NEXT TUESDAY'S THE DAY...

that we get Brenly's tonsils out. I called to make the appointment, fully prepared to schedule it for after Uncle Jay's wedding (he is getting married 6-7-08) and the nurse says that Dr. Duncan wants us in sooner than later and his first appt at LeBonheur Surgery Center is next Tuesday! I am alittle upset, because that is the day that Uncle Jay graduates from Pharmacy School in Auburn, but I suppose that we need to get this over with so Brenly will be ready to be the flower girl in their wedding next month! Sorry Uncle Jay, it is a day we will all remember!

Pictures as Promised!

Believe me when I say that these pictures are not for the weak stomach...Please properly prepare your self for what you are about to see....These are pictures of my Brenly's tonsils (aka balls in the back of her throat! Thats what she calls them) Just a quick funny story to make you smile before you have to see these pictures...
Wednesday when I told Brenly that we were going to have to go to the Dr. to check on her tonsils...she started crying, saying that she didn't want to have to go to the doctor! She couldn't grasp the concept of tonsils, so I asked her to come to the mirror so I could show her what I was talking about! the conversation went like this:
Me: Open your mouth so I can show you what I am talking about
(Brenly opens her mouth)
Me: See those balls in the back of your throat?
Bren: Balls in my throat?
Me: Yes, do you see the balls right beside the hangy down thing in your throat?
(Bren looks in her mouth again)
Bren:Why do I have balls in my throat?
Me: Those balls are make your throat hurt, so we are going to have to get them taken out...Its not good to have big balls in your throat
Bren: Do you have balls in your throat?
(she looks in my mouth to see that I don't have balls)
Me: I don't have balls in my throat, I got the balls taken out!
Bren: How do you get balls out of your throat?

UUUGGGHHH! I can see that this conversation wasn't sounding great so we had to quickly change the subject...Just a reminder...It's not normal to have large balls in the back of your throat! :)

So here are the pictures:

Fantastic!!

I was on the phone the other night with my sister-in-law, Ronni and Brenly asked what we were talking about. I told her that Aunt Ronni was laughing about the stories that I post on here and Brenly cracks up laughin out loud and says You girls, ya'll are just FAN-TASK-TIC..(You must not forget to add the K sounds before you say the last part of the word!) and Baylee (which is her 8 month old cousin)well she is just a little FAN-TASK-TIC!
P.S. it makes me laugh that some of you actually said FAN-TASK-TIC out loud, like Bren says it!

Tonsillectomy and Adenoidectomy...

are in our very near future! Dr. Duncan said that they were definately going to have to come out! I will have to try to get a picture of these massive things so you can understand how huge they are! The dr. said that most kids have stage 2-3 and my precious Bren has a 4!! I have to call tomorrow to find out exactly when this is going to take place...hopefully sometime soon. Bren is in her uncle's wedding 6-7-08...She needs to be all healed up so she can be a precious little flower girl!! Anyway, just wanted to let everyone know that these massive mounds of flesh will be removed very soon! Praise the Lord!!

Tonsils, Tires and Teeth

So this past week Ray was in Middle Tennessee for Boating week (yet another week of training about boat crash scene investigation and boating under the influence) and it was also the week that both kids were sick, I had a major tire problem and Avery got another tooth! Which only makes sense because the kids ONLY get sick when he's gone...AND I ONLY have car problems when he is gone! (Praise the Lord he has no more training left!) Anyway Tuesday night Brenly woke up in the middle of the night screaming that her throat hurt! I automatically know that it is her tonsils, because she has, quite possibly, the BIGGEST tonsils I have ever seen. Even on a good day, when she isn't sick, they touch her uvula (the hangy down thing in the back of your throat, for all you non dental people) and then when she gets the least bit sick, they constrict her airway and cause her to gasp for breath at night! So I decided that I was going to take both of them to the doctor on Wednesday (Avery has been very fussy, with green snot and small fever!) So I will take my day off and spend it at the pediatrician, why not?? In the meantime, on the way to the doctor I noticed that my tires are sounding weird...THUMP, THUMP, THUMP isn't exactly a noise that I am used to while driving, so I then decide to use the rest of day off to take my car in to get my tires diagnosed! So we arrive at the pediatrician to find out that Avery is just snotty and Brenly has very LARGE tonsils...I mean, did I really need to spend $40 in co-pays to get that info. Anyway, Dr. Miller said that we need to make an appt. with the ENT to further investigate the situation (Her appointment with Dr. Dunkin is Today 4/28 at 1:00) So we will see what he says this afternoon. I am certainly not a proponent to cutting on my baby unnecessarily, however I think that this might be a time when it would be worth it to go ahead and get them out! So off to Gateway Tire on Highway 64,. I walk in and tell them that my tires sound funny (Keep in mind that I am the most mechanically ignorant person you know!) and that I might need them balanced and rotated or something, and while they are at it, they can go ahead and change the oil! After 30 minutes and a trip to Sonic with the girls (it was right next door..and what better way to keep them quiet than to give then ice cream , right?) we paid for the services and were on our trek to Hardeman Co. However shortly after we left, I STILL heard the THUMP, THUMP, THUMP that I heard before! And I didn't like the way it sounded. I get home and call Ray (because like I said, it is ONLY when he is gone that I seem to have these problems) He tries to walk me through diagnosing the problem myself...again I am NO mechanic. I then call my father in law and he too tries to diagnose the problem over the phone! I go outside and start to look for myself (which cracks me up, that I might know what to look for!) I go outside and there is a stinkin nail in the side of my tire...and yes, I suppose that I could've gotten it on the way home from Gateway Tire, however it was completely worn down on one side, so I have to think that its been in there for a while! So I already know that I am going to have to make a trip back to the tire store , since i DID diagnose at least one of the problems by myself! I was going to get to work and take my lunch hour to get it fix. Well, Thursday morning after driving the girls to Denise's house, it was sounding even worse, so I decide to look at my tires again and found that there was a 6in X 6in. section of tread missing from my car, with steel tread stuff coming out of my tire...aka a blow out waiting to happen! AND there is NO way that any tire person that looked at it couldn't have seen it! So I call work and try to explain to them that I would be late... I made it safely to the Gateway Tire store on Covington Pike... I walked in and stated furiously what has happened in the last 14 hours. They said they would look at the tire...come to find out, the tire was BAD, the guy even said that he was surprised that I made it in safely (Thank you God that you were with us all the way into town) And that I would need not one but two tire! SO what in the heck did they do at the 64 store..ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!! I was so mad that I had taken my car in because even I knew that there was a tire problem...only to be sent away with 2 tires that could've blown at any minute! The Covington Pike store called the 64 store and found out that Randy...the guy who supposedly looked at the tires...it was his first day on the job! And I understand that everybody has to start sometime, however I also believe in somebody checking his work to make sure that he is doing did job correctly! What a 24 hour period that was. After work Thursday night, I was playing with Avery and decided to check her teeth and would you believe that my precious baby girl has a MOLAR...She doesn't even have the lower lateral incisors yet, but she cut her upper right molar...why is it the my children-the children of a hygienist-cut teeth all wrong! (Hence the eruption chart that I have posted at the top! It might come in handy for some of you!) So no wonder the child has been fussy as all get out! Molars are pretty hard teeth to cut! So there is a synopsis of my week of drama...It tends to hang around our house ALL THE TIME! But there will be a day when I will look back and miss all of these times! Lord, help me to remember the good times and the bad, for one day I will yearn for Brenly wanting me to hold her in the middle of the night with a sore throat, and wishing that Avery were still young enough to cut molars! I want to live each moment, carving them deep in my memory bank, so that I will never forget these days!

My Rule Follower!!

So yesterday we made the journey home from my brother's house (although, driving to my house from anywhere is a journey!) and as soon as we got home, I had to go to the bathroom..we had been in the car for over an hour...Brenly however said that she wanted to stay outside and wanted Avery to stay with her. I asked her before I went inside if she needed to go to the bathroom...She quickly said NO and went straight to her swing...(she tends to ignore important things just to be outside- not eating dinner, not going to the bathroom!) I was inside long enough to pee and change clothes and I ran back outside...Brenly was acting very sneaky, and I immediately asked her what she had been up to! She gave me this very persnickety grin and said, "I'm a big girl!" I looked down at her feet and they appeared to be wet, my first thought is that she had gotten in the water hose...Then Bren says, "Let's go play..but I am going to walk backwards!" I told her to turn around so that I could see the back of her skirt...She started to get big ole alligator tears in her eyes and with a whimper said, "But mommy, I couldn't leave Avery out here by herself...I went over there and pee-peed so Avery wouldn't step on it!" I felt so bad. Here is my 4 year old, who honestly wants to follow the rules (most of the time) and she was torn between leaving her baby sister outside or peeing in her pants! Praise the Lord she opted to stay with Avery...for we can always clean up accidents. It makes my heart happy to know that she loves her baby sister enough to pee on herself:)

A 14 month old without a pacifier...

WE DID IT! We took her pacifier away last night and I am so excited. Two if the things I dread most about parenting toddlers is #1 Taking the pacifier away and #2 Potty training. (AND I know, one day I will wish for these days when both of mine are teenagers) Anyhow, we took Brenly's paci away from her when she was 13 months old and with Avery just turning 14 months, I knew that it was time. (why take them away so early...well me being the dental freak that I am, I know that they aren't the BEST thing them to have for a long period of time and I feel like they can talk alot better without them instead of grunting at me all the time) Yesterday we all went to the zoo. We hadn't been there 5 minutes and Avery had lost the only one that we had! So we (and when I say we I mean Ray and I) had to suffer the afternoon without it. I am fully convinced that we relied on the stinkin thing much more than she did! The ride home was a little hairy especially since she hates car rides anyway. But we made it. Then last night before bed, I gave her the lamb (her very favorite thing ever) and said her prayers and she went straight to sleep, not waking up until I woke her up this morning! PRAISE THE LORD! So, 1 down, 1 more to go on thing that I dread. This went so well, perhaps potty training will go the same way...HAHAHA, we will start praying about that NOW!!!

The intelligence of our 4 year old!

Saturday night, we had just finished dinner. Avery is my great eater...she eats twice as much as Brenly does at every single setting, however she is notorious for picking EVERYTHING up and putting it in her mouth! She is especially fond of getting out of her chair, after eating everything on her plate-plus some-and eat the crumbs off the floor under her chairs (I never said that she was a neat eater!) I was cleaning up the kitchen and had not yet got to the aftermath of her dinner and I heard Ray say..."Avery, what do you have in your mouth?" (because we NEVER know what it is that she has found) Avery continues about her business and acts as if she hasn't even heard the question that Ray has posed! Again I hear Ray say, "AVERY, what is in your mouth?" After the 3rd time of Ray saying this statement...Brenly (as serious as she can be) says "Daddy, she can NOT talk, she is just a baby, why do you keep telling her that!!" It was really funny. Brenly had enough of the same question and wanted to be sure that Ray knew that Avery couldn't answer the SAME question he had been asking for the past 5 minutes!

You know when your the wife of a Game Warden when...

First of all...this past weekend we went to my brothers house and on the way there we are listening to Frogs on CD...no it's not the latest boy band...it is just that Frogs on CD...Last night Ray had to do a Frog survey of Hardeman County...Supposedly if there are environmental changes, frogs are the first to change and so they have to do frog surveys 4 times a year to make sure that the environment is stable...So we drove an hour and 15 minutes and were listening to 30 different frogs so that Ray could determine which frogs were croaking (all of those statements are strong indications that I am a wife of a game warden)
Secondly, last night the girls and I had just come in from playing outside to get ready to watch the Tigers play :( and a truck drives up in the driveway and starts waving his hands up in the air...hoping that I wouldn't shoot him (which was too funny) He is all dressed in camouflage (it is turkey season for all of you wives of non-game wardens) and so I walk outside and that he has a hearing aid in and his speech was a little hard to understand. He says...I got a bird and don't know what to do with it...To which I say in my head...pluck in put it in a roaster pan at 350 for a couple hours...what the heck -I don't know what to do with your bird for cryin out loud...I was born and raised in the city and I don't understand all this huntin talk! So I look at him with a blank stare, wandering if he really thinks that I might have the right answer. After a few seconds, I tell him that I am going to have to call my husband who is on frog duty (oh my!) I proceed to call Ray and tell him that there is a man who has killed a turkey and doesn't know what to do with it. Ray starts rattling off all these options for the man and then says, Just let me talk to him. I hand the phone to the man, who then points to his ears and says I can't hear, my aids will start feeding back and I won't be able to understand...Oh my goodness, so Ray gives me the different options and I then relay them to the gentleman...We finally come to the conclusion that he will have to wait until the morning to check it in @ Pioneers (whatever all that means!) He gets in his truck and drives off in the sunset. I get off the phone with my husband and have to laugh out loud that this is the life that God had given me. God is so funny sometimes! Me, the city girl, given instructions on checking in a bird! That's when reality sinks in and I realize that my newest identity is being a wife of a game warden! And I love it!

Happy Birthday Momma! I know that you are so excited!

I cannot believe that the Tigers have finally made it! I am VERY jealous that My brother and his wife (Chad and Ronni) and Richie and Christy left yesterday after church to drive to San Antonio to watch the game! For those of you who knew my mother, she was one of the BIGGEST tiger fans ever. She absolutely loved to watch them...I have very vivid memories of her sitting on the couch screaming REBOUND so loud that they neighbors could hear her, as if she was actually at the game! Chad and I both knew that if a tiger game was coming on that we could be no where near her because she would punch our arm so hard...as if that was going to help them gain a victory! Anyway, how awesome that they are playing in the championship game tonight and it happens to be her birthday! She would have been 59 today! I know that this is the best birthday present ever and I guarantee that she WILL be in San Antonio with my brother, except she'll have much better seats...She'll be sitting on the Front Row :)

Momma, we love you very much and still miss you, now more than ever! I hope that you have the best birthday ever...and I am sure that even I might be able to hear you scream REBOUND tonight! I can't wait to hear you!

Alittle P.S. Keep in mind that the picture was taken in 1999 and and I am positive that Blue Jean dresses were very "IN" then (HA!) This was the last picture that was taken of mom before she went home to be with the Lord! (yes, my momma was headed to church just a week before she slipped into a coma...she always did love her Jesus!) I had come down from upstairs and we were ready for church...AND dressed alike! I promise that we didn't plan it, for I am sure that dressing like you mom was "NOT IN"...however it is another memory of mom that I will cherish forever!