Eye Surgery: Done

(Note: the gash right underneath his eye has nothing to do with the surgery today....he came into our room in the middle of the night last night, walked right into the foot board of our bed and injured himself! Good grief......)

This morning started off suuuuuper early.......and we were off to Boys Town Research hospital!

The medical staff was excellent right off the bat.They also provided a neat service of a child psychologist coach. Ms. Danielle's goal was to make the hospital as calming of an environment as possible and ease any nerves that Sawyer (or his parents!) may be feeling. She began with a flip book that showed the sequence of events for the morning: chaning into pj's, getting an IV, going back to the operating room.....then she pulled out some IV tubes for him to check out along with the gas mask that he would later use. After her little chat, she also brought out some coloring things to keep him occupied until we were ready!

Dr. Troia stopped in to say hello, answer any last minute questions and let Sawyer pick out a stuffed animal to take into surgery with him!

He was pretty excited to switch beds to the one with the big wheels!

We prayed that God would keep everyone safe and they wheeled him off! Then the waiting began........we stayed in Sawyer's room and they brought us some breakfast, juices and coffee. I can't remember the last time that Bill and I sat and watched an hour and a half of news together....I quite enjoyed it, until I kept remembering that Sawyer was down the hall getting his eyes sliced open.........

After what seemed like four months, he was back. Groggy as could be!

They placed a cool wash cloth over his eyes as he was waking up so that he would be less inclined to rub them. There were no bandages or anything! Amazing!

He kept asking to take his IV out. He wasn't too big a fan of that.....we had to wait for a while as the anesthesia wore off a bit and his vitals were normal.

We were joking with Sawyer about how his toe looked like ET :) He had just watched the movie for the first time this weekend with his grand parents, and thought his glowing toe was pretty sweeeet! He was given some of those really cool paper sunglasses and got to pick out ANOTHER stuffed animal on our way out!

He will be pretty tuckered out for the rest of the day and will return to see Dr. Troia tomorrow. There will be only slight swelling and tearing up, but other than that, he's good to go! We should see continued improvement over the next few weeks and complete recovery in six weeks!

Praise GOD for being with Dr. Troia! God had his hand on Sawyer all morning and we are so thankful it turned out so well! Thank you all so much for all your prayers and emails yesterday, they were so sweet and greatly appreciated!

Five Years Ago....

Five years ago, on a sunny afternoon in the park, Bill and I got married! It was August 9th, 2006. Judge Cooper was this great guy that looked older than dirt, with HUGE old-man sunglasses. We tried to hold back our chuckles as he kept referring to Bill, as Bill BYRON instead of Bill BRYON :) He also must have thought that I was of some American Indian decent, because at the end, he said, "In honor of your heritage, I would like to read this Native American poem."

Fast forward five years....a baby boy, a church wedding, a house, a business, college graduation and a dog. And here we are! It hasn't been easy but we can both say it was well worth it! God has had his hand of mercy, grace and love on our family thus far and we are excited to see what the next eighty years of marriage will bring!

We celebrated this weekend with our best friends, Brandon and Laney who were also celebrating an anniversary of their own! It was fun to sit and remember both the monumental moments and little things that made up our years together so far.

We also went out with Bill's parents who just celebrated their eighteenth anniversary! After being married for only five short years, my respect and admiration for couples who are still dedicated to each other for years on end, just grows and grows.

May God continue to work through Bill and I to be the best parents and partners in life that we can be.

"Being confident in this, that HE who began a good work in you, will be faithful to complete it till the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6

God vs. Mother Earth

Yesterday morning I took the kiddos to their cooking class at Whole Foods for a lesson on healthy eating! Sawyer, Samantha and Audrey met their friend, Dane there along with his mom and new baby brother! (Just a week old! and OH SO CUTE!)

The kids made a landscape picture out of fresh veggies and fruit! They used cucumber slices, cherry tomatoes, a green bean, pretzels dipped in peanut butter (for the wheat), baby carrots, oranges, strawberries, blueberries, a strawberry licorice stick and a maraschino cherry!

While Ms. Mandy was passing out the cucumber slices, she was mentioning that all these fruits and veggies came from nature and what a wonderful job that Mother Earth had done in creating them.....Guess who piped up right away to set THAT story straight?

Yup. Sawyer comes out with guns blazing,

"No! No! God made those cucumbers! God made everything except for plastic and metal, right Mom?!?"

Yeah, that was a proud yet awkward moment. Ms. Mandy just raised her eyebrows, smiled politely and continues on with, "Hmmmm.....alrighty then!"

As the other kids in the class were complaining about not liking carrots and how they don't eat cucumbers....my wonderful little veggie eaters were asking for SECONDS of tomatoes and snarfing down everything on their plates! I was beaming with pride! :)

The Dental Saga Continues...

As most of you know, Sawyer has been on what seems like a never ending journey towards healthy teeth. We had been letting him brush them himself (big mistake!) and apparently he's only been doing the fronts of them....so he had gone to a family dentist, freaked out, got kicked out (oh sorry! I mean, 'encouraged to go else where.') then ended up at the Pediatric Dental Clinic at Children's Hospital.

He has a few cavitis that have really been bothering him and that need to be taken care of right away or else we run the risk of having to do a root canal! He's four! So, that's how he and I ended up at Children's Hospital this morning, bright and early! If you haven't been inside Children's yet, let me tell ya, it's GORGEOUS! It's a brand new facility that is so well designed to be comforting and educational. We were the first appointment of the day, so we sat in the lobby area and looked at the aquariums, played on the activity walls, and watched a bit of, "The Fox and the Hound".

We were then introduced to Dr. Cox, his nursing assistant, and the anesthesiologist. Now, I didn't go to Sawyer's previous dental visit with the family dentist, but from what Bill told me, they weren't quite as kid-friendly as we had expected. So coming into this environment at Children's Hospital was just a night and day difference! Dr. Cox and his staff were just so excited and attentive to all of Sawyer's questions, and boy were there a lot! They explained what every single tool, machine and bottle in the room was. They encouraged him to climb up on the chair and use the controls to make it go up and down, test the lights and touch the tools. Dr. Cox was explaining what each instrument was, and when he got to the water sprayer, Sawyer started to look a bit nervous....so Dr. Cox suggested that HE would lay down in the chair and pretend to be the patient and Sawyer would be the dentist and he let Sawyer spray a bunch of water in his mouth! Now that's what I call good 'bed side' manner!

They continued to 'check his muscles' (take his blood pressure), listen to his breathing and then gave him a little cocktail of calming 'juice'. It was funny because for the past few weeks, Sawyer has asked, "Does this have sugar in it?" with just about everything he puts in his mouth. So, when they were mixing up his meds with sugary TANG, he of course asked what it was. Then he goes, "Oh no, I'm not allowed to have any sugar because it's bad for my teeth. My dentist told me so!" :) Dr. Cox proceeded to tell him that HE was his dentist and this was a very special treat today. They dimmed the lights, let Sawyer pick out a movie and we just sat and relaxed while waiting for the juice to kick in. He started to get a little bit loopy...just enough to make me chuckle :)

When they were ready to begin, I left the room and they went to work. Now, we were informed at the beginning that this procedure with the 'jiuce' and the laughing gas is normally 95% successful.....would it surprise you to hear that Sawyer is part of the 5% that wasn't?

Yup, that's right folks, they gave him as much sedation as they could without putting him under and he was still jabbering away, completely alert and ready to go. When considering how long he would have to have his mouth open for (about an hour and a half), Dr. Cox felt like it was going to be too much for him. So, we agreed that it was in his best interest to come back in a couple weeks for an OR visit and get everything done in one fell swoop. We'll do X rays, tend to the cavities and do a cleaning all at once. We want to get this whole thing taken care of ASAP, but at the same time we don't want to have a traumatizing experience and shoot ourselves in the foot for future dental appointments.

We feel really confident and comfortable with Dr. Cox and his staff. While we were chatting, his nurses of course thought Sawyer was the cutest thing they had ever seen and gave him a tour of the dental floor and he came back loaded up with all sorts of bouncy balls, rubber frogs and blown up glove balloons with faces on them!

Keep Sawyer in your prayers (his parents too!) as he makes his first trip to the OR in a few weeks! Yikes!

Evening at the Park

We wandered down to the park the other evening-the weather was perfect. Warm, but not muggy or humid, the bugs were somewhere else, there was a light breeze and smelled like fresh cut grass.

Is my dog not the cutest thing you've ever seen on four legs?!?

There is no question that Sawyer has inherited Bill's love for jumping off of things~anything that he can possibly climb up and jump off, he's there!

Who can resist a face like this??

You have no idea how long we sat and tried to coax, bribe and trick Phoebi into pulling us on Sawyer's bike! She's such a goof ball, because she's totally strong enough to do it, but she has it in her stubborn mind that that is just not something that she should have to do. She wouldn't even pull Sawyer down the sidewalk......goof ball.

We meandered over to our favorite bridge to climb around, play 'Pooh Sticks' and of course-Jump off the railing. if you are wondering what Pooh Sticks is, it's off of Winnie the Pooh when each of you drop a stick into the stream on one side of the bridge and rush to the other side to see who's stick was the winner. hours of entertaining fun with Pooh sticks guys :)

Pretty soon the sky turned an ominous shade of grey and black (kind of looked like a bad bruise) and we headed for home. Trying to get a four year old to pedal his bike up the hill in a hurry, is frustrating enough to make you burst into tears. But luckily, we made it to the front porch just as it began to down pour!

Peaches and the Charlie Brown Tomato Plant

(Of course Sawyer had to pick up the only one with an imperfection on it for the picture.....)

The other day our friend John came over with this huge box of peaches! (For himself, but was kind enough to let us steal a couple :) They were soooo good. Juicy and sweet, totally D-Lish!

My first bite in and Bill knew that we would be making a trip to Coscto for a peach box of our own :) Sawyer can't seem to get enough of them either-we've been snacking on them, putting them in our cereal, making smoothies.....God was in a good mood the day he made peaches*

As most of you know, we are in the final stages of having our deck finished. Bill and Steve have been hard at work for a few weeks now and let me tell ya' it's looking mighty fine! So, the other day I had gotten a gift card in the mail for Mullhalls (A huge landscape and nursery here in Omaha) and I thought the perfect idea would be to go and get some beautiful new plants for the new deck!

Guess what we walked out with?

We are the proud owners of this little tomato plant that I swear was stolen out of Charlie Brown's veggie garden and a dying habanero plant! It's tall and lanky and hunched over. A total socially awkward little guy in the plant world. But even though he looks depressed...

He produced a nice red tomato the other day!!!!!! I knew he was a winner*

Epic Fail

So, I committed the biggest blogger crime. Ever. I went on an amazing family vacation that of course was chalked full of blog-worthy photos and what did I do? Left my camera's battery charger at home. Yup. Epic fail. I couldn't believe it! We thought about buying another charger. They were $67 for an off brand one. We didn't buy another charger. Was I sad? Yup. Did it make me want to just stop blogging because 'what's the point of keeping a family blog if you miss major family events?'....yup. But after licking my wounds and stroking my empty camera, I pulled myself up by my yoga pants and decided to fill you all in on the fun vacation that we had that was documented by like eight random photos that I took before my cannon failed me.

So here we go guys.

We took a WONDERFUL family trip to Florida two weeks ago! Our best friends, Brandon and Laney were going to Florida to one of the Wyndham Resorts on a time share from their parents and invited us to tag along! Stay in a gorgeous, FREE resort? Count us in! They flew down because of their little rascal, Nolan, who would not have survived the drive. Did we fly with them? Nope. We decided to brave the 25+ hour drive down there. Call us crazy, but as you can see, we are all still alive and well!

We packed the car full of all of our junk, tons of snacks, drinks (5 hour energy bottles), books, the DVD player, and the GPS and off we went! Now I have to admit that before we left, I had mental flashes of me killing Bill and chucking his body off an overpass.....stapling Sawyer lips shut....Bill and Sawyer 'accidentally' forgetting me at a truck stop......but ya' know what?

WE HAD A GREAT DRIVE TOGETHER!

It really was! We played tons of 'I Spy' and other weird made-up games, told stories and just hung out! It was really fun! And I'm very proud to say that we are a family that can road trip together! Go us! :)

We did shave some time off the trip which was nice (Mostly because I drive like a bat outta hell) and it was wonderful to finally arrive and get started with the vacation! We had a great view of the canal and the million dollar homes that lined it on one side and the beautiful beach on the other, the resort was beautiful and the weather was fantastic! Sawyer loved sitting out on the deck to eat his breakfast and watch all the boats go by!

On our first day we decided to hit the Everglades! (You guys better soak up these pictures, because that's all we got folks!) And yes, it was like 104 degrees and with the hummidity, I pretty much had an Afro....

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Sawyer and I hanging out with the gators!

Who's kid is This??

We took an AWESOME air boat ride, with our very witty driver....he had us laughing from the start of the engine! It was so great for all of us (especially the kids) to be able to see such amazing wildlife right up close! We saw tons of birds, turtles, reptiles and of course-alligators!

The alligators would swim up SO close to the side of the boat that I was sure that Bill was going to get his arm gnawed off. I think it was the roar of the engine or the gale force winds, but little Nolan fell sound asleep for the entire ride! So cute!

After the boat ride we headed to the animal show that included baby alligators, all different kinds of reptiles,a skunk (I don't know where she really fit in.....?) and alligator wrestling! Sawyer and I also got to go up and hold one of the alligators which was surprisingly heavy! But do we have a great picture of that? Nope. (Can you tell I'm still a little bitter?)

We had a wonderful rest of the trip, swimming in the pools, lounging on the beaches, hitting the fabulous outlets malls, eating ridiculously delicious food and spending a day out on a boat that we had rented. It was so much fun*

Thanks Brandon, Laney and Nolan for letting us tag along! We love you guys!