Placed his first chest tube this week and has had some other new experiences during his trauma time. He's super tired. We were planning on leaving for Utah on Saturday but he thought he might get home a little bit earlier than usual and so we wanted to hang around one more day to get some time with him. He made it home around 3:30 and we spent an afternoon at the zoo and ate dinner by the elephants. He loves being with his boys any chance he gets.
Maddie:
had my sister in town this week! She flew in on Thursday and followed us on our drive to Utah to take our truck home. We are happy that sweet little blue truck is staying with family. I spent a couple mornings this week just cooking, we have visitors right after Utah so I wanted a stocked freezer. I finished a book this week, The Happiness Project, and enjoyed some takeaways from that. Owning your own happiness does so much for the people in your life and for yourself. Pi Day was my favorite day of the week, which Michael had off for his weekday break. We got Blaze pizzas for dinner (all pizzas $3.14 that day!) then Haagen Dazs ice cream while the boys played at the playground.
Westin:
passed his swim level! I was so proud of him, he worked hard. He also made a cute treasure craft at preschool and listed his treasures as, "Ice Cream, Firetrucks, Watermelon, Pumpkin Seeds, School". I thought that was so funny. He really does remember random things so vividly, like scooping out our pumpkin seeds and baking them together. That was months ago and we haven't really talked about it since. There are constantly things that come up like that which remind me that his memory is incredible and little moments of effort are worth it. Westin did NOT like our long weekend drive to Utah and had a hard time, but traveling always ends. I feel so bad that looking at books or anything like that makes him so carsick. The boys were SO excited to pull up to grandma and grandpa's house and see some snow left in their yard, and immediately had a snowball fight with grandpa. It was so funny to see those California boys get so excited over a little snow.
Bennett:
is a happy little guy and looked at Chatbooks/The Friend/Spot It cards for 6 of our 8.5 road trip hours without complaining, and watched a movie for the other two. He never fell asleep, and Westin slept the last 90 minutes. He didn't have any accidents on the drive is such a happy guy. Ali did lots of sound practice with him, lucky to have a Speech Language Pathologist in the fam :) He doesn't do the ending consonant sounds of many words and makes up words for so much stuff. It's adorable, but I feel bad when he feels frustrated at times if we're not understanding him.
Late Sunday walk with dad last week
Bennett loves animals and they love him.
He loves looking through The Friend lately.
When Westin leveled up at swim he gets to choose a prize or a treat from the swim school.
This time he chose an Icee, and I got one for Bennett too. They wanted to eat them right here together and it was so cute.
Haha the only quick picture I snapped of his bell ringing.
Music time at preschool
The boys ate an entire Blaze pizza between the two of them.
The days of us just sharing our food with them are coming to a quick end.
They found the perfect spot for their ice cream break.
Preschool, G for Glasses
Westin's Treasures
Watching Family Videos with Ali
Westin loves exercising with Ali and ran a mile of our regular two-mile walk that day.
The zoo is Bennett's happy place for sure.
Bennett LOVES to feed the giraffes at the zoo.
When he looks through his latest Chatbook, he always bursts into real belly laughs when he gets to the page with the picture of him feeding giraffes. He has to work so hard to wait his turn in line because he's SO excited to hand over that lettuce. It's so sweet.
Shake Shack stop on our drive.
8.5 hours in the car doesn't do much good for your move goals,
and I always laugh when my watch sends me messages like this right as I'm about to crawl into bed.
It's not worth it, watch. I'm tired.
is pretty miserable on this trauma rotation. He leaves before 5:30am and has gotten home as late as 10:30pm. His Saturdays and Sundays are supposed to be half days but his ICU list is so full that he's gotten home as late as 8:30pm on those days and only as early as 6:00pm. He's tired. One day off a week isn't a very natural rhythm, especially when it can fall anywhere in the week so the stretches can be pretty long at times. We feel so bad for him! He's exhausted when he gets home and he's not loving hospital life right now. We went to Dry Creek Park on his day off and then ate barbecue sandwiches at The Meat Market for lunch. It was kind of a disaster -- such a messy meal with kids and windy outside. But we did it :)
Maddie:
is going back and forth from bursts of busy to laying on my couch for all of nap time or after my kids go to bed. I try and get a ton of stuff done when I feel ok in the mornings, and then I just can't keep up the pace once my nausea hits for the day. I have started a "before baby" to do list and also a "boy names" list in my phone and I'll let you guess which one is waaaaay longer. In a lot of ways I'm having flashbacks to our first year here -- pregnant, so tired during the boys' nap time even though I have a long list of to do's, Michael working 90+ hour weeks... all flash backs to first year Fresno life. On Tuesday my friend Emily had us over for her Fat Tuesday traditions of jambalaya, fried pickles, and Mickey-shaped beignets. She's from Florida and keeps the South alive in her life and I love it. Our kids have so much fun together.
Westin:
loved having preschool at our house this week and especially loved that our turtle came out of hibernation (again) while his friends were here. They found lots of worms for him to eat and loved seeing him devour them. Mr. T is so hungry after his long naps! He has come around on random sunny days throughout the last few months and then goes back to sleep for a while. I don't know if he's entirely sure how long hibernation is supposed to last, but maybe he'll be around for good this time as temps warm up. Westin's sweet preschool teacher lost her husband to cancer recently, just two weeks after being diagnosed. She'll be moving soon and he's going to miss her so much. He just loved Mrs. Beard.
Bennett:
On Saturday I took the boys to a nursery east of Fresno for their "ladybug release". They let kids help them release thousands of ladybugs over the weekend to help with all their plants. The boys loved it and it was cute to watch them explore. Westin was a little concerned with ladybugs crawling up his sleeve and Bennett may have unintentionally smashed a few as he tried to set them free, but it was all out of love. Then we ran errands and played at the playground by the River Park Farmer's Market so that we could just be busy all day until nap time and not miss having Michael around at home. We watched two dogs this week which is Bennett's idea of heaven.
Westin loves to juice a few blood oranges with all the other oranges to make reddish orange juice.
He thinks it's just the coolest thing. He always saves the blood oranges for last.
So happy these chef hats and aprons are finally getting the use they deserve around here.
I still don't know why they were ignored on Christmas morning and not used until March,
but they've been a big hit lately! Kids are weird :)
Fat Tuesday with the Ryan girls! Our three boys and their three girls, we keep life balanced.
Bennett and his beignet. A love story.
Emily made such delicious beignets! I love how much that family loves Disney.
We chanced a day at the park on Michael's day off even though it seemed like it might be rainy.
We were lucky and it was a pretty nice day!
Throwing sticks in water. Never gets old.
I have made this meal soooo many times. Greek salad w/ homemade dressing, and lemon chicken.
Text me for the recipes because you need this meal in your life.
I haven't publicly expressed my love for our Traeger lately, but I do still really love our Traeger.
I've found a new favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe! Which is pretty crazy because I've been faithful to my other recipe for years. But I think I'll make these every time from now on, which is a big deal. They're different than each other enough that both might have their place though.
Preschool, F is for Fish and Friend
Rainbow fish scales
Mr. T came to play while all our friends were over! Bennett was over the moon.
Taking one last huge worm for the road.
Lady Bug Inventory
Time to set them free!
They chose a lemon tree to set them loose on.
Ice Cream after the Farmer's Market because I can't be by Haagen Dazs and NOT get caramel cone ice cream.
It's the best ice cream flavor I've ever had and I think about it so much. Don't judge. :)
Westin chose straight up chocolate. Makes me proud.
Bennett posing oh so seriously for a picture with Rosie girl.
