Catching Up

The past few weeks I've sadly neglected our blog…I feel like we've been overly busy and life has been a bit crazy lately, but my goal for the next few weeks is to slow down and enjoy my beautiful kids and prioritize. I use the blog as a sort of journal/scrapbook so that we can remember milestones/events so here's catching up on the past three weeks:

TY:

Ty's big adventure has been purchasing a kayak. He's decided his new hobby is going to be bay fishing from his kayak and already has his first trip planned in a few weekends down in Galveston with a friend. He found this kayak on Craig's List and pretty much loves it. It's a one seater with a kid's seat, too. Another guy in our house loves it, too: Jake! The night after Ty bought it, he and Jake paddled around our pool for over an hour. Jake refused to get out :) He actually is pretty good at paddling the kayak…he has a child size oar. There are plenty of small lakes in the Woodlands for Ty to take Jake out soon. And mom, I promise he'll wear a life vest!

In addition to his new kayak, Ty has been busy with It's My Heart as well. He's helped line up one of the speakers for the upcoming National IMH Conference in June. The man's name is Paul Cardall and he is a professional piano player from Utah who was born with a single ventricle and recently had a heart transplant. Paul has quite the story to tell and will be speaking and playing at the conference.

AMY:

I stay busy mostly running after Jake and Grace whose new favorite hobby is playing chase with each other so I'm literally running after them :) I'm also really still enjoying BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) every Wednesday morning. We're almost finished with studying John and will do Isaiah in the fall which I'm super excited about! I'm also organizing the pre-school playgroup at church and helping plan VBS for the summer. I found a role at It's My Heart that suits me as well: the newsletter editor. I'm able to use those English teacher skills and help out a good cause :) Last weekend, I got to go to the Women's Retreat at church which was at a church camp in Huntsville. My friend Misty and I went together and had such a nice, relaxing, spiritually uplifting weekend. It was the longest I had ever been away from Grace, but I'm pretty sure it was good for both of us. We both survived!

JAKE:

Jake just loves life in general. His talking his coming along more and more each day. Therapy continues to be a blessing for him. We love Miss Brittnie! He really loves going to Mother's Day Out too and I'm excited that they have a summer program for the month of June. He'll go on Mondays and Wednesdays and get to see his same friends and have a nice, cool place to play since our goal for the summer is to keep him somewhat out of the sun because of his heart. His next heart check-up is on Monday and we'll have a better idea of when his surgery will be. He still gets really sweaty so I'm just not sure if he'll be able to wait until the fall or not. Last weekend he had a little adventure with a scraped knee. He scraped his knee about a week and a half ago, and this past weekend I had gone to the Women's Retreat with our church. Saturday, Ty noticed that his knee was really red and swollen and Jake started crying and saying that it hurt. He went ahead and took him to the ER where they told him it was really infected. They put him on some high powered antibiotics but said to call the cardiologist because of the risk on endocarditis because of his heart issues. Monday, it still looked really bad and he was in quite a bit of pain, but by Tuesday, he was healed! Just a little scare for Mommy and Daddy and one more interesting ER trip to add to the list. Jake's other adventure lately has been potty training…possibly the most frustrating thing a mother has to teach her child. He's doing much better, but we have a ways to go! The Yo Gabba Gabba underwear and stash of Easter candy seems to be his motivation right now.

Jake playing on the bounce house at his cousin Elsie Jane's birthday party (thanks for the picture Aunt Destin!)

GRACE:

Grace is also talking more and more. Just last night we were outside by the pool watching Ty and Jake in the kayak again, and she started jumping up and down in my lap saying, "jump!" over and over again. She'll be so excited when the water gets warm enough to swim. Grace is officially a healthy girl. Her MRI came back just fine so the doctor says she's just a "noisy little girl" with an innocent heart murmur and an innocent venus hum in her head. We already knew she was noisy :) She still loves to play dress up in her tutus but also tends to have a car in each hand as well. She loves to play tools or trains with Jake. She had a bad virus about a week ago and had a fever for 5 days straight. Remember when I said about a month ago that I wish my kids would get normal things like ear infections, well, I didn't really mean it! :) We were all supposed to go to Marshall for the weekend for our niece's birthday and a family crawfish boil, but Gracie and I stayed home while she was so sick and Ty took Jake to Marshall and had a father/son weekend. Some antibiotics got her feeling better and now she's good as new! It takes at least two cups of coffee a morning to keep up with Grace…she's our go-getter!