Break a Leg!

Ever wondered where this phrase came from?  Well, we can now tell you!  It actually comes from the theater, in which you say "Break a leg!" to the actors as they take the stage.  It means the equivalent of saying "Good luck" without actually saying it, because if you say Good luck, it actually means bad luck in the theatrical world.  Hmm, okay.  Anyway, when you say "break a leg" it is referring to the applause that you get after a particular beautiful theatrical delivery - some origins would say "break a leg" to mean "take a bow".  Interesting - never knew that!  Amy is known for saying phrases and the musing as to the origin of the word (sometimes discovering a very EMBARRASSING origin of the phrase, resulting in a vow not to use it again!).  Well, Amy's thoughts as Karis jaunted off for his annual men's ski trip were "don't be reckless, and don't get hurt.  Don't break a leg, but have fun!"

Well, Karis was true to his word and didn't break a leg.  No, instead he badly broke his ankle.  Both bones - spiral fracture in one and hunka bone out of the other one.  Just beautiful.  On the second day of his trip, the snow wasn't that great so the group was skiing on a blue run, going a bazillion miles an hour, when Karis went over to the side of the run to see if there was any better snow.  He managed to hit a rut and one ski flew off but the other one did that not, and it was that ski that broke his left ankle (thankfully it wasn't his right, so he can still eventually drive once the left heals enough from a pain perspective).  He arranged an earlier flight home thankfully and was able to get into Dr. Cole, a top trauma orthopaedic surgeon in Orlando, and had the successful surgery on Thursday.  He's now recovering.  Last week, our post was about our family feeling like Job, well we can assert now that we DEFINITELY feel like Job - but we hope that we can remain faithful like he was and not become entirely depressed.  We have many blessings - such as it being Karis' left foot vs right, that the injury wasn't life-threatening, having Amy's Mom retired (we would be dead in the water without her), having wonderful Jennifer who has been carting the boys around to their various sporting events and keeping them all day etc.

Getting loaded up in the sled to be taken down the mountain

Last weekend, Amy took the boys to a park that we don't normally go to, and on the way we discovered that there was a black bear that had climbed up in a tree and was hanging out, looking at the crowd of onlookers below. So, we had to join the crowd of course! Pretty cool! Kaleb was amazed as he'd "never seen a bear before!" (although let's be clear, he's absolutely seen a bear before from either theme parks or zoos!).

Hanging out on a branch near the trunk of the tree just watching everyone below....

Can't see the bear as well, but we weren't allowed to get any closer.  The boys thought it was great fun (love Kaleb's new SPORT glasses!)

Zachary had some very exciting news this week when he participated in his school's spelling bee. They had a contest first by class, which he won for his kindergarten class! We are proud of you Zachary! He then participated in the spelling bee the next day for the whole school (he was positive that he was going to win against the 8th graders!), but fell on the 2nd round to the word "describe." But, as we emphasized to him, it is all about doing your best, having fun, and learning a new experience. It was pretty neat to see him stand up in front of the whole school and spell!

With all of the other excitement this week, we don't have pictures of little Addi to post - but she's continuing to grow and delight us. She is so precious - loves to suck her hands through her woombie (which makes for a wet woombie!), and we love to feed her as (nursing or bottle) she'll cover her eyes with her hand as if to say "oh me, oh my, life is so tiring!" Our little girly is so precious!  We have breathed a sigh of relief as we've now received our new shipment of Pampers (thank you Amazon prime).  We had used Huggies with the boys (after Kaleb got a terrible rash with Pampers) and as soon as we switched to Huggies with Addison, she immediately broke out in a rash (go figure!!) and started having poop blow-outs, so we had to switch back to Pampers.  Love the wetness indicator, baby powder smell, no blow-outs and no diaper rash!

Phrase of the week: "I want to go and comfort Daddy" (ahh!) - Zachary wanted to head over to Grandma's, where Karis has been convalescing so that he can have a bed all to himself and no children crawling all over it bumping into his leg. Daddy enjoyed his visit with the boys, and in fact was comforted! Kaleb had a funny conversation in which we discussed the fact that we have a baby, and in his mind, the fact that she lives with us is why we named her Addison - and that when she grows up and lives on her own, she'll have a different name. Sally sounded good to Kaleb as her future name, wonder what she'll have to say about this!? :) Amy remembers having similar thoughts as a kid - that there were no adults with the name of Amy, so when she grew up she'd have to change her name to something else....like Trina. Ha ha - Amy's mom must have known a Trina because not sure where that name came from!

Are We Job??

Ha ha, now it's laughable, but our "great" fortune just keeps on coming!  We'll start off on the craziness and quickly move on to the bright side of our lives, but it is just too fitting after last week's post.

So, we started off the week with having our A/C die.  Dead.  Kaput.  Gonzo.  It is only 8-9 years old, so this is clearly not acceptable and clearly a continuation of a run of bad luck.  On the bright side, it isn't 90 degrees outside, so the time that we lived with it not working was relatively comfortable.  On the even brighter side, we went with an Amana A/C unit from A1 Heat & Air, and they (or Amana?) have a deal that if you order a particular kind/size of unit and it isn't in stock, that they'll upgrade you to the next best one for free.  When Karis asked Amy what level they should put in, we discussed that we'd put in a good one, but not the top of the line - because why drop an extra thousand on a house that we don't believe that we'll be in long-term (yes, at some point we're still discussing moving!).  But, we were blessed and that one wasn't in stock, so they upgraded us to the next best one (the one that we had been discussing!) for free! Yippee!  So, we're $4K lighter in the pocket and at least comfortable as we head into the summer heat of Florida in the next few months.


May this one last long and prosper!

The week's bad luck finished with a less-than-pleasant experience at work for Amy (which is thankfully rare).  This is the second bad work experience that she has had in the past 4 weeks, which is highly unusual.  But, it seems to be par for the course for this month!  But aren't we all thankful that we're not defined by our jobs, and have wonderful families to come home to!  Makes it all worth it.

Now, on to the bigger and brighter things!  We had the pleasure of having Amy's Aunt Ev, Uncle Ken, and cousin Jeff with his wife Niesha over last Friday for dinner.  Aunt Ev and Uncle Ken are here for 2 weeks.  It was so nice to be able to visit!  Jeff has been struggling with vertigo over the last year, so we gave the boys grave instructions not to bombard him, but he was able to play some quiet games with them (such as Words with Friends) and even got them making up silly songs - only Jeff can be so creative!  We're looking forward to seeing them once more before they head back up to Canada.

Recreating the picture from the last time they were here - men in the front and ladies in the back!

The boys have started a multitude of sports this week.  Zachary's intramurals at FLEEC has switched over to basketball.  He had two games this week, during which he scored 3 baskets for each!  Proud as a peacock!  Both boys started skating, and they're in the same class level this time (you advance pretty quickly through the bottom two and then this third level takes a while to get through).  Kaleb isn't too sure about it because they fell a lot the first time (just like last year!) but we have assured him that next time will be much better.  Last but not least, Kaleb has started soccer on Thursdays with Evan and Kieran.  He was quite excited about that one - apparently it is a hit at least for now!  Hopefully we haven't overscheduled ourselves, but only time will tell.

Karis has headed off to Utah for his annual "men's only" ski trip for 5 days.   So Amy is holding down the fort, but only through the grace of her Mom who has agreed to come over every day and help!  It isn't so hard (well...at least not AS hard) when you aren't trying to nurse and pump, but with that wrinkle, it makes it very challenging to do by yourself.  We are thankful for Grandma to be sure!

Phrase of the week:  We'd have to dedicate this week's to the moaning and groaning of both boys, as they realized that their beloved father was going to be gone for 5 days.  Kaleb insisted that "he could just ski here!" and Zachary bemoaned the fact that his own ski trip was a million days away (translation, 49 whole days)!


Trying to get her to show off the dimples and take the picture at the same time didn't work out so well.....Oh well, gorgeous dimples!  And no need to worry if anyone recognizes the chair - we strictly use it flat on the floor, never up on anything!

For Real?

And it just keeps coming. What is the deal? I mean, can't a family get a break!? "Looking on the bright side" is becoming a common phrase in this household over the past month, because so many crummy things have been going on, that we have to keep reminding ourselves that life could be so much worse! So let's count our blessings and move on.

So what are we talking about? Well, we took Zachary in for allergy testing. We were suspicious that he had allergies because during the spring and fall he could get a dry cough that would last forever, and he would be stuffy at nights. Very reminiscent actually of Amy last summer when she would cough like crazy at night and eventually figured out that she had a dust mite allergy that we were dealing with. Plus, he's been having more headaches lately, so we decided to figure out what he was allergic to and see if we could ease his symptoms. After reading online and asking for referrals, Amy went with a doctor seemed to be good on the surface (even though she ignored a bad review that had been put online....surely sour grapes!). But, when she got home that night and Karis was upset about the doctor experience that day, she realized that perhaps it wasn't sour grapes at all..... Anyway, he was tested for allergies and came back allergic to the outdoors......just great for a child who loves to be outdoors! :) He's allergic to dust (Amy), pollen (Karis), grass (Karis), molds (Amy), and trees (Karis). Hmm, guess he takes after his parents..... But the real kicker of the doctor's appointment was that they gave him a breathing test. He didn't really know what he was doing in the beginning so wasn't closing his mouth properly on the tube. The first time he had a ~60%, then ~80%, then 97%. At this point, Karis realizes that they have him in the computer as an 8 year old...not a 6 year old. So, he tells them this. Then, they give him a broncho-dialator (spelling???) and have him blow again and he gets 116%. The doctor then says to Karis "he may have a little asthma" and walks out of the room and sends the nurse back in with a list of 6 different medications, of which one is a DAILY medication that has some serious (although not commonly) side effects in children including hallucinations, depression and behavior problems. Hmm. So, we had a child who had 97% when you thought he was EIGHT, and just because he did better with a broncho-dilator (which, as Karis points out, that is WHY ATHLETES want to take a broncho-dilator, because we all would do better with a broncho-dilator!!!), you want to immediately diagnose him with asthma and stick him on a daily medication????

No thanks. So, we're going to switch him to another doctor and get him re-tested. Perhaps he does have a very mild case of asthma, but we'd like to have a doctor who will do a valid test and who will bother to sit down with us and have a rational conversation about what level of medication we should pursue with a child whose only symptom is a seasonal cough and stuffiness at night before we jump into the world of daily medications....So stay tuned, we'll let you know what happens.


Getting the skin prick allergy test completed, followed by shots in his arm

On a happier note, we went out to celebrate our friend Heather Cochran's birthday last weekend at an Indian restaurant. First time Amy has stepped foot into an Indian restaurant because she hates Indian food....only wait...perhaps it isn't too bad....and perhaps it is good if you get the right dish of yellow dal ......whoops, guess her hating Indian food is a thing of the past! :) Yippee - a new restaurant to go to! :) But, sadly, no picture was taken of this event (how this could happen in the world of a blogger.....) even though the camera went there and back in her pocket!
Addison has hit the 5 month mark! She was 14 lbs 0 ounces at her doctor's office - sticking right at the 25th percentile the whole time for weight and about 75th percentile for height. She has started to stick her tongue in and out this week, just like a little gecko....(we could say snake, but Amy hates snakes so bad that she can't even use that analogy for her baby girl!!!). She likes to grab her feet and will stand up on your legs if you hold her hands. She doesn't show any signs yet of wanting to jump like her brothers did, so we'll see as she gets a little older and stronger.

One other picture this week - it is Zachary's kindergarten picture. Whoops, it is apparent in this picture that he needed a bit of a haircut (thanks to his mother!) but we're at least happy that he has a normal teeth smile (he had gotten into a habit of putting his bottom teeth out in front of his top teeth, which was driving his Mom crazy!)

Phrase of the week:  Zachary informed Amy "Kaleb is pretty cute in those glasses!" - And after the shock of the change has worn off, we have to agree - he is pretty cute in his glasses!  And the other phrase "Mom, I got an 84 point word!"  Zachary continues to play "Words with Friends" and tries all kinds of words and what-do-ya know, but some of them are actually words (that his parents don't even know!) and he gets huge points for them!  Crazy!

Welcome to 2013

It is hard to believe that another year has come and gone - they say that the older you get, the faster time flies.  At this rate, we'll blink and the entire year will be gone! :)  As we look back over the year, it was a wild ride with the arrival of Addison and our firstborn transitioning in the world of school.  A lot of changes, but good changes, and for that we are blessed.

It was a relatively quiet week.  Amy had Monday and Tuesday off of work, which created a very nice four day weekend.  We went to the park several times, and in general just tried to do errands and things about the house.

The one UN-exciting thing that happened was Amy getting rear-ended on her way home on Thursday night.  Traffic came to a stop (not particularly a fast stop either) and all of a sudden she was hit from behind.  The gentleman who hit her was very nice, and it turned out that he was a Sheriff's Deputy.  Apparently if a cop hits you, their supervisor has to come out and do the accident investigation/write-up etc.  By the time it was all said and done, there were four cop cars that had come and gone.  When the supervisor got there, he came and introduced himself to Amy and said "He is our chief pilot - apparently he's safer in the air than on the road!"  Ha!  Poor guy, it's a bad day when you get into an accident AND your boss has to come out and be a part of the experience!  His airbags went off, so he had to be towed but thankfully the Volvo (thank you safety car!) was still driveable.  The fender will have to be replaced as well as the trunk lid, but other than that it still looks fine!  It actually doesn't look too bad, so hats off to the Volvo makers!  But, Amy is a tad worried about it, as the car is now 6 1/2 years old and not worth a whole lot from a blue book perspective, but it only has 60K miles on it, and has a lot of life left in the car so if this ends up being a large repair, there is a chance that the insurance company could just write it off, which we do NOT want to happen!  Amy was pretty sore that evening, but after some Advil and rest, she was feeling fine the next day.  So, we are counting our blessings that it was as mild of an accident as it was, as it could have been much, much worse.

Hard to see, but the fender is scratched in several places, hanging too low and the trunk is slightly dented in under the license plate.

One other highlight this week was when Karis and Kaleb came to Amy's office to have lunch with her.  Karis had taken Kaleb to get some sport RX goggles (for gymnastics, soccer and in general wrestling with the boys at Jennifer's!), and on the way home they stopped in for lunch.  It was super fun!  Kaleb enjoyed seeing Amy's office as well, but mostly like he enjoyed getting a piece of chocolate and being the sole child getting all of the attention!

Future executive! :)

Phrase of the week:  Zachary and Kaleb had a very exciting conversation about going on the ski trip in March, with big brother Zachary sagely telling Kaleb what to expect!  "Kaleb, it is going to be so exciting when we go skiing!  We get to go to ski school, but you won't be there all day!  Mommy will pick you up after lunch time.  And you'll go out and learn how to ski, and it is okay if you fall down.  And your ski instructor will ski backwards like this....(demonstrating), and he can ski really fast backwards!"  Later on, when Mommy asked Zachary what his favorite part of the day was, he informed her that telling Kaleb all about skiing was his favorite thing because it made him happy inside!  Aww!

Christmas Fun

What else could this week's post be about other than Christmas!?  This was the first year that both boys were super excited about Christmas presents, and spent the days leading up to Christmas looking at the presents under the tree, figuring out which one was for which child etc.  They did very well though - no shaking, no trying to peek etc.  On Christmas day, they impressed us even further by waiting very patiently for Grandma to come over and Addison to wake up before diving into their presents!  There was much shouting with excitement as they opened their presents.  Addison of course just watched the goings-on with interest, but not much else! :)

Zachary's two favorite gifts were the Bible that his Grandma got him and the wallet that his Gram-Z and Papa-Z got for him.  God and money.  :)  He has been reading his Bible a lot over the past few months, so this is great as it has more color pictures/maps as well as bigger font.  He went this week to the store in order to make his very first purchase - he was so excited and the store clerk was very patient.  He was so proud of himself!

Kaleb's favorite gift thus far is the much requested "playhouse" which is really a kitchen.  He apparently fell in love with the one over at Calleigh and Aubree's home, and had begged for one here.  He has been "cooking" with it ever since, and talking on the cell phone that came with it - great imaginative play!

Kaleb has made progress with wearing his patch - he at least now is keeping it on for the entire 2 hours - even though there is usually at least one time during the duration where he begs to take it off.  We've made the rule that only Mommy or Daddy can actually take off the patch, so that is helping at least a little bit.

Phrase of the week:  "What in the hoots!?" - this is now a common phrase that Zachary uses.  We have no idea where he came up with this phrase though!  What is funny is that about 10 years ago, Amy used to say "What in the hootenanny" - but hasn't used it ever in front of Zachary.  But, apparently Mommy and Zachary's minds must work alike to come up with a very similar exclamatory phrase! :)

Family portrait - complete with Addison's "My First Christmas" pjs!

I'm a Pirate!

Those were the words Kaleb uttered while arriving back from the eye doctor appt that he and Zachary had gone to that afternoon.  Reality translation - Kaleb has a lazy eye that his brain has basically turned off because its vision is so much worse than the other eye (0.75 in the right eye, and 2.50 in the left eye).  With turning off that eye, he has very little depth perception and the very real possibility of going legally blind in that eye if the situation isn't turned around.  We are clearly not going to let that happen if we have anything to say about the matter - and thankfully as parents we do!  The doctor has prescribed wearing an eye patch for 2 hours a day for a month, as well as eye glasses, and then he'll go back to the doctor to see what progress has been made.  We are praying that this works quickly and thoroughly, and from our online research, it does appear that if the lazy eye is identified before the child turns 5, that the chances of a full recovery is highly probable.  Thank God.

This rocked our world a little bit this week - both Amy and Karis grew up with glasses but neither of us had a lazy eye nor did we get glasses until we were about 11 or so.  Kaleb is excited about the glasses (he wanted blue ones!) but is definitely not thrilled about the eye patch.  Enter bribery (hey, don't judge us, we'll do whatever it takes! :)) - so if he wears his patch, he gets a piece of gum.  We've just finished Day 2, and it does appear to be getting slightly easier to get him to wear it.   The first day was heartbreaking as he cried saying "Throw it in the garbage, I can't see!"  So as you read this, if you'd offer up a prayer that this will quickly resolve itself, we would be very grateful!

Having company seems to make it a little easier, and Zachary oddly WANTS to wear a patch too!

In another story of medical miracles, our friends Will and Heather took their five-month-old son Devin down to Tampa on Tuesday for open-heart surgery.  He was born with a heart defect that typically requires two corrective surgeries - the other one thankfully though won't be until he's probably an adult (update: surgeon is saying that Devin may NEVER need the second surgery!).  He had his surgery on Tuesday morning, and has made miraculous progress - so much so that after only 5 days, he's been discharged home today!  We serve a mighty God, don't we?

Devin from a few weeks ago

Last Friday, the boys had a field trip to SeaWorld so spent the day cavorting around the park - having a grand time.  They went through an educational session in the beginning but the rest of the day was devoted to sheer fun!

It's been a busy week, because both Kaleb and Zachary had Christmas programs (gymnastics and school, respectively).  Zachary's school had Colonial day - he was a super cute Colonial boy!  There was a lunch and then afterwards a little market where they could buy/sell items.  Karis was able to attend both events, and Amy was able to slip over for the lunch. 

Phrase of the week:  Tell us a "Stinky Pajama Gang" story!  The stinky pajama gang is comprised of Zachary, Kaleb, Adam, Luke, Blake, Evan, Cole, Kieran, Devin, and Eric.  The adventures are all captured within Karis' brain, and the boys love to hear what grand fun they'll come up with next!  Even Mom gets a chuckle now and then from the tales!

Look at the smile!  Look at the dimples! :)

One of Amy's favorite gifts each year come from Jenn - this year is no different - how cute are these MistleTOES!?

Backpack Bear

Last week, Zachary had the good fortunate of being responsible for his class' "Backpack Bear."  Backpack Bear was to accompany Zachary on his many adventures over the weekend, much to his delight, and then Zachary would document in Backpack Bear's diary all of the fun that they had.  Zachary took him to look at Christmas lights, Legoland (wow!), singing at the nursing home with Adventurers and showed him his room.  He had quite a lot of fun with it, and Kaleb was eagerly awaiting when he'd go to school and have his chance!

Daddy took the boys on a field trip with the school to Legoland, which was a whole day of fun.  They rode most of the rides, thanks to very little lines, and enjoyed being with their friends and classmates.

Addison is beginning to reach for things very actively now, and has been tugging on her car seat toys - one of them will pull out and then it retracts again making a buzzing sound, and this seems to be fascinating her lately.  She also has been rolling overy frequently from her back to her front, and Daddy was witness to even the harder accomplishment of turning from her tummy to her back!  This has not been repeated, but it would pretty impressive anyway!  She is four months old now - the time is flying by, which is both sad and joyous.  We want to savor each moment, but it will be so nice not to have to breastfeed anymore!  Amy counted the other day and has 300 ounces in the freezer, thus giving her a little comfort that even if the continual struggle to keep her milk supply up does at some point decrease, that we should be able to get her to somewhere between 6-8 months on solid breastmilk before introducing food to add in extra calories.   Yippee!

 One thing that we forgot to mention (thanks for the reminder Aunt Ev!) is that we found our little camera!  It was found at the last of Connie and Dennis' visit (it has been left in their room when Amy had gone in there the first night to make sure that all of Kaleb's toys were picked up etc).  We were very thankful for that!  The picture below is one of the pictures that we took with it immediately after it was found - it is a beautiful bear quilt that Gram-Z made for Addison as a baby gift. The back is a super soft pale pink (used in the 4 month picture above).

 Apparently last week Amy was feeling particularly lazy with the blog because there were many activities that we did not record!  We had gone two weeks ago over to Hilliards to participate in their community's annual Christmas parade, complete with the community horses!  The kids were all on decorated bikes (thanks to Heather H's creativity!) so it was quite cute.  They came back to the house afterwards and decorated sugar cookies.

Addison hanging out with Daddy while the rest of the kids got their bikes all ready for the festivities

We also took the opportunity the last weekend that Gram-Z and Papa-Z were here to have Cochrans over, as they've all known each other since we were all in college.  During the evening, we realized that we had never taken a picture of Devin and Addison together - they're only 5 weeks apart!  Poor Addison is not as strong yet as Devin in keeping her body upright, so she is a little slumped over in this picture!    We're hoping that these two will have as much fun together as their older siblings Kaleb and Kieran!

Phrase of the week:  Suck it up buttercup!  This is actually a Daddy phrase - when he's tired of listening to the whining and complaining from two certain boys.....  Another memorable moment this week was when Zachary shared "I got a goal!!"  This was a very proud moment indeed when Zachary announced to Mommy when she got home that he had scored his very first goal (in the very last game!) of soccer at the FLEEC intramurals.  He was proud as punch, that's for sure!  How exciting!