"The virus is out . .I repeat, the virus is out!"

Donny and I have been watching the 3rd season of 24 (the show with Keifer Sutherland). It's the season where Jack and crew are trying to capture a bio-terrorist weapon in the form of a deadly virus. We've been watching Hasmat (sp?) crews do their thing, people run in fear for their lives from the outbreak, people bleeding and dying from this deadly virus. This is the mind framework we were in when a virus of our own broke out in the Vaughn house.

It's not deadly. It's actually quite short and the kids have recovered pretty quickly. But why do stomach bugs have to mostly strike at night is my question that I'm pondering? Brady was up most of the night last Wednesday night, and by the time the virus had "done it's thing" with him, I had a couple of hours of sleep before I hear Tyler's sweeet voice saying, "Mom, my tummy doesn't feel too good . . .".

A couple of days and lots of loads of laundry later, we thought we were all through the "outbreak". Last night Monica called at bedtime sad and a little scared because it looked like little Annie had gotten the bug. Poor dear. I gave her some advice, wished her good luck, and headed to bed. Then at about midnight, I heard from my bedroom doorway some soft cries followed by the lovely sounds of Colby losing what was left of the contents of his stomach in the doorway. Poor thing. I hate vomit . . I dread it more than any other illness. It's so unpredictable, so out of control, and just so gross. Sweet Colby broke my heart last night, though, and gave me another reason to hate stomach viruses - they hurt my babies. Colby put words to it last night all night as he "purged": "Mommy, I can't do this! Why does it hurt so bad!" "I don't want my tummy to do this again!" And the one that really got me was, "I hope no one else has to cough like me!" We cried together and asked God to stop it. He did. It's all better now. Mommy is still "veclempt" (sp???) when I think about it, but Colby has moved on with life and is happy to be feeling fine.

That's all. Just had to get that one off my chest . . .praying Donny and I will be spared the delight of the bug. I look forward to Heaven will there with be NO STOMACH VIRUSES!!

My Mamaw

My Mamaw came to town this past weekend with my Uncle Don. They live in the Panhandle, and made a special trip to our area to meet little Annie and be with the boys and with Monica and I (notice Moni and I's place on the list - we recognize it and are ok with the fact that our "elders" come more for time with our kids than with us! It's good and ok!).

I just love my Mamaw. I want to be like her when I "grow up". She's 81, and just in the past couple of years has stopped traveling all over the country with her "Merry Widows" clan of ladies from church. She's the Queen for her local chapter of the Red Hat society. She plays cards until midnight with her girls a few times a week. She takes a nice long afternoon nap everyday. She eats at Applebee's for lunch at least a few times a week. She has a favorite waiter and table that are always reserved for her and her friend that goes with her. This is a glimpse into the life of my Mamaw now - and I love her for every bit of it!

What I really love about my Mamaw and the rest of my family, though, is the way they blessed my life as a child. See, my parents were divorced when I was Brady's age. My mom by the grace of God was given my Dad, Larry to be a father for me. They had Monica when I was 4 years old. If ever a family needs help on how to raise a "blended family", they really need to talk to my Mamaw and my parents. Mom and Dad have loved Mamaw (who is my birth father's mother - not my mom's) like she was their own. Mom organized Mamaw and Papaw's 50th wedding anniversary. Mom is always there for Mamaw from being at her 80th birthday party to helping with a garage sale before moving from her home.

I think one of the "keys" to all the intact relationships has got to be this: I don't remember EVER hearing anything negative said about my birth father or about Mamaw and Papaw by my parents. I don't remember EVER hearing anything negative being said about my Mom or Dad by my grandparents. Monica has just naturally been a grandchild of Mamaw's since she was born. Annie is her 5th graet-grandchild and only girl. I love that family can be this way to each other. As a parent, I can't imagine what my little life had the potential to turn into when I was 18 months old. I'm so very thankful for the Lord's hand in my life - so thankful that He guided all the adults in my life to create such an easy path to walk in as a child. So, today, I'm thankful for my Mamaw. She's a blessing to me!

Spelling Bee Champ

Tyler has a new hobby. He spells words all the time. Conversations with him go something like this: "Mom, that is so cool! C-O-O-L!" "I really need some food. F-O-O-D". He has found his "giftedness" in first grade, apparently . . math, science, and reading are ok, but spelling, now that's his thing!! He's been spelling so very much that he declared tonight that "Tomorrow I'm not gonna spell. S-P-E-L-L". Maybe he's getting tired of it, maybe he's realizing that it's not always C-O-O-L to S-P-E-L-L everything you say. Who knows. All I know is that I'm proud of my little spelling champ, and he can spell all he wants to as far as Mommy is concerned! Love him . .

Blessings

My 3 little Cowboys

This is called the perks of having a mother who is a graphic design artist. You forward her a pitcture of your kids from your living room wearing some cute clothes she and Dad bought, and she turns it into a creative wonder!! ha!

catching up . .

You know you are a true blogger when you find yourself thinking, "Now this will make a nice blog entry . . ." and take a couple of pictures to go with whatever it is you want to document. I've been thinking in scrabook pages for a number of years . . I used to dress my children for certain memorable events (birthdays, Christmas activities, etc) in colors that I knew would go well with the paper colors that I had in stock. Sad, I know, but man, sure made some cute pages! When we go places, I would make sure and take enough pictures to do a 2 page spread . .. ok, typing that makes me giggle. I promise I have relaxed from the mindset!! Now I realize that the more pictures I take, the more pages I'll need to do in a family album!! So I try to go more for "highlights" of the activities instead of capturing every angle of the events! But I digress . . .I was just thinking that I've noticed the same type of thought lately in my brain, but with the intent of blogging instead of scrapbooking. I go somewhere, take a few pictures, and think, "Hey - this will be fun to put on the blog . . ". Anyhoo . . with all that confession out of the way, now I can get to catching up!!

Last weekend our family had our first annual "Switcher-roo" weekend. Donny devised a plan for us to have some intentional individual time with our older boys - Tyler was off from school last Friday and Monday, so Donny called in his parents to come help with Brady, and he took Tyler out for the day on Friday, and Colby and I spent the day together. On Monday, we had a group outing to the Pumpkin Patch, then Tyler and I spent the rest of the day together and Colby and Donny went out on the town. In between days, we had some fun time with Nana and Papa all together as well as with Randy and clan. It was a fun family time for sure! Tuesday hit me like a wet rag in the face having to go back to normal routine . . .I much prefer playing to work, carpool, cooking dinner, laundry, etc!!

On Friday, Colby and I had a ball together. I LOVE being with this little boy! Our personalities blend so well together . . .he loves to chat and I love to listen and ask questions about what in the world he is talking about!! We had fun spending money at the first couple of stops: we went to Lifeway and picked out a new video and bought Mommy an AWESOME new praise CD. We had fun at the listening station checking out lots of CD's a finally agreeing on one that we thought would be good to have in the car, then getting giddy about running back to the car to pop it in and see which songs we already knew. Colby would say, "Oh man, I LOVE this one!!!" So very sweet.

We headed to Ulta after this . . Mommy was out of hairspray and Daddy was out of hairgel, so Colby got to learn about using a coupon to save some money, and he thought that was cool. Cracked me up that he wanted to look at all the different hair dryers they had on display as well . . doesn't take much to entertain kids, that's for sure!!

Next stop was TOYS R US to spend a whoppin' $6 limit . . .he picked out a Transformer toy (side note: how and why do kids get interested in toys that are so useless? I don't get it. Mine have never even seen a Transformer video in their lives that I'm aware of, and for some reason that's all they can both talk about?). We had fun just cruising all the aisles of the store and seeing what was out there in toy land.

Our last stop was to a very fun place that I've been wanting to check out for awhile now . ..INCREDIBLE PIZZA! It's like Chuck E. Cheese without the Chucky and times 10 for games and activities. It was very fun - Colby's favorite thing was watching a go-cart race (for big boys, not 4 year olds). We played games, ate pizza, and watched part of "The Apple Dumpling Gang" in the movie room. Colby wanted to watch the rest of the movie after we finished eating, so we had some nice Mommy / Colby snuggle time (he was getting pretty sleepy by then).

After going home for a nice nap (both of us!), we met Daddy and Tyler and went out to a FWC football game. The boys were so excited to see a "real football game" - and they each even found a friend from school / church there to play with, which made it nice! Colby and his buddy, Luke, had a ball playing, eating snow cones together, and dancing when the band played. Cute.

Ok, skip to weekend activities (and by the way, know that I'm documenting all this mostly for my family's sake so we can remember what we did together - you just might be bored by the length of this, so feel free to click on over to your next blog for the day!) Nana and Papa came to stay and have some Brady time as well as just be with all their kiddos down here. Nana always comes bearing gifts, and this time she brought some fun "science experiments" for the boys. She had 3 big dinosaur eggs that the boys soaked in water, and after 24-48 hours, they HATCHED! The boys were all 3 fascinated by the eggs and watching them crack the egg open, seeing what color and shape their dino would be . . .too cool. Thanks, Nana for the fun science lesson!!

On Monday, Donny had to stay back due to a nasty cold, but the rest of us including N&P and Randy's crew went out to the Flower Mound Pumpkin Patch. Can I just say that I LOVE that place??? I've gone every year since Tyler was 10 months old, and it's just one of my most favorite things to do in the fall!! Of course, the fact that it felt like it was about 97 degrees that day didn't quite make the "fall" part feel real, but I love love love all the pumpkins, the hay stacks, the hay maze, the hay ride, the cartoon cut outs, etc. It's just really too fun. Oh, and my favorite part is IT'S FREE!! How do those people do that?
Tyler and I jetted out for our day together after lunch, and had a blast. All weekend he had been saying, "I sure can't wait for Monday to have my day with you, Mom!" I love being with Tyler because our personalities are very similar - where Colby and I are pretty opposite and so compliment each other, Tyler and I can enjoy things the same way and don't even have to say very much. We spent over an hour in Toys R Us - just roaming the aisles, pointing things out to each other, hanging out at the book rack checking out cool books, and just going at our own pace. Of course, we spent the $6 on a Transformer thing.


Next it was off to the pet store to check out all the rats, guinea pigs, cats, birds and fish . . .we both really loved the turtles that were swimming around in a big tank. But enough with the pets . .we had to get to Marble Slab for some cream!!

This was by far Tyler's favorite part of the day, he said. Yum. I was with him. Target was next to do some more "aisle browsing", then we felt like we had given our ice cream enough time to make room for some Double Dave's pizza. Oh, what a nice way to top off a day. I love Double Dave's buffett. But what I love more than that is that Tyler and I were able to have so much time together just the two of us . . .no younger brother "interference" - it was all about me and him. And I loved it. My biggest baby amazes me with how "big" he truly is these days, and sometimes it takes getting away from all the other details in life for me to recognize the maturing that is occuring in Tyler Vaughn. I praise God for that - it's a gift from Him for sure.

Speaking of gifts . . .wasn't this a sweet gift on our way home from Double Dave's?? It actually was a faint double rainbow and we watched it on the side of us all the way home. Loved recounting God's faithfulness and how He will always provide, always protect, and always, always love us. He is good. So, year one of "switcher-roo" is over, and we can't wait to do it again, because not only was it a sweet time for our boys, but Donny and I were blessed beyond measure, I think. I love those boys. (all 4 of them!).

Blessings!

18 months

Brady is 18 months old - well, actually, he's almost 19 months now, it's just taken almost a month to get pictures taken and something documented about the little guy. Perks of being one of 3 with a busy home life! he!

This sweet baby of mine makes me laugh all the time. He talks about his grandparents constantly, asking, "where'd go go?" (which means where did they go - usually names them one by one asking where they are. Apparently grandparents and aunt Moni and baby Annie are supposed to be available to Brady 24/7). He gets a very dissapointed look on his face when he realizes they aren't just around the corner. He does cheer up when I let him call them on the phone, though - he likes to say "wewo" (hello, you know). Then he giggles, listens for a minute and runs away.

He loves reading / singing the Sandra Boynton book, "Snuggle Puppy". We read /sing it a couple of times, and he laughs a lot, joining in on the chorus part. The other night we put him to bed, and over the monitor we could hear him singing, "Oooooo! I uh you!" (means: Oooooo - I love you!). He is just so loveable!!! I bought him a puppy dog costume to wear for fall festival - he calls it his snuggle puppy and wants to peek at it in the closet and giggle all the time.

Brady has officially joined the ranks of wrestling with Daddy time. The other night he watched Colby come flying in to leap over a laying down Daddy . . Brady immediatly did the same and surprised himself with how far he flew across the floor when he launched!! Scared the poor guy for a bit . . .we'll see how eager he is to imitate his brother again next time.

He walks through the house looking for me, hollering, "MOM! MOM!" until I holler back "BRADY! BRADY!" More giggling and he comes to join me and say "Up!" with arms lifted up high. Precious.

Have I mentioned how much I love this sweet baby? His name means "Always takes the right path". I pray that over him at night often . .Lord, may it be in this child's life - may he always take the right path - may he choose YOUR path. The path that leads to righteousness and truth. Never let one little foot stray off that path - eyes locked onto the Lord's heart. May it be so.

Blessings!

My sweet Annie baby

I'm just amazed at this sweet little baby who has entered our lives and our hearts . . .life is already so much sweeter with her in it, and I sure can see signs that life will continue to get sweeter and sweeter! I love how Tyler and Colby always want to hold her and talk so sweetly to her. I love how Brady runs in when she comes saying, "Aa-y! Aa-y!" This afternoon I was keeping her for Monica, and he wanted to "help" give her a bottle, and kept needing to snuggle her head with his. Sweet baby girl. See how much she's changed in 5 1/2 weeks??

This was my "up close and very personal" view of Annie's birth . . .I loved being right there to catch her first breath of life . . .her first cry (and scream - that baby was MAD!). Love her!