Daniel's 6 month pictures

I know they are small and hard to see, but you get the idea. He did so well and these turned out much better than his 3 month pictures. Jacob did well also and overall it was a less stressful event than last time. Can you believe he is is 6 months already? I can't. Look at him standing while holding my hands - he looks so grown up. I got that picture as a 5 x 7 enhanced with a border and the words, "A mother holds her sons hands for a moment.. but his heart forever". Brent thinks it's cheesy but I love it.

In other Daniel news.. after weeks of trying to get him to eat rice cereal or pears he is finally starting to eat the pears. Believe it or not that is a pretty big deal.

These are my favorites:



These are also cute:

Monday, Monday

So I called my insurance company today and found out that the claim was never paid because the hospital was sending it to the wrong billing address. ?? How that can be I don't know (since they are especially the same). So I called up the hospital and told them the correct address. Why do I have to be the middle man here - they could see the claim, knew it was going to the wrong address and never corrected it themselves?! Stupid. Anyway, once insurance pays their portion of the $6,000 I found out I will be responsible for $1,130 of it. So now we are over $4,200 in medical bill debt.. how depressing. Maybe we won't be going on a cruise after all. You want to have a nice reward to help with motivation, but I don't know how we can justify an expense like that until we are out of debt. So we will probably end up with a night in a nice hotel and a bottle of Martinelli's. At least that is something, I guess.

Today I met up with my friend Mettina and her girls. We had a wonderful time together. Jacob, Nellie and Samantha had a blast playing together. I really miss having her live next door. I really enjoy days like today that help break up the every day schedule we adhere to.

Also, I had to tell you all that I had fish for dinner tonight. Those who know me know that do not like seafood. But I keep trying different things to see if I can find something I like. That and Brent and Jacob both love fish so I don't want them to miss out just because of me. Well, I finally found a recipe that I like. I found it on allrecipes.com and it is called Lemon Garlic Tilapia I've adjusted it a little but that is the base. I saute the garlic in the butter and lemon juice and then sprinkle the fish with parsley, a little salt and pepper and a some cajun seasoning (I put LOTS of cajun seasoning on Brent's fish since he like a lot of spice) right before baking and serve it with homemade tarter sauce. It is delicious! We've had it twice this month already. I've come to the conclusion that I like only white fish ie: Tilapia, Halibut and Trout and they have to be really, really fresh. I am so happy to finally find a way to eat fish and not gag on it. I've wanted to like fish for so long because of all the health benefits and now I have a recipe that works for me. We will probably have it twice a month regularly.

My week

This week went ok I suppose. My treadmill still doesn't work and the tech guy didn't show up yesterday, so that is being put off yet again. My friend Angela and I have come up with a plan to help motivate each other. At the end of each day we email each other and say what we did for exercise and how we did with our eating. I'm finding it very helpful to have the accountability and support. I worked out 5 days this week. I'm hoping to keep that up so that when my treadmill is finally "running" (hee hee) I can start right out on some nice workouts without delay.

We decided to switch services from Comcast to Verizon. It is exactly the same cost and it will be a faster fiber optic internet, we will get BYU-TV as part of standard cable and we will have a DVR for 6 months free of charge. I've always wanted to try one of those. Hopefully it will be a nice change void of complication.

I got the bill for Daniel's birth yesterday. You know how you sign those papers saying if your insurance doesn't pay up you are responsible? Well, the bill is 6 grand and due in the next 20 days. I'm going to call on Monday and try to be nice while getting our insurance to pay up. Stupid idiots. We have Providence Preferred insurance and delivered at a Providence hospital! How can they not pay that bill??!! I'm a little ticked. I don't need the added stress of all the insurance crap I've had to deal with. I'm glad to have it and have some coverage as some is better than none. But boy am I workin' for what we do get. We got another bill this week for Daniel's shoes. They cost over $800 and our portion is $120. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with medical bills right now. We owe around $3,000 (separate from that 6k bill I just got) and have set up a payment plan to help us manage it. The sad thing is there is more to come I'm sure.

Today we went as a family to the Children's Discovery Museum. Jacob has so much fun there and it was really nice to trade off interacting with him with Brent. Bob the Builder was there and Jacob got to meet him and give him 5. I would say he had the most fun in the water area, since that was all new for him. We were there for only 2 hours but we played hard and then came home for lunch. Both boys crashed and took a nice long naps. This enabled me to have some time to read, take a nap and workout to a DVD.

Tomorrow is expected to be a low-key day, which will be nice.

New tooth

Daniel popped his first little tooth yesterday. The bottom left came through and the bottom right is working on it. At least we know the cause of the constant night waking. I can't believe my little man is getting teeth! He's only 5 months old. Jacob got his first tooth at 7 1/2 months old. I guess I shouldn't compare them, but I can't help it.

Thwarted

I feel like I get thwarted a lot. Or I just have bad luck. I was supposed to get my treadmill on the 5th. It didn't come until the 8th. It was supposed to arrive between 11 and 1 pm. 2:30 rolls around and I call they said I was two deliveries away. It finally came at 5 pm. Then, 30 minutes later, I get a call from Brent that he is going to work late (which means he couldn't set it up). By now I'm pretty bummed. We got it mostly set up on Friday night and discovered it didn't work. I was going to call customer care on Saturday, but with it being our anniversary we were busy all day. I called this morning and they are going to send out a technician sometime in the next week. ::sigh:: I am so anxious to get going! Anyway, here are some pictures you'll enjoy.

In the hallway. The box was so banged up from shipping it was about to pop open. Since it weighs 248 lbs I thought it would be wise to keep Jacob away from it. He was dying to play with it. Poor kid.


- All the parts -




- Brent finishing it up -

I'll post another picture of me on it when it is actually working.

Also, I had to post about Daniel. Last week I went in our room (I thought he was napping) and this is what I found. He was chomping away on his crib making little cute cooing noises, it was so hilarious we took a little video to remember forever. What a cutie!



- Look at this grin! He's so proud of himself. -

Then I thought you would all like to see my cute boys in the matching pj's Grandma Turner gave them. Hilarious. Can you tell we just have so much fun?! (Jacob has been carrying around that screwdriver (from when Brent used it for the treadmill) for several days now).

Happy anniversary to us

We celebrated 5 years of marital bliss today. In honor of the day we attended an endowment session at the temple. We tried to do sealings (as is our tradition) but were thwarted in our efforts as they had only 2 sealing sessions today both at inoportune times. I was sad. I really wanted to do sealings. Anyway, we both enjoyed the session and I'm really glad we went. Then we went out to a nice restaurant for dinner and spent a lot of money and had a nice time. We even got all dressed up. We came home got the kids in bed and then we spent some time together looking at the scrapbook I made of our courtship and then our wedding album. In all I had a nice day and enjoyed reminiscing the past with Brent. We've known eachother for 7 years now, that's a long time.

I love you sweetheart. Thank you for being my husband and wonderful father to our two little boys. I absolutely love being married to you and enjoy all the adventures we have together. I look forward to our future together and raising our family.

Brent gave me some beautiful roses, so we took our picture with them. Yeah, this is us late at night and getting old... cute huh.





My mom and grandparents sent us a card. Thanks mom!

You all know how much I love a good deal

Well.. being the thrifty budgeter I am I normally shop at Winco/Costco. But I know that you can get some really good deals at Albertson's occasionally so I watch their store fliers. This week they were having one of their awesome deals; if you purchased $30 worth of select items you got $15 off your next trip (which I turn around and use immediately) and they were doubling manufactures coupons. So I went to coupons.com and found 5 coupons for some the items that Albertson's was advertising. When all was said and done I spent $36.57 and saved $74.64 !! I'm so proud of myself and even prouder of my well stocked shelves.

Also.. I FINALLY got the phone call letting me know my long awaited treadmil will be arriving at my front door tomorrow between 11 and 1. YAY!!! I have been saving my money and researching what I want for months and Christmas brought on some killer deals that I was able to take advantage of. I bought a Nordic Track T9 ci for only $899 (it's normally $1600). For added motivation, and possibly torture, I also got the Jillian Michael's iFit lose weight workout card package (I'm a really big fan of the Biggest Loser). This is my year. I am SO excited and can hardly wait to get my butt kicked. Brent and I have set a goal to each lose 30 pounds by our birthday (I'm hoping to even exceed that goal). As a reward to ourselves if we accomplish our goal we are going to go on a 3 day cruise to Alaska BY OURSELVES! I think that is something worth working towards. Seriosly, a LOT of thought has gone into this and I'm excited to get going.

Christmas

I thought you would all like to see some pictures from our trip. I didn't take that many (I never do) and when others had their cameras I simply asked that they forward theirs on to me so we don't have a dozen pics of the same thing.

Look how much Jacob has changed

January 2008 (14 months)


June 2008 (19 months)


December 2008 (25 months)


I was thinking about how much Jacob has grown up this year so I decided to go through some pictures and compare them. He has gone from just being able to say "daddy" and "bye bye" in January to a vocabulary of over 100 words today. He has grown into a little boy and I just love watching him play and explore. I look forward to him interacting with Daniel more as Daniel gets older, I think they will be good buds and have loads of fun.

Reflections

Looking back on 2008 has been interesting. So much has happened. I'll bullet some highlights for y'all:

• In February we drove to Utah for vacation time and also found out Daniel was going to have clubfeet
• Survived Jacob getting very sick with the RSV virus
• In March we moved from Portland to Tigard
• I participated in a musical/play
• I tried acupuncture for the first time
• Daniel was born
• We started the process of getting Daniel's feet corrected
• Had a bad car accident which hurt my back pretty bad
• My brother came home from Iraq
• My grandpa Eddington passed away
• We enjoyed Thanksgiving with John and his family
• We were snowed in and had our Christmas flights canceled
• I started making lots of birthday cakes for the kids
• Watched Jacob turn from a baby into a toddler and now a little boy.. all in one year!

Overall it was a good year and my family was blessed in so many ways. As always I look to the new year with hope and excitement. 2009 will be an especially fun year I think as I will be watching both of my boys grow and work on some personal goals for myself.. all while not being pregnant! I have been pregnant every year since 2005 and look forward to giving my body a much needed break.