A string of bad luck.....

I guess one of us must have broken a mirror......just kidding, I am not really superstitious. It certainly seems like the past few days have most definately had us under a bad luck spell.
Our anniversary day started out pretty good....I got ready for work, Ben got Kendall ready, and made us some pancakes then everything else went downhill.
I wasn't feeling good so I ended up seeing the MD that day. Ben's truck wasn't really safe to drive so we ended up having to take it to the shop for some costly repairs. I had some horrible news about 3 of some of my more favorite patients at work. But the biggest thing was Geronimo. He ended up falling down our stairs, couldn't stand on any of his legs, and was whimpering and crying. We took him into the vet. I could tell that he was alarmed since he has seen Momo is some serious conditions before but never this bad.
Due to Geronimo's serious neurological defects, there were several blood tests ran (that all came back normal), and then a steriod shot that was given to hopefully reverse what was going on with him. The vet had mentioned several very scary conditions that might be causing it. Fortunately, Friday morning he was walking and starting to act a little more like himself. When we went back into the vet on Friday, he thought that Mo might have had a stroke or an allergic reaction. As of right now, it remains a medical doggie mystery.
We are hoping and praying that he continues to improve with the 5 different meds that he is on. Kendall also got sick on Friday. Another MD visit for the Beach bunch!
Oh yeah, instead of the pasta that I was craving from Olive Garden for our anniversary, we had Chick Fil A. (Both of us were so emotionally and physically drained we just couldn't deal with going anywhere!) Ben said that if "Wendy's" was good enough for one of our first dates then Chick Fil A would do for an anniversary. :-) Those of you that know our history well will get the joke about wendy's!
We are all on the mend now so I am extremely thankful for that! Please keep us in your prayers over the next few days until we are all out of the woods!

Happy Anniversary!!!

Today Ben and I celebrate our renewal of vows wedding anniversary. Like many military couples, we have 2 anniversaries.....our elopement and our renewal of vows. It is so very hard to believe that 4 years and 5 months ago we celebrated our love with friends and family. So much has happened in the meantime and it has made me extremely grateful for that wonderful man that completes my life.

Happy Anniversary Beegeeweegee!!

Our Memorial Day trip

We left last Wednesday for PA. It was a great drive for us. We took a new route that was longer in mileage but avoided D.C. traffic & gave us some peace. My dad had been in on planning this surprise as my mom thought that we were coming in on Thursday. (These days both of us are too tired to just do the weekend trip!) It was pretty funny when we walked in to my mom's office on Wednesday afternoon. I still think she is in a little bit of disbelief about it!

Thursday, Ben got back in the car with my dad to drive 4 hours each way to see my family's hunting camp. He's such a good sport! They got to see some elk along the way so that was pretty neat. Dad took Ben hiking around some of camp and of course showed him some horrible pictures of me from my days up there! I believe that they had a good time and I am sure probably would have stayed up there if we didn't have more visiting to do. Kendall and I got to have lunch with my grammy & pappy plus some more relatives. It was really great just to relax and visit!

Friday was pretty low key. Ben, Kendall, and I got to eat lunch with our friends Brad and Bettie. I consumed a very large crab cake that was probably all of my fish/seafood servings for the week! We had a very interesting supper with mom & dad that involved Kendall running around the resturant. Thank goodness for small towns! Jen & Josh got there from their trip. Kendall was so excited to see "elvi" or elvis the terrorist.

Saturday, we went to Smicksburg with mom. Smicksburg is well known for all of the little shops that sell Amish furniture and other wares. I think we found a really nice wooden high chair that we might pick up for Isaac when we go back in December. Mom got us a wooden rocking airplane to go in Isaac's room. I am sure if he loves it as much as Kendall loves her wooden elephant from my dad that it will get a lot of use :-) Mom made a yummy round steak & gravy meal ( all of our favorites) for Josh's 30th bday celebration. Of course we had to have the traditional ice cream cake as well. (I am not taking my weight this week!!!)

Sunday entailed us going to my Lucas family reunion. We had a great time seeing everyone. The food, company, and activities couldn't be beat! We had a super time seeing everyone and catching up.

Monday, we went to the parade in Elderton. It was so much fun to see Kendall running to grab candy, clapping for the band, yelling for the horses, and just having a grand time in general. It was also good to be able to visit with lots of old family friends. We went to the service after that which was interesting even if the guest speaker turned into a long winded histroy lesson. It was so nice to celebrate Memorial day with Ben for the first time in 4 years!!

I am sure that I am forgetting many special memories but my brain is still so tired! Thanks to all of the friends and family that came out to see us! We loved visiting with you.

Happy belated Memorial Day to all of our friends, family, and of course the veterans & current service members!

Happy Birthday Laura! We are so glad that you had a great time in TX. We can't wait to see you in July!

Happy 30th Birthday Josh! You old man you :-)

HOME SWEET HOME!!

After being in blogger withdrawl (a.k.a my parents house where the internet is untrustworthy at best), we are finally home.
We got in yesterday evening about 6 p.m. We had such a blessed trip and had a great time visiting with family and friends. I will post about our outings, experiences, and pictures later on. As for now, we have Kendall's final rec play group for the summer this morning. It is also a potluck so I need to see what I can whip up with what we have here.

What's going on.....

Hmmmm........

Currently we are watching game 5 of the Pens vs. Flyers series. C'mon PENS!! Congrats to the Stars on their last 2 wins...keeping their series and thus Ben's hope of a Pens vs. Stars series alive. War at the Beach household again :-)


Anyway, onward to the past few days......

Friday, we picked up medication from our vet for Momo's ears. Turns out the very expensive ear culture was positive for a yeast infection. The poor boy! No wonder he cries when we are cleaning his ears out. Now we are on meds twice a day & ear cleaning twice a day. I will be glad when we get all of this cleared up.


I went for my OB appointment on Friday as well. I waited for 30 inutes to find out that the MD was called for emergency surgery so I had to be rescheduled for Monday morning. I wasn't super happy but what can you do?


Saturday, we started off the day with a family work-out. Ben jogged while pushing Kendall in stroller and I biked. I had to turn around about 20 minutes into it because the ride wasn't doing well with my back or belly. Oh well at least we tried!
Ben worked more on the yard (both with clean-up and the grass) Kendall and I worked on getting laundry done and our suitcase for PA packed!! Not that I am excited or anything :-)


I took a lesson on patience from my friend, Michelle, and we went to get Kendall's swingset for her bday. (I can't wait for things either Michelle! LOL) To make a long story short, I was worried that they were going to be sold out by the time that we got hers so we went to get it before they did. Ben is hoping to lure JT over for some help in June to put it up.

We went to get ice cream at Cold Stone after our swingset purchase. Of course coldstone is a treat in and of itself but there was a nice little girl there that shared one of her balloons with Kendall. She was of course thrilled & it left me very impressed with someone else's 3 year old! That was pretty neat :-)

Today was church and sunday school for us. Our Sunday school class has been discussing different religions and how we can relate to others that aren't christians. It has been very interesting but also confusing. I think that the next class that we will be doing is on marriage and relationships so I am excited about that too.

Isaac's bedding

We finally decided on the bedding that we want to put in Isaac's room. We are hoping to leave the room yellow but are planning on painting some vertical stripes of light blue, navy blue, and red to coordinate it with his bedding. It is pretty hard to conceptualize right now but I promise we think that it will work :-) I am going to put Ben back to work with some crown molding for his room as well. I think after that we will do the crown molding in the family room. It is so hard to work inside when the weather is so beautiful outside!

Some ramblings.....

We have been keeping ourselves busy the past few days which could explain the perpetual state of exhaustion I have been in!
Tuesday was work for me so as usual, both of us were exceedingly tired and cranky on that day. It was fairly slow pace at work so that helped things a little bit. I am going to try to pick up a few extra days in June (if schedule and amount of patients allow) for a special treat. (We are going to get Kendall a cedar swing set for her bday.....hopefully she won't read this and spoil the surprise!!)
Wednesday we had our normal Laptime & Rec play group. I am kind of disappointed we won't be able to do the summer rec (it meets on Tuesdays) as I have met some pretty cool ladies there. The afternoon was spent with Ben working on some paint ideas for Isaac's room and cleaning out the bonus room closet so that Ben can move more marine stuff in there from Kendall's new room. Another tiring day!
Today I dropped Kendall off to PMO and got to enjoy a nice visit with Stef. Too bad we don't get to do that more often! Thanks for your advice and for letting me stay past my curfew :-) Love my little man's growth!!
We are in the process of cleaning and packing for PA as well today. I must say that I am SOOOOOO very excited that we have been blessed to be able to watch nearly all of the Pens playoff games & that they have been kicking butt. (Esp. the flyers butt!!) I really miss having the Pens game so readily accessible. (Same goes for the Steelers in football season.) The little things in life I guess :-) I keep telling Kendall about the stanley cup and how her mommy actually got to touch it when I worked at UCSD in California. She just nods and pats my face.....they just understand how to win our hearts!
Let's see what else....we will be going to see the free concert in the park tomorrow (weather permitting) with our friends from playground pals. Sorry we missed ya'll at breakfast today! Kendall will soon be out of PMO so we will be able to do mornings in the summer!
Oops.....relaxing time is done. There is a little gal crying "mommy" down the hall! Guess more ramblings later on!

Kendall's "Korner"

Every parent knows that your child seems to grow in leaps and bounds.....we are no exception to this unspoken rule & how time seems to be passing us by so I decided to dedicate some time every now and then to all of the crazy antics that Kendall has been up to. Hence, Kendall Korner is created.
Kendall has been amazing us with her new vocabulary (both from us and other sources that we are unaware of!!) even though ALL of her teachers say how QUIET she is! (She talks non-stop to Ben and I so we find this quite amusing.)
Her new favorite sayings are "hurry, hurry" (said with an adorable little accent while pulling your hand), "I find it," "he's hiding," "find him," and my personal favorite "it's broke" followed by "you fix it."
She is really stringing lots of words together. It amazes me that she has gone from saying single words to putting 2 and 3 word sentences together.
She knows her animals and animal sounds quite well. Partly due to us and partly due to the animal dvd's that the Phadkes got her for Easter. Thanks Dr. Phadke!! We have been working on shapes with her and so far circle, flower, and square seems to be the ones that she recognizes the most. Ben has really been working on numbers with her but she doesn't seem to interested in it yet. Unless it is when I am counting to 3 when she is in trouble.....then she likes to say 2 as if I am counting for her own amusement.
Kendall has recently gotten into honking noses. She seems to think that this is the best thing in the world!
Another funny thing that she has picked up on is liking knuckle sandwiches. Ben will ask her if she wants a knuckle sandwich & she nods and starts to giggle. Sometimes if you catch her in the right mood she will say "knuckle" and give you a knuckle sandwich.
I taught her to say "EWWWWWW!" when she sees a spider. She is much more adorable than I am when she says it!
Mom and Dad brought my old toy box down over Easter. It doesn't have a lid so she has started climbing in it to hide alot. It is pretty cute! I think that it is fun to share things that I remember from my childhood with her. The toy box used to be my mom's & they repainted it and put the current stickers on it for my sister and I. As of right now, we really like the nostalgic feel of it so we are going to leave it as is for the time being.
Besides that, we are working on potty training as well. She loves to sit on her big girl potty & tells us immediately when she "poo-poos" in her diaper but she is still not putting together going on the potty!
That's about it for this episode of Kendall's Korner but stay tuned for more!!

For all of my great nurse buddies!!!

Wishing you the best and thanks for all that you do :-) Love you guys!

My mother's day weekend

Let's see.......Saturday we went to Onslow Beach and played for a few hours then came home & enjoyed a long, hard nap. Then Kendall took me out to eat at Texas Road House for Mother's Day. (I am still not quite sure how she earned all of that money! Thanks Mamoo and Dadoo.) Sunday we went to church where I worked my first Sunday at the nursery desk as part of the nursery committee duties. It wasn't too bad as I only missed the praise and worship part of service but still got to see the sermon! Ben got me a prenatal massage at a local day spa here so I will be enjoying that sometime in the next few months. Other than that we were pretty low key due to horrible weather here in J'ville! Thanks to all who sent texts, emails, myspace messages, and phone calls! Also, thanks to Ma & Pa Beach for my spending cash! I went today and spent my fun money :-) It was all much appreciated! We hope that ya'll had an equally pleasing mother's day!!

Before our dinner at TRH

Snack break at the beach
Collecting shells

My baby growing up too fast

Isaac's first gift

A package arrived yesterday for our soon to be newest addition. I have to admit getting blue things is starting to make me more excited. Thanks Grammy & Pappy/mom & dad!(or Pa-pa if you want to go with Kendall's name for you both!)

We hope everyone is having a wonderful mother's day and I will touch base on my mother's day weekend tomorrow when I have more time to devote to it!

Happy Mother's Day!!!!

We want to wish a great day to Mamoo Heider, Ma Beach, Gma Schwalbe, Grammy Heider, Gma Wonderling, and all of family & friends who are celebrating this glorious day!

GO PENGUINS GO!!!!

Fast friends

Daddy found a turtle on the way to work this morning and decided to bring it home for Kendall Bug.

It was love at first sight.

I like to crawl like my new friend.
No I don't want to put him down!!

Looks like we have added another 4-legger to our crew. (No we are not legally insane yet!) Ben almost ran over this poor little guy on his way to work this morning. He decided to go back and get him so that no one would hit him. Lucky that he did because Kendall loves the turtle or "turt" as she calls him. She has been trying to feed him lettuce and give him water. Very concerned about the welfare of this little guy.

We have let him roam about freely in our fenced in back yard complete with a saucer of water. Ben did research and apparently they eat soft shell bugs so there shouldn't be a shortage of food. The dogs have been very curious. Momo mostly to sniff but Jordan really wants to play. I don't know that the turtle is going to be up for that any time soon! Kahlua was pretty indifferent when we had it in the house.

I am hoping that Kendall will calm down a little bit because she wants to carry the poor thing all over the place and keeps petting his shell telling him "good boy."

We made it to the park today but it turned out that it was the wrong one. They moved the free concerts to the park by the USO. Kendall and I enjoyed lunch in the park and she performed quite a bit on stage for me. I guess we will check out the band next Friday with our friends from Playground pals.

I must admit that I have normally turned my nose up at anything downtown Jacksonville but I was pleasantly surprised at the quaint park located at the old railroad station. It was really very pretty. After we finished lunch, we explored downtown a little bit more & I found a little country store called "southern comfort" that I have been wanting to check out since December when we got a gift from there. It was great and I can't wait to take some of our family there when they visit next.

Daily Bible verse was very interesting to me today....

The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down. - Proverbs 14:1

Happy Belated birthday to NINA yesterday!

CONGRATULATIONS Becca and Nate. I am so excited for you guys. You will love being parents!

Stat away rain!!

Let's see......
yesterday I greatly enjoyed dropping Kendall off at PMO. I was able to take the doggers to petsmart for a little tlc in the form of nail clipping & ear cleaning. (yep we are STILL battling mo's ear infection.) I then picked-up and cleaned the house a bit (without 2 little hands that LOVE to help!) and grocery shopped uninterrupted. May seem boring for those of you that don't have children or those that may forget how INTERESTING all of that can be with a toddler but I greatly enjoyed the peace & quiet! (esp. after a diasterious trip to Sam's on Wednesday that involved 1 pregnant mom, 1 screaming toddler, 2- 55 lb bags of dog food, and various other items...I'll let you draw your own conclusions!!)
Our group "playground pals" opted not to get together yesterday since it was supposed to rain. It didn't so both of us were disappointed but there will be plenty of opportunities to get toghether this summer.
We are supposed to go to the Riverfront Park for the free concert series but it is supposed to rain AGAIN & the sky looks nasty so we will see what it looks like around noon!
Kendall is doing SOOOOOOOOO much better. Thank you all for your kind words and asking about her. Where the incision was is now looking like a bad scratch and is starting to scab. Amazing how fast little ones heal right?! She doesn't even point to her bottom as one of her boo-boo's now so I guess it is forgotten. I am just so glad that it seems like we have made it through without getting it infected. The nurse in me went into overdrive I think because I was freaking out about cleanliness & checking her very hour to make sure she hadn't gone to the bathroom. Oh well....what else are mom's for?

Pictures of Isaac from 4/23/08

Isaac

Isaac's head to the left with his hands up to his face
A lot of alien-like pictures in this bunch

Isaac's foot to the left and the cord blood flow in color

Couldn't resist......

So tired I fell asleep in the dog beds with Momo
Daddy had his old roller blades out for the garage sale so I decided to try them out!

A steal......

I forgot to mention a blessing that came out of this past weekend..... We decided to ride around our neighborhood to see what others had out for their garage sales. We found a double jogger stroller that was on sale. We paid $40 for a jogger that is only a year or two old.....Ben looked it up online and it retails for $429! It is a kool stride for those of you that have to know about strollers! What a bargain :-)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Ma Beach!!!!!

We hope that you have a blessed and special day Ma Beach!!

We love you.

Ben, Jamie, Kendall, Isaac, and the 4-leggers

Rough weekend.....

We had big plans for this weekend.....too bad that we didn't get to do any of them. Our community wide garage sale was on Saturday and the air show was this weekend just to name a few things that fell by the wayside.
I haven't been feeling well so Ben has been trying to do a good job taking care of me, Kendall, the house, and the 4-leggers. Saturday, we ended up in the ER with Kendall due to the fact that she had a cyst on her bottom. Poor girl, she just kept saying "butt hurt" "toot hurt." The MD and staff were wonderful in working with her. She had to have a small incision made on her right "cheek" to relieve the pressure from the cyst. Now we are keeping the area as clean as possible to prevent infection....hard job being that it comes in contact with urine and feces daily! :-) I am slowly starting to feel better so I thank God for that and Kendall is a little champ as far as getting a bath twice per day and getting her bottom squirted each diaper change.
So for now we have garage sale stuff in the living room that we have to pack back up for our September 13 (We will see if Isaac cooperates for this one!) sale and we are going to go to the Cherry Point air show in June to make up for this one. Biggest plus is the Blue Angels will be flying at the Cherry Point one and I do miss them from Pensacola.
So that's about it for right now....I am keeping Kendall out of her PMO because we all know that kids are germy creatures & I just don't want to take any chances of her incision getting infected. Well I am going to nap while Kendall is down!

Playdate with our "playground pals"

Kendall and Brady AGAIN!

Down the slide.....over and over again!

Cleared by Cardiology

Hey all!
Just wanted to let you know that I saw the cardiologist yesterday and he gave me the ok for my safety and our baby boy (at least from a cardiac stand point.) I have palpitations because of my heart speeding up and skipping beats. There were not enough of those on the echo, ekg's, or holter monitor to put me at serous risk. He offered to give me medication to help with the palpitations but it lowers your blood pressure. Those of you that know me well know that I can't afford to do that with my BP being 90's over 50's normally. They really don't bother me enough to take meds every day. I am feeling that as long as the baby is ok that I can just deal with the increase in the skips and the increased shortness of breath! Thanks to all that have been praying along with us! Now I just have to convince the OB to put me back on a normal schedule instead of every 2 weeks and we will be set!

Relaxing

Aunt Cathi and Uncle Paul's whirlwind visit

Kendall really did have a good time with her great Aunt Cathi and Uncle Paul....she was just a little surly in these photos!

Thanks for the beautiful house-warming gifts and the company Cathi and Paul! See you guys in July!