Happy (Very Belated) Birthday, Andrew!

I'm very delinquent in posting this post.  Andrew's birthday was last month and I didn't want it to go unmentioned.  I can't believe my firstborn is nine years old!  I feel like somehow the last few years have been in fast forward mode.  His birthday this year fell on the weekend right after school ended so he invited a few friends to go bowling and play laser tag then back to our house for some late night swimming and a sleepover.  Then on his actual birthday we spent some quality family time together and went to dinner at one of his favorite restaurants Cristina's.  

So now a little about Andrew these days.  He is measuring in at 4'10.  Our prediction is that he will top out around 6'7.  His shoe size is an adult 8 1/2.  It's like a puppy with big feet!  Personality wise he is definitely my debater.  He can argue about anything and everything, even if he is in total agreement with you!  His temperment is melancholy.  He's very analytical and is my deep thinker.  I see so much of myself in him and yet there's so much about him that I just don't understand.  Andrew has the most compassionate heart of any kid his age I know.  I think it plays in with his melancholy-ness, because he is able to identify with others' feelings and put himself in their shoes.  I often wonder how much of this is innate and how much is circumstance.  When my mom died, Andrew definitely took the brunt of my emotions.  I felt very strongly that it was okay for him to see me cry and to know that it was okay to be sad.  He was very close to my mom also, and I wanted him to know that grieving was healthy.  I don't regret it for one moment because I feel that that contributed to his empathetic spirit toward others.  As for his current interests, he loves all things "boy".  He is a Star Wars fanatic (still) and LOVES legos.  He would build legos all day long if he could!  He loves to read - especially non-fiction and loves science.  He is playing soccer again this fall.  He began playing goalie in the spring and absolutely loved it so hopefully that will continue into the fall.  Andrew's love language is quality time and gifts.  His ideal day would be to spend it with Paul and I going to lunch at his favorite restaurant and then heading to either Toys R Us or Barnes and Noble to buy him whatever he wanted - haha!

I am so proud of the young man he is becoming.  Happy Birthday, Andrew!!

The Things We Do For Love

Here's a transcript of some phone conversations between me and Paul on Friday morning:

Paul: Hello.
Me: Did the dog go to the bathroom last night when you let him out?
Paul: No, I couldn't even get him to go out.
Me: I'm a little worried because I don't think he has peed or pooped since yesterday morning.
Paul: I'm sure he's fine. Just keep an eye on him and I'll take him to the vet when I get home if I need to.

Second phone call about 20 minutes later..

Paul: Hello.
Me: How do I get dog poop out of the pool?

Our 12 year old, three-legged, mostly senile yellow lab has been having "potty issues" lately. When he decides he has to go, you have about a 30 second window to get him outside. That morning when he finally decided he needed to go he was in a bit of a hurry. As he was hurrying to his favorite "spot", he tripped over the pool scooper that Andrew had left on the sidewalk, and fell into the pool. Between having only three legs and his fear of water that he's had since he was a puppy (good lab, huh?) he panicked and pooped. I got him out before he even got all wet, but the "damage" was done. FYI - dog poop disintegrates when trying to scoop it out of water...

This came less than 24 hours after this scenerio. Andrew and Jacob were playing out in the backyard, when Andrew runs in:

Andrew: Mom, Scout just ate a bunch of leaves and grass and threw up on the sidewalk.
Me: Okay.

About a minute later:

Andrew: Mom, Scout is now laying on top of where he threw up.
Me: Sigh...

I then had to wash off mostly undigested monkey grass off his side, which did not want to come off without the help of my fingers. YUCK, YUCK, YUCK. The things we do for love...

Happy Anniversary, Paul!

Twelve years ago today, Paul and I said our "I do's" to each other. I could use the cliche and say "It seems like just yesterday..." but it doesn't. We've been through a lot in these twelve years. I think we've definitely experienced the "for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health". I think back to all the heartbreaking trials we've gone through the past few years and can't even begin to imagine how I would have survived without Paul being at my side. Many of these things have been experienced in private - most of the outside world knows nothing about. There is nothing that I can't share with him and he always supports, encourages, and most of all just loves me.

Since I missed blogging on his birthday and Father's Day, I'll share a little more about him. He is the best father to these four little men that we are raising. I can't even begin to describe how much they love their daddy! When he comes home from work, their world's stop momentarily so they can run to him and hug him. He loves to play and act silly with them and just plain "male bond" (much to my dismay sometimes). I can't imagine a better partner to parent with and look forward to many more years to come.

I love you, Paul. Happy Anniversary, Happy Birthday and Happy Father's Day!

Where is Marianna??

I know it's been a long time since my last blog but I have a good excuse. My hard drive crashed a few weeks ago. You know, the kind where you lose EVERYTHING! And no, I had NOT backed anything up recently. We sent my drive off to a data recovery company with the hopes that they can retrieve it, but so far they have had no luck. They are trying one more time this weekend. I'm also waiting for my new laptop (a Dell this time) that should hopefully be here tomorrow. NEVER buy a Toshiba computer - I've been tempted several times over the last few weeks (actually months) to change the "b" in Toshiba to a different letter for a more accurate description! In the meantime, I'm having to do everything from Paul's stinky mac. As soon as I have everything up and running on my new system I will be holding a cremation ceremony for the old one - via a baseball bat! I'll try to post more later today as Paul will be gone this evening for a while. I've got some cute pics of the boys to put on here as well.

The Unthinkable

My heart is so sad tonight. I found out earlier this evening that one of Andrew's classmates lost her mother today. What makes it so much worse is that her dad was the one to murder her. Here in Dallas, it was plastered all over the news because the dad then tried to jump off a highway bridge to commit suicide.

I had a PTA board meeting at school this morning. About half way through our principal was called out. As the meeting ended, we noticed several officers in the school. Apparently at that time, they did not know where the dad was and were afraid that he would show up at the school to get the girls.

Andrew had already gone to bed when I heard the full story, so now Paul and I are faced with the decision on what and how much to tell him. I want him to hear it from us rather than as a rumor from other kids at school, but I don't want to tell him more than he needs to know at his age. Not that any of this should be anywhere even remotely on the radar of an eight year old. I mean, how do you tell a child that one of his friend's father killed her mother and now in the course of a day she has virtually become an orphan. Please keep their three daughters in your prayers.

Happy Birthday, Nicholas!

Nicholas' 5th Birthday was last week. Wow! Where does the time go?? He celebrated with a party at Chuck E Cheese last weekend then Paul and I took him to lunch on his actual birthday. When I told him he could go wherever he wanted, he chose McDonalds (but with the stipulation that we eat in the play area!). He is such a sweetheart! Of all my kids, he is definitely the most laid back - which is ironic since he was the most difficult pregnancy and delivery. While at lunch, Paul and I reminincsed about what was going on at that exact time five years ago (Nicholas was born at 1:17pm). The main thing I remember was thinking the pain was unbearable and that he either needed to come out or I needed to die! My epidural did not work and he came out at lightning speed (17 minutes and one push)! But it was all so worth it. Nicholas came along at a time in my life that was the pit of darkness. I found out I was unexpectantly pregnant with him just three months after my mom died. God knew what he was doing when he gave me this ray of sunshine. Because of the physical effects of the grief I was going through, I had a really rough pregnancy. I had no immune system the first half of my pregnancy and ended up hospitalized a week before Christmas with dehydration and contractions. I finally past a milestone around 25 weeks and began to feel better. However, at 32 weeks I went into pre-term labor and was put on bedrest while in and out of the hospital the rest of my pregnancy. Finally, at 39 weeks I developed preeclampsia and had to be induced to avoid a stroke. I think one of the most memorable moments from that time was one night when I was 34 or 35 weeks. Former Dallas Cowboy Randy White was at our house picking up some business cards that Paul had done for him. They were in his office chatting and I knew Paul was in heaven as he is such a big fan. Meanwhile, I'm in the family room having big time contractions 5-6 minutes apart! I called my dad and asked him to come up and stay with the older two. As soon as Randy left, my dad shows up to Paul's surprise. I told him to hurry and get in the car because we were headed to the hospital again. Luckily, each time they were able to stop my contractions and stabilize me so that I could go home and remain on bedrest there.

Now for a little about Nicholas these days. He had a Star Wars party (which is his newest craze). When we went to pick out his cake, he chose a Scooby Doo cake. I tried to explain that all his decorations were Star Wars that he had picked out, but he insisted on the Scooby Doo. His newest thing is to give me a thumbs up and for me to do it back to him. He loves doing this especially during his soccer games. The problem is he often does it to me after he's just pushed another kid down or kicked the ball the wrong direction! His other thing is to tell me he "very, very, very, very,.... loves me. I then say it back to him and it turns into a game to see who can say the most "very's". We have always called him our Campbell soup kid, because he has the face of the Campbell soup boy. He is the epitome of childhood innocense. He almost always has a smile on his face and just wants to make us happy. More than anything he just wants to be near us. Everyone needs a Nicholas in their lives!!

Happy Birthday, my Nicho-licko-lous!!

Brotherly Love ???

Here's the transcript of a conversation me and Nicholas had on the way to soccer practice tonight:

Nicholas: Can you be anything you want to be in Heaven?
Me: What do you mean?
Nicholas: When I get to Heaven, I'm going to ask God to turn me into a chicken.
Me: Why?
Nicholas: Because if I'm a chicken then Jacob won't recognize me and he won't be able to hit me, but I can sneak up on him without him knowing and then I can hit him.

The Wind Huffed and it Puffed...

...and it (almost) blew our house down! Night before last we woke up to the sound (or lack of) that occurs when your electricity goes out. As I sat up in bed, I heard an eerie whistling sound followed almost immediately by the sound of 87mph winds pummeling our house. We could feel the vibration of the house shaking and the roof trying to come off. I screamed "I think it's a tornado!" as we both jumped out of bed. By this time, the older three boys had already woken up so I yelled up to them to run down stairs and get under the stairs while I ran up to get Noah out of his crib. The adrenaline kicked in and I made it up the stairs and back down by the time the others got down and wasn't even out of breath! (Although I'm definitely feeling it now!) Since we had no power and had no way of finding out what was happening and not knowing if more was coming, I called my dad from my cell phone. Luckily he had power and was able to look at the radar on tv and let us know when the worst was over. After it was over, our power was still out so we let the kids sleep in our room, but I think we were all too wound up to get much sleep. We didn't realize how bad the destruction was until the morning when we could venture out. Praise God our house was mostly spared other than some tree limbs and roof shingles, but several of our neighbors were not as fortunate. A few houses had their chimneys knocked off their roofs, numerous fences were destroyed, and several 50+ year old trees were snapped in two like toothpicks. One street over from us, just about every tree was knocked over. There are also some electric and telephone poles south of our subdivision that were knocked over. Of course, while we were under the stairs Andrew said, "I hope our trampoline isn't blown away." To which I replied, "I hope our roof isn't blown away!"

My brother in Allen also lost his chimney along with their fence and a tree. My dad's plane was heavily damaged at the McKinney Airport. As I'm writing this, there was a story on the news confirming that there was a tornado mixed in with the straight line winds.

I've had several people ask if we heard the tornado sirens and no, we did not. The only way to hear them from our house is if everything is completely silent (which is usually not the case in a storm)! I think we will definitely be buying a battery powered weather radio to have for the future. All I can say is I am glad the forecast is for sunny weather for the next several days!

Desperate for Summer!

A few weeks ago, we had a couple of very unexpected snow storms in McKinney. And it was the good kind of snow too - the snowman building kind! The kids had a blast and the best part? It was gone in a day! HaHa (I am a Texas girl at heart!) At one point, I sarcastically asked the kids if they wanted to go swimming. Nicholas goes running out of the room and puts his swim suit on! When I told him I was only joking, he threw a fit so I said "Fine, go for it!" Here's the picture as proof!

Long Time, No Post

What's been going on in the Ernest household? A whole lot (as usual). Andrew and Nicholas started the spring soccer season and of course because of their age difference they are no longer playing on the same fields which makes for fun Saturdays when their games overlap! We had a fun spring break last week with lots of relaxing! On Friday, we went to Fossil Rim Wildlife in Glen Rose. It's a wildlife park that you drive through and the animals come up to your car and you can feed them. It was a lot of fun but very crowded. Because of the crowds and constant feedings, the animals were not as eager as normal to come up to the cars for more food. We did have some rams come to the car and eat out of the kids hands so they thought that was pretty cool. Noah had never been before so he had a blast calling all the animals "pigs" and all the birds "ducks". One of these "ducks" (an ostrich) also came up to the car and reached its head in for a treat. Noah thought it was hilarious and said "Silly Duck". He's doing so much better with his speech and loves his PPCD class.

On that note, I found out this week that McKinney ISD will be opening an Early Childhood Learning Center to house all of their preschool programs such as PALS, PPCD, Headstart, etc. This will remove these programs from the elementary schools and put them in a central location thus alleviating some space issues in the current schools. It's also great for parents like me who had kids in multiple schools because of different needs. Noah is at one school and Nicholas was at another one until he graduated PALS and is now at a third school for his once a week speech therapy. And of course these are all different than our home campus at Valley Creek! So when does this new school open? Fall of 2010 - the year Noah starts kindergarten. Even though it comes a little too late for us, I'm still glad it's being done as I think it's a huge need for MISD.

Andrew and Jacob are staying busy with school. Andrew just got his results back from his first TAKS test and only missed two questions and therefore was "Commended". He will take the math portion later in April. Jacob was invited to participate in the "Alpha" program which is McKinney ISD's gifted and talented program. He has definitely come a long way from where he was at this time last year. As I mentioned earlier, Nicholas "graduated" from PALS and is now going in for speech therapy once a week for his stuttering. I was going to put him in a preschool program for the remainder of the school year, but decided I wanted to keep him home and just enjoy having him with me during the day since he'll be starting kindergarten in the fall.

Paul is staying busy as ever at work. He just hired a full-time designer to help out so hopefully that will take some of the load off of him. I'm staying busy too. I just took on the role of Treasurer of the Valley Creek PTA. So far, it's been a lot of fun and it let's me combine my work background with helping at my kids school.

I know I say this far too much, but I am going to try to get better with posting more regularly! I have some pics to post too.

We're Seeing Pink!

No, we're not having a girl. We have pink eye going around the house. Yuck!! All the kids except Andrew woke up with it Monday morning thus extending their spring break. The one good thing with pink eye is that you usually don't feel too bad so the ones at home were thrilled to get a few more days at home. Of course, Andrew was not so happy and kept trying to rub his eyes to catch it so he could stay home too! Unfortunately for him, it didn't work and he had to go to school every day. And where did all this lovely stuff come from? That would be Paul - he had it last week. And who got to take care of all these little eyes instead of enjoying the kids being back in school from spring break - that would be me!

Lock Down

Last week I was up at the school one morning for a PTA board meeting. When I arrived there were four police cars pulling into the parking lot at the same time. Considering it was only 8:45, I thought this was odd. I went inside, signed in, and went on to my meeting. At that point even though there were several officers, nothing seemed tense or unusual. However, within a few minutes, the school secretary comes into where we are meeting and announces that we must come with her immediately for a lock down drill. We all went into the nurses office along with everyone else from the front office, turned off all the lights and computer screen and had to be completely silent. Even though it was only a drill, I was unexpectedly anxious. All I could think about was what if this was real and wondering if my kids were scared even though it was only a drill or if this was just "ho-hum" routine stuff to them. The drill lasted about five minutes at which time one of the officers knocked on our door to let the principal (who was in with us) know that the drill was over.

Later that day, I kept thinking about the drill and wondering why it had upset me so. I finally figured out why - it's the one drill our children practice that is rooted in pure evil. If a fire were to occur, there would be a few tense minutes until everyone was out, but then the immediate danger would mostly be over. For a tornado, there is at least some warning at the beginning of the day for the possibility of severe storms. However, a lock down only occurs for one reason - somebody is trying to do evil. Whether directly in the way of actually entering the school to do harm, or indirectly by commiting a crime in the neighborhood of the school. When I was in the drill imagining what if it was real, all sorts of thoughts ran through my head. Since my kids are on opposite ends of the school, would one be safe and the other not? All I wanted to do was run out of that room and grab my kids and head to safety. It was hard knowing that I was in the same building as them and yet I couldn't protect them. After school, I asked my kids where they go for the drill. My younger one goes into a walk in coat closet with another class. We're talking 40-45 kids! My older son was actually in the process of switching classes when the drill began. They were instructed to drop their backpacks and RUN into the classroom where there is a closet/loft area. And yes, to them it was just "ho-hum" routine. Barely a distant memory by the time they got home from school. But for me, the images of the "what if's" will serve as yet another reminder that my kids are not truly my own, they are just on loan to me. And the job of Protector? Well, that is ultimately the Lord's responsibility.

Night at the Museum

Last weekend I got to go with Andrew on an overnight trip that he earned for selling popcorn for his Cub Scout Pack. We spent the night at the Dallas Museum of Natural Science. They had this elaborate program set up for the boys where they got to learn about electricity, baseball, and sharks. When it was time for bed we got to sleep upstairs in one of the exhibit rooms. Andrew and I staked out our spot right next to a dinosaur - a REAL dinosaur! It was really cool! We waited to see if he wanted to play fetch after the lights went out, but no. It could have been the older Webelos that kept sneaking out of the room most of the night. (Did I mention that by sleeping by the dinosaur we also were right by the door that went to the main hallway and ultimately the bathroom). The next morning we got to see an IMAX movie about sharks. The boys really enjoyed it but I think I slept through most of it since I had only had about an hour of sleep! I got a really good picture of Andrew in bed next to his new friend but I haven't downloaded it yet so I will try to post it once I do.