Baby Ryder turns 1!

I can't believe my new nephew has already turned 1!!  I'm so excited for him, his parents and my kids who love their baby cousin.

A Cooper's Hawk

April 2011, Maylee convinced her dad and I that we should get chickens as pets. We were down at Grandpa Buckle's house and he always had chickens in his backyard. The girls LOVED playing in the backyard with the chickens. Darren and I talked about it and I start researching chicken coops. Well non of the coops were exactly what I wanted,and having the handy husband that I do, I decided to design it and let him build it. He LOVES me, he really does. We brought home our new pets in June 2011!! Living in the house with 3 small girls our life pretty much revolves around Disney Princesses, so all 4 of the hens were named after one: Mulan (dark/black), Cinderella (buff/brown), Pocahontas (buff/brown) and Kiara (light/white).

Well back in February, I went out in the morning to let the chickens out of the coop and into the yard, but noticed there were only 2 (Pocahontas died of the heat back last August). I started looking around and found a chicken behind the coop, something had gotten to her. I rushed off to do my school drop off run and was going to clean it up later. I got home and was getting the babies settled in before I went outside when I noticed a feather butt in the air that did NOT belong to our chickens!! I ran outside and found a hawk behind the coop!! Well him and I did a stare down and we were both unhappy!!

I got him shoo'd off and got Mulan cleaned up, put the other chickens back into the coop and let my neighbors with small animals know that there was a hawk in the 'hood. I called Kansas Wildlife and Parks to see what options we had to get rid of him as he was perching all over our yard waiting for his next meal, we since we live in town our only option was to wait it out and keep our other chickens cooped until he found another place to hunt for food. Finally, after 2.5 weeks we were able to let the chickens out in the yard again and they have forever been grateful since!!

So much has happened....

And I know that is a totally lame excuse for not keeping up the blog. I have a lot of blogging to do if I am going to meet my goal of 52 blog posts by the end of the year!! I cant believe that school is almost out and summer is almost here. I am in the process of planning for our summer and how we are going to have a great summer on a greatly limited budget, but I know we can do it, we always do!! I thing I have been trying to do (if your on Facebook you already know) is ride my bike more, hopefully I can keep it up too. We will see. I know this is short and sweet, but I am going to go ahead and post it and work on another blog post that will have more guts to it and let you know what is going on in the Pousson Abode!!

Recovering from the Plague

Maylee was released from the hospital on Wednesday morning, February 15th, the doctor told her she could go to school starting Thursday. Well unfortunately she didn't have school on Thursday or Friday due to parent teacher conferences. So instead, on Friday I took all of the girls and one of our friends boys to the school to play. I walked and pushed Albany and Rori in the stroller, Maylee and Dominic road their bikes and we enjoyed the awesome weather and NOT being sick. Except for the fact that Dominic joined us because his brother and one sister were sick and the other sister wasn't home. We do a lot of things with Dominic's family (they were the family that we went skiing with and shared a condo with back in November) so he is used to playing with my girls and I think he enjoyed himself!!

Plague...

On February 6 I came down with what I thought was the plague. It was the flu like I had never had before. All day Tuesday I laid in bed with the TV remote (gasp, no computer or iPad) and restarted Rio anytime it was over (the remote reaches from my bed to the DVD player). Poor Rori didn't want to watch Rio for days afterwards. I even had to call Darren home from work as Albany, at the ripe old age of 4, was the baby sitter came in telling me she got a stool to wet a rag and wiped Rori's (who is 1 lb smaller then Albany) hands, face, and nose.

Just as I was recovering from it, Rori got it. We were semi prepared for her and called the pediatrician immediately for Zofran. Once we got the Zofran in her she slept through the night and was fine. I then had time to totally disinfect our house and bleach, Lysol and wash anything and EVERYTHING in our way. Obviously I was to late, but I tried. Sunday night following Darren got sick like no ones business. He slept downstairs so Albany wanted to sleep with me which was fine, but she kept telling me her tummy hurt. SOOOOO..... I slept with a bucket on my bedside table. Of course not long after she woke up telling me she needed the bucket. After I got her comfortable I called the 24 hour pharmacy to get her dosage of Zofran. After she got that she was able to sleep and only missed dance for that week. Well we thought we were going to be done with it, but Monday night as I was taking Maylee to gymnastics she said she was going to be sick.

So I turned around and took her home; but Albany who hadn't eaten in two days wanted chicken nuggets, so I dropped Maylee at home and ran to McDonald's for Albany. By the time I got home at 6:15 pm Maylee had a dose of Zofran, by 6:30 the Zofran wasnt working. She got so dehydrated by 7:15 that we made the decision that she needed to go to the ER. We were at the ER by 7:40, were in an ER room by 8:30, on an IV by 9:15, second dose of Zofran by 9:30, through the first bag of fluid by 10:15, started on a second bag of fluid by 11:00, the decision to admit her to the pediatric unit by midnight, and in a pediatric unit room by 2:30 am. Fabulous Uncle Adam stayed the night with her as I had to get the little girls around in the morning (Uncle Adam didn't know how to do long static hair) and Darren didn't have anytime off work. I was in and out of the hospital dealing with little girls stuff and normal mommy things till about noon. By noon I had me and the little girls ready to camp out till Maylee was released. At 3 pm the nurse came in and said Maylee had to stay another night as she was not eating and drinking enough to sustain her without IV fluids. I called my parents and they came up to help with the little girls and Darren and I both stayed the second night in the hospital with Maylee. That night the nurse came in and brought Maylee the most amazing blanket gift. There is a group of women (piecedthings.blogspot.com) her in Lawrence that strive to give EVERY child who is admitted to the Lawrence Memorial Hospital Pediatric Unit a quilt for their stay.



(sorry about the quality its an iPad photo!)

The next morning the doctor came in and released her immediately. We were able to be home by 10:30 am Wednesday. Unfortunately Maylee didn't have school on Thursday or Friday, so she was READY to go back this past Monday. Thankfully our week was pretty usual and no big surprises, but I of course have been trying to play catch up.

All of this to say, I am sorry it has been so long since my last blog post. Check back soon though cause I am back in the saddle!!

7 Year Anniversary

Yesterday marked 7 years of marriage for Darren and I. Had I been asked 7.5 years ago where I would be now, I would not have said married for 7 years with 3 kids. But alas we have been married for 7 years and have 3 girls and many other things that we have successfully done... together! Looking back I will say that the last 5 years have been relatively easy compared to the first 2, in fact they have been what most people would call normal.

In our first two years, well really the first 18 months we got married, Darren changed jobs, had a baby, Darren was diagnosed with Lymphoma, I went back to work after having a baby, I changed jobs, Maylee turned 1 AND Darren got his remission, we bought a house and we sold a house!!

Like I said the last 5 years have been less of a roller coaster and more 'normal' for people our age, had a couple more kids, sent one off to all day school, have a second in preschool, still in the same house, sold the little compact car and bought a minivan, I quit working and started staying home. In fact, the last 5 years have gone bye a whole lot faster then the first 2 did, but somehow I feel like I have less to show for it. I guess I dont have a good way to measure time.

I am so very thankful for everything Darren is and everything he has ever done for me and our family. I don't know where I would be without him by my side everday. He is the most amazing father to our girls and the most dedicated husband I know.

Last night we had an in house date, Darren grilled steaks and twice baked potatoes. We fed the girls chicken rings, mac and cheese and bananas before our food was done. It was a lazy day where the girls didnt even get dressed, but it was a FABULOUS day!!





To add to the day, Maylee found some left over red heart magnets from Albany's Wizard of Oz birthday party last year and wrote on them for us!!



This one says: It is mom and dad anniversary



This one: rori and albany + maylee all love you

I do love the sweet, wonderful, caring girl that Maylee is becoming!!

KC Boat and Sport Show

Today we packed up the family to go to the KC Boat and Sport Show. Ross was very kind and gave us two free tickets that he had received. We ended up splitting them with Reece and Missy. We had a great time and spent some quality time together with Reece, Missy and Ryder!!






And then it was time to head home!

Without a morning nap...

I was going through some pictures and forgot that I had taken these. This is what happens when you play hard all morning and try to keep up with your older sisters....

THE Fingers... (yes they have a name)

Since Albany was a newborn, she has consistantly and constantly sucked her fingers. The pointer and middle finger on her right hand to be exact!





She first came to the conclusion, during the first of many attempts to make her stop, that if she covered her eyes then we wouldn't be able to see what she is doing.



The covering of the eyes didn't work the way she wanted so she moved onto the idea that if she covered her fingers then we wouldn't know they were in her mouth. Obviously this idea would work much better if a) I wasn't smarter then that and b) she was only ever seen from the left side instead of the possible right side.



So a week ago, I decided that I had had enough. Maylee was going to get a tooth pulled that had been hanging on by a thread. It really needed to come out as her adult tooth had come up behind it a couple of months ago. Rori was going to stop sucking her bink at all. That was easy on me as all I did was take all of the binks that I knew of and put them in a baggie, then into a drawer to never be seen again. Albany was GOING to let go of the fingers. That was going to be a task!

We had tried everything we could think of to at least have her give them up a little. She could have them only in bed, we would take her to the store to pick out ANYTHING she wanted, flick her cheek every time we caught her. Finally I decided that negative punishment whenever we caught her with her fingers in her mouth, along with a positive reward when she stopped sucking them, aka pierced ears, was going to be how we broke her. So on Sunday she got her reward!!

Family Photos Minus Mom

Yesterday we took all 3 of the girls back up to Potter Lake at KU to get a few more photos. I am wanting to redo the gallery wall in our living room and update the photos. My goal was to get a good photo of Maylee, Rori and some photos of the girls together plus a good group shot of all 3 for the main photo on the wall. Maylee has proven to be quite the challenge to photograph as she won't do a real smile, but I have plenty with her mouth just hanging open. I think between the two shoots I found enough pictures that will work. But here are some more pictures of the girls. Of course all of the pictures are minus mom as I was the run doing the pictures and camera! If anyone would like prints of the pictures either email me or leave a comment of which ones and your email and I will send you the large digital copy for you to send to your photo printer.

Sweet Albany turns 4!!

Well the first post is going up. My goal is to update at least once a week. Mainly with pictures as I am not a fabulous writer, but we will see how things work out.

Our sweet, smart, sassy, pink flamingo loving Albany turned 4 yesterday. I can't believe she is that old, of course since she is so little (part of what makes her, her) I have to tell everyone that she is not 2 nor is she 3 anymore, but a big whopping 4!!

I took Albany and big sister Maylee upto The Hill this past weekend to take some pictures for her 4th Birthday, Rori didn't join us as she was busy napping at home while Daddy marked projects off his todo list.

Yesterday afternoon was a bit of a busy day. Maylee had school and gymnastics from 5 to 6 plus we still had to fit in dinner and cake and ice cream. So we went ahead and let Albany open her presents in the afternoon so she would have time to play with them.

While Maylee and Daddy were gone to gymnastics Shelby and I spent an hour setting up a marble run out of Albany's new toys. Lets just say Rori didn't quite understand why she could use the unstable plastic pieces to pull up her 24 pound self....

We finally ate the meal of choice for Albany: french fries, corndogs, chicken fingers, peanut butter and jelly, pink yogurt and Hawiian punch. After dinner we had pink cupcakes with pink frosting and pink sprinkles, pink sherbet, on pink plates with pink napkins!! And of course sung her HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!