San Diego trip, Day 1san

Brett & I took the kids & his parents to San Diego for a few days. We went to the Holiday Bowl Big Bay of Balloons Parade on Monday morning. It was fun! We took the trolley to the bay and then watched the two hour parade. 

Watching the balloon floats. 

Sitting on Daddy waiting for Thomas!!

Waiting at the trolley station. Their poses are killing me!

After the parade we had lunch with our friends Kyle, Amy, & their daughter Kaylee at a fun place called Fudruckers! 

Kaylee and Maryam!

After lunch Brett & I took our kids to visit their NICU. They sure were a hit! It's great to know that even after 7 years they still love their little Miracle Maryam!

Dr. Matt Sebald was one of Maryam's and Jax's doctors. He was head of the NICU by the time Jax was born. We LOVE him. 

After the NICU we checked into our hotel.  The kids took advantage of the 77 degree temperatures and the heated pool! They swam through nap time! Hehehe

Jax and Maryam in the pool. Jax flashing a "v" for victory!

The bunk beds in the kid suite. They had their own room with tons of floor space to play! 

The view from our room. In the distance is USD. San Diego sure is beautiful. We miss it!

Our friend Koz gave us four tickets to the Holiday Bowl! We didn't want to take Maryam out in the cold, damp night air, so we asked Brett's parents to go along. Jax was super excited to go to a football game!

Warming up with some cocoa! 

Chowing down on popcorn with Momom! Daddy told me that Jax was asleep during the 3rd quarter. :)

While they were at the football game, Maryam & I hung out with our friends Jennifer & Mike. Jen was one of the kids' nurses and even took care of me after Jax was born. They're amazing people. Maryam & I had fun catching up with them. 

Thanksgiving

I think I will always be most thankful for my family and friends. For my husband. For my miracle baby. For the doctors and nurses that saved my life and the lives of my children. For the CHOC feeding clinic team. For Maryam eating orally and not having a G-tube. For Jax being born with a non-life threatening operable medical problem. For all these things that have shaped me into the wife, mother, friend, daughter, sister, aunt, & friend that I am today. For most importantly, going through all of it and learning the point of it all. To appreciate the good times, like these!

Yep, grateful. 

Christmas Crafts

The kiddos LOVE crafts. If I just say the word "craft" they get so excited!! So, we've done tons of Christmas crafts! Maryam's school even had a craft night and we went to that too. Crafts, crafts, crafts. 

These are the crafts from craft night at Maryam's school. They made ornaments and door hangers. They had a great time! 

Gingerbread house fun!

Painted masks! They later had a puppet show for Mommy that combined Frosty and Rudolf. It was really cute!

Decorating Christmas trees they cut from green construction paper. They used ALOT of glitter. They made a huge mess and had a great time! 

Painting a wooden stocking. Maryam made hers for Jax, even put his name on it. Jax made his for Mr. Bishop. Hehe So cute!

Making coffee filter snowflakes is my very favorite Christmas craft. I love making them! I love that we do it as a family. I love that they're always different! I love them! This year we used three different filter sizes, we had super large, regular, and tiny cupcake papers.  It was fun! 

Christmas stuff

The kids met with Santa and went over their lists. I think Santa May have been overwhelmed especially when Jax asked for a lot of bacon! Haha Funny story about this Santa, it's the same Santa the kids have been going to their whole lives! M has been going to see him since 2007. 

Maryam's PTO does a fundraiser called Pancakes with Santa. It's fun and we all eat breakfast for less than $20 and the kids get to see Santa again!

Santa! 

They also got to see Santa after the City of 29 Palms Winter Lights Parade and tree lighting! He rolled up on top of a fire truck. The kids were stoked!

This was a fun night! We sat with a bunch of our friends and watched the parade, then we walked to City Hall for the tree lighting ceremony. The high school choir was there singing Christmas Carols and there were cookies and hot cocoa for everyone to enjoy! 

Jax

Jax is a typical 4 year old boy. He's cuddly one minute and jumping off of the top bunk and hitting his head on the dome light and ending up in the ER, the next. That really happened, by the way. :)

He's my little buddy and we spend most days together making crafts, baking, playing games, playing with his cars or dinosaurs, or riding bikes. He keeps me busy all day and into the night! 

I took him out of preschool because it was costing us too much money. I missed our time together. We still have a few days apart a week though. On Monday I volunteer in Maryam's class and I substitute teach at least one other day a week. We're making it work and I'm glad to be working again. 

Here are some of my favorite pictures of Bubby. 

Jax loves art. He loves painting, coloring, & drawing. 

He thought Mr. B's bed needed decorations too! :) Sweet boy. 

Maryam

Maryam is having a rough winter! She's had Strep, scarlet fever, RSV, bronchialitis, & CLD flare ups.  She missed the whole last week of school because she couldn't breathe! I took her into the doc's office on Monday and he said she had a cold and a tummy bug. I told him, Maryam has never had a cold, it always turns into something else! By Wednesday it was bronchialitis and RSV needing breathing treatments every 3 hours and a strong antibiotic to help her fight of pneumonia. Good times.

Poor Punkin missed the most fun week of school! Lame. No Christmas concert or crafts. I did crafts with her at home, and she and Jax had fun, but it's not the same. 

But in good news, Maryam had a great parent/teacher conference the week before! She's the fastest reader in her class and she's the only one who scored 100% on some of the benchmark tests. Yay Maryam! Her teacher loves her and told me that she's a delightful young lady. She said if she had 22 more Maryams her job would be so easy. :) It was all really nice to hear. Everyone loves our little Maryam! 

At the doc on Monday. 

Wednesday appointment. 

Maryam with her Student of the Month Award. Yay Maryam!

Last Friday she and I went to see The Nutcracker Ballet! I was so glad she was feeling better. Brett had bought us the tickets for my birthday and we had been looking forward to it since! 

She's adorable!

Waiting for the show to start! She loves the Sugarplum Fairy. :)

Punkin & I all dressed up for the ballet. 

The ballet with Maryam is amazing. She's so well behaved and has amazing manners. She is a pleasure to spend time with. I love her!

Merry Christmas!!!

This is the picture I used for our Christmas card this year. Let me tell you, these two were mocking me! I had their shoes on, no antlers, & no lights when we started. I had them standing next to the poinsettia hugging each other, they kept knocking each other! 

I left to go get a Diet Coke, I mean beer and when I came back they had their shoes off, the antlers on, & were wrapping each other in the twinkle lights! I decided to just go with it and I'm glad I did. It's a great picture! 

Here they are in the outfits their Auntie Sarah sent them and the hats their Auntie Brande sent them. This was Christmas Eve before heading over to Momom & Popop's house. 

Before they opened up their WiiU.

After. :)

Christmas morning before the carnage. 

I didn't take one of the aftermath. But trust me when I say, woah. 

Here are some of my favorite pictures of the kids with their Christmas presents. Santa spoiled them again this year. :)

The kids got many really great gifts this year, but their favorites are the WiiU, Disney Infinity, Skylander's Swap Force,   and all the characters they got to go with each game. 

Thank you to everyone for helping make their Christmas AMAZING.