Farmington Pond (catch-up post)

On a chilly day in June, desperate to get out of the house, I asked Vance to take a break from his homework for an hour or two and go with me and the kids for an outing. I didn't care where we went, but I'm glad we ended up at Farmington Pond. It was a perfect place for some fun pictures.We started out trying to feed the ducks and geese, but there was already a huge pile of bread for them so they seemed to have no interest in us once they realized we had nothing different than bread. We then moved on down the pond and just had fun!!

I have sooooo many pictures of Vance up in a tree, and usually he's doing a crazy pose. Sometime, I will post them for you to see. I love this man!!!  This time, for some reason he had to drag Mason up with him.

(June 2009)

Dermatitis Herpetiformis

Yes, it's true. Vance was recently diagnosed with Dermatitis Herpetiformis, which is an extremely itchy rash made of bumps and blisters. It is linked to gluten sensitivity, so Vance is no longer allowed to eat anything with gluten in it (unless he wants to break out in this blistery rash again). Which means he can't have any wheat, oats, barley, rye, flour, and a few other things. In other words, he can no longer eat bread, noodles, pizza, hamburgers (the bun), brownies, cereal (except for chex!), cake, battered chicken, etc... Unless it is made with Gluten-Free products. His lifestyle has completely changed; well pretty much OUR lifestyle has completely changed. The funny thing is that I think I'm having a harder time with it than he is. Since Gluten-Free products are so expensive only Vance eats those foods. The other night I made spaghetti and I had one pot with Gluten-Free noodles for Vance, and another pot with regular noodles for the rest of us. I'm sure this will be the case with a lot of our meals.

Just to give you an idea on how much Gluten-Free products cost, a loaf of bread is $5 and the loaf is 1/3 the size of a normal loaf, and the slices are 1/2 the size of a normal slice. Pancake batter, flour, cornbread mix, etc... all cost $5 for a 22 oz bag (which is very small compared to normal), and soy sauce is $4. A cake mix, brownie mix, or cookie mix is $5 at Smith's, but was very pleased when I found it for just over $3 at Wal-Mart.

But the part I have the hardest time with is that he most-likely has Celiac Disease (which means the gluten problem is in his gut also) and that can lead to many different kinds of Cancer. It's a scary thought when you find out that the chance of your husband ever having Cancer just increased.

Vance has had this rash for a few years now and we have seen doctors about it before, but they always just sent us home with a cream and said it was Psoriasis. We finally found a doctor that took one look at it and knew what it was. He took two skin grafts from his elbow and sent them to two separate labs just to verify it, and sure enough, both labs confirmed it. He recently went to an Gastroenterologist and they ran a bunch of more tests on him...now we just wait for more results...the crucial ones.  So Pray hard!

If any of you know of any place to buy "Gluten-Free" products or have any info at all please let us know! We are still pretty new at this huge adjustment in our lives.

I Did It!!!!!!!!! (Catch-up Post)

These are words I hear about 6 or more times a day at our house. Mason gets so excited everytime he pees (or poops!) in the potty. Everytime, he says, "I did it!!!!!" Yes....he is now POTTY TRAINED!!!!! It was actually the easiest thing ever. I was so afraid it would take weeks to get it down and for him to start catching on to what was going on but I was totally wrong! I started out with the idea of having him run around my parents backyard (since we don't have much of a yard here) in his underwear so he could pee freely and I wouln't have pee spots to clean up on my carpet. So I went and bought a kids pool for him and just tried to make it fun. Then I realized, as he was swimming, that since he was wet from the pool, I wouldn't really know if/when he was peeing. But, I continued on with the idea, and he had a blast!

Mason doing one of his absolute favorite things...blowing bubbles!

Ok, so I know this is really gross, but I could not resist. The picture below is Mason after he had his first "poop" accident. If you look at his bum, you will notice the bulge in his undies. Just be grateful I didn't post the picture of just his bum!

The next day, I kept him inside so I could really see how he was going to do. He had sat on his little potty many times before this, but he had never actually peed in it. So while he had his first accident (of pee!) I made sure he was recognizing that he was peeing, and I congratulated him even though it was all over the floor. A little while later he started acting like he needed to pee so I rushed him to his potty and........he went pee in the potty for the first time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was soooooo excited I took a picture! I got way excited and praised him like crazy, and that's pretty much all it took. Yes, he did have a few accidents and still has them here and there, but overal, he does real good. In fact, he goes all by himself so most of the time I don't even know he has gone until I go into the bathroom and there's pee in his potty. Oh, and he can "hold it" for a real long time. It's nice!! It's funny because when he poops, he comes out and yells "I poooooped!!!! Come see it!!" And he drags me and Vance in to see it (he makes sure we both see it). It's pretty funny. The picture below is of his first pee in the potty.

(July 2009)

3 Hours Gained!!

As you can all tell, I am TERRIBLE at keeping up on our blog. Our summer has been completely crazy and extremely fun all at the same time. I remember the last summer Vance and I had together before we had kids. It was the best summer I had ever had and I wasn't sure when it would get beat; but the last few months have definitly beat it. We have gone on many trips, had many family events, and have done our best to give our kids some fun times! The next few posts will be me just playing a little "catch-up" and then after that I will hopefully start doing a little better with keeping caught up. I now have a new daily schedule so that should help. I actually have recently gained 3 hours in my day, and I love it!! I watch 2 kids besides my own. They used to come Tues-Fri at 10 am until 7:30 pm. But now, they come at 8 am and leave at 6:30 pm. I love to sleep in, so the schedule before worked great for me. But now, I am forced to be ruled by my alarm clock and get up 2 whole hours earlier. This gives me 2 more hours a day. Also, now that the kids leave an hour earlier, that gives me another extra hour each day! Four kids two and under are INSANE to watch all day. This is the main reason blogging has come to an extreme hault lately. By the time the kids leave, I am literally exhausted! Anyways, so my goal is to take major advantage of these extra 3 hours a day, and get some things done that I have been trying to do for months now. And so far, I have been doing just that, and it feels great!!!!!!

He's DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Vance finished his FINAL for his FINAL class bright and early this morning around 2:30 AM!!!!!!! HE IS NOW DONE TAKING CLASSES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He still has two tests to take so he can test out of 7 credits (Let's PRAY that he passes them because he was told they were pretty hard). Then, he will have his BACHELOR'S DEGREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you tell I'm excited????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????!!!! For pretty much our entire marriage, our lives have revolved around school. Escpecially for the last 2 years since Vance has started the Bachelor's program. His schedule has literally been work M-F from 8 or 9 until 6ish. Then he would come home, visit with me and the kids while he ate dinner, and then he was straight onto the computer to do homework until 1 or 2 in the morning. Then he would finally get to bed, and start the whole routine over again the next day. Usually all day on Saturdays, he would be doing homework all day and if he was able to get it all done, we got to go out. If not, we stayed at home, once again. Saturdays were usually the deadline for all homework due that week, so it had to be done by midnight each Saturday. But now......................we are FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't wait for Vance to get home tonight so we can do whatever we want!!!!!!!!! Mason and Isaac will have their daddy back, and I will have my husband!!!!!! I have to say, the hardest part of all this (besides feeling like a single mother most of the time) was watching Mason BEG for Vance to play with him every night, and Vance would have to keep turning him down. Vance took as many breaks as he could afford, so he tried to spend as much time with us as he could but Mason always wanted more. I am soooooooooo excited for this new time in our lives! Congratulations babe, and I am sooooooo proud of your hard work!!!!! I love you!!!!!!!!!!!

4th of July

Usually for the fourth of July, we go to the Gorge with my family, but this year we decided to go for the 24th instead. We hadn't been to visit Vance's dad yet this year, so we thought we would take this opportunity of a 3 day weekend to do so. He lives in Rock Springs, WY which is about 35 minutes away from the north end of the Gorge so we went boating all day Friday. It was a lot of fun. I can't help but laugh everytime I see his boat because it was given to him by my dad because it was our old family boat. When we gave it to him, the boat hadn't been used for a few years, and the last time we used it, I swear it was going to fall apart if it hit another wave (at least that's what it felt like!) Apparently, it wasn't in as bad of condition as I thought because it did pretty good! However, there were a lot of boats out so we hit waves like crazy, many times of which I thought for sure the boat was going to flip! It was quite scary at times. In fact it made me so nervous I refused to let go of Isaac the whole time and I made sure Vance had Mason good. (I think I was the only one who was nervous at all the entire time. It's just me. I can't help but worry too much all the time.) We went tubing for most of the time, and then attempted to go cliff diving but were unable to find a safe enough spot. I was not able to get pictures of people tubing because I was too busy watching where the boat was going and holding on to Isaac for dear life! J/K!!! This first picture is when we stopped for lunch on the shore and I laid Isaac down for a minute while we got lunch ready.

This was Mason almost the ENTIRE time on the boat (which was pretty much the whole day). He had to be in his daddy's arms or he flipped out. When Vance took his turn on the tube, Mason cried. When Vance got out to go cliff diving, Mason cried, etc... This picture was taken when we got back in the boat after lunch so he didn't quite have his life jacket on yet, but I promise both kids had life jackets on the entire time in the boat. He was also very tired and hot, so that didn't help him have a fun time at all. He was like this the entire trip though. I have NEVER seen him cry in his whole two years of life as much as he did in these 3 days of our trip. It was horrible.

Here is Vance checking the depth of the water before they jumped in. (Doesn't this look a little familiar?! Maybe he did learn something from getting the jeep stuck after all!) Unfortunately there was a shelf of rocks that came out too far so it was not very safe to jump.

I know this life jacket looks a little too big on him, but it's the only "infant" one I could find. It didn't seem as big as this picture makes it look.

On Saturday, we went for a drive up to the top of the plateau. One of my favorite parts of the trip was seeing the wild horses.

Everyone climbed to the top of Pilot Butte except me and the kids. I did not have the right shoes, and it would of been impossible to get the kids to the top and back down safely anyways.

Mason running up the hill after his daddy.

After climbing Pilot Butte we went target shooting with some 22's.

Beautiful Rock Springs!

Here is Vance fixing his dad's truck. What a hottie!!!!

Later that night, we went to the firework show. It was a whole different experience, and I loved it! Since the big fireworks are not illegal in Wyoming, everyone was lighting their own fireworks before and after the main show. So we would look across the whole valley and there were fireworks everywhere, along with right above our head from people doing it that were right by us. It lasted forever and it was way fun. Mason was in amazement the entire time and he just cuddled up to me on the blanket and didn't move until it was over. That was the one thing that entertained him the most on the trip. Sunday we woke up and went to church, got packed up, and traveled home.