HAPPY BIRTHDAY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SWEET BABY GIRL!

I cant believe she is 26.

Benefit Softball Tournament

I have been real busy just like everyone else. Not much time to blog. But last weekend we did something a little different so I am taking time to blog about it tonight.

I mentioned before about our friends who are on a journey to adopt from Peru. That is an expensive process. So Calley's sweet and athletic sister they call Grubby, put together a Softball Tournament to help raise money for the blessed event!

We pitched in our two cents worth and helped out. I helped out by agreeing to help with the concessions (some great little girls did a great job at that though and mainly I just got to enjoy the events of the day.) :)
Avery was pretty happy that Nonna was helping with concessions since that meant Nonna was happy to give her a dollar for treats now and then. She was very nice to share her sucker with Uncle Mark, don't you think?

Charlie and Mark helped out by playing! They were pretty good!Josh helped out by staying home and watching the LSU game. Oh wait, never mind. (No photos)

And Mark helped out by holding this fence up. Oh sorry, just a line so I could put in one more picture of my handsome son. (Just sayin!)

Casey helped out by showing up and providing moral support and cheers.

Avery helped out by making sure "May" minded her. (Or Amaus as his family calls him.)
Avery had wanted to go up these stairs but lazy Nonna showed her that the door at the top was locked with a pad lock, so we didn't need to go up. So in this picture when Amaus was heading up, she was yelling to him "No May, door lock!!" reapeatedly.
We actually had a church team in this tournament. I think thats a first for Cornerstone. Lots of our folks showed up and lots of Calleys family showed up. This is her dad, and I just wanted to add the picture because I find it interesting. He helped out by playing, umpiring, and he made the plaques for the winning teams. We didnt get one of those by the way.

Lots of people were there. It was nice to see the support.

We had a really nice day. Avery had a blast. Here she is stealing, um I mean borrowing some plastic pitching balls. I sure hope those got put back in there...

There were lots of kids there too. Of Course Calley and Danny have 3 boys of their own right now and they have lots of cousins. They enjoyed the day too.

I hope their parents dont mind that I used this one. I just couldnt resist!

So once again, we had a great day. So glad it raised some money for such a good cause.
Have I mentioned that Danny

and Calleyare like the sweetest people I know. YEP! (You know besides my mom of course.)

Two Years

Two years ago today, I was sitting in my living room with Todd and we got a phone call from Casey. Not one of my favorite conversations. Casey was upset at some news from the doctor about Avery. They were concerned that one of the risks of prematurity was closer to reality than anyone wanted. Cerebral Palsy. I have to admit that shook me. Her little muscles were sooo tight which was preventing her from sitting up and some other things but since she was behind in sitting up and she had these things going on they wanted to test for that and also for Hip Displasia. We immediately began to pray. Todd was insistent that we not call people, or blog it, or anything like that... But just pray. We did. I thought for some crazy reason it would be the thing to do to research Hip Displasia since I didnt know much about that. Ummmmm Bad idea! The first picture popped up was a little girl in some contraption pulling her limbs from one end of the room to the other. Awful awful pictures. I shut the laptop down. I couldnt stomach it. Thankfully that prayer was answered SO QUICKLY. Avery just needed physical therapy to loosen her tight mucles which was from the prematurity. Soon she did sit up, and eventually did stand with her whole feet on the floor.

I am so thankful that she has come so far this last two years. She is growing, talking, painting, making phone calls, running, and saying Night Night Prayers, like "Dear God, I like cookies. In Jesus Name Amen." and other more meaningful ones.

She is even riding horses! She has her own ideas and attitudes and is becoming more and more precious to us if that is at all possible.

Cool what a couple of years brings.

What in the world will there be in two more years?

Avery Scooter & Gigi

HEY HAVE YOU PEOPLE SEEN THIS? IT'S BALLOON RACE WEEKEND!

We did see balloons but she was only impressed with them from afar. The horses though, now that was impressive. Honestly I thought she would love to look but not touch. This is the kid that's afraid to ride elevators, and even the backyard swing. But she surprised me. She loved the horses. She is MY grand daughter! We got to ride Scooter. She enjoyed her ride with Nonna. She petted Scooter, said Giddy Up Scooter, and loved waving to Mama and Poppa while we rode.
I think that was our favorite part of the weekend!

Well maybe thats my opinion because as far as Avery was concerned there was also:

GIGI

Here is a little GiGi story for you: After GiGi and Pap left our house Saturday Avery noticed a pair of my shoes in the living room. She immediately was obviously startled when she saw them. She gasped. "Oh GiGi shoes!" She looked completely worried that GiGi had left her shoes at my house. I explained to her that those were not GiGi's shoes but that they were mine. NONNA's Anyway I put them up and the next morning when getting ready for Sunday School I pulled them out to put them on. Avery was ANNOYED! "No No, GiGi's shoes" She promptly took them from me and moved them far away from me, with a shove! I told her once again that they were Nonnas shoes but she was having none of it! Thankfully a bit later GiGi called. I let Avery talk to GiGi so that she could assure Avery that she in fact did not leave her shoes here and that they really were Nonnas shoes. She said "Okay, love you GiGi" and off she went. I went and put on the shoes. NO PROBLEM! Have I mentioned that this girl loves her GiGi?


Avery also got to see her Mawmaw this weekend. Beverly walked her over to see the horses because as I mentioned before they were a hit. This time she wasnt up for a ride but enjoyed seeing them up close and personal with her Mawmaw.

It is a little crazy that it was Balloon Race Weekend and I didnt get one picture of a balloon. :( I think it may have something to do with the fact that in previous years I have, well lets just say WAY TOO MANY balloon pictures. But one from this year would have been nice. Oh Well!

Doctor Visit

Oh I hate to do posts with no pictures. So maybe I will come up with something before I'm done. I mainly just wanted to do this so I would have it documented in case I need to look back for some reason.

Unfortunately it was me going to the doctor this time and not Todd. (FROWN) Not that I would rather it be him, but that I would rather it be no one. I have known for a good bit now that my blood pressure is too high. I dont know why. It's not like I fry everything we eat. As a matter of fact I rarely fry things at all. It's not like we have a big juicy steak every other day. I do grill steak sometimes but certainly not real often. So the only thing I can figure is it's the job and the stress there. I dont know. I do know that I dont exercise enough. Shame on me! Anyway I also know that I asked God to bring it down and waited for a while. It did not come down and was as a matter of fact going up. I had had a headache for the last 5 days but I was thinking it may just be something else. Anyway I made an appointment to go in and have it checked. I certainly was hoping that there was just something wrong with my blood pressure machine. Unfortunately it was right.

So Monday I went in to my appointment knowing it was probably up. But when I went in to have it checked, their machine would stop and then go up, stop and then go up, stop and then go up. Finally it just started beeping. The nurse came in and said what in the world is wrong with this machine. So we tried the other arm. I told her maybe my pressure was too high for the machine. So the next one worked but my pressure was 215/117. Which set the alarm off again. The nurse came back in thinking there was something wrong with the machine and then saw my reading. Wow. She left the room and I was thinking 'Oh my goodness, they are going to put me in the hospital." The nurse came back in shortly with two little pills that she asked me to take. I have never been given medication right there in the doctors office! So I took those and then the doctor came in and wanted to check it again. The first time he got an incorrect reading because of his super sensative stethascope. It read 245/130 I think, so we were glad that was wrong. He changed stethascopes and my pressure had already come down to 189/105. Thankfully I did not have to go to the hospital. :) As bad as I HATE it, I have to take medication just like Todd for my blood pressure. It is working already though. I am suppose to take my pressure daily for a few weeks and today it was only 135/83. Havent seen those numbers in quite a while. I feel a little better already. My head isnt hurting tonight and I didnt wake up with my heart racing this morning. I was wondering if that had something to do with it too as every morning lately I wake up like I just had a stressful dream or something. But today I woke up calm. So I am thankful.

I have to go back in tomorow morning early to do some blood work. Of course they have to check your kidney function as high blood pressure can damage the kidneys. I pray there will be no problem there. Also they are checking my thyroid just in case that is what is causing the high bp. And they are checking my cholestoral too. I pray it is normal too.

So pray with me if you will.

Meanwhile here are a few photos that will be sure to relax you. Maybe even bring down your blood pressure.

Can you tell I like the beach?

Whatcha Doin

I walked into the kitchen this past weekend to find Avery standing at my dishwasher. I said "Avery, whatcha doin?" She turned towards me and I saw what she was doing. She had my debit card in her hand. My purse was innocently hanging on the chair at the kitchen table like normal. Avery was sliding my debit card into the crevice or space between the countertop and the top of the dishwasher. I got the card from her before she pushed it in. I explained to her that it was not a good idea. I needed that card so I could buy things. As I was putting my card back into my purse where she got it from I noticed she seemed to be trying to get into the dishwasher. I decided I should open it and check to see why. I was right. There they were. About 4 or 5 miscellaneous cards. A gift card, Insurance card...
She was having a grand time pushing those cards in there. Good thing I came in when I did.