Birthday Celebration!!!

We had a fabulous time Saturday celebrating Jackson and his 2nd birthday! He really enjoyed it all. He loves all of his new toys. He got some great new outfits for Spring/Summer! He really liked everyone singing happy birthday to him. We had no meltdowns at all so I say it was a total success!!! Here are some pics from Jackson's big day!!!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Jackson!

I can't even believe that its already been 2 years since Jackson was born. Its amazing how quickly time has gone by. March 20, 2007 was a fabulous day. I am so grateful that we were able to have a home birth. That was one of the greatest experiences ever in my life. I am also thankful that my mom, my mom-in-law, and Byron were all there to witness the miracle of life. I will never forget that day. Jackson Alan, you have changed this family's life forever. Your dad and I are so blessed to have you as our son. Jaycee loves having you as her little brother. Thank you for making our family complete. You are such a joy to us all. Your craziness makes us laugh and always brings a smile to our face. I thank God everyday for blessing me with a son. I am so privileged to know and understand the love between a mommy and her baby boy. You have an amazing love for life. You want to experience it all. You are a go getter! You love exploring even if it causes you at times to get in trouble. You love cars, trucks, tractors, and backhoes. Disney Cars is your favorite movie. I love finding all your tractors tipped over when you have finished playing with them. It melts my heart, whenever you come up to me, grab my leg, and say "Love you, too"! I love your big hugs and your big kisses!!! I love how every night when I put you to bed you grab your bear and puppy and give them to me for me to sleep with them. I love watching you find your corners of your blankets and rubbing them in your ears! The newest thing that gets to me is when you wake up and come out of your room, waving your hand and saying Hi, Mom! I am such a blessed mommy! I am so thankful that you are my son. Jackson, I know that God has great things in store for your life. Your daddy and I will do our very best to help you along the way. We pray that at an early age you will come to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. That you will follow after Him passionately. We pray that you will live your life seeking Him and the plans that He has for your life. We also pray that God will protect you and keep you safe. As parents, we are so thankful that God placed you in our care. We as parents will do our very best to encourage, support, and help you along the way. Through God's guidance you will become a mighty man of valor. We love you and we celebrate you today!!! What an amazing gift you are to us all!!!

Here are some pictures of our growing boy!!!

March Madness!

I am sure you all are aware of our family being basketball junkies. This month is by far one of our most favorite times of the year. Every year Byron and I fill out our brackets for the NCAA men's and women's tournament. Well, this year I decided to let Jaycee join in on the fun. We selected for the men's bracket only. The attention span for an almost 4 year old isn't too long especially when mommy is researching Mascots on the internet. That was our avenue for her selecting her teams by giving her the Mascots of each school. So here is her Final Four selections~ Ohio State Buckeyes, Connecticut Huskies, Oklahoma State Cowboys, and Gonzaga Bulldogs. She has Ohio State Buckeyes playing Oklahoma State Cowboys in the Championship with Ohio State Buckeyes winning it.

Her west region selections will probably do very well. The others I am not quite sure. She had many top seeded teams falling in the first rounds. At the same time anything is possible and that is why you play the game!!! I look forward to the day when all of us are filling out our brackets in the house. Hopefully, as a family we will be able to attend a Final Four for a family vacation!

Oh, I really hope that her choosing Oklahoma State Cowboys doesn't mean that she will grow up being a Cowboy fan. It won't settle too well with the rest of us! I do think she kept picking them for one that the name Oklahoma she knows very well. She knows it is the state she lives in and the 2nd because she can actually visualize a cowboy, she can't really visualize a SOONER at this point in her life. That is at least my excuse. Obviously, she has no idea what a Buckeye looks lik either, but I did actually show her a picture of the Ohio State Mascot. Its definitely a kid friendly Mascot. Anyways, I will stop analyzing her process and pray that she will become an OU Sooner fan!

Can't wait for Thursday to get here!!!

Growing Kids!

Its been a little while since I have posted pictures. So here are a few of our growing kids!!! I can't believe this Friday Jackson will turn 2!!! That doesn't seem possible at all. Both kids are doing great! As you will see, Jaycee's hair has really grown. Its not too thick though, but I don't think there was ever hope that it would be thick. She likes her hair, but doesn't like it in her face and she doesn't like you playing with it.So, she is always having to remind me of that! Jackson loves wearing his sunglasses. For some reason, when we chat with Andy and Marilee on the web cam, Jackson must be wearing the sunglasses!!! Enjoy the pictures!!!

All Boy!

Yesterday, was quite the day for Jackson. He is always getting into stuff. To this day, every door in our house is closed except for his bedroom door. Jaycee has gotten to where she shuts her door as well because of the damage Jackson can do. Most of the time its just him crashing cars into things, driving them up the wall, or kicking a ball all over the house. He definitely went beyond all of that yesterday. He decided first that he needed to get in my cleaning closet and pull out the Swiffer Wet Jet. Before I could get to him he had already been spraying for about 5 seconds on the tile floor. I can confidently say that we could eat off of that part of the floor after the good bath he gave it. Not much time had passed and he went back to the closet. Knowing that the Swiffer Wet Jet is now off limits, he pulls out the brooms. All of sudden, there is a big crash and glass breaking everywhere. As he was pulling out one of the brooms the handle part hit one of my vases on the table and it shattered everywhere. No one was harmed and it was quite the mess, but we survived this episode as well. He has gotten really good at opening the fridge door. We never had problems with Jaycee doing this, because we had always had side by side fridges before. Well, we don't now and oh how I wished we did. Jackson opened the fridge door, crawled up to grab an open Mountain Dew Code Red can, and proceeded to dump the entire can onto the kitchen floor. Amazing!!! I am thankful that all of this is taking place on the tile, its so much easier to clean!!! The last episode was him with the dogs' water. I had the gate open because I was cleaning up the dogs' area in the house. I ran to the laundry room to grab fresh bedding and by the time I came back Jackson was on all fours trying to drink out of the water dish. On top of that he had already spilled about half of it out on the floor!!!

I can't even imagine all the things we will go through raising him. I am sure it will be quite the adventure. I don't know how you moms of multiple boys do it!!! So Tanya, I hope and pray that you are having a little girl, because you so need the peace and quiet that a little girl brings!!!

A cute story!

This morning I was on the phone with my mom. I was letting her know that our plans had changed for the day. Byron and I were planning to attend the Class A and B state basketball tournament championship games today. Jackson woke up in the night running fever and was awake for a couple of hours. We decided that it wouldn't be the best idea to leave a sick boy with his great Aunt Retha. While, telling my mom the change in plans, I said that Jaycee has been bothered by stuff in the air. Her nose has been stuffy and her eyes have been watery. Jaycee over heard me say that it was something in the air causing her to not feel so great. She came over and told me that it was actually little bugs that she couldn't see crawling on her arm biting her that made her cough and have watery eyes. I just started laughing when I realized that she has heard us use the term of "catching a bug". That was her explanation of "catching a bug"! Its amazing how they can reason and come to terms with things with what they know.

Jaycee was very excited this morning because she knew the plan was that she was going to spend the day with Aunt Retha. So we did keep to that plan. We had lunch with Aunt Retha at the Chuckwagon. After that Jaycee spent the day all by herself with Ree. They had a grand time! Retha took her to the park, they baked cookies together, played with buttons, checkers, Lincoln logs, legos, and much much more. Jaycee came home around 7:30 tonight and about an hour later she had fallen asleep on our bed.

Jackson is feeling better tonight. He hasn't ran any fever today either. He took a 4 hour nap this afternoon. He woke up a very sweaty boy, which is a good sign that his body is fighting off the "bug"! His nose is running like a faucet and he is sneezing about every 2 minutes, but he continues to play like nothing is wrong so that is definitely a good thing!!!

We survived!

We survived the weekend without our precious baby girl! It wasn't easy not having her with us, but she had a wonderful time with her Aunt Amy and her cousins. She is already asking if she can go back in a few days!!!

Jaycee and I met my sister around 5:30 Friday evening. Jaycee was so excited. On the way, she fell asleep in the car. I pulled over before getting on the freeway to put her head over on her pillow in the car. Well, she wouldn't go over and it caused her to wake up. She was so excited I think she was afraid that she would miss her ride to Amy's or something if she totally went to sleep like usual! She climbed in Amy's car with no hesitation at all. She gave me and hug and kiss and she was ready to go.

Amy's boyfriend Michael has a niece, Sophie. She is 5. She came to stay the night with the girls on Friday as well. Jaycee had met her at the girls' basketball game we went to a few weeks before. Jaycee was quite sad that she wasn't able to really play with Sophie. So Amy decided to have Sophie over so they could play together. They played great together! On Saturday, they watched the girls' final basketball games of the season and they also went to Chuck E. Cheese.

They had only 2 episodes that weren't really on the positive side of things. The first being that Jaycee got pinched by the girls' hermit crab, Stripes. I guess Jaycee loved them and played with them constantly. I think the girls have 4 of them. Stripes, Bubbles, Tigris, and the other I guess doesn't have a name yet. Jaycee got pinched on her hand. Jaycee started crying and my sis of course, panicked. Jaycee got even more scared. They sprayed water on the crab so he would let go. They finally got Jaycee calmed down. They put a band-aid on it and she was okay. That was the only story we heard about all the way home yesterday! It will probably rank up there with Jaycee getting stung by the bee at Nana's house when she was 2. The second episode was that Jaycee had an accident on the way to the bathroom. My sister was getting ready for church and the girls were eating breakfast. My sister's light switches are placed high in her house for some reason. Jaycee had trouble reaching the switch therefore causing her to have an accident in the bathroom. Amy was in total amazement of how much pee there was. I am always amazed at how long she can go between each pee. I consider those both very mild episodes so things went quite well for them.

Yesterday, Jaycee went to church with them. She is just a little social butterfly. She went to class at a church that she had never been before in her life! Amy said that she was already playing before my sis could even get all of the paperwork filled out. Jaycee said she loved it and brought home a painting that she did. All in all she had a fabulous time!

We totally missed her, but we also had a great time with Jackson. We went to Oklahoma City on Saturday. We did a little shopping and then went to a basketball game Saturday night. Its so incredibly easy with one child. Jackson loved being the only child too. I am nervous about the next trip to shop. We gave him a lot of freedom. He pretty much walked everywhere or I carried him. I am sure he will throw quite the when he is back to riding in a cart or the stroller. He even slept with us Saturday night. Actually, I guess just me. Byron got up and moved to the couch.

We are very glad to be back together as a family of four. Even though it isn't as quiet and peaceful as it was over the weekend, we wouldn't have it any other way. It was so great to see the kids chasing each other around last night. It just melts your heart when they sit by each other and love on each other!!! They are both so precious and we are so thankful to have such wonderfully awesome kids!!!

Here are some pictures from Jaycee's weekend with my sis and the girls!!


Amy, Sophie, and Jaycee

Jaycee being silly!

This is too precious! Sophie and Jaycee sleeping!!!

All the girls! Sophie, Kiley, Jaycee, Keely and Kiley's best friend Annie!

I guess this was the popular thing to do, giving the peace sign! So the next time I take a pic of Jaycee we will see if this is what she does!

Keely and Jaycee sleeping!

Having fun at Chuck E. Cheese

DRIVING!!!

4 beautiful girls, Keely, Sophie, Jaycee, and Kiley!