Grandpa Arizona

We are so happy that Grandpa Arizona came up for a visit this last week...we are bummed we only got to see him for two short visits, but it was better than nothing I suppose!  It took Landon a few minutes to warm up each time we saw him, but Zane had no problem showing off for Grandpa the minute we saw him each time!

As usual, kids not cooperating for a photo!!!

Are second visit with Grandpa was tonight before he headed off to the airport and Landon warmed up a lot quicker!  Within minutes they were best buds and laughing and playing like crazy.  We sure do miss Grandpa and hope its not so long before we see him again!

Zane telling Grandpa stories!

Landon giving Grandpa kisses good-bye :(

Zane being silly with his good-bye!

10 Years

Josh and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary 2.5 weeks (August 3) ago - I am late in posting this because I wanted to wait until I had something fun to show you!

There are some days that make the last 10 years seem like they just flew by in a blink of an eye, there are other days that it seems like longer than 10 years.  No matter what happens in my life there is no one else that I want to have it happen with than Josh.  He is the most patient, optimistic, loving, caring person I have ever met.  Is everything perfect?  Of course not.  Does a day ever go by that we don't tell each other we love each other?  Never.  Do we still laugh at/with each other like we did 10 years ago?  Yes, maybe even more.  Do I still love him as much as I did on our wedding day?  More!  Do I still get butterflies in my stomach when I see him?  Almost always.  Are there days that I get so frustrated with him that I just want to scream?  Yes, and I usually do {scream}!  Are there days that he gets so frustrated with me that he just wants to scream?  Yep, but he's usually better at controlling his screaming!  We have conquered so much over the last 10 years and I know there will be more that needs to be conquered.  Life is never dull with us or our perfect {for us} little family we have created.  I thank God everyday for leading Josh and I to each other 15 years ago, I cannot imagine my life with him in it.  I love you babe!

Our anniversary was low key, both of us had to work - I was pretty sure I wouldn't even see him that day since he was still working nights, but I was planning on trying to wait up for him.  Around noon I was just closing down my computer to head out to lunch when Josh walked into my office with flowers (mind you, my boss and her boss and our chief were having a meeting in our office at the time) - I was in shock!  I was so happy and surprised to see him, but I was extremely embarrassed!  Of course the meeting stopped in its tracks and they all started to ask what was up and proceed to make fun of me and embarrass me even more!  It was very nice to see him and have lunch before he had to head to work!

I had only one request for our anniversary and that was to have pictures done of just us!  I'm very good at getting the kids' pictures and family pictures updated every year professionally, but rarely do we ever get any with just the two of us.  I don't think its really necessary to have a ton of pictures of just the two of us now that we have kids that we want to include in all of our pictures, but for this decade of a celebration I thought it was important!  I have decided we will do this every 5-10 years, its fun to look back and compare how we've changed.  I also think it will be a nice keepsake for the boys when they grow up!

Here are a few of my favorites!

For a fun comparison - 10 years later, my how we've changed!

*HUGE thank you to our great friend Joe Peila for using his fabulous photography skills on us!  You are amazing Joe and we owe you big time!!!

Climber

Landon has recently turned into such a little climber - he climbs on everything and gets really frustrated if he isn't able to climb up onto something by himself.  He's a short little guy with short little legs, but he sure can stretch those suckers to get up on to almost anything he wants.  Tonight after playing with the soccer ball, he ran over the play structure and climbed right up the slide like its something he's been doing for years (pretty sure this was his first time).  I have a feeling we will be visiting many emergency rooms with this kid.  He has absolutely no fear.

And of course as soon as I saw him climbing up, instead of stopping him for safety reasons, I snapped pictures instead - such a good mommy I am!

When I asked him to come back down, he turned around and came down backwards just like he does if he's going downstairs...I guess that was a safe way to go, so that was a good choice on his part!

Zane was happy to be at the bottom to catch him!

Soccer Fun

I needed to get some pictures of Zane with his soccer ball tonight for some stuff I'm working on for his birthday party (yes, I realize his birthday isn't until the end of October).  He was busy playing with something else when I came out with the ball and my camera so Landon decided to be cute with the ball for me first.

Who knew that "Air Jordan" played soccer too...gotta love the tongue!!

Ok, Zane is ready to play now!

Its a ride alright...

Most days I feel like this picture represents Zane's diabetes pretty well...sometimes it goes so fast that you close your eyes, you are constantly going up or down and sometimes all around and you never know if you'll make it to the end of the ride at all, let alone safely and unharmed.  The only thing is...Zane is the one riding this roller coaster and all I can do is be the best ride operator possible and make sure it is the smoothest and most fun ride he's going on.  I never want a day to go by that he doesn't have fun, diabetes or not, life should be fun so I refuse to let diabetes get in the way of any of it!

Just a bit of how I'm feeling today.

Ah Nuts

Almost 2 weeks ago Zane was at my work for a doctor's appointment and before we left he spotted some left over carrot cake we had in the clinic from an earlier birthday celebration that day.  Of course he asked if he could have a piece and I of course said yes.  About two bites into the cake he said his tongue "itched", I told him (like an idiot) that tongues don't itch and to keep eating because we had to get going!  We got down to my car and he was still complaining of his tongue "itching", I looked at his tongue and saw nothing odd about it, offered him water and away we went.  He fell asleep when in the car and continued his nap for about an hour or so in the house.  We headed out to run a few errands and I noticed he was itching his stomach a lot, I took a look and voila...hives all over!  I didn't correlate the itching tongue and the hives yet at this point.  Once we got home I applied some hydro cortisone cream and called the consulting nurse to get his Benadryl dose because of course I can't remember and the bottle doesn't tell me!  As I was talking to the nurse I thought I should mention the "itching" tongue and she stopped in her tracks and said that he was having an immediate allergic reaction to whatever he was eating...carrot cake??  Whoops...guess I shouldn't have encouraged him to keep eating that - live and learn.

The next day I spoke with his doctor (so handy having her office next door to mine) - she put in an urgent referral for allergy testing and prescribed 4 Epi-pens for us - oh joy.  She told me to find out the ingredients in the cake and let her see.  I called Safeway and the gal was nice enough to read down the list - I gave the list to the doctor and she was pretty certain it was the walnuts.  Zane is not a big nut eater, he can't stand ANYTHING with peanuts or peanut butter (not even cookies or candy), he doesn't like cashews and won't eat walnuts on their own (in the cake was fine of course), but he does love almonds, so has eaten those quite often.

Fast forward to this past Monday and we went in for his allergy testing.  After talking with the doc for awhile and letting him too read the list of ingredients in the cake we proceeded with a scratch test.  I had no idea what this would be like for Zane, but had heard from friends that its not a fun experience for kids so was preparing for the worst.  He did AWESOME of course :)

They tested him for about 15 different allergies, I honestly don't even know what all of them were, but the ones I do remember are: walnuts, almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, peanuts, dogs, cats, wheat, eggs, carrots, grapes & pollen.

Normally the body doesn't start to "react" to the drops of "allergens" (not sure what you call the oil stuff they use) they put on the skin until they scratch/poke your skin so the oils can seep in a little...Zane immediately started to react to the peanuts, he started turning very red in the spot he dropped the "oil" before he even scratched that area.  The nurse doing the test was even shocked by it.  We waited the 10-15 mins for all of the body to react to as many as it needed to (we were obviously hoping it wouldn't react to many).  Here is what his back looked like at the end of the test:

I circled where the peanuts were.  A huge welt/hive had appeared.  Zane has an 80-90% risk of allergic reaction if he eats or comes into contact with peanuts.  He had a mild skin test reaction to walnuts which may have caused his recent episode. but the doc thinks most likely the cake was cross contaminated with peanuts when it was made.  The doctor said that since he has tolerated almonds in the past that he can continue to eat them as long as he continues to not react.

The most common question/comment we are getting from everyone is: "but he's had peanut butter and stuff with peanuts many times (even though he doesn't like it) and he's never had a problem" - TRUE, but you can develop an allergic reaction to something at anytime in your life.

The good thing is...its not too difficult to cut peanuts out of his diet as he doesn't eat them anyway, yes, we will need to read labels more carefully, but that's doable.

The bad thing is (and we learned this the hard way)...he is even allergic to peanuts if he is touches something containing peanuts (we think).  Landon had a peanut butter sandwich and about 20 mins later Zane broke out into hives - we are pretty sure it was because Landon probably touched Zane and had some peanut butter on his hands.  We aren't positive if Zane is this sensitive to it, but we are definitely taking precautions just in case.

I am not ready to eliminate peanut butter from my house yet, but we do ask this: anyone who decides to eat anything with peanuts or peanut butter when around Zane; PLEASE wash your hands with soap thoroughly after eating and before touching anything especially before touching Zane.  If you plan on giving Zane a kiss on the cheek or head or anywhere, please make sure you brush your teeth very well before doing so.

In addition to all of the diabetes supplies we carry around with us anytime we leave the house, we now carry Benadryl and an Epi-Pen - I think I'll be carrying a diaper bag until my kids are away at college I swear!!!

The joy of being a parent just never continues :)

A Hoot of a Baby Shower!

  My really good friend Brenda had her 3rd baby on July 12th and because I am a firm believer that every baby deserves a proper celebration no matter if it is your 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 5th baby I threw her a "Meet and Greet" shower last weekend! 
   Brenda has a very strong will power and has not found out the gender of any of her children, so I wasn't able to really start putting my ideas to paper until she actually had her baby - which meant I only had a month to pull this thing off!  I had a theme picked out for each gender and a million ideas for each theme floating around in my head, in a file folder and on Pinterest! 
   Once little Berkley Rae was born on July 12th it was full speed ahead for "Operation Owl Baby Shower"!!   I picked this theme based soley on the fact I find little pink owls adorable - but once the shower was all set up I learned Brenda had decided on an owl theme for Berkley's nursery too - so it worked out perfectly!

I am very proud of how this shower turned out - I love throwing parties, creating and crafting for them, but as usual I bit off more than I could almost handle.  It was down to the wire to get this thing pulled together, but I'm proud to say that everything that I wanted to do, I did and I think it turned out great (yes, I'm tooting my own horn)!

 I created this invite on Photoshop and just printed them myself...

Guests were greeted with an adorable owl when they arrived...

As well as with some hand sanitizer so they were ready to hold little Berkley!

The Food Tables...

 Guests were able to fill out cute little "wish cards" I made as well as sign the guest book.

Brenda took pictures of her belly throughout her pregnancy and unknowingly to her, I kept copies of the ones she posted on her blog - each page of the book has one belly pic on it and at the end its a picture of her holding Berkley in the hospital!  Guests could sign anywhere in the book - I was sure to leave a lot of open space.  She really liked it thankfully!!

I saw this idea on Pinterest and knew that I just had to do it!  I was a little worried about how it would turn out, but thankfully once everyone got the hang of it, it turned out perfect!  I supplied onesies and fabric squares with iron transfer that I had ironed on earlier in the week on the back and an array of stencils (I just cut different shapes out on my Cricut).  Guests picked their onesie, picked their fabric of choice and stencil (or free handed if they wanted to) and away they went!

Once they were done, they hung them on a clothes line out back so we could admire everyone's work - I think they turned out PERFECT!

I found this cute little chair at a consignment shop and Josh gave it a little...ok...A LOT of TLC and it turned out great!  I put Berkley's name on it and hopefully its a treasure she and her dolls can enjoy for many years!  Thank you Josh for all of your hard work sanding and painting this beauty - its perfect.

Berkley was having a bit of a rough day yesterday, but its her party so she can cry if she wants to!  I think deep down she enjoyed herself though!!

I still have my touch :)

And lastly, guests got to take home some homemade owl cookies.  I have to say I will probably NEVER attempt this detailed of a cookie again - they took me 3 days to do and my kitchen was a disaster for all 3 of those days and I still don't think they turned out half as cute as they should've.  Oh well - better than nothing I guess!!!

Berkley, so happy to have you in our lives little lady and I hope that you know how much you are loved.  Brenda, thank you for letting me throw you this shower, I had so much fun putting it together and am so glad that you enjoyed it!  Thanks for always being such a wonderful friend.