Double Time

It breaks my heart that these cute pairs of ears can cause so much pain and misery. A year and a half ago Dominic had ear tubes put in because he was having chronic ear infections and could barely hear! They immediately brought relief and hadn't caused a problem until last weekend. He would wake up at night crying that his ear was hurting. I could see his tube when I looked in his ear and it was obviously ready to fall out, but was stuck by wax. So we went back to the ENT doctor this week and after 3 of us pinned down my screaming boy the doctor used tweezers and got the tubes out of his ears. One ear had a lot of fluid so Doms in on amoxicillian to clear that up.

Tessa has also been extremely grumpy, feverish, had no appetite and not been sleeping well this week. On Wednesday she was absolutely inconsolable and would scream and couldn't be comforted no matter what I did. I definitely suspected that she too had an ear infection. So to the doctor we went and sure enough . . . she has a double ear infection. So now both kids are on amoxicillian and are improving! Tessa loves the pink meds and gets so excited when I start shaking it up! I love these kids and hate to hear them suffer and I'm grateful for Doctors who will actually give me prescriptions for ear infections, because I know that there are some who won't!

Father Daughter Date

Macie's perfect attendance in school got her a free ticket to a Blazer game and the parent got one at reduced price.




So last night she and Cole got to go to the Blazer game against Oklahoma City.

Cole said that Macie was kind of scared at first with the large crowds of people all around. She was kind of tired the first quarter because the game started at 7pm and her bedtime is 7:30. But he cured her with a soda that cost a crazy $5!
She really started to enjoy the game after half time. Cole said that Macie had so much fun chanting with the crowd, sitting on his lap asking him question after question about the game, and cheering on the Blazers! Cole said that he got teary eyed several times because it was so fun to be there with Macie and to see how much fun she was having! He's a very sweet dad and they have a special bond.

Well the Blazers managed to finally get way ahead, had hit the 100 point mark (which gets the whole crowd free Chalupas) and with a few minutes left told Macie it was time to go. She said "No, Papi. There is still 2 minutes left and I want to stay!"
They had such a fabulous time together and I was thrilled to hear all about it!

Our Little Linus

Tessa is a blanket baby. Our other kids have had favorite blankets since they were young too, but Tessa carries her around all the time. She snuggles with them (there are multiple ones she loves), puts them on her head and walks around the house, drapes them over her shoulders etc . . . She doesn't suck her thumb like Linus, but she's a lover of the Binky (both habits that I'm not ready to break).

She also loves to ride this little bike. She'll sit on it and babble, push it around, ride it and hide stuff under the seat that has a lid. It keeps her busy for quite a while and I love to watch her play on it.

Tessa loves to throw things in the garbage. We have an easily opened and accessible garbage can in the kitchen so the bigger kids can help with clean up etc. . . However, it also makes a fun place place for one year olds to put things.


Tessa has been caught throwing away her clothes, her socks, TV remotes, toys, and I'm sure many other things that she shouldn't have and have now gone missing. (We're pretty sure Dominic threw away Cole's wallet when he was her age.) We've now put her good skills to use and have taught her to throw away her own dirty diapers!

The Birds

We fed the birds down on the Willamette River recently. It was a super clear, cold, and windy day. All the birds were hanging out on the lawn, but we saw a few geese in the water making their way to shore so we headed down there.
The first few pieces of bread were tossed to the geese, but the other birds caught on quickly to why we were there and came flying in as fast and furious as they could.

It scared Macie to death to have tons of starving birds swarming around us so she spent the rest of the time cowering at our sides, crying and screaming if the birds got even remotely close to her. It didn't help that Cole was a huge tease and kept throwing bread by her feet. By the end Cole had her up on a rock yelling something about how wimpy she was being and we got some smiles and giggles out of her. Dominic was thrilled by it all and he would have spent an hour just throwing rocks in the river if we would have let him.

Moving from Coast to Coast

With our upcoming move to Virginia we are searching out the various options of how to get all of our stuff there. We are leaning toward doing a PODS type of a move so that we can all just ride in the minivan together (we only have one car) and not have to drive a Uhaul. I'm looking for any advice as to which company to use and any success or horror stories you have to share.
THANKS!!

Rip City

I've really truly been enjoying watching all the Bowl games with Cole these past few weeks. I like to watch football and am learning a lot. We've also been following the Blazers this season and they are doing pretty well. We even got tickets to go to a game during our Christmas break.
We took Cole's brother Logan and his friend. It was a great game against the Celtics and the Blazers won (and Brandon Roy didn't even play)!!
It was a lot of fun to be in the Rose Garden among all the exctiement, even though we were in the extreme nosebleed section (notice the wall behind our head). We were on the back row, but the view was still great and we had a lot of fun!

Our Christmas Catch-up

We continued our regular tradition this year of asking Santa to come early to our house so we could have our own family Christmas at home before we headed to Salem to be with our extended family. The kids were excited to leave treats, eggnog and milk for Santa and apples and carrots for the reindeer.


"Christmas" morning (20th) was beautiful and snowy. The kids enjoyed opening their gifts and played with them for a little bit, but the snow was coming down hard so we packed up very quickly, put the chains on the van and headed down to Salem early so we wouldn't be stuck at home for the holidays.


Luckily most of the planned Christmas activities were not cancelled because of the snow or ice. We had a major ice storm which brought down lots of trees and left us without power at Cole's mom's house for about 8 hours (my parents were without for 2.5 days, and others for up to 5). Cole and his brothers cooked us up a nice dinner on the BBQ since we had no lights.
We enjoyed all the activities with our families. Cole and I hosted a Ugly Christmas Sweater party and caroling at a Retirement center. The brothers were quite the sight with their sweaters and facial hair, and Cole's mom and sister had some fun with their outfits too.



Some other activities were an adult white elephant gift party, cookie decorating, watching elf, a cousins gift exchange and lots of nice late night meals after the kids were in bed.


Our kids were too sick and too shy to participate in acting out the nativity so Cole stepped up to represent out family as one of the wisemen.

On the real Christmas morning we were at my parents house with my sister and her husband to open gifts and have breakfast. My dad did his traditional dress up as Santa and I was very surprised that Tessa didn't cry when he came in the room.



You might notice that Dominic's eyes look terrible in most of the pictures. That is because he came down with the worst case of pink eye any of us had ever seen on Christmas Eve. His eyes were so goopy, red, puffy for about a week. Luckily Cole's brother in-law is a doctor and was able to call a prescription in for us, We also had numerous other illnesses hit our family that left the rest of us with a few sick days each (colds, ear infections, throwing up etc . . .)

Despite the nasty weather and sicknesses we had a great time! Oh, we were sick on New Years Eve too, so no photos of that . . . we were in bed well before the clock struck 12! Happy New Year!