Pitiful

Henry has had this lingering cough for a couple of weeks now.  It morphed out of some preschool plague (mutation H1N1-624Q... or something like that)  and it just seemed to hang around.  Everything else about him seemed okay, but sometimes he would start coughing and would sound like a two pack a day smoker trying hard to get rid of that troublesome lung.

The other morning he and I were laying in bed and he started coughing.  I looked at him and said "Baby, that cough is so pitiful".

He looked at me and smiled like he was proud, so I asked if he knew what pitiful meant. 

"Ummmm.... Pitiful means much much better!"

No... not really right at all.  I tried to explain pitiful to him, but it's kinda tricky.  I told him it was sad, or sick, but he just said "No... it's better!"

A couple of days later we were visiting with Grandaddy and Val in our living room and Nick said "Mama... something is wrong with Henry."  I loved over at him and he had hives all over his cheeks and arms.  My first thought was he was allergic to something, and I  shot up a quick all important prayer of "Please god, don't let it be peanut butter..."  .

We gave him some Benadryl and they went away, but three hours later they were back with a vengeance.  Through out the night they took on a life of their own and completely covered him from head to toe.  The Benadryl would help for an hour or two, then they would start creeping back up.  By the time he was ready for another dose he looked like he had the plague.  If the plague looked like really really bad hives.

So anyway, off to the doctor we went (after a two hour emergency babysitting stint by Papaw (THANKS PAPAW!!) where they watched Tron and  played with play-dough while Mama gave her mandatory final presentation for class... the juggling act of school/mama/work. It's tricky sometimes) Turns out that some viruses can result in full body hives. Who has ever heard of such a thing?? Not me. I just assumed hives were always from allergies.  But some viruses just throw them at you as a curve ball. Jack ass viruses.  On top of that the poor baby has a sinus infection, which was all part of this smokers cough. So... good thing I finally caved on having to pay a copay.

When we got into the car to leave the doctor Henry asked if he was pitiful. I said "yes baby, you are pitiful".  Then I asked him what pitiful means. He thought for a second and said "Pitful means... awwww, poor Henry."

I think that's all around pitiful. 

I am happy to report the hives are gone and the cough seems to be getting better.  He isn't nearly as pitiful as he was.   He is now officially Much Much Better.
 

Meet Aech (H), Our Personal Elf (of the Shelf variety)

So here he is!  (Haven't you all be curious?)  Henry's very own personal Elf, Aech (pronounced like you say the letter H)!!

Pretty cute, right?

I really wanted to get Elf of the Shelf for Henry last year, but foolishly thought I would wait for it to go on sale. You know what never EVER goes on sale? An Elf on the Shelf.

Wait, you all know what an Elf on the Shelf is, right?  He is a little elf that comes with his own story book explaining that he is really alive, and on a mission from Santa to keep an eye on you during the Christmas season.  He shows up after Thanksgiving and every night after you are asleep he uses his elf magic to fly to Santa to report on if you are naughty or nice.  Every morning he finds a new place to sit, so Henry gets the joy of finding where he is hiding as soon as he wakes up.

Part of giving you Elf his magic if giving him a name.  And Henry was very sure of his elf's name.  It's H.  Which... is a nickname we use for Henry a lot.  So he sorta named his elf Henry. We tried to talk him into something different, but the kid would not budge.  This elf is named H. End of discussion.  Since I am a total nerd I decided we would spell H like Aech from Ready Player One.I find that it makes him much cooler.  All the other elfs at the north pole will be jealous.


Henry liked the idea of Aech pretty much right away. Although he didn't get it exactly. "Cool, and early present from Santa, bummer I can't touch him. Is he a toy? Is he my friend?"

The first morning Aech had moved from the mantel to the top of the little Christmas house Henry was interested.  "He Moved?  How did he get there??"  I reminded him how Aech goes to the north pole.  He seemed to be thinking it over.


The next morning Aech made a big move. According to Henry, a HILARIOUS move."Aech, YOU ARE ON THE LIGHT!!! How'd you DO THAT??" 

This morning when he woke up the first thing he said was "Where's Aech??"  He found him in the manger, which was apparently also hilarious. 

I already love this new tradition.  I can't wait to see what  Aech gets into over the next few weeks, and how much joy that will give my sweet boy.

Christmas is going to be so awesome this year. 

**I know I don't do a lot of instagram, but for some reason it just feels right for pictures of Aech.  Expect to see more.

**If you have any great ideas for fun things for your elf to do, please let me know! I am running out of easy spots and need to start with all the cute, funny things you people seem to be coming up with all the time!  I plan to use you for your ideas.
 

Thankful for Thanksgiving

So how was everyone's Thanksgiving? Good? Great! Mine too! It was truly wonderful.  I love Thanksgiving.  I love the time with family, I love setting aside a day to be thankful for what we have, and... to be completely honest... I freaking love food.  Especially thanksgiving style food.  I am a casserole kind of girl.  Vegetables, good.  But vegetables mixed in with cream of anything soup, cheese and crackers.... BETTER!

I did an absolutely dismal job of taking pictures this weekend.  And the few real ones I took are stuck on my memory card in my camera which is sitting on my parents mantle up high so the kids can't reach it... and hour away from here... exactly where I put it to keep it safe on Sunday.

But I since I know you are dying to see photographic evidence of our weekend, I have cell phone pictures for you!  (None are actually Thanksgiving related.  More just random weekend pictures.  But we gotta work with what we have...)


 Well, this one is a little Thanksgiving-ish! The day before Thanksgiving Aunt Boo kept Henry and they made these little craft projects. How adorable are these two??

And this is from Thanksgiving night at Grandaddy's house. Uncle Chris brought a mind battling game, which Henry LOVED. We are raising him right. Into a complete nerd.  A powerful mind control nerd!
 
More proof of raising him right, Nick got an early Christmas present this weekend, the new Wii U! I cannot tell you how proud I am of myself for pre-ordering this thing so I wasn't in some crazy footrace on Black Friday. I was going to make him wait until Christmas day... but then figured what the heck. Let's start the fun now. Henry is in love with Papa's new games! (Do you see the little picture of Henry in the top right of the TV screen? He is a serious racer)
 
Well... I hadn't realized exactly how nerdy all these pictures are until I lined them up together. But... what can you do? WE ARE WHO WE ARE! We took Henry to see Wreck it Ralph this weekend (SO GOOD!) and while we were there we snapped this picture of Henry at Bilbo's door. because who doen't want a picture of themself as a kid at a Hobbit door?

 As a side note, do you all know how many people go to the movies on Thanksgiving weekend? Apparently the ENTIRE CITY GOES. I have never seen it so packed in my life. And I go opening night to things like Harry Potter and Twilight. I have seen a movie crowd.

Anyway, I that's all my pictures. So I am going to wrap this up. Really smooth like....

The end.
 

Thankful

This has not been the easiest year of my life, but when looking back through my pictures of 2012, one thing is clear. There is so so much to be Thankful for.

     

 Through ups and downs, celebrations and heart aches, we are working our way through this amazing life together. And for that, I am forever grateful.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

My Very Important Thoughts and Feelings about Breaking Dawn Part Two (because I think you care)

Top Half of this is Spoiler Free.  I will CLEARLY mark when I start talking about the actual movie.

So as you may or may not remember, I was at one time a very large twilight fan.  And you may also have heard that the final movie came out this weekend.

I have read all the books, plus all the extra material Stephenie Meyer has written online, and of course I have seen all the movies.  But sometime between the second and third movie I stopped talking about it as much.  Not because I didn't still think it was a great story, but more because other people thought it was THE GREATEST STORY OF ALL TIME.  And like... I don't know.  Things like this started happening:

And to each their own! If you want a huge tattoo of Edward Cullen on your back, more power to you!  But it seemed like the crazy fans were so loud, and then the "I HATE TWILIGHT" crowd got even louder, so I just slowly backed away and took on the attitude of being over it.  I never denied that I loved it when I read it, but I wasn't like, going to wait in line to see it at midnight or anything.

This weekend the final movie came out. Missy had her treatment on Thursday and we have seen all the movies together. I knew she wouldn't be up for a movie on Friday, but I wasn't concerned to miss opening night.  We would see it eventually.  No need to panic.  I am over all this Twilight stuff.  I am just seeing it to like, finish off the series or whatever.

 Except when it came out the word was that it had a twist.  A big twist.  And I got very afraid someone was going to TELL ME the twist.  So since Missy was feeling pretty good on Sunday we (along with Boo and Candice) went to a matinee show of Breaking Dawn.  And you know what?  I loved it.  LOVED IT!  I mean, it's has cheesy parts of course.  But I was so annoyed with myself for letting these crazy fans and crazy haters make me feel dumb for liking this series.  Everyone loved it a few years ago!  And the story isn't any different than it was when I read it and loved it!  Basically it was a reminder that it's okay to like what I like at the level that I like it and not have other people influence that.

This movie was worth seeing if you liked the series.  If you didn't like the books, you will hate it.  It's as simple as that.  I thought the twist added a lot to the story.  I think it made the movie so much better than it would have been without it.  Although the lady behind us FREAKED OUT and kept yelling "THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN IN THE BOOK!"  It would have been funny if we all didn't want to yell "WE KNOW LADY! NO BE QUIET!"

That is all I will say spoiler free, But below this line are my thoughts and feelings full of spoilers.  So ONLY READ FROM HERE ON IF YOU ARE OKAY WITH SPOILERS!

************SPOILER LINE******************

Let's do this in bullets:

• I thought the battle at the end was awesome.  I know a lot of people had no idea it was just in Alice's head, but I actually figured it out when Jasper was killed.  When it was just Carlisle I was SHOCKED they would do that.  When it was Jasper too, and then Seth... I KNEW they wouldn't make this big of a change.  The fans would REVOLT!
• Even knowing it was in Alice's mind, I still thought it was great.  It added so much to the end and it gave fans the battle they thought they wanted at the end of the book without having to actually have the characters die.
• I was REALLY worried about Renesmee's face.  And I though it looks really odd for the scene where she was three days old.  And after that I thought it was fine.  I liked that they moved her to older very quickly. 
• Some of the CG with Bella and Edward running through the woods I thought could have been cut.  It was just a little cheesy to me.
• I have a deep love for Charlie Swan.  I just think he is awesome.
• I thought the Jacob/Renesmee thing would be really strange, but it wasn't at all.  It didn't really bother me in the book like it did other people, but for some reason I thought it might be odd on screen.  Nope.  It played out fine (according to me).
• I kinda want to own that little cottage that Bella and Edward moved into.  How cute was that place?
• I really liked all the casting of the extra vampires.  I liked the Amazons, Benjamin and Garret the most, but really I thought they did a great job bringing in so many new people.
• It felt like by far the fastest twilight movie.  Was is shorter? 
• In the end when they did the thing where they showed every character from all five movies, I LOVED that.  Yes, I am a sucker, but it was nice to see everyone! 

 I think that's it.  But in general, if you loved these books when you read them, and you liked the movies as they came out, don't give up on this series.  They ended it well!

 

Family Photos

Do you remember when I mentioned a few weeks ago that I wanted to have family pictures made? And how I was running around like crazy buying clothes and getting it set up and was worried if all wearing shades of browns was too BROWN? Turns out it wasn't too brown. Turns out it was kinda awesome because these pictures came out better than I ever could have hoped.

Wanna see?

Our family out at Waveland
 
Around my favorite Red Door
 
A different, but also lovely, Red Door
 
They also have a Red Barn which makes for nice pictures.  My parents and their three girls.
 
The Sisters

The boys
 
My sweet parents
 
Possibly my favorite picture ever
 
Followed closely by this gem

Family
 
The babies
 
My boys

I know wearen't paying attention, but I like this one

The Bio Girl Family.  Henry was a little under the weather (shakes fist at Pre-school plague) but I he still looks pretty adorable

He just gave up on smiling pretty early on. Still cute with the grandbabies

Boo Chris and Sweet Cici
 
Sisters again

Family

It was a great day.

Thanks so much to my amazing Aunt Donna for capturing it for us.

(If you want to see MORE of the pictures, you can click on any of these and it will take you to my flickr account where you can look through even more.  I have the other 360 at home on a disc, and they are all pretty stinking great too!  )