Swimming

I always forget to bring the camera to the pool. Now it doesn't matter as my razr takes photos that are usually as good as our camera. I have two cell phones now, one personal one and one for work. Betsy says I look like a drug dealer carrying two cell phones :) I LOVE my new smartphone!!! It is amazing!!! I can access both my email accounts from anywhere, keep track of my schedule, and even create spreadsheets to keep track of babysitting hours. It also means I can work anywhere. And I do. On the way to the pool tonight I spent the whole drive (Rob was driving) sending texts and emails and stuff for work. I feel like a workaholic!

Anyway, enough about me. We went swimming tonight because we won't be able to make it this weekend due to my romantic date with Rob on Friday morning at the surgical center. At least I can't complain that he never takes me anywhere expensive :) As always, we had a wonderful time swimming! Laura fell asleep in the car on the way there, so I got to do laps before she woke up. Last time I managed 12 laps (about 600 ft). This time I did 20 laps (about 1000 ft or 1/10 mile) :) Yay for feeling better! I hope it keeps up and they don't find anything chronic Tuesday at the MRI or Friday.

Beth practiced jumping into the deep end last week. It really scares her. This week we only had her jump in twice. Jack practiced swimming without any floaties this time! He jumped off the diving board and swan to the side multiple times, swam from one side of the deep end to the other several times, and jumped off the diving board then swam about 2/3 of the way across the pool!

Eva and Beth -

Meg and Kylie -

Kylie and Jack -

Kylie, Megan, Beth, and Jack - 

Beth and Laura (she had a swim diaper on, but Eva stole her bathing suit as Eva likes Laura's better than her own and Laura really couldn't care less) - 

Beth, Laura, Kylie, Jack, Eva, and Megan - 

Rob - 

Thank you so much Jojo (and Dan) for letting us borrow your pool all the time! Jojo wasn't home tonight, but Dan was there. Jack remarked "Oh, the Jojo's are home" when he saw Dan through the window :)

Quick Update

Well I no longer think we used to be busy. Life is crazy now. It's amazing to me how working just a few client hours a week can take up so much freaking time!

I have clients now. My very own :) Just a few. I haven't actually met them yet, but we have our first sessions set up for this week. I have five hours of direct client contact set up for this week, but, of course, none of it is anywhere close in time to the rest of it. I have to be at my office for 4 blocks of time and none of them are closer than 8 hours apart. And my office is 35 minutes away without traffic. Not fantastic planning I suppose, although much of it is based off of what times the clients are available. It will be an adjustment. Plus, at least for right now, I'm finding that for every client hour, I spend about two to three hours doing research and planning and other stuff. Hitting my minimum of ten hours a week is not difficult.

We've also been reevaluating the two of us working. The original plan was for Rob to quit as soon as my income could replace his (a few years down the road). That plan is now shot to heck because with my heart condition, no private insurance on the face of the planet will ever cover me. On the plus side, at least I developed this now, rather than several years from now when we were trying to get private insurance!

It has also just hit us that with my internships starting, we are now a family that has both parents working. I recognize this may make us seem a bit dim, but I don't think the idea that this would be the case really crossed our minds. It made me a bit upset. It's always been really important to us to have one parent home. Then we talked about it and realized that we have always had to have two sources of income. Either we've both had jobs, or one of us has been in school and has received grants or loans to help with expenses, or Rob has had two jobs. So this isn't new. Plus we really feel like this field is where I am supposed to be.

My dream job is a stay-at-home-mom. I can't imagine anything more wonderful than getting to be a mom and raise my kids. I know this is all spiritual and personal and stuff, but we feel like being a therapist is what I was meant to do with my life. As if God said that He knew how much I wanted to be a mom, so He let me have six amazing children (and we were told multiple times that we would never be able to have children) and have over a decade of getting to focus on just being a mom. Now it is time for me to pay Him back for the amazing experiences He has allowed me to have by helping His children who are lost and need someone to help them find their way back. I'm not saying back to Him in a religious sense, I mean back to peace and happiness in whatever way that client decides is best for him or her. I feel so amazed that He is allowing me to go along for this ride. I sit in sessions and work with clients and feel like I am getting to be a spectator to the incredible process through which clients heal and find happiness.

Anyway, I know this has rambled a bit. I just wanted to get it down for me to read later :) Jack has a check up this afternoon (just a yearly physical), then I have a million things to do to get ready for my client tomorrow. Jack and I are going to turn his appointment into a mommy date. He'll go shopping with me for my office stuff and then I will take him to dinner. I got to do the same type of thing with Megan last week. She had her yearly check up, then we went out to dinner together. I love one-on-one time! It is nice having a nanny so that I can do more of that with each of the kids. Hopefully things get less crazy as we adjust to this and figure out how to get things to work in the best way possible :)

Another Specialist Visit

I got to visit a gastroenterologist today. I'm getting to see so many fun doctors this year! After examining the test results from the ER two weeks ago, he decided he needs to do a biopsy of my large intestine, which is done through a colonoscopy. Yay. He hopes it was just a random infection, perhaps somehow related to food poisoning or something. No one else in our family got sick though and I hadn't recently eaten at a restaurant or anywhere that my food wouldn't have been the same thing everyone else ate. He said it was a pretty significant bleed. Anyway, I get to go have that procedure done next Friday. We scheduled it on a Friday so Rob would be home for the next few days just in case I don't feel fantastic. He has to be there with me as they sedate you and the doctor said driving after sedation is not the best idea ;)

He also checked out the lesion on my liver they found in the CT scan at the ER. He says he thinks it's a hemangioma, which is benign, but he wasn't sure based on the images he had. So I get to have an MRI within the next week too. I feel like that meme that is floating around pinterest and facebook that says "buy ALL the things!" or whatever, except in my case it's "do ALL the tests!!!"

Other than that, life has been super busy. My practicum officially started last week, along with the class that goes along with it (mostly peer support and educational supervision). I had my first official client call and got to do a phone interview intake with her, which was awesome :) Figuring out my schedule and developing a client base is one of the more stressful things I've dealt with, but it's exciting to finally be able to work as a therapist! 

The kids are enjoying summer. It's been raining all week, which I've loved. It cleared up today for a while, so we picked up KFC for lunch and had a picnic at the playground with Ashley. The older girls have set up a "preteen club", which the younger ones aren't a part of, so the younger ones made their own club. Eva is the cutest two year old ever and has reached a stage where she repeats everything other people say, so the older kids will respond to some question and Eva will repeat their response as if we asked her. It sounds so funny to have mature phrases come out of her little mouth! Laura now has three teeth and spends as much time as she can with Megan. 

We try to go swimming once a week, although the weather hasn't been horribly co-operative this summer. Beth went off the diving board for the first time ever last Friday! I think the pool is Rob's favorite place now :) We are keeping busy, but looking forward to Rob's birthday, then Megan's, then Jack's, followed by our anniversary. Somehow in all that, I need to fit all my practicum hours. Life stays interesting :)

The 4th of July

Usually we do lots of fun things for the 4th. Due to what was going on with me, we didn't do pretty much any of them. We had Kiki and Dan (Rob's best friend) over for dinner on Wednesday, or rather Rob and the kids had them over for dinner and Kiki made all the sides and I slept and didn't eat as I can only eat things like applesauce and bananas at this point. I did get to spend some time talking with everyone towards the end of the evening, which was a lot of fun.

Jojo brought sloppy joes over for dinner on Wednesday, but since Kiki and Dan came over with the other food, we saved Jojo's food for Thursday. All we did Thursday was heat up the sloppy joes for dinner (thank you Jojo!!!) and let the kids watch fireworks on the tv. We did manage to get our cake baked. Every year we make a cake and decorate it with whipped cream and red and blue fruit. We used to decorate the whole cake, but the kids always have different plans regarding the decorations, so we've started dividing it up and letting each of the decorate their own part.

I decorated Laura's for her :)

Laura had three servings of blueberries and only ate a few bits of cake.

We didn't even do our annual family photos in flag shirts. We'll have to get to those this weekend :)

10 Months Old!!!

I missed the 9 month mark and don't even have any pictures of Laura from that time period. It was the last week of school for the four older kids and it was a rough week for me and they just didn't happen. We got 10 month pictures though!

Laura got her first tooth the day she turned 9 months old. She got her second tooth last week. It figures that the child that would take the longest teething is the one I'd have to wean early . . . :) She's been standing on her own for over a month. She walks as long as someone holds on to at least one of her hands. She could definitely walk on her own, but she hasn't figured that out yet. She shoots up the slide in our playroom at lightning speed and has figured out how to slide back down again on her tummy. She pretends to talk on cell phones and cracks us up with her fake laughs. She has figured out how to climb up things (like the chairs in the kitchen and the rungs on the play structure in the playroom), but hasn't figured out how to get down again. She excels at sneaking away from whoever is watching her and climbing up the stairs when the gate isn't up. We used to us a wagon to block off the bottom of the stairs, but she figured out how to get past it.

She has the cutest smile and the most beautiful dark brown eyes. Her hair is the lightest of any of the kids and has a definite red tint. Her favorite person is Megan, with Mommy coming in a close second. She has started reaching for Daddy and Kylie too now :) She loves playing with each of her siblings. Her very favorite thing is the roku remote, but any remote is awesome. Cell phones and pencils are also on her list of favorites. Her favorite foods are blueberries, avocados, and bananas. If we put her in her high chair at dinner and start setting down the other kids' plates, she screams bloody murder until she gets some of whatever is on their plates. She may be the sixth child, but she will never be overlooked :) Her very favorite song is "the Reason" by Hoobastank, although she loves pretty much any music.

She is an amazing little girl and we are so glad we have her as part of our family!

She kept trying to crawl into my lap, so I gave her the remotes to play with.

Seriously Mom? Haven't you taken enough pictures? (Yes, she is standing on her own.)

Yesterday

Once a month Jojo and I meet for lunch. This past weekend a cold front blew through Texas, so it was beautiful weather for playing outside (87* and beautiful blue skies). We met at a park and brought a picnic lunch for the kids. The sandbox had just gotten a load of sand delivered and all five of the older kids were drawn to the gigantic pile of sand like a magnet. They spent almost the whole time making a "tunnel village" in the sand pile. I forgot to put sunblock on them when we got there, but within minutes they had very intelligently acquired a thick covering of sand over every exposed surface of their bodies, so none of them burned :)

I started feeling warning signs that my heart was about to go all wonky, so we headed for the car. The kids are so good at helping to take care of me that I didn't hear a single complaint about having to leave :) Within about two minutes of starting for home, it became apparent to me that I wouldn't make it. Fortunately we were only a minute or two from Kiki's house, so we headed there.

Bless Kiki's heart (in the good way, not the veiled insult way :) ), I pulled into the driveway and made it into her house and she took over, even though she had no warning that we were coming over. She got all six kids out of the car and gave them quick showers to wash off the protective sand layer, then even washed their clothes. The kids were thrilled to get to hang out at Kiki's house; it was just as good as the playground :) They each got one of Kiki's t-shirts to wear while their clothes were being washed (one benefit of running lots of marathons and races is that you have enough t-shirts to cover your nieces and nephew when they drop by unexpectedly covered in sand) and Kiki rented a movie for them. She keeps a cabinet full of toys and activities for them too. Kiki's house is one of their favorite places :)

This time my "episode" was different. It was much, much more painful, but the pain was different. It was abdominal pain and it was some of the worst pain I've had in my life and I've had gall stones and kidney stones and delivered six children. A few hours later I was able to function well enough to come out and see what was going on. Rob left work and drove to Kiki's and we headed home. Within an hour of being home, it was pretty obvious that something out of the ordinary was going on. Kiki came over and we headed to the ER. Ashley came over to help with the kids too as we didn't know how long it would take.

Morphine is good :) They did an abdominal CT scan and discovered intestinal bleeding caused by colitis. About six hours later they let us go home with two different antibiotics and vicodin for the pain. I have a follow up appointment with a gastroenterologist in two weeks. While reading the CT scan, they also noticed a lesion on my liver, so I get to go have a MRI to check that out. Both issues are possible side effects of heart failure and since I've never had problems with either, I'm betting it's related to that. I'm still pretty drugged out, but I wanted to get this down so I can keep track of what's happening. I will update when I know more.

A HUGE thank you to Kiki for all her help and to Ashley for her help! And one to Laura for her medical advice (she made me go to the ER and stayed up really late waiting to see if I was ok and to make sure she was there to answer medical questions) and to the few friends who knew what was going on and kept us in their thoughts and prayers :)

June in a Nutshell

I haven't felt great most of the time, so I haven't posted much within the past month. I decided I need to catch up :)

Father's Day we took it easy. I was down for the count most of the day, but we made sure to give Rob a long nap in the afternoon. Instead of breakfast in bed, he got dinner in bed. He requested toasted sandwiches for dinner. The kids each made him a card (I don't remember why Jack was pouting in the picture) and they all sung him a song when they delivered the cards and dinner to him, ending it by piling on top of him to give him kisses :)

For dessert, we got Rob his very own coconut chess pie (made even better in his opinion by finding it in the discount section of the bakery) that he got to eat from the inside out.

Happy Father's Day Rob!!! You are an amazing dad and husband and we are so glad we have you!!!

I didn't get any pictures of this, but a few weeks ago Rob won tickets to Hawaiian Falls, a water park near our house. We decided Laura and Eva wouldn't enjoy it much, so we got a babysitter for them and took the four older kids. We had a wonderful time, but were very glad we had won the tickets instead of paying for them. The older kids went down a grand total of two full sized water slides and the younger kids didn't go down any. They loved the little water slides and the wave pool, so we spent most of our time in those. The kids have wanted to go there since it was built a few years ago, so being able to hang out there was definitely one of the highlights of the summer so far!

We had a wonderful visit with one of Rob's best friends from high school, Damien, and his wife, Rhea, and their daughter, Jia. Damien's job brings him to our area every few months and Rhea and Jia always come with him, so we've gotten to see them several times over the past year. We love getting to spend time with them! They are some of the kids' favorite guests :) The kids even call Rhea "Tita", which means aunt in Tagalog (Rhea is Filipino). We got some extra time with Rhea and Jia when they came over to play with us during the day while Damien was at work. 

Allison came to visit too :) We went out to dinner at PF Changs, then went shopping for work clothes for me (and an outfit for each of the kids) and a giant cow pillow for her, then wrapped things up with drinks at Sonic. It was sort of a belated birthday celebration for me as she wasn't up here for my birthday. We had a wonderful night! She needs to move back up here so I see her more often.

 Megan modeling the shirt/dress outfit we picked for her -

Other than that, we've pretty much take it easy. We've been to Miss Jojo's pool twice so far this summer, which I guess isn't bad for three weeks of summer. We've had a lot of storms here, although we haven't gotten much rain. Thunderstorms tend to put a damper on our ability to go swimming. I was feeling bad about the kids missing out on fun things because I haven't been feeling well, but I think we've managed to do more than I thought we had :)

I think I'm starting to adjust to my meds. I actually felt normal (which was weird) on Thursday, felt pretty good on Friday, and felt good most of Saturday. We got a babysitter at the last minute Friday night and Rob and I went out for dinner (Korean food from a hole-in-the-wall cafe), then just drove around for a while. It was really nice :) Saturday I got up early and crawled into bed with Kylie, Megan, and Eva (who camped out together the night before) and read to them for a while. Later that morning Rob and I took Eva and Laura and did grocery shopping for the week, then I took a quick nap and we headed over to Jojo's to hang out with her and swim. We finished up the evening by picking up pizzas on the way home. The kids had all earned free pizzas through school and their coupons expired on Sunday, so we had to use them up :) I felt horrid Saturday night and all day Sunday (and still don't feel great today), but I had almost three normal-ish days, which is more than I've had in a long time, so we were excited!

And I have to add that Rob and I have been doing some light couponing. Pretty much just loading online coupons to our Kroger card and shopping sales when possible. We eat mostly organic and all natural and most of our food is fresh, plus we buy our meat and eggs from a local farm, so there aren't a whole lot of things we can use coupons for. We managed to save 20% off our groceries this week, plus we had coupons that doubled our fuel points, so we ended up paying $2.08 for gas, saving us about $27 on gas alone (we filled up both cars)! Yay for us!

Some random pictures from this month . . .

Eva enjoying her cereal -

Megan, Kylie, and Beth really, really, really like an Australian show called H2O about girls who turn into mermaids when they are touched by water. Rob caught them cuddled up together as they watched it - 

We had to take a picture of Kylie's invention, called the "AK Ultimate". Kylie did a super serious pose for me. It shoots fire, water, earth, and hot lava. Kylie informed me that it was made by three inventions. First it was Beth's, then Jack's, then Kylie's.

The official start of my internship is getting super close! I got my work phone last week. I needed one with a local number and one that was separate from my personal number. We decided to get a smartphone so I would be able to access my work email through it. Up until now, we've only had basic cell phones - we don't even have internet on our phones. Can I just say that smartphones are super cool??? :) I can scan documents with my phone! And deposit checks! And order pizza online! And pinpoint my exact location on google maps! We're having lots of fun with it :)

After discovering what my new phone number would be (I still have my other number as well, this is just for work), I got my business cards printed up :) Rob and I designed them online. I think they turned out really well! I know it was official before, but to me, getting the cards made it real :) Oh, and by the way, I managed to get an A in my last class, so I have a 4.0 going into my internships!

We managed to fit haircuts into our Saturday schedule before I crashed. As a joke, we gave Jack a mohawk. He liked everyone's reactions to it so much that we kept it :) Notice his super cool shirt - Angry Birds + Star Wars = best shirt ever :)

And I snapped a photo of Laura's first time riding in the car cart at the grocery store on Saturday morning. No, Eva's not choking her (survival of the fittest, right?), she's trying to make her look at the camera :) I can't believe she'll be 10 months old tomorrow! I missed getting 9 month pictures of her. I need to get 10 month ones and give an update on her (her 2nd tooth broke through yesterday!).