New Addition to the Family

Yesterday Dusty and I took the boys to meet their new puppy. Back in January Dusty bought this new hunting dog... without asking me first, which is a whole other story. Anyways, ever since, Dusty has been like a little kid at Christmas. This dog already has all the necessary hunting gear, accessories, etc. Dusty is building it a dog house and we are going to fence our backyard this spring. It already has two playmates (B&B) and a sister (Harley). The only thing she doesn't have is a name. We've never been good at picking out girl names! Dusty mentioned one name that I liked too. Now, if only I can talk him out of the other 200 horrible names he's picked, her name might be Avery.
The people who have the puppies live way out in the country. It was so much fun to see the boys in their "natural" habitat. They had so much fun running around, seeing all the different animals, and playing in the mud. Bodey pretty much just chased the cats around the entire time. Good thing cats can't hunt ducks, because we aren't getting one!

Dusty and his new hunting pal.

Shall we say, Avery?
Future hunting buddies.

The only 5 seconds of Bodey's time that he wasn't chasing cats!

Finance 101

Not quite sure where kids pick these things up, but here is our dinner conversation with Booker last night:

Booker: I need some money. I need to buy sompthin’.

Dusty & Me: What do you need to buy?

Booker: A truck, a toy, a castle, a dump truck...

Dusty & Me: How are you going to get the money?

Booker: Because I need it.

Dusty & Me: But how are you going to get it? Do you want to learn how to get money?

Booker: Yeah.

Dusty & Me: If you finish all your dinner and pick up your toys, you’ll earn a dollar.

Done deal. I’m not sure how much he’s going to need to save for his wish list, but at least he knows he needs money to get it!

The Obvious is Now Official

We took Bodey to the Allergy and Asthma specialist on Thursday and learned that he officially has asthma and excema. This visit has been a long time coming. In the back of my head I thought that as soon as we take him there, he will magically be better. Once I realized that I'm completely wrong, I was still anxious to go learn how to better manage everything at home and to minimize all these doctor's visits. Hopefully we've accomplished this. The dr. upped his dosages of his daily treatments. Now he will take 4 puffs of his Flovent inhaler a day. Then she laid out different "zones" for us. On a healthy, daily basis, he is in the green zone. At the first signs of any type of cold or virus, we need to bump him up to the yellow zone and start giving him albuterol. This will hopefully prevent the virus from moving into his lungs and him getting pneumonia. If he gets worse in this zone we move into the red zone and give him an oral steroid and most likely take him to the doctor. She said with time we will even become comfortable enough to manage the red zone from home and my motherly instincts will let me know when he needs to be seen. Right now his asthma is viral induced, which pretty much just means that any little virus will irritate his airways and cause them to inflame and fill with mucus. So, now my job is to prevent this from happening. Sheesh, that's a lot on my shoulders... I hope I can do it! Also, with viral induced asthma, the summers are usually a lot better. The doctor said that most likely May-August will be pretty low-key, and then we'll have to hit it hard again in the fall. I'm just glad she gave me a little piece of mind and education. Wish us luck!

The Big 3!

Booker Michael, I wonder if there will ever be a year when I don't remember this day 3 years ago as clearly as I still do. It was truly the day that changed my life forever, for the better. I will never be the same person I was at 7:59pm on March 21st as the person I became at 8:00pm. I am the luckiest person alive to be your mom. I have been dreading this day for the last few months. Mainly because I just don't want you to grow up. But this morning when you ran into my room to wake me up, I was just so happy for you. I couldn't wait to wish you happy birthday. I couldn't wait to see you celebrate with all your loved ones. You are growing into such a great kid! You have learned so much this past year, and sadly, you are no longer a baby, nor a toddler. You are pretty much a big boy. But we have been so fortunate to have had you in our lives for the past 3 years. You amaze me every day. You make me smile every day. You make me laugh every day. Thank you for that! Now, I've heard through the grapevine that the 3's are worse than the 2's. This ought to be interesting, but I'm in it for the long haul. Bring it on baby, because I don't know what I would do without you.

Booker's new Spiderman bike, thanks Nana & Papa!

What 3-year old doesn't want a duck cake?

Spring Pictures

Germs For Sale!

Millions of little germs for sale, or better yet, for free. We have outgrown our love for them and are ready to move on. They have been well-used, but still work great. Can deliver to you by hand-holding, playing, kissing or coughing. These germs are hardy and will not let you down. A must go - fast!

Oh, what a day. It started with me forgetting that Bodey was out of diapers at daycare. So, I decided to grab some on my lunch hour and run them by. When I arrived, I dropped the diapers off, but gained a lunch buddy. Booker just wasn't feeling well at all. So, I decided to take him to the dr. so hopefully I don't end up missing too much work. It was determined that he has croup and an upper respiratory infection. As we are finishing up with the dr., my cell phone rings and what do you know? It's daycare. Bodey is not doing well, and struggling to breathe due to his asthma. The dr. told me to run and get Bodey and bring him right back. She checked him out, gave him his normal back to back treatments of Atrovent and x-rays and determined that he once again has pneumonia, most likely caused by the same upper respiratory infection and cold that Booker has. It just blows my mind how the same thing can be a runny nose and a cough for Booker, but almost always turns into pneumonia for Bodey. Anyways, I am so glad we already have an appointment with an allergy and asthma specialist set up for next week. Although, I was kind of sad the other day when I realized that in the back of my head I've had the misconception that as soon as we take Bodey there he will automatically be better. Hopefully we will just get some answers to our questions and some ways to prevent and maintain his asthma.

My Portfolio

Today I finished up my 2-day photography class held by Rocky Mountain School of Photography. My friend Nickie got the same camera that I did for Christmas, so she decided to take the class with me. At the end they talked about your "porfolios" and since I don't have one and probably never will, I decided that will be my blog. Here it is in a nutshell:

Registration and Orientation: To begin at 8am and classes at 9am. Nickie and I decide that 8:15 sounds like a good time to get there since there probably won't be that many people there. In my true fashion, I show up at 8:30 and have to STAND in the back of the room because the other 250 seats are taken! I knew it was going to be a good time with Nickie there when she pulled out her camera and took a picture of everyone in that room for her blog! I was too embarrassed to do it, but she did the dirty work.
Course #1, Basics of Photography: This was the first class we sat in. I failed the very first thing he taught us, which should have probably been the easiest... how to hold your camera. Maybe this should have been my first clue! Anyways, we learned about aperture, shutter speeds, F-stops and ISO, all of which were completely foreign to me when I walked in that door. Nickie and I were feeling pretty good about ourselves after that class.
Course #2, Beyond the Basics: In this class we learned more about aperture, shutter speed and ISO and threw in some jargon about metering and some other stuff. A little bit over my head, but there were parts I thought I really understood. After this class we had a lunch break and Nickie and I thought this was great and even though it was a little over our heads, we could handle it.
Course #3, Understanding Light: Here we learned about when and when not to use flash and about white balance. I kind of tuned out the whole white balance thing because it was way over my head and I have so many baby steps that I need to take before I can even think about white balance. Nickie and I left this one a little overwhelmed.
That Night At Home: I decide that I'm going to get my notes out and "practice" all these cool things I learned. Having been told by the instructors that they never want us to use Auto mode again, I was determined to put my Manual skills to work. Long story short, most of my pictures turned out black or extremely fuzzy. I was depressed.

Course #4, Photographing People: This pretty much used all of what we learned the previous day and wasn't too bad, but in the back of my head I was still picturing all the black pictures I had taken the night before, and become less and less confident that I would ever be able to do any of this.
Course #5, Photographic Techniques with Photoshop: Nickie and I had learned early on that we needed to be in the front of the class, so this time we scored front row seats. When the class started he started talking about panoramas and we were both bored and confused. We thought this was a Photoshop class. Nickie whispered in my ear that if we weren't in the front row we could sneak out and switch classes. I'm glad we didn't though because we finally got into some really cool things we can do in Photoshop.
Critique: This by far was the best (and funniest) part of the weekend. Each person got to submit a photo to be displayed on the projector in front of everyone else to be critiqued by the instructors. All I can say is thank goodness it was anonymous. Nickie and I just busted up laughing when the 1st picture came on the screen. It was really creative and very professional. And so was the next one, and the next one, and ALL of them.... except my and Nickie's "snapshots" of our kids. It was so hard not to laugh outloud the entire time just waiting for our pictures to come up. They were very "nice" in the way they critiqued, although they said Nickie "broke all the rules, but it seemed to work" and for mine "Bodey's face washed out and the sky was blown out." Not too bad for complete rookies I guess!
Overall, this was a very good learning experience for me and I'm really glad that I took the time to do it. I have SOOOOO much to learn and a ton of playing around to do, but hopefully by the time they come back to KC in two years, I'll be able to take it again and build on it.

Some of Booker's Many Sayings

Here are some sayings that Booker uses at least a few times a day:

~Dat not spose to happen.
~I know... (like he has a grand plan)
~I have an idea!
~That's perfect!
~You promise?
~You need to share that.
~Cause, I need to.
~Cause, I want to.
~See, I told you.
~You need to fix it.

Finally an Accumulation of Snow on the Weekend

So, most people probably aren't so happy that it snowed this weekend. But really, I kinda am. We just haven't had any snow this winter and Booker has been wanting to make snow angels for some time now. I kept thinking, I just wish it would snow on the weekend, and then I would have time to get the boys out to play. Well, Saturday we woke up to 3 or 4 inches of snow. Today I dressed them all up (which took longer than we were actually outside) and let them loose.

Booker finally getting to make his snow angel.

Booker having a snowball fight with Daddy.

Bodey was like the little brother from A Christmas Story. So bundled up and helpless.

But cute!

Snow angel #2

The snowball that I didn't realize made it inside with us... :)