Two Week's Worth!

Got a little behind on sharing my Instagram pictures.. These are from the last 2 weeks! 

1. Found this at Sams Club! Who doesn't love Olive Garden's salad dressing!? 

2. Sister was not happy about PT obviously :) 

3. Speech Evaluation. She did really well & she does qualify for therapy. 

4. You can tell from this post I love sleeping babies!! I just love everything about this picture. 

5. Sweet girl

6. OT evaluation (last week) She qualifies for OT 2 days a week! Yes they are hanging her off the side of a bench :) 

7. Another sleepy pic! 

8. AND another! LOVE this one.. 

9. More from her OT evaluation.. she did so well! 

10. Isabella's PT has been coming to the house this week for therapy since we are not taking her out until surgery. Xander was doing PT with his dog!! so sweet! :) 

11. This is what our living room looks like most days! Isabella is only three months old and her toys are already taking over!! Xander better watch out ;)

12. Took the kids for a walk and Xander wanted to push the double stroller toward the end.. it was so cute.. until he crashed!! 

13. I love this silly boy! 

14. Tummy Time Fail! 

15. Xander putting beads on a string. 

16. Life is so hard! ;) 

I hope everyone has a great weekend!! This time next week we will be waiting to see Isabella after her surgery! 

Wordless Wednesday

3 Months!

Happy

Three Month

Birthday

Isabella Faith!

I can not believe you are already three months old!

You weigh 10 lbs

You wear size 0-3 month clothes 

You are taking about 3oz of formula every 2-3 hours

You found your hands!!! (3rd pic) and you are always hitting yourself in the face with them! 

You are sleeping pretty well, I have to get up once a night to feed you a quick bottle

You no longer like to be swaddled

You are so very loved!!!

Surgery is Scheduled!

Isabella's open heart surgery is scheduled for Friday, August 3 and I am kind of freaking out. We have known this day was coming since I was 23 weeks pregnant, but now we have an actual date and time to focus on. She will be having surgery at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock, which is about three hours away from our home. My little sister Annie and my Aunt Barbara are going to come to our house to stay with Xander. I spoke with the nurse yesterday and she gave me a run down about how everything was going to play out.

We will have to be at the heart clinic the day before surgery from 8:30am-4pm. They will draw labs, take x-rays, possibly do another echocardiogram and an EKG. It's going to be a long day for sure. We will go back to our hotel after that and we will need to be back at the hospital at 5:30am on Friday. We will meet the surgeon, Dr.Takeshi Shinkawa, to go over the details of the surgery, we will meet the anesthesiologist, and some of the nurses. They will take her back around 7am and start surgery around 9am. Surgery will take a few hours, and a nurse will come and update us every hour or so. She will be on a heart and lung bypass machine (which takes over the function of her heart and lungs during surgery) so she will have to have a blood transfusion. They typcially use donated blood, but if we want to doante blood they will use ours. Since we are three hours away right now they are going to see if the Red Cross here in town will take my blood this week and have it down there in time to prepare for surgery... praying they can make this happen! She will be in the ICU for a few days and then she will be moved to a step down room. The nurse was so excited to inform me that they are opening their brand new ICU this week, so everything will be new! And they now have beds in the ICU rooms for one parent to stay. I will stay in the room overnight with her and James will go back to the hotel. They will wake her up 24-48 hours after surgery and we will go from there. One of the obstacles babies face after heart surgery is eating. I am not expecting any complications with Isabella taking her bottles. She has been sucking them down without a problem since she was three days old. They told us to expect a 7-14 day hospital stay, but I am praying we are released sooner!

There is an extremely high success rate with this surgery and Isabella's AV Canal is pretty standard. We do not anticipate any complications. We have been praying for Isabella's heart since the day we found out about her AV Canal and "heart day" will be here before we know it! While I am somewhat nervous (this is a MAJOR surgery afterall) I have a sense of calmness and peace knowing that everything will go smoothly. One of my favorite verses throughout my pregnancy was Isaiah 26:3 "You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in You." I am reminded of this verse now and I trust that the Lord is going to heal our baby girl's heart.

Will you please join us in praying for our sweet Isabella? Pray that the Lord guide with wisdom and skill the mind and hands of the surgeon who is doing HIS work. Pray for a successful repair and a smooth recovery.

Also- Will you pray that Isabella stay healthy over the next two weeks. If she gets as much as a runny nose we will have to reschedule surgery. We have decided to "quarantine" ourselves for the next 2 weeks to try and limit Isabella's exposure to germs. I will not be leaving the house with the kids at all which means I am going to have to get VERY creative and find ways to entertain Xander! Please pray for my sanity as well ;)

And for those of you that are interested I put a picture of Isabella's specific heart defect below. You will see there is basically a hole in the middle of the 4 chambers ~ which is what they will be patching during surgery!

Thank you all so much for your support and prayers!!

A Week's Worth...

1. Isabella loves this play mat...I just love her expression in the mirror!

2. Xander has been taking care of his dog like a baby lately. When I am feeding Isabella he feeds his dog. Its actually pretty sweet. He was putting his dog in the swing to sleep since we were about to leave the house. 

3. Xander was singing the National Anthem when the All Star Game was on this week! He loves watching baseball! 

4. Isabella practicing holding her head up at PT.. she is getting much stronger! 

5. Xander's new favorite food is cereal (with milk) I just started adding milk, and he loves it! 

6. We saw a deer on the nature trail during one of our walks. I was so excited to show Xander, he was scared of course! :) 

7. Morning snuggles! 

8. Xander keeping himself busy while Isabella had PT 

9. Sissy was not happy about PT yesterday, we had to cut her session short.  Poor Girl! 

10. Xander had a ball while sister was working out!! He thinks we are at an amusement park every time we take Isabella to PT. 

11. Sweet baby yawns :) 

12. "I see you Mommy!!" 

13. This was our sweet treat last weekend. I love making big batches of cookies and freezing them, you can just pull a few out at a time and not be tempted to eat 20 cookies just because they are there!! 

14. Sweet Girl!

15. Xander practicing his tracing and  pencil grip! He is doing a pretty good job I think! 

16. Sister LOVES to sleep with her head back like this. I am constantly moving her only to find her like this 2 minutes later! 

**Just wondering.. has anyone ever had Instagram pictures printed? I am curious to see what they would look like, or if they would even turn out!

I hope everyone has a fabulous weekend!

Life is Sweet

Jesus loves me! This I know...

For the Bible tells me so...

Little ones to Him belong,

they are weak, but He is strong!!

Yes, Jesus Loves Me!

Yes,  Jesus Loves Me!

Yes, Jesus Loves Me!

For the Bible tells me so...

Isabella's Turquoise & Coral Nursery

I adore Isabella's nursery! I have been meaning to share pictures for a while, and I am finally getting around to it. The inspiration for her room started with the turquoise dresser. I found the dresser on craigslist - already painted- and from there I knew I wanted the color scheme of her room to be turquoise and coral. I hit up pinterest for some ideas and this is how it turned out...

I am obsessed with this dresser. I love the design on the corners and the first row of drawers!

I love the alphabet cards on the wall! I thought they turned out so cute!

The lamp shades match the pillows on the futon. I bought the patterned pillows at home depot - they are actually  outdoor pillows, but they were the perfect colors! A friend from church went and bought extra pillows and used the fabric to cover the existing lamp shades. I love them! She also made blackout curtains - which I still to hang up!

I love the Jenny Lind Crib and changing table! I ordered the crib off of amazon, bedding from Serena & Lily, and I found the changing table at a thrift store for $15 which I painted it the same color as the dresser. The 3 frames are NOT neon, I promise! The lighting in the room makes it look that way in photos. They are just 2 shades darker than the coral on the wall.

My Aunt Barbara painted the cute picture of the cow jumping over the moon and my Mom bought Isabella the cross.

I wanted to have a little futon in here because the kids' room are upstairs in our house and we are down, I wanted somewhere to be able to sleep if I needed to. I have used it a couple of times, and I like that we can all sit together and read books. 

I literally did the whole room, including the painting, in one week while I was 37 weeks pregnant. Talk about procrastination! I love the way it turned out and I think Isabella likes it too! 

A Week's Worth...

A weeks worth of pictures and thoughts...

Here are a few thoughts from this week.. Not necessarily relating to the pictures...

• I am obsessed with spicy buffalo wheat thins
• Isabella is precious and she works so hard during physical therapy she passes out right after! 
• Xander would literally eat all day if I let him.
• Going to the grocery store with two kids is quite the adventure! There is no room in the cart!!
• I am thankful for this great Nation and for the men and women who fight to preserve our freedom.
• Freedom isn't FREE!! 
• My heart breaks to see what divorce does to families and children. 
• I love red nail polish
• I love the way women dressed back in the 50s & 60s 
• I hope we get some good new neighbors!! 
• I really want to paint the TV stand in our living room! I think that will be my next project!

I hope everyone has a blessed weekend!!

Weekend Recap

We had a fun busy weekend that started with a water play date with Hunter. Love these pictures of the boys waiting to come inside! Too cute!!

When James got home from work Friday he and Xander mowed the lawn :) Love these boys!!

Saturday Morning Breakfast!

Of course we had a movie date at home again! Love spending time with my hubby catching up on movies we weren't able to go see in the theater! 

Sunday night we went to Fireworks at the Crosses at the Pinnacle Hills campus of our church. This is the first time Xander has seen fireworks and he loved it!! We met up with our small group so we could all sit together, and we had so much hanging out with friends and letting the kids run around.

Sweet Girl!

The boys bringing us dinner :) Corn dogs and funnel cakes.. YUM!

James & Mike

This picture cracks me up! I don't know if you remember Xander's first haircut when he was 16 months old, but they kept calling Xander "Leon Phelps" who is the main character in "The Ladies Man". I can tell you now that that nickname was perfect for him. At the age of 2.5 Xander is in deed a ladies man!! He loves the ladies!! Every where go he wants to talk to all of the girls.. he doesn't pay any attention to guys, but as soon as a girl is near he immediately starts putting on a show. We did not know the girl in this picture, she happened to be sitting near us and Xander just walked right over there and sat in her lap and shared his pretzels. She was super sweet, and Xander was just eating it up! Ill say it again friends.. I am in trouble!! :)

Xander's buddy Max

Sweet Wyatt!! 

Brooke, Ava, & Xander

Love!!

I hope everyone had a great weekend!