The Novel

So here it is! The update of all updates. This is a recap of some of the fun things that have happened in the last few months. You may want to go grab a snack and drink, because this may take a while.

I will start with the Trike-a-thon. I was going to skip this, but several people have asked about it so here you go. Ethan and Emily's preschool sponsored a trike-a-thon for St. Judes Children's Hospital. Ethan was so excited about it. He came home telling us that he need to get money so he could ride his trike and help sick kids. It was actually taking place on a day that they usually don't go, but after hearing that how could I say no? Now Emily really could have cared less, but I thought she might have fun anyways so she did it too. Their Grandma's each sponsored them. For Emily is was just a set amount of money and for Ethan they said they would do a dollar per lap. The day of went just like I thought. Emily struggled to pedal so she only made it around 2 or 3 times. Ethan on the other hand was speedy!! He did 25 laps!! He was so cute. After about 10 laps he would ride by me with very exaggerated panting and say he was getting tired. After about 15 laps, he was wiping the sweat (which wasn't really there) from his brow. It was the cutest thing. They did it in the gym so the lighting was horrible. I tried adjusting my camera but could never get any real good pictures unless they were close up.

The next event I wanted to recap was our trip to Grandma and Grandpa's house. Emily ended up being really sick the whole time so unfortunately she missed out on most of the fun. The first night we got there she was fine and we all had dinner with friends. I am sure most of you have seen these pictures on Sunnie and Nicole's blog, but I had to post one here too because I think it is hilarious to see how many kids there are in the picture. It was so fun and the kids loved getting together and playing again!

The next morning Grandma and Grandpa took all the kids (and some of the parents too) to see Horton! They loved it. It was after the movie that Emily got sick. She has never been that sick before. Because she was so sick someone had to stay home with her during church. She was so sad to be left behind when all the cousins and Grandma and Grandpa left for church. The next day she was even more sad that her and daddy had to miss the trip to the space center. Ethan had a great time! I think he loved that he had mommy all to himself (Emery stayed home with Eric and Emily).

Here are all the older cousins standing in front of the big rocket.

This isn't the greatest picture but Ethan was pretending to hold up the moon!

If you have made it this far I give you a great big round of applause. I am almost done for now, and will possibly do part 2 in a couple of days.

The next big thing was Eric and his brother riding in the MS150. Can you imagine 180 miles on your bicycle. Eric figured that his rear end was sitting on the seat for a total of 13 hours in two days. Needless to say he was a little sore. My sister-in-law and I decided it would be fun to take the kids to see the dads cross the finish line. We left here on Saturday morning and got a hotel for that night. The hotel had an indoor pool so we took the kids swimming, ordered pizza and just had a great time. The next day we met Eric and his brother at the end! The kids had made fun signs that said "#1 Dad"! They were so excited to hold them up and see dad cross the line. The whole trip there they were saying how they hoped dad would win the race. I tried to explain to them that it wasn't a race like that and he would cross the finish line with lots of other people. I didn't want them to be disappointed when they saw a bunch of people cross before him. After they crossed the line we were walking to our meeting spot and Emily turned to me with the biggest grin and said "I am so glad that my daddy won!" She was so proud. The only picture I have right now is one that Eric took, he had the camera so I don't have any of the cute signs. I will try and get a copy from my sister-in-law.

Anyone who read my blog last year might remember that last years picture of the MS150 was a little more exciting than this years. I am a huge fan of the Amazing Race and last year Eric came home with a picture of him with Joyce and Uchenna from that show. It was pretty funny. So although he didn't meet anyone famous (or semi-famous) this year, he had a great time and is ready to go again next year!!

The last is just an update on cute little Emery. He is growing so fast. I can't believe that he is already 8 months old. He is trying really hard to crawl. I want to try and get a video of it to show off, but we will see. Here are some cute pictures taken recently.

In the last few months he has started eating baby food. At least I think he might eat some of it. In the beginning most of it ended up on his face, as you can see from the picture above. A couple weeks ago he got his first teeth. The two bottom ones came in right about the same time. One day he will cooperate and I will get a good picture of the two cute little teeth. It seems lately he has had lots of trips to the Dr. I took him in for an ear infection and they gave us a prescription for amoxicillin. This was the second time he has had it, but after about 4 days we woke up to this:

I was pretty sure right away that it was an allergic reaction to the amoxicillin. Some of you may remember that we had a similar thing with Emily. Her reaction was way worse than Emery's. You can check it out here. So I took him in and found out that he is allergic just like his big sis.

Well if you are still here, you made through my novel!! Thanks for reading and I will try really hard to keep up with things so I don't have to do a monster post like this again and so that you all don't have to spend half your day reading it!!