Busy...

Well, what have we been up too???

We had some fun on Morgan's Spring break. The first night, Josh was home with the kids. It was my girls night away. So they watched a movie and ate popcorn, normally not allowed on school nights. Tuesday night, Caden had a sleepover in Morgan's room. They were super excited about this, and it went well! Wednesday night, we went to Fort Wayne and got Power's Hamburgers for dinner and went to visit Great Grandma Mary (josh's grandmother). That was a fun evening. Thursday night we took the kids on Family Date Night, we went to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D and then out to dinner. The kids had a good time. Then comes Friday..... I had seen a post on facebook about someone going to the Spangler Dum-Dum Factory in Bryan, OH. I showed it to Josh and he was ready to go that night. It looked pretty neat and was only open during the week. Josh and I had both planned to take Friday off so we thought, what a great idea. Let's do it! So, that is what we did. We did not tell the kids were we were going and another extra surprise was we had a special guest coming with us. They figured out who the special guest was when we got pretty close to her house.... Special Guest of the day was Grandma Mary! The kids were excited. They still had no idea where we were going!

We had fun on the car ride over. Morgan and I sat in the back of the van and entertained each other. It was a good ride. We arrived at the Factory and the kids loved to see all the suckers in the Store. They have a little musuem set up inside the store too. It was neat to look through and see the things we had when we were younger. We were also able to sample suckers while we waited for a trolley to take us on the tour. We had about a 20 min wait and we were first on the trolley. We got to see the sucker wrappers and where they are stored, lots and lots of stored candy waiting to be shipped out, suckers being sorted and ready for packaging, and Candy Canes. We were not allowed to see the suckers being made, but we did watch a video on it. The kids enjoyed it and it was interesting.

After the tour we had spotted a Diner on our drive through town. We had not eaten lunch yet so we thought it would be fun to stop there. Josh, Mary and I thought it was neat. Morgan and Caden might several years down the road, if they can remember it! All in all it was a good fun day! The kids got a kick out of not knowing where we were going.... Just an Adventure!!!

The sleepover in Morgan's room......
Group photo at the Dum-Dum factory... No, Mary and I did not plan on matching! ha!
The Dum-Dum Trolley.... what a fun ride!Josh and his beard net! ha!!! Cute, Josh!
Grandma Mary and the kids!

So... that was our Spring Break in a nut shell.

Morgan is on Jesus' team!!

For a couple of weeks now, on Sunday night Morgan has come home talking about being on Jesus' team. We talked with her about it and told her when she wanted to ask Jesus in her heart to let us know and we would pray with her. Tonight at bedtime, Morgan told Jesus she was ready to ask Jesus in her heart. Josh prayed with her and afterwards her face was just glowing. She is so excited to be on Jesus' team!! Yeah God!

We are very proud of you & We Love you Morgan!

Cardio Appointment

Monday, Caden went back to his cardiologist. It had been 6 months already! Boy how time flies! Anyway, Caden had an echo done. He did AWESOME! You can sure tell how much older he is getting by how well he lays still. It used to be quite a struggle! I still packed a bag of entertainment just to be safe, but his sweeper cards pretty much did the trick this time! After the echo we waited on the Dr.... and waited, and waited! An hour and a half to be exact. But we understand, we love his cardiologist and we understand he takes his time with this patients. We used to get a lot of his time as well. Now I am happy to say... we don't have to talk about the next surgery, or medicine adjustments or heart enlargements, or anything else like that. This visit went more like this.....
Caden still has leaky valves* (he has always had leaky valves),we will up his blood pressure meds to stay on top of the leak. Dr asked how is he was doing..... well, he is an EXTREMELY active 3 year old! His response.... EXTREMELY good! He listened to Caden's heart for awhile. For those of you who may not know.... Caden's heart sounds very different an a normal heart! Then we asked a couple of questions.... First being, what actives can he be involved in? Josh is very interested in putting Caden in flag football at the Y this fall. We got the A-OK to do this. Josh also asked if Caden would be allowed to place baseball... Dr said that would be the perfect sport for him. They talked sports equipment for a few minutes, what Caden might need for a little chest protection and all was well. My only question of the day was, what is Caden's diagnosis? Dr questioned me... asking if I really wanted to know.... Yes, Dr. I do. He thought it would be best if he wrote it down for me. He then told me, Caden has.... Double inlet left ventricle, pulmonary atresia, L-transposition. For those of you who just read that and are completely lost that simply means.... Caden has a single functioning ventricle (his left one). He was born with out his right ventricle.... L-transposition means his arteries (pulmonary and aorta) are switched.... blood flow going in the wrong direction, but in Caden's case did not need to be fixed because of the missing right ventricle. Ok, enough about that... I don't want to confuse anyone, probably already have. But just know Caden is an amazing 3 year old boy, who has been through an amazing amount of "stuff" his three short years of life. We are praying for a hospital free year this year!

* leaky valves... fluid leaking from his heart into his lungs, causing his shortness of breath.

We would just like to thank everyone for the prayers for our little guy! We believe he would not be with us with out them!!!



Caden with Dr. Ghazali... the best pediatric cardiologist!!! We Love him!


Caden with his surgeon, Dr. Mark Rodefeld! He is an awesome Dr. We Love him too!

Lots going on....

First an update on the Dr. visits.... It was a great visit. We love our pediatrician! She is so super sweet. Anyway, both kids are growing great and very healthy. They both passed their tests with flying colors (she has them jump, bend over, count, talk, etc.) I asked her about Caden, he bumps his head A LOT!!! She was not concerned AT all! She said that was completely normal, and she would be more concerned if he did not bump his head often. Ok, I hope she is right! He bumps his head alot, sorry I said that already, but it is true. She also commented on how well Caden was doing. She said he is a miracle child! I would have to agree. The boy has been through so much and he just keeps going, on pace and everything. Praise the Lord for all that! There were no concerns with Morgan either. She was very impressed with both kids! I like hearing that!

We had a busy weekend, since we were sick last weekend we rescheduled Morgan birthday party for this weekend. But first, Josh took her to the Father/Daughter dance at Eagle Glen Friday night. This is their 3rd year going. This year they asked Josh's brother in laws to join with their daughters. They all had a good time.

Josh putting on Morgan's corsage.

Daddy and Morgan. How pretty!
Sunday, was the party. Of course, it was a Flamingo party. I had my first attempt at making the birthday cake. I have always bought the kids birthday cakes before. But thought, I could probably do it myself. So I did.... This is my attempt at the flamingo cake. Morgan LOVED the cake, she wrote me a Thank you note. That meant a lot to me, even if no one else liked the cake she thought it was that best and that is all that mattered!



The kids got robes from Grandma Darleen and Grandpa Doug.... They were both super excited to wear them tonight to brush their teeth! Too cute!

Well, that was our weekend in a nutshell.
Hope all is well with everyone.

The Flu Bug....

We were hit!!! This weekend the kids and I were hit with the flu! What a weekend it was. Friday night we were all asleep by 7pm. I woke up for a little bit to talk with Josh about the next day. Saturday we were to have Morgan's birthday party. We decided the best thing to do was to cancel. We were uncertain what we were going to be like the next day. I was sad with the decision at first, but now looking back, I am glad. Saturday was a good day to just re-coop. We still were not feeling the best and then Josh came down with a slight bug too! By Saturday evening we were all in better spirits and felt good enough to have some fun on the Wii. Morgan got a High School Musical Sing it game, that was fun. We had a blast with that. Sunday we were all back at it and feeling good! Needless to say, we were ready for a new week to begin!

Mickey Mouseketools

Caden is a huge fan of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. For you to understand this story a little better, I will explain Mickey Mouse Clubhouse a little for you. Mickey is a problem solver, and to help solve these problems he needs his Mickey Mouse head shaped "tool" (Toodles) which supplies tools for him to help solve the problem. (I hope I did not confuse anyone)

So last night at dinner, we were eating and chatting and Caden drops his sippy cup. He looks down at it from his chair, looks up at me and says " I needs a Mouseketool" he then cups he hands around his mouth and shouts "Oh, Toodles!" Everyone cracked up! It really was funny! Crazy kid!

This is the same child who wanted "Chunky Charms" for breakfast yesterday morning! (Lucky Charms)


And this my friends, is my Micky Mouse Clubhouse, Chunky Charms lovin' boy!!!

Weekend Memories

This weekend was a very low key one. I loved it! Saturday morning we took the kids sledding. It was a short trip (it was COLD), but it was a good trip. We went to DeVol Field. Here Morgan is before we even made it to the hill. This is a snow pile from the parking lot to the basketball court. She was super excited to go!!






Josh and Morgan getting ready for the first trip down the hill! She LOVED it. I think she could have been out there all day!
No it is "snot" cold out here! Ha! Caden is very cold! And with good reason. He was "tared"(scared) going down the hill. He and Mommy went back to the car to get warmed up while Daddy and Morgan had a couple more trips down the hill.

The kids waiting on their push from Daddy down the hill. They were full of laughs, but Caden did not want to try it again!

After a restful afternoon, we went to Great Grandma Marilyn's for dinner with her and my cousin Sam and his family. It was crazy there, but the kids had a blast.

Tonight we went over to some friends house for a Super Bowl get together. Yummy snacks, good friends and football, what more could you want!! Home in time for bed. It was a good weekend!

Looking forward to this week. I start a new family and my house should not be as chaotic! It will be a welcomed changed!