The Month of October

So I'm a real slacker when it comes to posting. October was a fun-filled, exciting and scary month. Here's what went down...

October 20th- Stella celebrated her 2nd birthday! She was excited to have new books to read, clothes to wear and an easel chalkboard/dry erase board (she doesn't know that part yet; we'll introduce her to that when she's a bit older).

October 22nd- We had a birthday party for Stella at Countryside Park. She had a blast with cousins, grandparents and her many aunts and uncles :) Curtis and I had a time making her Mike Wizowski pinata and Boo's Door cake.

October 23rd- We had family pictures with the Curtis' family. Curtis had put some 8 porkchops in the crockpot before hand (keep in mind there's only 3 people that eat solid food and one doesn't eat that much). So he invited Nathan and Jessica over to enjoy dinner :) Well I was in a hurry to get back to clean and tidy up a bit because my house was a DISASTER! For those who don't already know, I stress and freak out when people are coming over and my house is a mess. Anyway we get home and Curtis focuses on dinner, while I clean.

We put in a movie for Stella and she decides to sit on the floor to watch it. I am coming back and forth from room to room and my last time around I see Stella sticking her whole fist in her mouth trying to get something out. I start to pat her back to get it out and she's really choking!! I call for Curtis and he comes running in and starts pounding on her back and he says Ashley call 911. I was freaking out at this point, but tried to keep my cool and called 911. The lady that answered said that she would send the fire dept over. She stayed on the line with me to keep me calm and to tell me what to do with Stella. The fire dept shows and they check her air ways and blood pressure and other vitals. They decide to get her to the ER sinceher blood pressure was going down. She was coughing up blood and gettin real red.

Curtis left with her and I was left with Mr. Lincoln. Just as they drove away Nate and Jessica were walking toward the house. I explained everything told them that dinner was ready, fed Lincoln and left for the hospital. Upon getting there Stella was happy as can be and back to her normal self. She ended up coughing up the object, a monopoly piece-the hat, just as they turned the corner on the ambulance ride. She got to take an x ray and play the game room, but was ready to go home and play with Roxy and Rhett.

We are so grateful to our Heavenly Father for keeping our sweet Stella safe.

October 29th- We had our annual ward Trunk-or-Treat. We got there about half and hour after it had started and there was sooo many people there! The line for food was ginormous! Curtis only had time to get food and leave because he was throwing a bachelor party for Nick that night. The rest of the night was ok, but I really wish I had a husband there to help me with two crazy kids. Luckily uncle Nate took Stella trick or treating. All in all I hope next year Curtis can stay, I probably would have enjoyed the night more haha

October 30th- Rachel's surprise party was AWESOME! Nancy went all out for the big 1-8. There was a bouncy slide, cotton candy, popcorn, snow cones and hamburgers and hot dogs. Stella had such a blast playing with her cousins, aunts, parents and uncles. Oh and Kavika. Kavika is Stella's new and best pal. She adores him it seems :)

And that was our October!

Sore throat, ear ache....Misery

I had a sore throat about a week and a half ago and that was just misery. It faded away about last week, but then came full force on my left side and caused an earache. I figured well I'll try all the home remedies like I did before and it should go away. Plus my sweet sister-in-law provided me with some ear drops and some other medicine. According to Curtis she is our personal pharmacist :) Thanks Jess! So we get home Sunday night from nanny's house and put the kids to sleep. I'm sitting on the couch and decide I'll try to go to sleep. But the pain was just unbearable! I couldn't swallow very well and my ear was pounding :( I gave the remedies a go, but nothing. Finally by 1am I couldn't bear it any longer and my sweet Curtis offered to go to the 24hr Walgreens to get me some drugs. I really need to better about having the basic medicine needs in our house lol. Well I take the pain killers and try going to bed and then Lincoln wakes up. Great! So I comfort him put him back to bed and finally get some sleep. The next day everything seemed ok, but it still was not comfortable. I went over to my mom's in the afternoon and she was like "Ashley your poor face is swollen." My reaction "What huh?!" So I go to the bathroom to find that the left side of my jaw line is swollen and has a protrusion. My mom then asks "Have you had anything to eat?" My response "No it hurts too much! Curtis already made me drink a big thing of water so I won't get dehydrated and that killed!" Then I asked her "Can you make me some atole?" She said sure thing :) For those of you who may not know what atole is, it's a mexican drink. It's basically just water and corn maize boiled. It may sound gross, but I love it! Especially with some yummy chocolate.I then relax and have my delicious drink and instantly feel better. But as soon as I'm done, the pain returns with avengence. My mom says "You really need to go to the dr, you don't sound the same. Your speech sounds slurred." I was like "Thanks mom, puh." This morning I got an appt with the Dr and the first response from her was "Whoa! Your left tonsil is so swollen that it is shifting your uvula to the right." Then she told me that she was afraid I would get something called an "abscess." For the full definition go to the link below. But here's the quick version, she said that if it continued to swell so much that I could not talk or swallow I would need to go to the ER to get it drained. Gross I know. So she prescribed two medications and before I left the office I received a very uncomfortable shot on my upper hip/bum area. I was limping afterward because of the burning sensation going down my leg. http://www.emedicinehealth.com/abscess/article_em.htm And that was my fun-filled beginning of the week. I'm supposed to go back to the office in two days to see if any progress was made with the antibiotics. Oh and I forgot to mention, my dr said she wasn't going to be there on Thursday, so she brought in one of the other doctors, who was going to be there Thursday, to check it out. Her reaction was shocking she said "Oh my are you sure you're not feeling more discomfort than you appear to be having? With things like this you should be drooling all over yourself and not able to really talk." Yeah my usual reactions from doctors are like this. I appear healthy and well on the outside, but on the inside there's some crazy stuff happening.

Rash gone bad...

So over the past couple of days Lincoln has had a rash on his cheeks. It looked like it was getting better with a home remedy of corn starch, but just yesterday it didn't look pretty at all! It just kept oozing liquid. I made an appointment with the pediatrician for this morning and the whole time Lincoln was such a trooper and happy as can be. He seriously is an AWESOME baby boy! His poor cheeks looked so painful. :(

The pediatrician looked at it and checked everything saying that everything looks great he's in the 95th for weight and 90th for height. Then she went on to say that he has a 2nd degree infection on top of his eczema. Owie! So she prescribed and antibiotic and also gave me some cream samples to try on his skin after the antibiotic does it's job. So hopefully he gets better soon. Here are some pictures. They don't do his poor cheeks justice.

Taken the night before :(

Taken at the pediatrician's office. Looking happy.

Curious of what's going on. :)

Pain tolerance

So here I am one who had all natural birth with no pain killers, thinking I could handle pain. HA! Little did I know I was wrong haha. On Sunday I was shaving my legs for church and Stella was watching. I wasn't even shaving in a hurry when PSSht my razor snags my skin. I didn't even realize that I cut myself until I look down and see whiteness and blood. EWWWW! Stella was like "Uh oh, uh oh, owie" She gave me a hug and patted my leg and said "Kay, kay" I told her I'll be ok, but as I put the shower head to rinse off the blood, I couldn't help letting out a small yelp of pain. Then I got out dried my legs and put a bandaid on. Done. Today I remove the bandaid to see how it looks and it looks super red. Curtis is like "That looks nasty, maybe you should put some hydrogen peroxide on it." I was like "Does that hurt?" He said "It usually doesn't, but it sometimes does." Here I'm thinking "What kind of answer is that?!" So we busted out the hydrogen peroxide and I was getting ready to put it on a cotton ball and Curtis, with a face of "Come on, it's common sense," said "That's not how you do it." I said "Well how do you do it then?" He got a paper towel and draped my leg over his lap with the paper towel underneath to catch the falling liquid. I was like "Wait, wait, let me grab something. I can't do this Curtis. No, no don't put it on yet." The whole time I was expecting an excruciating sting, but it didn't even hurt hahahahah. I was embarrassed. Curtis to make things more funny was like "And you thought you had high pain tolerance Hah!" We both just sat there laughing at my silliness.

Coupons

So I was really excited about using my 10% coupon from Joann's tomorrow, since they have a labor day sale going on. I have visited Joann's multiple times in my anticipation and even have gone to Michael's to compare prices. I even kept showing Curtis all the stuff I wanted to get, he didn't care much haha. Tonight I decided to look on their website and add up the things I wanted to get. I got up to $42.69 and then I figured "I'm only saving $4.27 LAME!" So I'm really not that excited now.

Harry Potter touches our hearts

I had a burning desire to watch Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, so I borrowed it from my parents. We watched it last night and Stella got way into it. She would be glued to it and add some commentary like "Whoa!," "Look, look" and during the part where Hermione is crying because Lavender Brown and Ron kiss after the quidditch match, she kept looking at me and and pointing to the tv saying "Sad sad". She had such a sad face that she seriously looked like she was on the verge of tears. It was such a sweet moment hehe. Quick update on Lincoln- he is GINORMOUS!! haha He has the chubbiest cheeks that you can't get enough of! Loves to jibber jabber all the time. His sister always wants to hold him and love up on him and especially when someone else is holding him. She's like "Holt Holt baby," "Peas, peas, "Mine," "Kinken," etc. She talks a ton! She says nonsense stuff, while adding a few actual words. She's actually pretty good at communicating though. Her new phrases are "Get it, get it," "Do it, Do it," and "Gen (again)." Lincoln also loves music like Stella. I got way into Horton Hears a Who and sang the line that Joe sings at the very end "I can't fight this feeling anymooooooooooore" and he just stared at me smiling and making "Aaaa, ooo" sounds like he was singing too :) Love my chunky boy.

Cutest Moment Ever!!!!!

While in church, Curtis and I were in the hall walking to our Sunday School class and we happened to pass by Stella's nursery class. They were heading to snack time and Stella was reverently walking with her arms folded and she looked up at us and just kept on walking. Oh my goodness I'm going to have that image in my brain forever!! On another note, Lincoln has been jibber jabbering all the time and he LOVES to smile! He's been smiling since he was born! :) He is such a sweet handsome boy. We love him, especially his big sister haha. Oh and one more thing...in church today we had an anouncement from the Stake President saying that our current bishop was getting released next week and that we would be sustaining the new one. I'm sad about that. Curtis took this opportunity to pull off an EVIL joke on me and my sister-in-law Rachel helped him. He came home after his home teaching and he was sitting on the couch with Stella when he got a call. I was working on the computer and didn't think anything of it, since he is always getting calls about Scouts and stuff. Well I look over and he has this look of fear in his face. I ask "Who is it?" and he says it's Billy Reed! He takes his phone and he shows me the name that is popping up. I was like "Oh he's family he's probably calling about something else. For those who don't know, Billy Reed is the Stake executive secretary and we just had that anouncement about getting a new bishop in church. Bishops in our ward have a tendency of being called extremely young, for example our current bishop was called at age 28, the one before that was called at 25. Curtis is turning 25 this Friday!!! Curtis just kept letting the phone ring and he didn't answer. I was like "I thought you said that they probably already called someone since they need approval from the first presidency?" He was like well I don't know. I was starting to FREAK OUT!! A voicemail was left and it was RACHEL saying "Hi I thought I would make it more official by leaving a voicemail." Curtis had changed Rachel's name in his phone to billy reed. How evil!!! I don't know if I'll ever forgive them hahah. PS- Lincoln is always hungry hahaha.

Shameless Plug For Curtis's New Website.

Hey, my husband created a website. We are trying to get it to the top of the search engine so any links that you could add to it would be great. (Having links to your website from other websites is the best way to bring up your ranking on Google and Yahoo!) The webite is a listing service for used tires and it is located at UsedTireDealer.org.

If you would like to create a link to his website just follow these steps:

1. Start a new post or open the post that you want to add it to.
2. Copy and paste the following text into the editor:

My friend recently created a website to list/look for used tires for free.

Check the website out at http://www.usedtiredealer.org/. If you could create a link to his website on you blog as well, that would really help him out. Just copy and paste this into one of your posts.

3. Add anything else to the post that you want to.

Thank you guys so much for your willingness to help out.

You can also "like" us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/UsedTireDealercom/137609999614282

Rainy Night Fun

Curtis decides that he wants to rent a redbox movie and stay in, but one little problem where is Curtis' wallet???? As I was giving Lincoln a bath Curtis and Stella were in a vigorous search for his wallet. After I finish getting Lincoln bathed and clothed I hear the front door open and Curtis says "Ashley are you almost done?" I say "Yeah why?" Curtis, "I need you to come out here and watch Stella." I'm thinking to myself, wait a sec isn't it raining outside??! So I go outside and Curtis tells me "Now Ashley don't stress if Stella decides to lay on the ground or go in the grass." She was soaking wet!!! I couldn't really be mad at her since she looked soo adorable. Here are some pictures of our wet fun :D Thanks to Curtis for helping me be chill about this sort of thing haha.

Come and play with me is what she's saying :)

Ring around the rosies

Not wanting to go inside

Family pic :) Lincoln freshly bathed and passed out haha

D-Backs Game!

We were invited by our friends Tiffany and Alex to a D-backs game and let me just say it was awesome! Usually I don't follow baseball very well, but the atmosphere was great! It was a sold out game I think the attendance was 48,500 something. Luis Gonzales's number 20 was retired and there was a whole ceremony and everything. It was soo cool! Best game to have on record for Lincoln's first D-backs game :) Now Curtis can say you see that number 20 up there, you were there to see that number retired. Lots of people asked how old Lincoln was and when I said 2 months they had the reaction of "Really!?" I guess he must look older hahah. He definately takes after his dad in the chunky dept :)

Once again sorry about the quality.

Swimming at Nana's

Stella is a big fan of swimming and I must admit I use it was bribery when she doesn't want to do what I say. Guilty. I know I shouldn't do that, but sometimes I can't thing of anything else. Today she got to go swimming and she loved every minute of it, even though it was scorching hot! Lincoln and I were melting away on the pool side, while Stella was cooling off, but it was so fun to watch her playing.

Her with her Uncle Clarkie before getting in. You can tell she's excited!

Mall Adventures!

So we went to the mall today and Stella absolutely LOVED it! Her and Curtis went up and down the escalator lots of times. Then we would distract her with other things to keep her moving. It was fun to see her react to all the different things (i.e. purses, shoes, people, toys, clothes, etc.) Here is a picture of her on the escalator.

Sorry for the poor quality it was taken on my phone.