Eight is Great!

Happiest of Birthdays to my first born!  You are one heck of a kid and I am so lucky to be your mom buddy.  You are so kind and generous, you love to laugh and have a good time and even at 8, you're still a mama's boy and I love it :)

Zane's plan for his birthday was to run a 5k - weirdo.  So, I found one in Seattle and he and I signed up for it.  When I woke up this morning it was POURING and SO windy.  I try not to be a wuss, but man oh man, I had no desire to go out and run in that business.  I was also afraid of tree branching falling/breaking off and hitting us on the course!  Maybe that was my "logical" made up excuse, but it made me feel less guilty about not going.  I asked Zane what he wanted to do and he agreed not to go run.  We decided to make the best of the day and do other fun stuff instead.

He was very excited to wake up to 8 balloons in his room!

Onto opening presents:

He was begging for Red Robin for lunch, so of course we made that happen:

Our service was terrible, so our meal ended up being free AND when they brought out his sundae to sing to him - they also brought out a tower of donuts for the rest of us!  Winning :)

After lunch, we headed over to Arena Sports to do some bouncing...they boys had the whole place to themselves for most of the time there - very cool.  Four bouncies for 2 boys - another win for this birthday boy!

After bouncing, we headed over to XXX for a ginormous Root Beer Float - Zane devoured the entire thing himself and didn't even get a stomach ache...I may have by just watching him though ;)  It was fun trying to guess the amount of carbs in this thing...he ended up with a perfect blood sugar a few hours later; another win for the birthday boy (and for me)!  Landon enjoyed a "kids cone"!

It was so nice having Zane's birthday fall on a weekend this year - we were able to celebrate him the whole day before the craziness of Halloween took over!  It's so hard to separate his birthday from Halloween when school takes up most of the day!  It was a real treat this year!

Words cannot describe my love for this boy.

Maple Bar, Flu Shots & Trick-or-Treating

Landon didn't have school today due to a teacher conference (seriously, still trying to figure out why that's necessary for a 4 year old in preschool, but whatevs).

Anyway - after conferences, I took him to a delicious bakery in North Bend called George's and he decided on a ginormous maple bar - his favorite!

I brought Landon into work with me for the day afterwards and he and I got our flu shots - no pictures, but trust me - it happened!  

We headed home to pick Zane up from school and change into their costumes because it was time to trick-or-treat at my work and for Zane to get his flu shot...he was lucky enough to get a photo of him doing it ;)

Now it was time to trick-or-treat the clinic!

Sick Day for my #1

When Zane was little (started around 6 mos old), he'd get really bad wheezing when he developed a cold.  We spent many days/nights in urgent care and at the doctor trying to get it under control.  He was on multiple inhalers and finally we got our own nebulizer for home - which helped greatly in cutting down our visits to urgent care.  He ended up being diagnosed with "cold-induced" asthma. He would be fine all year until he developed a cold and then it was game on for the asthma.  It sucked.  I was told by his pediatrician that he'd outgrow it by the time he was probably 5.  And I'm happy to say that for the most part he has!  It is VERY rare that he needs his inhalers or nebulizer now and that's great...but because of that...I am not good at keeping up on the rx's for them - oops!

He spent yesterday and today home sick with a pretty bad cold.  This morning he woke up crying and saying he couldn't breathe while he was coughing his brains out.  I knew he could breathe since he was talking, but the doctor described it to me one time as it feels like an elephant is sitting on his chest when that sort of attack happens.  Yuck.  Zane also has a tendency to develop pneumonia very quickly - so once I realized all of his inhalers and the albeuterol for the nebulizer were way past-due, I decided to take him in to get checked out - mainly to make sure there was no pneumonia starting.

Thankfully no pneumonia - but the doctor did say he was very impressed with his wheezing, ha.  He added another medication to the albeuterol in the nebulizer and Zane was not a fan - apparently it tasted horrible.  But he soldiered through.

O2 was down to 90 - that is technically hospital bound numbers...but thankfully
the nebulizer was able to bring it up enough, but not too 100.

LOVE that I get to work from home now when I need to if the kids are sick or whatever!

Gotta get this kid well for his birthday!!

The Wanna-be Photographer

It's not surprise to the few readers I have out there that I love photography and love taking pictures...

In the past couple of years I've had a few select friends ask me to take photos for their Christmas cards...nothing gives me more of a high than getting a card in the mail at the holidays and MY picture I took for them on is on it!  Maybe that sounds conceded, but it's not intended to be...it just means I'm very prideful in my "work" and get so happy to see that others enjoy it too!

Now, I am starting to have people I don't even know asking me to take their families pictures because they saw the ones I did for their friends or whoever...what a cool feeling.

I received a text yesterday from a good friend of mine asking if I could take pictures of her WHOLE family in December when they are all in town for Christmas.  We are talking at least 10 kids, 10 adults and a few dogs!!  I have done her own little family of 4 the last couple of years...so this is a little bigger of an ask than in years past.  Of course I told her I'd be happy and honored to try. Am I nervous?  Hell yeah, but I can't wait at the same time!  I know most of her family very well, so this should be pretty easy; easy as in comfortable for me...but getting 20 people (6 under the age of 7) to look at me at the same time??  That is going to require a lot of wine (after the pictures are done of course)!

Anyway...to try and track my photos that I'm doing for my own sake and to show those who want to see some of my "work" - I've started a separate blog and I wanted to share it with you all if you'd like to follow the bouncing ball along too.  If not, I totally get it...but that's where most of those pictures will show up...not on here so much.  This will be saved for our regular family shenanigans.

Follow the journey here: http://capturingthesmallstuff.blogspot.com

I'd love for you to leave me comments to tell me what you think...but only if you can be nice! Remember I am still learning everyday...

PIG

If you are part of PETA or a vegetarian...you may want to skip past this post!  Josh has been wanting to smoke a pig in his smoker for quite awhile now...that quite of while came to fruition this past weekend.  A few of our neighbors went in on a pig for Josh to smoke...so after about a week of him defrosting in our garage refrigerator...he was ready to be smoked and devoured.

I really thought this whole ordeal would be very traumatizing for the kids...I was wrong.  It was more traumatizing for me!  The kids thought it was great...every last kid in the neighborhood who saw the pig from start to finish was enamored with it.  I on the other hand felt so sorry for this poor Wilbur...but apparently not sorry enough to not eat him...he was delish!

Great job Josh - I know you were nervous about this and researched for hours how to do it just right...you did fabulous!

Per the neighbors...this is now an annual tradition for us...oy.

Fall

Because leaves are cool and endless hours (or minutes) of fun for kids...

Pumpkin Patch

After the train ride we headed over to the pumpkin patch...pretty sure the pictures speak for themselves so I won't bore ya'll with a description :)