Swimming!

We purchased our summer entertainment about 3 weeks ago, and it's turned out to be the best $65 investment we could've made. It's been used so much already, and summer hasn't "officially" started yet! This pool is 10' x 30". It's the perfect size for Addy. The water comes to her armpits when she stands in it, and it's perfect that Steven and I can get in it, too, and "swim" with Addy!

Here's Addy in the pool right after Steven set it up:



Today we finally remembered to capture some video!



She's more and more brave each time she gets in the water. I hope she keeps liking it, I'd love to have a little fish on my hands! We have a good start at least. Now we need to get her into some swimming lessons.

I don't think I've blogged about her walking yet. As you can tell in the video, she's walking in the pool and she's a confident walker on dry ground as well. She finally walked at 13 months after keeping many of us thinking "any day now" since about 11 months! She just had to be good and ready. She was such a good, and fast, crawler she just didn't put much effort into walking unless she was holding onto the furniture. And we couldn't convince her otherwise!

She's doing great now though. She LOVES her freedom! She really hasn't gotten into anything that she wasn't already getting into, she's just much quieter about it! The biggest change has been how quickly she can sneak away because she's so quiet!

Her vocabulary is coming along, too. The most popular being "uh oh". I don't know, does that count as vocabulary? She's also saying "cat" and "meow". I love it when she says "woohoo". She uses sign language to say "more" really well. Although, to Addy is also means "I want milk or food in general". She'll walk into the kitchen and just start signing and saying "mmmmm". And this girl totally takes after her daddy's side of the family with her love of milk. She LOVES milk and would drink it constantly if we would let her!

First Time Visitors

So, I'm about a week and a half behind, again. I'll catch up one of these days! We have been busy, but my lack of blogging is mostly because of how wonderful our weather has been! We've been outside to the last minute as much as possible in the evenings. Then we come inside, get Addy to bed, and catch up on the rest of the stuff around the house.

So, we had some company here a little over a week ago! My cousin came with her family from MN for a long weekend. This was their first trip to see us since we moved. Their boys, Jack and Alex, absolutely ADORE Addy. They are just so sweet to her.

While they were here, they fed our neighbor's horses:





We went to see the bridge at the Natchez Trace, and got some fun pictures!





Addy got to watch her first "Wiggles" movie, and she enjoyed it!


The boys also did a lot of swimming in our little pool we got. The weather wasn't optimal all the time, but they didn't care one bit. Then again, they are MN kids! I can't figure out why I don't have one picture of them swimming, but I don't.

It was also fun for us to have them here because Michelle is a home decor guru. We have a whole new living room! She helped us completely decorate our living room, dining room, and kitchen mostly with things we already had around the house. A few new things, too, but it was really fun to repurpose so much of what we had. We love our new "great room"! I completely forgot to take a "before" picture, but trust me, it was sad; and it occurs to me now that I haven't taken an "after" picture yet, either.

Thanks for the great visit!!! Come back soon!

24 Hour Trip to MN

Last Tuesday Addy and I made a quick trip up to MN. We were only gone 24 hours, but we were so glad we were able to go. Poor Steven packed for us while I gave him instructions over the phone since it was literally a last minute decision! It was time for my mom to shave her hair off, and we wanted to be there for that. Addy was an angel, as usual, and handled the trip like a champ.


Addy had a little fun playing with Grandma's scarf and hat. Then, we thought we'd try the wig on her to see what she'll look like with hair someday!!! I think the rate at which Addy's hair is growing, Grandma's will be back before Addy's grows in!

The Week That Was, Part 2

Finally, I'm getting to this post! Well, most of you know by now that much of Nashville was affected by flooding in the last couple of weeks. We were in MN when the rain started on Friday, April 30. It didn't stop for 48 hours, and 15" later there was flooding in Nashville like never before. One of our neighbors kept us updated on the rain and we were watching it online from our local news websites, but we just couldn't imagine what was really going on. And the national news wasn't covering it. Even when we were at the airport on Sunday, May 2, watching CNN, there was not one bit of information on the flooding in Nashville.

We ended up getting bumped off our flight to Nashville to make room for fuel because of the weather! The plane was overweight with the extra fuel, so 3 of us had to get off with our luggage. Talk about a walk of shame!!! The pilot was super apologetic and we got a lot of "aaaawwwwws" from the other passengers when they saw that we had Addy with us! We ended up flying into Louisville, KY and driving home from there instead.

By the time we got home, about 9 pm, we had missed the worst of the rain and flooding in our area. Our street had been closed all day and houses just 5 doors down from us had flooding inside. We are so blessed to be on high ground! We didn't really have any damage at our house. The only thing is that some rocks got washed out from under our driveway, but that is so minor compared to so many others that are at a total loss. Our ditch is a bit wider now too, but again, certainly nothing to complain about.

Here's a few pictures of our "side effects" from the flood. Our ditch is about 18" wider than it used to be, and you can see on each side of the bridge where the rocks got washed away.



It's so sad to drive down our street and just around town in general, and see all the drywall, insulation, carpet, and bags of garbage sitting at the end of people's driveways just waiting to be picked up. There are dumpsters everywhere. Driveway bridges have been washed away, fences down, big trees down, cars piled up, or in creeks like the picture below (this car is at the end of our street).



This is about 3 miles from our house:


This is the major highway from our house to Nashville that stayed under water until last Wednesday:



These are a couple pictures along that same highway. The water level is still visible on the trees.



This is a link to a video that has made the rounds pretty well, but in case you haven't seen it, it's worth watching. It shows many of the areas around Nashville under water and the damage done by the water. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFjaQoOdJvI&feature=email

This link, http://www.section303.com/we-are-nashville-4366, is definitely worth reading, too. It was brilliantly written by Patten Fuqua who writes for the Nashville Predators. He did't write the article until Tuesday, and most of the national media didn't pick the story up until that day and the next when the Cumberland River crested and word got out that Opryland Hotel and the Grand Ole Opry House had been flooded. But as the article points out, this community came together and got to work as soon as possible. Neighbor helping neighbor. It's been truly amazing what's happened here in the last couple weeks.

Just last Monday night one local news station held a telethon. Vince Gill and Friends (like Keith Urban) performed and answered phones and in just 4 hours $1.7 million was raised! There are a bunch of benefit concerts going on and being planned to help raise money for flood victims. That's the benefit of living in Music City!

Happy Mother's Day

Hope you all enjoyed a great Mother's Day! We had a good one here, not all parts great...I'll explain after some cute pictures. We remembered to take a few pictures today, but we didn't really do much that was picture worthy! For the most part it was low-key. We went to church this morning, played outside this afternoon, and went to Red Lobster for dinner. Addy missed her morning nap, as usual on a Sunday, then took a shorter-than-normal afternoon nap, so her behavior during dinner was less than acceptable. :) We definitely had some Addy-tude! To say the least, we've learned our lesson! Don't take a tired girl out to dinner!

Big cheesy smile:


Eyes open, but forgot to smile:


Big bear hug from daddy:


Okay, now for the most exciting, but equally horrifying, part of the day. THIS is what I woke up to:


Happy Mother's Day to me! Notice that grayish blob under the toilet paper? Yup, another MOUSE! Seriously. What gives? I turned the light on in our bathroom this morning and saw it right away. I screeched, it turned it's head, and I ran right back out and called Steven. At least this time he was on his way home from work! But, you want to know what his response was to me telling him there was a mouse on the trap that was still alive? "Just go get a shopping bag out of the pantry and get rid of it." I responded calmly, of course, "EEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW. UM, I DON'T THINK SO. You just hurry home, I'll be in the other shower!"

And it's a good thing that I didn't attempt to "just get rid of it" on my own, not that it was EVER an option, but still...When Steven reached down to pull the trap out from under the shelf, the ninja mouse launched itself at him and bit him!!! It didn't draw blood, but there were two puncture marks. And the mouse released himself from the trap in the process! Steven's really mad at this point and borderline cursing this mouse. After a few more attempts, he did get the mouse. I would have totally captured all this on camera, still shots and video, but I was on the bed with limited view and could really only see Steven's back side!

I did call the ER for him, though. We weren't sure if he would need a shot of some sort. Turns out he didn't, just wash with soap and water. Follow up with your primary care doctor if anything changes.

So, why did we even have a mouse trap in our bathroom? Because the pest control (yeah right) guy wanted to see what kind of spiders we had in our house. He didn't believe Steven that there could be a spider in our house, and in fact we find dead ones every so often. So he set a bunch of sticky mouse traps around our house for that purpose, so he could "see what he was up against". And am I ever glad he did! We kept mouse traps out for about 5-6 months after the last mouse, but Steven picked them all up in the house and just left the ones in the garage. Then a couple weeks ago the pest control guy set out these new ones.

I just want to know if this was a solo operation or if there are more. And how did it get to our master bathroom? And why our house? None of our neighbors have had any mice. Now we've had two...that we know of! Can I blame it on the flood? It was displaced and confused?

p.s. I promise I'll finish "The Week That Was, Part 2" soon. It took until today for me to get some pictures I want to post! Stay tuned...

The Week That Was, Part 1

Last week, on Monday, Addy and I flew up to MN. As usual, she was a great little traveler! She especially enjoyed the snacks!


My mom was having surgery on Tuesday to have her thyroid removed, or so we thought. During surgery they did some testing on an enlarged lymph node, which we knew was there, and it turned out to be large cell lymphoma. At that point the surgeon came out and talked to my dad and me to let us know and also to get permission to put a port-a-cath in that would be used to administer chemotherapy. April 27, 2010 was a tough day. That night and Wednesday morning involved more testing to complete her "workup" which would determine the stage of her lymphoma.

Mom was given her first cycle of chemo already on Wednesday afternoon in the hospital. She did SO well. She will get 3-5 more cycles, once every 3 weeks. It took until Friday morning for us to get all the test results back, and we are so thankful they all came back negative for more disease! God is so good. Her official diagnosis is stage IIe Large B Cell Lymphoma. Mom has a great prognosis, and we are so thankful.

While grandma was in the hospital, Addy stayed with my cousin. She was never short on attention or activity, that's for sure! My cousin's boys are 6 and 3 years old and absolutely adore Addy! She had so much fun with them. The great thing is they're coming to visit us in another week!

Addy was around to do a little visiting with grandma at the hospital, too. She was very sweet and such an angel. We didn't have a single toy there for her, but she didn't even notice! She kept herself busy with other things, like grandma's Yahtzee game.




Grandma's brag board in her hospital room:


Mom was able to go home from the hospital on Friday. Then right away Saturday morning we went wig shopping! My cousin, Michelle, called and made a private appointment with the most amazing woman and wig shop owner out there. She's a breast cancer survivor who has been through the process of hair loss and it growing back again. Jan shared her experience with us and shared her photos, too, which was so helpful to get a good understanding of how long my mom will need her wig. She'll probably wear her wig for a little over a year. The words "wonderful" and "amazing" don't do this woman justice.

Of course, we had some tears and a lot of laughs. My mom's siblings all "gifted" her the wig and accessories of her choice. They made arrangements ahead of time with Michelle and Jan so the cost of her perfect wig was never an issue. That had all of us crying! As Jan said, it's just humbling to be on the receiving end of such kindness and generosity.

Mom and Jan (Mom's wearing her new wig in this picture!)


Another picture of her wig, which really looks so much like her own hair!


And now for some other looks (the first one is very similar to how she used to wear her hair short, the rest were just to be goofy!):





And then we all put a scarf on for a fun picture!


This experience has already shown our family how God blesses us by having the right people in our lives at the right time. We've been showered with so many prayers and well wishes. Our family and friends have been so generous, kind, and thoughtful. The nurses and doctors were also just perfect for the nurturing we all needed last week. My mom is doing well and has a great perspective on this situation. No, it's certainly not a picnic, or anything any of us ever expected, but she does see the blessing in it. It has caused all of us close to her to stop and remember not to take life for granted.

My mom is one of those people who sends a card for anything and everything. She remembers every birthday and anniversary. But she said that this has already taught her how to care for people better. And I think it's safe to say that she probably didn't need that lesson, but God has a bigger plan for her. I know with every fiber in my being that she will use this experience to benefit someone else some day. She will be there to help someone else along their own journey, and she will care for them in a way she never knew how to before. And for that, we are all blessed by this. God sees the bigger picture, and I trust that he will help my mom through this every step of the way.

One more thought I want to share is the Bible verse that one of our pastors shared with us on Tuesday evening. Hearing these words gave me peace when so many things seemed uncertain. "So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." Isaiah 41:10. Amen!

Stay tuned for part 2 of our week that was!