Christmas eve we went over to our surrogate familys house. They are not blood relatives but they may as well be. They have a white elephant gift exchange every year and every year we are unable to attend. Well, this year we made it and we are so glad we did. We had a great time, as we always do. I got a gift card to starbucks and a couple small things from crate and barrel. Aaron got a bathroom reader and some scratch its.

Christmas morning we were here at home. Payton got way too many gifts as usual. Audrey did pretty darn good too! We decided to save a little money and did not buy much for her since we knew others would and she will not know the difference anyway. They enjoyed their morning and loved their gifts. Audrey especially loved the paper. After we were done with our gifts we went to celebrate with Aarons mom, step dad, sister, brother in law and the kiddos. We had a nice relaxing time with them and ate yummy food.

New Years was spent at home with more of the surrogate family (Jeromy, Darci, and their boys). Darci is pregnant and Aaron and Jer do not drink so the party was sparkling apple cider. All the kids stayed up (except Audrey) and boy were they tired!!! So were the adults. Audrey, who normally sleeps pretty good, decided that she was going to wake several times after I went to bed that night. Yawn! All in all it was a good New Years. Oh except for the part where Aaron got two tickets on his way home from a 13 hour day at work on New Years Eve. Good times. NOT!!!

In other news, Audrey is rolling over from her belly to her back. And today she sat up on her own for the first time. She is still not eating solids. Well, baby solids anyway. She loves, loves, loves, crackers. She shakes because she is so excited when I put them on her high chair. It is a site to see. But baby food she spits out. Does not like it. And she still does not like her bottle. Grrrrr. She will have to like it pretty soon darn it. I will not breastfeed her forever. Bitty.....

Payton is back in school, thank the lord!!! He had some serious cabin fever and since I work from home I do not have a lot of time to entertain him. I think that he is happier being back in school though he would never admit it. He loved school last year but now that he has to do real work....forget it. LOL.

Ok, that is all I've got for now. Need sleep.

9 + inches....

Now that I have your attention...ha ha ha. So, we have had quite the weather here. It has been snowing on and off for the past week. Yesterday it snowed about 10-12 inches here at our house. Then last night we got about an inch of ice. Now it is snowing again. The county I live in has made it a requirement that you drive with chains or studs. We have neither. We get to stay home. Payton has gone out a couple of times to play in the snow. We bought him some snow clothes finally and he is much warmer that way! But we don't have a sled or anything so it comes down to building a snow man. Yesterday the snow was like powder so it was too hard to make a snowman. We may try again tomorrow.

We did venture out yesterday for our neice's, Brianna, birthday. We met up with sister in law, mother in law and Grandma Kathy (Peters mom) for lunch at Red Robin. It was before the chain requirement was in effect but it was terrible driving conditions and we were glad that we got home when we did. But we had fun while we were there. Let me just say that it does not matter where I go with Aaron, we always seem to run into one person we know or knew. This time as we were getting seated, I hear someone calling for Aaron. Turns out it is a friend that he knew from grade school and junior high. I can't believe that they recognized each other. Weird!! I don't know that any of my old friends would recognize me. lol. Then as we were leaving the restaurant we ran into Shaun Hauser. He is like family to us but we don't get to see him often enough as he works some crazy hours.

Well, that is all of the exciting news that I have for now. Be back soon!

It is snowing in Beaverton, Oregon!!

The world stops when it snows in the cities of NW Oregon. School is out. Stores at the mall close down. People shop until the shelves at the grocery store are bare. You would think that we will all be stuck in our homes for weeks on end. But I should be honest here, I hate being outside when it snows. I have the benefit of working from home and since Payton has no school, I don't HAVE to be outside. Therefore, it does not affect me like it does most people. Even Aaron has to brave his way to work unless they decide to shutdown. I feel bad for the people who have to drive in this mess. Snow, then frozen ice, and now we will have more snow. Bleh!!!

Payton is starting to get cabin fever. We ventured to the store to mail out a package yesterday just so we could get away from the house for a few minutes. The child is not lacking in the stuff to do department. He has a closet filled with games and arts and crafts, plus a room full of too many toys, not to mention all of the video games he has and yet.....he is driving me nutty. As I type this he is talking to me non stop!!! I love him.

Audrey is just as happy as always. Actually, probably a little happier since big brother is home. She just loves him so much. Everytime he is around she just smiles and laughs at his antics. So cute.

As for me, I should be working. On that note.......