The Dickey's

Good News

2011-03-06T21:58:00.000-08:00

I haven't blogged in nearly a year. It's not that I didn't have anything to blog about. With four boys there are plenty of stories to tell. I just don't have time for blogging. But tonight something very news worthy happened. Here is the story in Kevin's words..............................

Exciting news from the Dickey house tonight! Our firstborn, Eli, has been born again! Let me share the story with you...

We came home from church tonight after a long weekend at the annual Dad-N-Lad camp out with the Cub Scouts. It is not unusual for conversations to turn to spiritual matters with Eli, but I could tell that tonight was different. We talked about sin, trusting in Jesus, and what it meant to be a Christian. The attached photo is of a 3"x5" note card on which he was drawing as we talked. If you look carefully, you'll see a dot where two paths divide. He said he had learned that at Kid's Choir, I assume from Mrs. Judy Moore and Mrs. Beth Camp (thank you ladies for your influence in his life). He said Jesus talked about two roads, one was the right way, the other wrong. Also with scriptural accuracy is the relative width of the roads! You'll notice on the narrow road to the left is a lit sign that says, "riht way". I won't apologize for this little saint's spelling, only explain that he is very phonetic. He said that road went to heaven. The other road, much wider, which he labeled with a "wrong way" sign (no lights), he claimed led to hell. He tried to spell it, I think confusing it with "hail" and wrote "Hali". I told him that each of us must decide which of these two paths we will walk, but unfortunately, there aren't any road signs. Jesus leads us on the right path to heaven, but the other path leads to destruction. I asked him how a person gets on the right path. By this time, he is having a difficult time talking as I can tell he is fighting back tears and a broken spirit. He wrote "Crichtin" [Christian] at the top. I asked him what that meant. He went on to draw the stick figure praying, then the arrow curving downward to the baptismal waters (just to the left of the "riht way" sign). I agreed this was all true, and we talked about how all of us are on the wide path leading to destruction, but not because God is mean or wants to hurt us. Rather, our own sin leads us down that road. It is when we decide we no longer want this road, seek forgiveness, turn around, and take the other road leading to Jesus that we find Him there waiting for us. We went on talking more about sin, all the while trying to make it personal, that Eli has this problem too. He knows John 3:16 by heart, so we discussed what that verse meant. When he understood that "all have sinned" from Romans 3:23 meant him, I asked him which road he was on. He quietly pointed to the broad one. "What do you need to do about that?" I asked. He pointed at the praying stick figure. Trying to make it all the more personal, I asked, "Tell me one person Jesus died for." He said, "He died for everybody." I insisted, "Tell me one person Jesus died for." His reply, "Everybody." Again, I quietly asked, "Tell me one person Jesus died for." With reddened face, no longer able to control the tears, he pointed at himself and whispered, "Me." That was all either of us could take (probably you by now too!). Weeping, he crawled up in my lap and prayed for forgiveness, sought repentance, and trusted the Savior. He couldn't talk for some time, but neither could I.

The little card is priceless to us tonight, and I know it will be for him in the coming years. How thankful I am that Jesus doesn't care how well you can spell or draw. He cares only about a tender heart that admits our greatest need and finds it met in Him.

A Ssssnake Party

2010-04-12T19:39:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, Eli will turn 7 years old this coming Friday (April 16). We had his birthday party this past weekend because he is in a Geography Fair next weekend.

Eli LOVES birthday parties. He also loves coming up with birthday themes. He begins planning the next year's birthday party pretty much after the wrapping paper from the current year is thrown away! This year he mulled over several ideas but ended up choosing to have a snake theme party. After all, it is his favorite animal. In his prayers, he thanks the Lord for snakes. He checks out books at the library about snakes. He is all about snakes.

One of the books that he checked out at the library had some craft ideas for reptiles and amphibians. From this book, he got the idea to create his own birthday invitations. So we started a birthday invitation sweatshop. He would draw a few everyday over a period of about a week.

He came up with the design all by himself. The two snakes fighting on the left are a king cobra and a common garter snake! Hummm....I wonder who will win?

Of course, a snake party isn't complete with out a big snake cake. This snake had three different flavors --Red Velvet, Chocolate Fudge, and White.

The Birthday Boy!

Seth was attacked by the snake cake!

The fun part...opening presents!

I am having hard time believing that my babies are growing up so fast. But it has been fun watching them all grow up. Eli is really turning into a sweet boy. He is constantly thinking about others. He is a very good big brother and takes his responsibilities seriously. He loves hanging out with his Dad but he loves snuggling with his Mommy. He also loves being in Cub Scouts. He takes the Cub Scout "Leave No Trace" guidelines seriously and is found picking up trash in parking lots as we go into stores. He still likes to dress up and get into character when he plays. He is still OCD about Star Wars and probably always will be. Eli's little heart is beginning to ripen to the gospel as he learns and understands more about what Jesus did for us when He died on the cross. Eli has decided that he is going into the army to be a veterinarian and to tell people about God. As far as school goes, Eli loves to read, he loves the state study we are doing, math is a love it or leave it type subject, and spelling.....well it brings out the ugly side of Eli (which in turn can bring out the ugly side of Mom too)!

I am so thankful that the Lord blessed our family 7 years ago with a little red headed baby boy! What a blessing he has been.

Spoke too soon

2010-04-02T04:36:00.000-07:00

I spoke too soon.

After I posted the blog post on Seth sleeping in this new bed, we started having trouble again. Take for instance last night/this morning.

At 4:30 AM, I heard Seth squealing. At first, I thought it was a dream. But after a couple of squeals, I realized it was REAL life. The little booger was in Eli and Luke's room trying to wake them up. I walked in the room, it was pitch dark and called him. He giggled and walked to me. I started taking him back to his room and heard voices. The TV was on. I turned it off last night before I went to bed. Seth had walked in there and turned it on before venturing into his brother's room. I guess he thinks he might need to order some infomercial gadgets! I put him in bed with us after turning off the tv and finding a pacie and his dog. For the next hour and a half, I wrestled with him trying to get him to go to sleep and stay asleep.

A couple of nights before, Kevin woke up to let Newt, our dog, out. He said Seth was in the living room playing Eli's leapster. He put him back to bed and Seth stayed there.

So what do we do? Any suggestions from the three people that read this blog? Dr. D told me at Seth's 2 year old well visit, that his 2 1/2 year old is still in a crib. They have had trouble with him climbing out. But they found a crib tent to put over the crib to keep him safely in the crib. I wonder if they make such a thing for toddler beds? I am going to google it right now!

Seth takes a leap

2010-03-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

Seth took a leap...literally.....out of the crib! One night a couple of weeks ago, Kevin came in late. I had already put Seth down for the night. Seth wasn't quite asleep when Kevin came in. Seth started getting excited when he heard Kevin's truck and then again when he heard the front door open. Kevin peeped into Seth's room said hi and he told Seth to lay down and go to sleep. Later on, we (Kevin, Eli, Luke, and I) were in the living room just hanging out before the older boys went to bed. We could hear Seth in his room. He was jabbering and walking around in his bed. We were all minding our own business and then all of a sudden we hear a loud THUMP and the sound of cries wailing from Seth's bedroom. I jump up and go in there and found Seth on the floor. He checked out fine. Nothing broke, cut or damaged. Just needed some TLC from his mom and dad.

Up until then, Seth was sleeping in the crib and Silas was in the cradle in our room. We really didn't have a plan on what we were going to do when Silas out grew the cradle. I know. I know. We have had 13 months (9 month in utero and 4 months since Silas was born) to get a game plan together. But we couldn't decided what to do. Two cribs, one crib and a toddler bed, one crib and a twin bed, one crib and bunk beds (for the future). Seth little leaping episode was the push we needed to make a decision. Seth's room is the smallest room in the house so whatever we decided it had to fit in there.

We decided on option 2 - a crib and a toddler bed. So the Saturday after Seth's failed attempts of flying, we went to buy a toddler bed. I am glad we went with that option because anything else was going to be too big for the room. We actually had to move the glider rocker out of the room.

The blanket and pillow case Granna made and gave to Seth for his birthday matches the bed perfectly!

This little boy is even still in his sleep. He needs a king size toddler bed to have enough real estate for all of his tossing and turning.

Funny story about his first couple of nights in the bed...

It was late Sunday night when Kevin finally got it together. The "Made in Vietnam 25 minute project" was actually closer to 2.5 hours. Maybe not quit that long but it was late none the less. Seth fell asleep in the pack and play while Kevin was working on the bed. So when we got it all situated in the room, we picked Seth up and put him in the bed. Kevin went and sat in his chair to unwind before he went to bed.

If you know anything about Kevin's sleeping habits, you know that Kevin + recliner + after 8 pm = Kevin asleep in the recliner. Actually the recliner is the X factor that can be any variable in the equation...couch, floor, etc.... But I digress..

So Kevin falls asleep in the recliner and stays there for the night. At 4:30 in the morning a little 2 year old wakes him up by climbing into his lap.

The second night in the toddler bed, a girl from church spent the night with us to go to work with Kevin since it was Spring Break. Hannah loves going to the sale barn with Kevin so anytime she is out of school she tries to work with Kevin. Hannah was sleeping on the couch in the living room and at 3 am Seth wakes her up by beating on her with both of his hands.

Now at this point, I wonder if he is going to stay in bed a whole night.

Night #3 ...

We made sure all doors were securely locked before we went to bed. I told Kevin that either he or I probably needed to sleep in the living room instead of the bedroom just to intercept Seth in the wee hours. But we didn't. Several things (children and animals) that night caused me to wake up and get out of bed. Each time I got out of bed I check on Seth. I think the second time I woke up, I actually found Seth asleep on the floor. I picked him up and put him back in bed. That is as far as he ventured that night.

Since then (knock on wood) he has stayed in his bed all night long. We do have to wait until he is good and tired before we can put him to bed. If he isn't nearly on the verge of falling asleep, he will get out of his bed and start playing with his toys. The music to his toys alarm us that he is up and playing and not asleep. So those drive you crazy noisy toys do have a purpose other than driving adults bonkers!

Seth is a little stinker for sure but he is a sweet stinker!

4 months already!

2010-03-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

It is hard to believe but Silas is 4 months old this week. He is such a joy to have around. The big brothers adore him. Seth will find one of Silas' pacies laying around and say "Baby" and take it to him. Silas likes his pacies but he has grown fonder of his fingers in recent weeks. Now you can find him with two fingers in his mouth and pacie laying on his shoulder. **Sigh** While he looks sweet sucking his fingers, you can not throw away fingers like you can pacifers. I will have to consult my Aunt Donita on how she finally broke my cousin, Andy, from sucking his thumb.
Andy was very, very, very fond of his thumb.

I took Silas for his 4 month well visit on Tuesday of this week. He weighed 13.3 pounds which put him in about the 20th percentile for his age. He was in the 75 percentile in length measuring in at 25 3/4 inches long. Dr. DeLisi suggested that we start feeding him rice cereal. I was a little surprised because he told me with Seth that they were now recommending starting solid foods at 6 months. Dr. D said that the rice cereal might "beef him up". When Silas was born, he weighed 9 lbs 12 oz. -- 4 ounces short of being a 10 pounder. If you would have told me that day that we were going to have to "beef him up", I would have laughed in your face!

As developmental milestones, Silas is doing good in some areas and lacking in others.

On the good side we have:

Silas has discovered that the Good Lord has given him hands. He loves to look and play with hands.
He has also discovered that those same hands can grasp things. He loves grabbing at this toys on his play mat.
He also "talks" and interacts with us. If you talk to him he will flash his million dollar smile at you.

I love playing with my hands. They are really neat!

On the needs work side we have;

Can not hold up head while on his belly
Does not push up with his arms while on his belly.
Rolling over --- well that is iffy -- he has rolled over once but now he just rolls to his side and stays there. If he gets a little too close to rolling over, he cries!

This is belly time........

He cries for a few seconds and then he finds his fingers and off to dreamland he goes. I contacted Ms. Sallie from ECI, she has worked with Seth, about Silas not being able to hold up his head while on his belly. She told me a couple of things to try to encourage him to hold his head up while on his belly. (And didn't I tell you the pacie would be pitched to the side and the fingers in the mouth.)

Promoted to the big bed!

This week we moved Silas out of the cradle in our room into the crib. Look for an upcoming post on Seth's new digs!

Many times Kevin and I look at each other and just shake our heads in amazement of what God has done. We are truly amazed at just how good the Lord has been to us by blessing us with four boys. Kevin asked me recently if I ever imagined having four boys with him when we first started dating. The answer, of course, is no. I never dreamed of anything as wonderful as this!

Our Tiger Cub

2010-03-02T08:26:00.000-08:00

This past fall, we signed Eli up for Cub Scouts. We had avoided getting him involved in organized activities up until now. He really isn't interested in sports enough to play in any organized leagues. Plus, he got his athletic ability from his mom and dad.......which isn't a good thing! We thought that he would enjoy Cub Scouts plus he could gain lots of great experiences and leadership skills through scouts. So when School Night for Scouting came around we signed him up. Little did we know how much Eli and the rest of the family would enjoy it. Nor did we know that Kevin would end up signing himself up to be a Den Leader!

Luke doesn't think it is fair that he can not be in Cub Scouts. He is counting the days until he can join!

The first den meeting of the year.

We were right... Eli LOVES Cub Scouts! He looks forward to the twice a month den meetings and the once a month pack meetings. He loves all the activities.

We found out that Eli is quite the salesman. When it was time to sale popcorn for scouts, my goal was to sale $500. Our pack will pay for one camping trip during the year for each scout that sales over $500. So when I heard free camping, I was motivated! But Eli was motivated beyond $500. He wanted to earn a telescope by selling over $1100 in popcorn. So we hit the streets and started selling. And I am happy to report, Eli earned his telescope! He was actually one of the top 5 salesmen in the pack. Three of the top five sellers came from Eli's den!

At the November pack meeting, Eli earned his Bobcat badge. This is the first badge that a Cub Scout earns. To earn this badge the scouts have to learn and memorize several things about Cub Scouts, like the motto and cub scout hand shake just to name a couple.

Kevin pinning Eli's Bobcat badge on. They pin the badges on upside down and the scouts can not turn in right side up until he does a good deed.

Part of Den 6 - Eli's den

Because all of the scouts worked hard and met the pack's goal in selling popcorn, the scouts got to throw pies in the faces of their leaders! Here is Eli throwing a pie at his daddy. To better illustrate his athletic ability, when Eli first threw the pie at Kevin, he missed him completely and hit an innocent bystander!

In January, Pinewood Derby fever hit our family. Eli, Kevin, and Luke began designing the Pinewood Derby cars. Luke was able to participate by entering the Outlaw Division. This is a division for non-Cub Scouts. After working on the cars for a couple of weeks, Kevin made a rule for our household... you have to be 4 years old before you can have a Pinewood Derby car! He wanted to put off have to make 4 cars as long as possible. When Eli is in his last year of cub scouts (5th grade), Kevin will have to make 4 Pinewood Derby cars!

Our races were held on Saturday, January 23. Eli's car came in 4th place in the Tiger Den Division. There were 12 cars that entered that division. Luke's car came in DL --Dead Last-- in the Outlaw division. His car didn't weigh near enough. Kevin learned a lot on what makes a good racer and what doesn't by watching and helping run the race! He took notes for next year!

Eli and Luke with their cars and participation ribbons. They didn't win any races or win any of the showmanship awards but they still had fun making their dream cars!

Eli's car
He is into GI Joe and Army things now. He wanted his derby car to be an army tank.

Luke's car
Luke first wanted a Cheetah but then decided that he wanted his car to be a dinosaur. I really think his car turned out looking really good!

All the cars in the Tiger Cub Division.

The cars in the Outlaw Division.

Eli's car racing. His car is the one on the far right track.

Luke's car racing. The Dinosaur is on the far left track.

The Tiger Cubs getting their ribbons and awards.

Luke decided to hand his ribbon in his ear!

This past weekend, our Cub Scout pack had their Blue and Gold Banquet. At this banquet, the scouts who have completed all of their achievements get their rank badge. The 5th graders also graduate from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts at the banquet. That was really neat to watch them cross over from being a Cub Scout and to becoming a Boy Scout. They walked into a tent with their Webalo II neckerchief on and walked out of the tent with their Boy Scout neckerchief on.

Eli and rest of his den members completed their achievements that are required in the Tiger Cub rank. At the banquet they were given their Tiger Cub badge! So he is an offical Tiger Cub now! Granna, Big Daddy, Nana, and Papa were able to come to the banquet. They enjoyed getting to see him get his Tiger Cub badge.

Eli and I walked up to get his badge and when we turned around, Luke had decided he wanted in on the action! We call Luke the Junior Tiger Cub.

Luke checking out Eli's new Tiger Cub badge after I pinned it on him. Eli has already completed his good deed, so he can now put his Tiger Cub badge on right side up.

US Representative, Louie Gohmert, was the keynote speaker at the banquet. Rep. Gohmert is an Eagle Scout himself. He was kind enough to take pictures with a lot of the scouts. I guess that is part of being a politician -- kissing babies, shaking hands, and having pictures made with constituents.

We are very proud of Eli and his accomplishments. He really enjoys Cub Scouts and so do we. It is really a family affair. If all the boys join Cub Scouts, we will have many, many, many, many more years to enjoy all the fun!! And we will have LOTS of popcorn to sell!

2 years old already!

2010-03-01T04:00:00.000-08:00

It is hard to believe that our little preemie baby, Seth Benjamin, is now 2 years old! Where does time go? Looking at Seth today you could not tell that he started out so frail and small. God is so good! Seth has overcome his weight issues. Today he weighs about 30 lbs (give or take a pound or two). With the help of Early Childhood Intervention (ECI), he has overcome his physical delays. He took his first steps in August at 17 months. Now he doesn't walk, he RUNS everywhere! His language is improving with a little help as well. His vocabulary is expanding by the day. We are working on 2 word phrases with him now. Seth has his one year evaluation with ECI on Tuesday of this week. His case manager, Ms. Sallie, and his speech pathologist, Ms. Shelly, will be doing his evaluation.
.
Seth LOVES animals and LOVES making animal sounds. He started with just a few farm animals but now he has all sorts of animals he loves to imitate. He loves to play in his brothers' room. They don't like him playing in their room because they have to clean up after him! He loves looking at books. You know when Seth has been in Eli and Luke's room, when all the books are on the floor. He still has to have his pacifer. Our other boys had thrown their pacifers away by the age of 2. But Seth (and mommy and daddy) are addicted to it! We had him taking it just at nap times but the month of February has been a sickly month for the Dickey household. So Seth got his pacie more when he was sick and when Mommy didn't feel good. So now we will have to start the weaning process again! Seth is a bundle of joy and a bundle of energy! Everyone who is around him for very long always makes comments on how busy he is. He is never in one place for very long. Like I said earlier, he runs now....he doesn't walk!

We had a Barnyard themed party this past Saturday with family and a few friends. Seth enjoyed getting lots of attention.

The birthday boy with his party hat on. I knew he had too many pictures made with his party hat on, when he put one on Sunday afternoon and looked at me and said "Say Cheese"!

Luke's horns finally showing up! I knew they were there somewhere!

Karis and her Dora doll

The Barnyard Cake

I think he enjoyed the cake!

If you want Seth to be still for something, you have to strap him in!

More Snow Pictures

2010-02-28T19:58:00.000-08:00

Here are some more pictures of the snow we got on the Feb. 12 and 13. Kevin took these pictures early Friday morning. As you can tell when you compare these pictures to the ones where we were making the snowman, quite a bit of snow had melted in just a few short hours.

This is behind the shed at the back of our yard. Lots of snowy chicken wire!

An East Texas Blizzard!

2010-02-17T20:57:00.001-08:00

Last Thursday and Friday we got 6 inches of snow! It snowed all day Thursday but it wasn't cold enough and it didn't accumulate very well. But Thursday night/Friday morning the big storm blew in and it was below freezing so it accumulated! It was so pretty! The older boys were so excited about the snow!

Thursday we went to a Valentine Party that our homeschool group hosted at a roller rink. We played in the snow a little that day but not a lot. Friday, I was mean and made Eli do school first before we went outside. I know it was a once and a lifetime opportunity for him to play in that much snow but we had missed so much school that week and the week prior due to illnesses. It took us two weeks to get one week of work done! So around lunch on Friday, we finally got out and built a snowman. By then the snow had started to melt. I had planned on building a HUGE snowman. But I quickly found out how much work building a snowman is. Add to that chasing a 23 month old in the snow from going to the back yard and keeping the dogs away from the 3 month old, and building any size snowman proved to be quite challenge!

Seth had a hard time walking in his rubber boots.

Eli enjoyed throwing snowballs! And yes, you are correct, he doesn't have on gloves. All we had for him were work gloves. He didn't care one little bit though.

Can you see Silas?

Mr. Snowman and the boys!

Thanks to the Valentine party the day before, Mr. Snowman had facial features! As soon as me and the two younger boys went inside, Poodo, our dog started eating the candy. When Eli came in about 5 minutes later, he said that he ate the rest of the candy to keep Poodo from eating it. I looked outside not long after he told me that and saw that Mr. Snowman had been decapitated. The dogs had taken Mr. Snowman's head with the toboggan on to try and find more candy. I guess dogs have a sweet tooth too!

Happy 2010!

2010-01-01T08:56:00.001-08:00

Happy

EVERYONE!

Christmas Blessings

2009-12-24T21:24:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas from our bunch to yours!

Things at the Dickey house are finding a new normal! Our sweet addition, Silas, is doing well. The other three boys, including Seth, adore him. Seth pretty much ignores him. He does like to say "Baby" and make kissy faces at him! I am doing well. Things get crazy and hairy for me sometimes with four boys, but what did I expect?

Starting the first of the year, Kevin will once again be doing relief work. He did relief work for three years before joining Hughes Springs Veterinary Hospital. For those that don't know, relief work is when a veterinarian is self employed and works at different clinics in an area when the owner is out of town, wants a day off, etc. We are hoping this will provide us a little more family time.

On a side note, I thought I better explain why Silas is "naked" in this picture. I saw this sweet picture on the internet in black and white of parents holding their newborn with just a diaper on and they are lovingly looking at the baby. I thought, "Wouldn't that be so sweet to get all of us gazing upon our adorable baby?" Then when it came time for our family photo shoot at 9:00 at night after a Bible Fellowship party at church (yes that is the church's tree not ours!), it didn't take long for reality to set in. Taking picture with four boys is workout. We were lucky to get this ONE good picture out of about 20. Silas crying, Luke goofing off, Seth trying to walk away, Eli...well he was about the only one that behaved. The loving, adoring family picture turned out to be "just get a picture and we want do this again for a few years!"

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

June Travels: Part 3

2009-10-22T22:05:00.000-07:00

I started this post nearly a month ago and as usual, stuff happened. I burned our pictures from the trip that were on Kevin's computer onto a CD. I did this so I could use my dinosaur (also known as my desktop computer) and make the post. One Saturday I sat down to load the pictures and finish the post and see that one of my sweet precious children (and I have an idea as to which one it was) had completely deleted my CD drive off my computer. So I gave up.

Since I have a bad case of heartburn tonight, I thought I would pull Kevin's laptop out and try to catch up on some blogging instead of going to bed. Honestly, I would rather go to bed but I know I wouldn't be able to sleep with this raging heartburn. So with no further ado, Part 3 of our June travels!

Our final trip in June was one we look forward to for the past few summers. For the past three years, we have participated in our church's Family Mission Trips. This year the Family Mission Trip was ministering to the beautiful town and people of Creede, Colorado. This was our family's second trip to Creede. The very first family mission trip that our church sponsored in 2007 was to Creede. Creede is an old mining town with only 400 residents during most of the year. But from May until September it expands to about 3000 due to retirees summering there. Tourism is there big industry now since the mines closed back in the 1980s. Most residents have two or three jobs during the summer to try and make ends met the rest of the year.

I believe we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 140 people from our church go on this mission trip. We had several different projects that people worked on. Some went up on the mountains and cut firewood for the church we work with to give out to those who need it during the bitter cold winter months. I believe with what we took up there on two 18 wheelers and what they cut during the week, the church ended up with over 60 cords of wood. We had a couple of construction crews that worked on individual houses and one that reconstructed a day care facility. There were paint crews. The log cabin school was stained and a National Forrest Service Campsite outhouses and cabins/pavilions were painted. There was a yard crew that did yard work at various places. The children also had several projects that they did during the week. They hosted a free car wash that was a huge success, planted flowers at some the houses that the construction crews worked on, sponsored a 4th of July craft day in the park, and they also washed windows and cleaned the sidewalks. And last but not least, we had a crew of people that worked in the kitchen all week feeding us three meals a day.

I worked with the children's projects and Kevin ended up on the paint crew that painted outhouses at the NFS campgrounds. One day, Kevin took Eli with him to paint. Eli really enjoyed getting to go paint.

Rio Grande River at the campsite Kevin helped paint.

The outhouse painting crew.

The head waters of the Rio Grande!

The sun was too bright for Eli!

Mr. Sid and Eli. Mr.Sid oversaw the campgrounds. Kevin got to witness to him throughout the week.

Luke in Kevin's work clothes acting like a clown! What else is new?!?

Eli FINALLY getting to climb the mountain, as he called it, behind the church. He begged to climb it everyday that we were there.

Kevin helping Luke along. Luke was a little scared.

Kevin, Eli, and Luke at the top of the hill behind the church.

Spring Creek Pass Continental Divide.

The family at the Spring Creek Falls.

Kevin and Eli decide to climb down the the bottom of the ravine.

The made it safely down to the bottom!

The view of the falls from the top.

We really had a great week. The two older boys loved it! They loved climbing all the mountains and finding lots of rocks. And they both worked hard. Looking forward to next summer's mission trip!

June Travel: Part 2

2009-09-09T06:16:00.000-07:00

The weekend of Father's day, found us in hill country of Texas and in the Austin area. Kevin had the honor of being a groomsman in the wedding of John and Elise Mason. We decided to go down on Thursday evening so we could spend Friday doing something fun. We ended up going to the Longhorn Cavern State Park outside of Burnett. It was a really neat cave. The boys seemed to enjoy it.

Waiting for the cave tour to start.

The cave's watch dog. Several Geologists have examined this rock formation and have determined that no tools were used to make this rock formation, thus meaning the rock was formed this way strictly by the river water that formed the cave.

They told us we would see a bear in the cave! If you look closely, you can see that this rock looks like a bear. People are allowed to rub his nose for good luck.

Seth had so much fun in the cave, he passed out!

Friday night and Saturday were spent with wedding festivities. The rehearsal dinner was held in a small community named, Oatmeal! I may never been to New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, or Miami, but I would imagine not many people can say that they have been to Oatmeal, Texas!

The oatmeal can welcoming you to Oatmeal, TX!

Since I was pretty much a single parent of three kids at the wedding, with Kevin being preoccupied with wedding stuff, I did not get to take any pictures of the beautiful wedding or the lovely bride and groom. :(

Saturday night after the wedding, we drove to Austin to spend the night. We got there in time to check out the bats at the Central Ave. bridge. An estimated one and a half million mexican free-tail bats make their home under the Congress Ave. bridge. Every night between mid-March through early November the bats emerge from under the bridge and literally blanket the sky. I really thought there would be only a handful of people on the bridge to watch the bats come out for the night. But I was wrong. As you see from the pictures, it is a quite popular attraction in Austin.

People bat watching from the ground.

The line of people on the bridge to our left.

To our right facing downtown Austin.This is the best still photo we got of the bats.

Just to give you an idea of just of how many bats there were, here is a video of some of the bats flying out from under the bridge.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

On Father's day we went to McKinney Falls State Park, which is actually inside Austin city limits. You would never know you were only a few miles from downtown Austin. Kevin and the older boys played in the creek while Seth and I relaxed in the shade. Before we left for the day, the boys gave Kevin his father's day present that they picked out. What does a 6 year old and 3 year old want to give their father for Father's day you ask?

GI Joe action figures of course!!! Every dad needs GI Joe toys to play with at work don't they?

It was really fun weekend. The boys still talk about the bats and the cave.

June Travels: Part 1

2009-09-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

June was a whirlwind of a month for us so I thought I would divided it up into small portions. Instead of one huge post. (Thanks Ashley for the idea!!!)

It started out with VBS June 7-10. Our theme this year was Studio Go Game Show. It was a fun week for the kids and the volunteers. I was co-director of VBS this year. I believe that there were two or three children who accepted Christ as their Savior during VBS! That made all the running around, hounding, I mean, calling people worth it!

Bible School was Sunday through Wednesday. That Friday after VBS was over, we went to Ashley and Chuck's for the weekend. It was the weekend of the Texas Blueberry Festival in Nacogdoches, where they live. We woke up early Saturday morning, to stand in line for 45 minutes in the Texas heat, to eat some yummy blueberry pancakes for breakfast. They give you three pancakes on a Styrofoam plate and the pancakes are as big as the plate itself! We bought four plates. The lady thought we were crazy but out of all four plates that we bought, there was only a few bites left over. We have some pancake eating fools at our house! We also got to enjoy some refreshing and yummy blueberry lemonade inside one the banks downtown. And we took in the Cowboy Max show at another bank downtown. We tried to find all the indoor stuff we could because it was super hot that day. Eli got to be Cowboy Max's deputy during the show! If you want to see pictures from the weekend, check out my sister, Ashley's blog. She actually took pictures and I didn't! I am not even sure if I took a camera at all!

We enjoyed our weekend at the Flurrys. This was our first time to spend the weekend with them. I am sure it want be the last. Eli will make sure we attend the Blueberry festival again since he is a HUGE fan of blueberries!

Entering Week 28 - Pregnancy Update

2009-08-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I will be in my 28th week of pregnancy! Only 12 more weeks to go!!! The pregnancy to going well. Only minor things to complain about like a little heartburn here and there and sciatic nerve pain.

I went to my doctor last week and he ran several tests. I had my glucose tolerance test, blood work to check my thyroid, and an ultrasound to check the baby's growth and development. I had gestational diabetes with Seth, so I am at a higher risk for having it again. An ultrasound was what caught the low amniotic fluid problem that I had while carrying Seth. As you can imagine, I really wanted to know the results of the these two tests.

My blood sugar was 126 after having to drink that awful sugary orange flavored drink they give you. That is within normal limits so I do not have gestational diabetes this time. Praise the Lord! After having numerous ultrasounds with Seth, I know what to look for when they are calculating the amount of amniotic fluid. So I didn't have to wait to hear from the doctor's office for this part of the report. My fluid level was at 19.2 cm, which is great! I was so relieved. I prayed the whole time during the ultrasound that it wouldn't be a problem. And the Lord answered my prayer! With Seth, my amniotic fluid was half that when they found the problem. The baby is growing great. The baby weighs approximately 2 lbs and 10 oz., if I remember correctly. I don't think Dr. Mason is planning on anymore ultrasounds since all is well.

My thyroid test did however present a problem. My thyroid level is under 1.0. Dr. M wanted to lower my dosage of thyroid medicine. Once he found out exactly how little I take, he decided to take my off the thyroid medicine all together for the next month. In a month, he will retest my thyroid to see what the level is after being off the medicine for a month.

We resisted temptation again and didn't find out the gender of the baby. Kevin and I think it is fun not knowing but the grandparents and the baby's aunts don't appreciate the element of surprise like we do!

We don't have any names picked out either. Kevin has always made naming a baby hard but this time he is making it extremely hard. Here are his request/guidelines

The first name has to be a Biblical name and the middle name a Family name. I tried to talk him into a Family Bible combo name and I got a speech on how God comes first then Family.
The name has to have a good meaning. Remember the post where I talked about him praying the meaning of the boys names.
He wants the family name to come from his Dad's side of the family. Eli is named after my dad's grandfather, Luke after Kevin's mother's dad, and Seth is after my mom's grandfather. So you see that Kevin's dad is the only side we haven't used. My argument is his sister's son, William Joseph, is using two names from his Dad's side. And two of the best names from that side I might add.
He thinks the Biblical name should be a New Testament name. Eli - Old, Luke - New, Seth - Old, Baby #4 - get the picture.

Now you can see why there isn't any names picked out. So we are likely to have the baby and still not know what we are going to name him or her. I think we should just name him or her Eli Luke Seth, because I call the roll as it is when I am trying to call one of them.

I have tried four times to scan my favorite 3D ultrasound of the baby. My scanner keeps locking up. I will keep working on it and try to post it later so you can see the little sweetie!

Surprise!

2009-07-15T07:56:00.001-07:00

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! --- I am making a post!!!

Since it has been ages since I have posted, I thought I would back track a little and bring you up to date on things I have wanted to post about. Then I will post about more recent things!

April 2009

Easter

We spent Easter at home this year. For Easter lunch, our friends, Josh and Becky Tanner, invited us and another couple over to their house. We enjoyed getting to sit and visit with our close friends for the afternoon. Becky is the hostess with the mostest! She makes Martha Stewart look shabby!

Beck took our family picture before we left. It is next to impossible to a picture of all of us without someone having a goofy face!

I included this picture just because it was a sweet picture of Seth. When we picked Seth up from the nursery after church, he had on different clothes due to a exploding diaper. Beck was kind enough to to wash his outfit for me. See I told you she was the hostess with the mostest!

Sharing the News

In April, we made it public that we were expecting our 4th child! I know everyone has heard by now, but I had to included it the happenings of April. Baby #4 is due November 18. Right now I am 22 weeks pregnant. Everything is going well with the pregnancy. To answer your questions, no we don't know yet if it is a boy and girl and we want know until the baby is born. Seth has been the only baby that we found out the gender with. I actually like the suspense, even though it drives our families crazy. And no we aren't necessarily trying for a girl. A baby girl would be great but another boy would be wonderful as well. I actually think Kevin is hoping for a girl more so than I am.

May 2009

Mother's Day

This past mother's day, Kevin tried to surprise me with a special gift of pictures of him and the boys. But he found quickly found out that getting three boys ready, out the door with all needed props for pictures, going shopping for coordinating outfits, and having the pictures taken all in a mornings time, is not for the faint of heart. I found out about the pictures because Kevin had to call me to come pick up the boys at the state park where they had the pictures taken because he was running late for work. When I got out of van to get the boys, Eli yelled "Happy Mother's day!" So the cat was out of the bag!

Here are a few of my favorite pictures.

Travels

The first weekend in May we went to Arlington, TX for a Vet Conference. We got to go to a Ranger's game. We left the game early because a bad storm was on the way. Kevin got most of his CE hours in that weekend and the boys and I got to go shopping.

All three boys sported a different Texas Ranger hat. Luke - a batting helmet, Eli - huge foam cowboy hat, Seth - a baseball cap.

Isn't he cute with his pacifer and bball cap!

The next weekend, Kevin and I went back to Arlington for a Homeschool Bookfair. Kevin's parents were supposed to keep the boys at our house for us but Kevin's mom had been put in the hospital earlier that week with food poisoning. So at the last minute, we got my parents to keep them for the weekend.

The bookfair was a two day event but we only made it for one of the days. We found out why it is a two day event...it is HUGE! There were information sessions given throughout the day on different topics. There were a few that I would have like to have gone to but we simply didn't have enough time with only being there one day. We really thought we would be there for three or four hours tops but we ended up staying ALL day just browsing through curriculums and deciding that what would work best for us.

That about sums up the end of spring for us. We have had a extremely busy Summer so far and hope to post on those events soon (which means within three months!).

Potty Talk

2009-05-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS TALK THAT IS ONLY MEANT FOR THE BATHROOM.

Since Luke is potty trained now, he enjoys calling us to his room after he has been in bed for 10 minutes or so to tell us that he needs to go potty. Eli does this as well. We are trying to stop the habit. They like to go to the bathroom together and look at magazines and talk - Eli on the big potty and Luke on the little training potty. It is pretty cute but night after night, it gets old.

Last night they both used the bathroom right as they got out of the bathtub, or so I thought. When we put them to bed, I felt sure that we wouldn't be called back in for a potty break. Well just as Kevin and I settle in and try to relax, we get the call.

Kevin walks back to the boys' room and I hear him tell Luke "Mommy said that you used the bathroom before you brushed your teeth."

Then I hear "Luke, I better see some tee tee in that toilet or you are going to get a spanking."

Kevin stays in the bathroom to monitor the situation. He will not let Luke have a magazine or any of the bath toys to play with. So our little clown, starts making funny faces. Kevin just stares at him. Then Luke's face starts to show signs of the "poo poo face". As Luke is straining, he looks up at Kevin and with all seriousness says "I think an egg is coming out."

Kevin bites his bottom lip and has to turn around and walk out of the bathroom to keep his composure. Sure enough, Luke did have to go to the bathroom!

Star Wars: The Clone Wars Episode 6: Eli's Birthday

2009-04-21T18:53:00.001-07:00

IN A GALAXY NOT SO FAR AWAY, ON THE DAY OF APRIL 16, IN THE YEAR 2003, A BABY BOY WAS BORN. FROM THE BEGINNING HIS ENERGY DREW THE ATTENTION OF THE JEDI COUNCIL, WHO NAMED HIM ELI. THEY KNEW HE WAS THE ONE. IN THE 6 YEARS THAT FOLLOWED HIS BIRTH, YOUNG ELI HAS BEEN LEARNING THE POWERS OF THE FORCE.

RECENTLY THOUGH, THE JEDI KNIGHTS HAVE FELT A STRONG DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCE. A DISTURBANCE GENERATED BY THE DARKSIDE. MANY JEDI KNIGHTS HAVE BEEN LOST. THE VERY FUTURE OF THE JEDI ORDER IS NOW IN JEOPARDY.

THE JEDI COUNCIL HAS CALLED UPON YOUNG PADAWAN ELI TO SEEK OUT FUTURE JEDI. PADAWAN ELI AND SEVERAL OTHER YOUNG PADAWANS WERE PRESENT ON SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 2009 TO ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE OF JEDI TRAINING.
MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU.

Young Padawan Eli waiting on his Jedi Training.
For those who aren't up on their Star Wars lingo, a padawan is a Jedi in training.

The Padawans that accepted the Jedi Training challenge.

Obi-Wan Kenobi instructs the Padawans.

Darth Vader showed up to spoil the Jedi Training.

Obi-Wan and Darth Vader in a lightsaber duel.

The Padawans pose for a picture with Obi-Wan and Darth Vader.

I had several mishaps with this cake. It isn't anywhere near what I had wanted it to look like. All Eli really wanted on the cake was the action figures on top. He really wanted a LOT more action figures (like 12) on the cake but that idea was vetoed. But I guess the looks of the cake didn't affect the taste because there wasn't any cake left.

An Update of the Dickey boys

2009-04-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

SETH
Seth had his ECI comprehensive evaluation and a doctor's appointment to recheck his ears. The ECI evaluation went well. Sallie Justiss, the Early Intervention Specialist, and Debora Mears, an RN with ECI came out and evaluated Seth using DAYC (Developmental Assessment of Young Children) assessment. Through this screening they were able to determined at what age of development Seth was performing at in the different areas of development. Here is Seth's results as compared to where he should be as a 13 month old.

Developmental Skill - Age Level
Cognitive - 11 months
Communication - 12 months
Social-Emotional - 14 months
Physical - 7 months
Adaptive Behavior - 10 months

So as you can see, he is pretty much on target in all of his development except his physical development. Since he was more then three months behind in his physical development, he qualifies for services from ECI.

Our plan of action for Seth is for Sallie to come out once a month and work with him. She will play with him and try to get him to do new things. She will also instruct me on how to help him develop with games and activities. They even showed me today some things to do with him to help with his balance and to get him to start alternating his hands while crawling.

Once the physical therapist comes out and evaluates Seth, he may also have physical therapy. Hopefully in a week or two we will know if physical therapy will be necessary. I believe that both Debora and Sallie think he is borderline on needing physical therapy. Seth favors his right side more than the left. When he army crawls, he leads with the right hand and leg and drags the left, which could lead to an imbalance in muscle tone. But they were pleased to see that he will pivot to the left and right when crawling.

Right after the ladies left the house, we loaded up and headed to Pittsburg to see Dr. Delisi and to get our third Rocephin shot. After Dr. Delisi took a look at Seth, my mother's intuition was confirmed. He still has infected ears. :( His lungs sounded better which was great to hear. Dr. Delisi's plan of action now is to have him free of antibiotics for one week and come back in to see how his ears look. He also instructed me to spray saline solution up his nose more than I have been. He actually mentioned me doing it 5 -6 times a day to help get the drainage out. Since Seth is so young, there isn't a decongestant that is effective to help relieve the drainage. Right now Dr. Delisi isn't ready to refer Seth to an ENT because this is his first ear infection. It is just a stubborn first ear infection. Usually they wait until the 5th or 6th ear infection before they refer to an ENT. But if the ears are still infected on Wednesday, I am afraid we will be headed to an ENT for tubes.

Please pray that Seth will be able to get rid of his ear infection soon and that we can stay clear of having to have tubes.

LUKE
A few posts ago, I reported that the Farmer's Almanac had the best days to potty train. Well I am here to report that it is all a bunch of HOG WASH. For April, it says the best day to potty train is the 10th and the 20th. It is a bunch of Hog Wash because to day is April 2, and I consider Luke POTTY TRAINED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEAH LUKE!!!

He will go sit on his potty chair when the urge hits and then call us in to show us our surprise. We have to guess what the surprise is every time!

The other day, he told me that he had to go tee tee. He went to the bathroom and I hear "Mommy, I have a surprise for you!" I go in there and he gets up and shows me that he did #2. We had to admire the #2 and we even counted how many were in there! After the count was over, he said that he needed to tee tee. He was so excited to find out that you could tee tee and poo poo at the same time!

He still has accidents though. It want be long though before those are few and far between. We still put a diaper on him at night. Some nights he is good at holding it until the morning. And then some nights not so good. But I am just excited that he has thrown diapers away during the day! Way to go Luke!

ELI
There really isn't any big developments with Eli, other than him about to turn 6 and getting excited about his Star Wars: The Clone Wars party.

I am taking Eli to a pediatric dentist tomorrow. I took the boys to a local community college dental hygiene clinic a couple of weeks ago to have their teeth cleaned. They found several problems with Eli's teeth. Bless his heart, he inherited his dad's small mouth and my cavity prone teeth. Not a good combination at all. From the way it sounds, we will be paying for the children of our dentist to go to college!

Sweet Seth

2009-03-31T20:05:00.000-07:00

This is how I found Seth last night ....

After supper, Kevin got called out on an emergency. So it was up to me to get all the boys bathed and to bed and clean the kitchen. I gave Seth his bath first while the other boys were picking up toys. I got Seth ready for bed and put him in his exersaucer to play while I got the two other boys ready for bed. It took a little longer than I expected to get the two older boys ready because I ran into some discipline problems with a certain big blue eyed boy. After getting the older boys to bed, I went into the living room to rock and nurse Seth and found him sound asleep in the exersaucer. He didn't even wake up when I picked him up.

Seth hasn't been feeling well all month. Actually today, I took him to the doctor for the fourth time this month. We went for his 12 month well baby visit and three sick visits. And he actually wasn't "well" at his well visit. Seth has a terrible ear infection that he can not shake. We have been on two antibiotics and the infection has not gone away. So today, Dr. DeLisi pulled out the big guns. Seth is getting three shots of Rocephin over the next three days. And for the second time this month, he is on breathing treatments for wheezing airways and the deep cough he has.

At his 12 month visit we found out that he has fallen on his growth curve to below 10 percentile in his weight. He weighed 19 lbs 5 oz. He only gained 5 ounces in the three months between his 9 month visit and his 12 month visit. Dr. DeLisi was concerned about the drop. At 9 months we was between 20-25 percentile in weight. Seth eats solid foods three times a day and has a big appetite for his food when he feels good. But Seth hasn't felt very good since January. Dr. DeLisi didn't want me to switch him to whole milk because whole milk has less calories and vitamins/minerals than formula or breastmilk. So I am still nursing him some but I am giving him formula during the day. We will go back to check his weight at his 15 month well visit. So hopefully he will get to feeling better and put some weight on.

Dr. DeLisi was also surprised that Seth wasn't pulling up. Seth did start army crawling in January but he has yet to try and pull up or stand on his own. After discussing some concerns that I had, Dr. DeLisi thought it best to have Seth evaluated by Early Childhood Intervention (ECI), a state program for families with children, birth to three years old, with disabilities and developmental delays. Seth had his initial ECI screening on March 11. Seth was tested on hearing, vision, nutrition, social, gross and fine motor skills, and cognitive learning. He scored age appropriate in everything but gross motor skills, which he scored extremely low. Sallie, the lady that evaluated him, thought he would qualify for the program on his delayed gross motor skills. He has a more comprehensive screening on Thursday of this week to see if he actually qualifies for the program. To qualify, Seth will have to be a least three months developmentally delayed. Next week, a physical therapist with ECI is coming to see if physical therapy would be beneficial to him. I am guessing we will know if he qualifies for the program and if needed, what type of therpy will be needed over the next couple of weeks.

He may not be breaking the scales with his weight or breaking records in physical development, but he is one sweet little boy -- despite that nasty infection he is still fighting. He has expanded his vocabulary by a few words. He can say clap, dog, and cat. He also can bark like a dog. It is simply the sweetest bark you have ever heard. You have to listen closely because he is a soft barker!

Our cup overflows here at the Dickey house with these three sweet boys!

Night-Night Prayers

2009-03-09T20:04:00.000-07:00

Our regular bedtime routine is to read one storybook then we read a Bible story. After the Bible story we say our night-night prayers. Then sometimes after that prayer, Kevin will voice a prayer for the boys and our family. Usually in his prayers for the boys, he prays for them using the meanings of their names. He prays that Eli will be uplifted, Luke will be a light giver, and that Seth will be appointed to serve God in mighty ways. We usually say the "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" prayer but here lately we have told the boys that they need to pray for what is on their hearts. Most of the time their "from the heart" prayer is more of a wish list of toys and play dates than anything. But tonight, Eli decided to prayed something a little different and mimicked Kevin's prayer .

Eli's prayer:

Dear Jesus,
Thank you for Mommy and Daddy. And thank you for Baby Seth. We love Baby Seth so much. Luke is the light, Seth is important, and I am the Jedi Council.
Amen

His little red head pops up and he asks "Was that a good prayer?"

The birthday celebration

2009-03-02T21:09:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday we celebrated Seth's first birthday. We had 15 family members come help celebrate his big day. We ate a big lunch, ate some cake and ice cream, opened presents, and visited. It was a great day all around.

When I started planning and thinking about his party I wanted to do something to help other families that had premature or sick babies. Seth received a hand made quilt while he was in the hospital that I love dearly. The blanket was made L. Hall and donated to the hospital. I decided to asked every one invited, if possible, in lieu of a gift to make a blanket to be donated to the Good Shepherd NICU where Seth was hospitalized after he was born. So far we have 16 blankets and 5 more in the process of being made. That is a total of 21 blankets! I never dreamed we would get that many!!!

Seth eyeing his smash cake.

Either he is not going to be a messy eater or he was too sleepy to have much interest in devouring the cake.

Checking out the party hat.

This icing isn't half bad.

The smash cake, the big cake, and the plates

Seth and his cousins and brothers
Luke, Karis, Karaline, Seth, Eli, and Will
Wyatt did not come to the party. He was invited to a friend's party so he stayed at home to go to that party.

Big Daddy with his baby girl and his baby boy.

Karaline flying her kite with Papa watching on.

Luke running flying his kite.

What a difference a year makes!

2009-03-01T20:47:00.000-08:00

What a difference a year makes....

Seth Benjamin, born March 1, 2008 at 33 weeks gestation ~ 4 lbs 13 oz ~17 in. long

Seth Benjamin at a year old! Nothing preemie about him now.

Sweet little fingers
Sweet chubby fingers

A tiny preemie foot.
A fat little foot ready to explore!

Mommy holding Seth for the first time when he is 3 day old.
Mommy still loves loving on her baby boy!
We give praise and honor to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for healing our little boy and making him the healthy baby that he is today.

Every good and perfect gift is from above...
James 1:17

Farmer's Almanac

2009-02-26T05:38:00.000-08:00

Kevin has been looking at the Farmer's Almanac to see when we need to plant our garden. We were looking at it together over the weekend and saw in the "Best Days" section that there is a best day for potty training. For the month of February the best days for potty training were the 14 and 24. So I decided that I would work on potty training with Luke for the millionth time on February 24.

Did it work? Was there something magical about February 24? The answer is ........ NO! He didn't even sit on the potty. I tried to convince, bribe, manipulate, and any other thing I could think of to get him to finally throw those diapers away and become a big boy. You might say (like Kevin) "You need to make that boys sit on the potty. You are the one in control." After much battling with Eli on potty training, I learned that you can not MAKE them do it. As bad as I would like to man handle him to make him do it, it just leads to fustration on my part and his part. So last night I went to Wal-Mart and bought another package of diapers in a size 5. I couldn't find a size 6 (the biggest size) in the cheap diapers and I refuse to pay to pamper his big bottom in those expensive name brand diapers.

About a month ago, we did get him to tee tee in the potty once. So I am living on that small victory that maybe we can get him to do it again soon. Maybe we might try the Farmer's Almanac's best days for potty training again in March. But I am beginning to believe that the Farmer's Almanac is a bunch of hog wash.

I couldn't resist taking this picture of the boys last month doing their paperwork together!

And if you have any tricks or suggestions on how to get a 3 1/2 year old to use the potty, please leave a comment.

New Motor + Antique Tiller = Newique Tiller

2009-02-24T20:06:00.000-08:00

When we bought our house last year, we inherited 40+ years of junk from all the previous owners that we found in our attic and in the shop in the backyard. Kevin actually collected up enough scrap metal from the shop to buy a bass guitar. And there is more scrap metal out there. Kevin is always in the shop trying to organize it and clean it up. He says he still has a way to go. I wouldn't know. I don't go out there because there has been sightings of rats (some might call them field mice but they are ALL rats).

One of the things that he discovered out in the shop was an old rusty tiller. When we were looking at buying this place last year, we talked about planting a garden. So when Kevin found the tiller he got excited. Honestly, when I saw the tiller, I didn't think there was any hope for it. Kevin took it to a small engine mechanic in Hughes Springs, and he thought the same thing I did. Kevin was told that it would cost more to fix than it would to buy a new one.

Kevin didn't like that answer. He called a company that he worked for right before we got married that is a wholesale distributor of small engine parts. They quoted him a price for a new engine. It was a little cheaper than a brand new tiller. So he ordered it. I really thought it was going to be a waste of our money and his time. But he showed me....it actually works now!

Our Newique Tiller

Here are some more pictures of the condition it was in and of the little mechanics helping Daddy.

We aren't sure the manufactor of the tiller. After uncovering some of the filth, we discovered it used to be bright green.

Luke, the farmer, is happy with his tractor that "that man" worked on for him. And if you are wondering, Luke farms acorns, flowers, and corn.

Hopefully a garden post and pictures want be too far behind!

Prince Luke goes to a Royal Tea Party Birthday

2009-02-18T14:24:00.000-08:00

On Valentine's day, Luke was invited to a Royal Tea Party to celebrate his friend, Campbell's 4th birthday. The invitation said the the Princesses and Princes should wear their royal attire. Umm.. an easy thing if you have a girl but a little more challenging if you have a boy! Lets see, we have a cowboy outfit, spiderman, batman, superman, a couple of Star War costumes, LarryBoy, but nothing that was anything close to prince attire. Kevin suggested him using his Armor of God gear to be a Knight in Shining Armor but Luke was determined to be Prince Charming. So I put my thinking cap on, went through the closet, bought a crown, borrow a slipper and finally came up with a Prince Charming outfit.

Prince Charming calling Cinderella!

Tana, Campbell's mom, is a very creative and talented lady. She put tons of details and time into making this party special.

Tana made tutus and put them on the girls chairs. They got to take them home as a party favor. The boys had a wide wire ribbon on their chairs.

A place setting fit for a princess!

Place setting fit for a prince!

I was asked to speak at a MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) meeting in January on party planning. As a door prize at the meeting, I gave away a certificate to make a child's birthday cake. Tana won the cake. I had fun making a girly cake. After seeing this party though, I think Tana should have been the party planning speaker instead of me!

All the children had a blast at the party as you can tell.

The Birthday Girl
Princess Campbell Claire and Prince Luke

Luke got to set at the table with the birthday girl!

All the kids in front of the castle and Tana and Greg made out of cardboard!

Update and a story

2009-02-16T19:50:00.000-08:00

Things have been crazy busy around here the past few weeks. I have actually had several blog worthy things but just haven't had time to post any of them. I actually started a post on January 27 that I never finished. I am hoping to play catch up this week and possibly get caught up if that is possible!

But for now, I have a funny Eli story.

Today in school we started learning the letter U. One of his activity sheets today had him looking at the word in the box at the beginning of the row. He was to find the match word in the three or four words that were listed following the boxed word and place an "X' on the matching word. I had him sounding out the boxed word for practice and because I was loading the dishwasher while he was working at the table. He got to the last word on the page and he started sounding it out.

Eli "b ...u... "

He stops sounding the word out and proclaims "Momma this is a bad word."

I stop doing dishes walk over to check out what four letter word that has the letter U in it is my my son's reading workbook. I scan the the page and the last word on the page was but. I try to explain to him the meaning of that word was different than from the word he was thinking. It is extremely difficult to explain when you are trying not to laugh!

Mystery Solved

2009-01-22T15:46:00.000-08:00

The lost is now found!

For nearly a month, I have been searching for some missing Christmas presents. We made a whirlwind trip to Arkansas the weekend after Christmas. We left our house at 10 am on Saturday and returned home around 10 pm on Sunday. In that 36 hours, we had three different Christmases in two different towns. In all the unpacking and repacking of our stuff, several items went missing. Seth's brand new sippy cup, a bib, and a little lion chime that we gave him were missing, along with the pot to the Pampered Chef micro cooker that I received. The lid to the micro cooker made it home but the actual pot was MIA. I called all over Arkansas (well maybe just my mother in law, sister in law, my sister, and my mom) and the items were no where to be found. I searched high and low around here. The items had disappeared into thin air.

Yesterday, I was getting my nephew's birthday present together to be mailed and I found all the missing items in our stash of birthday presents we bought on our way to Arkansas for Christmas. We stopped at the mall in Texarkana on the way to Arkansas because I had to get a gift for Seth for one of our get togethers. While I was shopping, Kevin took the boys to KB Toys. The store was in the process of going out of business and everything was 50% off. After looking through the store, we decided it would be worth it to buy up a few things to have when we get invited to birthday parties and for our own boys' birthdays. When we got home, I stored the bags in our hiding place so a certain red head wouldn't see the Star War stuff that we got him. When I put the bags up I assumed that the bags just had the toys we bought at KB Toys in them. I never once thought about looking through those bags for the missing items.

Kevin told me all along that he remembered seeing all the missing items but he couldn't remember what he did with them when he was packing us up to leave. Why he untied those bags to stuff those few things in, I will never know. I am just glad to know where they are now!

I didn't think the pjs would fit

2009-01-09T06:47:00.000-08:00

Seth in his Christmas Pjs

When Seth was in the hospital, my mom or my mother in law and I would have to pass a little time each afternoon before we could go pick up the two older boys from daycare. Seth's last feeding during the day shift and the boys nap time at daycare overlapped so we usually spent that 30-45 minutes running errands. One day, my mom and I went to Kohls to look for Eli and Luke an Easter outfit. On the clearance rack, I found a pair of Christmas pjs. The pjs were a size 12 months and looked HUGE. I thought there was no way my 4 lb 13 oz baby would be big enough to wear the two tone green stripped pjs. They were marked $6 so after debating with my mom if Seth would be THAT big at Christmas, I decided to go ahead and buy them. I thought even if he isn't that big I could save them and give them as a baby gift. After all, I was only going to be out $6 so it wasn't that big of a deal. I got even more excited about buying the pjs when they unexpectedly rang up for $4 at the register!! I hung the pjs in his closet and kept wondering as the months passed if they would fit. As you can tell from the above picture, Seth was just the right size for the bargain Christmas pjs! He turned 10 months old on New Year's Day. I had to take him to the doctor for his second flu shot on the 2nd of January. They weighed him with his clothes on and he weighed 20 lbs. Here are a few things that are new with Baby Sefy, as his big brothers call him.

Teeth - He now has four teeth- two on the top and two on the bottom. He likes to try out his new teeth by biting on things. This would not be so bad if I wasn't still nursing. OUCH! OUCH! OUCH!
Sitting alone - Seth started sitting up with out support around Thanksgiving. Just give him something to play with and he will be in the same spot you left him -- that is unless a certain big brother decides that Seth needs to lay down. You never know what Luke is going to do when he "helps" Seth.
Crawling/Scooting - Seth is not crawling but he is trying to figure out how to scoot to what he wants. Most of the time, he reaches his hands and kicks his legs so hard that he gets off balance and ends up on his back. So he rolls over and tries again.
Talking - He is still saying Dada in a sweet tone and with excitement. He says something that sounds like Hi/Hey but not all the time. So I am not sure if it is actually just sounds or a word. In the last Seth update, I said that he didn't say Momma. Well maybe that wasn't exactly true. I have decided that he is indeed calling me but it isn't the sweet tone I prefer. When he gets aggravated and upset, a fussy, whinny "Ma Ma Ma" can be heard. I would much rather hear a sweet loving tone of Momma but I will take the whinny Ma Ma for now and we will work on tone and attitude later.
Eating - Around the first part of November, Seth decided that he would start eating solid food better. I guess he decided that I wasn't going to give up. He enjoys eating solid food now. To save a little money, I am making his baby food. Don't worry, I am not going green or getting all earthy on you, I am just trying to keep a little green in our checking account! I found a website that has lots of information and recipes on how to make baby food. He is exploring a lot more food than his brothers did. He has tried rice cereal, oatmeal, bananas, applesauce, pears, pumpkin, carrots, sweet potatoes, avocado, green beans, peas, lima beans, cauliflower, broccoli, eggplant, and butternut squash. I am starting to add some flavoring to his food. I have only tried garlic powder but I plan to add more soon. Lima beans win the award for the most yucky face made and avocados come in second. As you can tell from his orange tinted face in the picture he enjoys his veggies rich in vitamin A!
Sleeping - At his 9 mo. well visit, he was still waking up and wanting to eat during the night. Dr. Delisi told me that he should be sleeping through the night without being fed. His stomach was big enough to go at least 8 hours without eating. He suggested that I just let him cry it out instead of jumping up and feeding him. He thought Seth had grown accustomed to eating during the night and was waking up just out of habit. Dr. D said that he and his wife also had the same problem with the last two or three kids that they had . (They have seven or eight and with another one on the way!) It took a couple of weeks but he is finally sleeping through the night! He is also going to bed a little earlier too!
Clapping - Seth has just started trying to clap his hands. He hasn't mastered it completely but he is so cute trying. Give him a couple more days and he will have it down pat!
Signing - Seth is taking after his cousin Karis by using sign language. He isn't using correct sign language by any means, but he lets us know when he is ready for a bite. He opens and closes his right hand when he is ready for another bite. It is like he is saying "Give me more". It is funny to watch his hand stop moving while he is eating and as soon as he swallows he starts motioning for more.

We look forward to celebrating Seth's first birthday in a few weeks. Wow, how time flies when you have three active boys!

Christmas Cookies

2008-12-30T06:52:00.000-08:00

I am not sure if it was all the gingerbread house and gingerbread men ornaments that I have or the gingerbread man game on starfall that got the boys interested in gingerbread cookies. But they begged me to make gingerbread cookies. Gingerbread cookies isn't a cookie that I grew up with. So I had to search for a gingerbread cookie recipe. I found a recipe in my Southern Living cookbook, added the ingredients I needed for the cookies to the grocery list and was geared up to make the cookies from scratch. With list in hand, strolling down the aisle at Wal-Mart I was pleasantly surprised to see the Betty Crocker had a special edition Gingerbread cookie mix! Thank you Ms. Crocker! Less mess and less stress for me! So the Monday before Christmas, the boys and I along with two of their friends, Greg and Haley, made and decorated gingerbread cookies for Santa.

The kitchen help!

The benefits of mixing the batter.

Haley creating a masterpiece.

Luke put more icing in his mouth than he did the cookies.

Run. Run. As fast as you can. You can't catch me, I am the Gingerbread man!

Luke didn't spare any red hots on the cookie he decorated for Santa. We had to leave Santa lots of chocolate milk to wash down this cookie. It also ended up with about four candy corns on it.

Jedi Eli excited about decorating cookies

Haley showing off all of her cookies.

Jedi Greg happily taking a break from fighting the Empire to decorate cookies.

Still eating the icing and candy.

Eli decorated these three cookies for Santa.

To: You From: Us

2008-12-23T07:21:00.001-08:00

Kids say the darnedest things

2008-12-13T08:11:00.000-08:00

I started this post on November 29. I am finally getting around to finishing it. The past few weeks the boys have been keeping us entertained with their thought processes and conversations. I thought I would share a few of the funnier and cuter ones with you all.

The Wish List and Angel Tree

You need a little background information for this story. Eli is obsessed with Star Wars this year. Each year since he was two, he has had an interest in some particular character. When he was two it was horses and cowboys. At three it was LarryBoy. When he was four his interest turned to more toward Spiderman and then into Transformers. This year as I mentioned is Star Wars and Bibleman.

The top items on Eli's Christmas list this year is a Star Wars vehicle called an AT-TE. When he first saw it and started talking about it, I decided to see how much it cost. I was SHOCKED. It is $99.99. A toy, that will eventually end up in pieces, costs $100. No thank you. Then I saw that Legos had a Star War line, I thought this would be the answer to the problem. I assumed that they Lego AT-TE would cost around $30. I was wrong - way wrong. With its 798 pieces, the Lego AT-TE cost $89.99. It is absolutely ridiculous the cost of Star Wars toys (and for toys in general). But that issue is for another post at another time. So now that you have the background, here is our conversation.

Eli has the Wal-Mart, Target, or Toys R US toy ad, which is tattered and worn from constant use, that each store mails us at least once a week starting in November. He is looking at the Star War two page spread.

Eli says "Momma, I want this AT-T for Christmas. It is 99 dollars." (He never says the E that is at the end)

I say "Eli, we have told you that Santa doesn't always bring you what you want. He has lots of boys and girls to buy for and that AT-TE is very expensive."

"Well Momma I really want it." says Eli

"Baby, I have a feeling that Santa want be able to bring that for you this year because it just costs too much money."

Eli says, "I think I will just get an angel." as he waves his hand over the 2 page Star War spread.

"What do you mean?" I am thinking he wants a Star War angel, of which I had never heard of.

Eli says, "You remember last year, when we bought toys for the boys and girls who were Angels?"

"Yes" I replied. Our Bible Fellowship department sponsored an Angel Tree and some of our church members just gave money and the boys and I went and bought the gifts.

"Well," says Eli,"I want to be an Angel so someone will buy me what I want."

I had to hide my face behind Seth, who was in my lap, to muffle a laugh. The boy was schemeing ways to get what he wanted. I knew then that we were going to have to work on giving and generosity.

Operation Christmas Child

To help with our generosity issues, we decided to participate in the Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child. We packed a shoe box for a little boy that Eli decided needed to go to a 5 year old.

I found a video online on how to pack a shoe box. Before we left to go to fill our shoe box, I had the boys to watch the video. I wanted them to see what we couldn't give fighting toys. Luke lost interest and walked off, but Eli stayed around. I told him that this little boy either didn't have any toys or very little toys. I said he MAY not have a mom or dad either. Notice that I said MAY.

Well we are at Dollar General picking out items. Eli picks a Speed Racer car that he wants the little boy to have. Luke picks out a Tigger figure to put in the box. I found a set of Lighting McQueen playing cards that I asked the boys if they wanted to put in the box. We ended up with too many items to put in the box, so we find an aisle that isn't busy and pull out all our goods to pick through. Even after the "we are only buying for the little boy" talk before we went in, Luke wanted the Lighting McQueen cards for himself. I told him again that we were not buying for ourselves. We were buying for the little boy.

Eli in his big brother way, tried to console Luke by saying "Luke, when your parents die, maybe someone will buy the cards for you."

Once again I had to muffle a laugh.

That night when we were eating supper, they told their Daddy all about shopping for the little boy. The boys kept asking when we were going to the little boy's home to give it to him. Kevin and I tried to explain that he weren't going to his home. We didn't know where he lived. After we said that, Luke in all seriousness said "He is going to be SO mad."

I asked "Why is he going to be mad. We got him some cool things."

Luke said "We need to go get him because he doesn't have a mom or dad."

(sniff sniff) Finally, a little generosity.

Making a New List

Each month our Children's Department at church has a virtue of the month that they learn about. This month is the virtue is Generosity. (coincidence? I think not.) Each week in Bible Fellowship, Eli gets a weekly devotional guide, called God Time. We start our school time each day by doing the God Time devotionals. On Tuesday of this week, the devotional was on Acts 20:35, which is the passage where Jesus says "It is more blessed to give than to receive." The activity of the day was to make a new list of what he was going to give others this Christmas rather than a list of what he wanted.

I got a little notebook and wrote down his list of what he wanted to give the members of our family. Here is his list and some of our conversation.

Luke: Bibleman and Wall-E (I had to remind him that he needed to think of things for Luke that Luke would like, not things Eli would like. I had to do this because his first answer was Star Wars.)

Seth: a Little Einstein video

Daddy: a Crusoe gun, shells for gun (Kevin watches the new show Crusoe with Eli and Luke. Eli loves Crusoe's gun)

When the list came to me, Eli told me not to look. He took the pen from me because I had been writing down all the items up until this point. So with pen in hand, he sits and starts to write. He works on it for a little bit and then comes and asks for help.

He said "Momma, I need you to help me write this but close your eyes and don't look."

"Okay" I took the pad and pen and closed my eyes a bit. I needed to see a little bit so I could tell where to write.

Eli said "write light"

I wrote it with my eyes half way closed. I saw that he had tried to sound it out and had written "LIE" for light. When I opened my eyes and gave the pad back to him he had the biggest grin on his face. He told me "You need your own light to help Daddy when he shoots. All the lights we have are Daddy's." He was referring to the hog killing incident a few weeks back when I held the spot light for Kevin to kill the hog.

A Tall Tale by Luke

Last but not least, is a tall tale by Luke. Luke is quit the tale spinner. He is always telling us he has shot a deer, a bear, a snake and so forth. The other night we were at the supper table and he tells of his latest kill, a snake. He is talking about how the snake bit him and then he killed it. He were just giving him a little of our attention at this point, because it was a story that we had heard a thousand times. Well the story got interesting when he said that his son was eating the snake. Kevin and I started asking about his son. His son's name is Luke Sidney Dickey. And his name (that is Luke) was Daddy. After asking if he had any daughters, Luke (or should I call him Daddy) told us he had 5 daughters. He told us the 5 girls were at the house cooking chocolate. He told us that he lived in a tree house (I am guessing that came from Crusoe). When asked about the mommy, he told us she was at Wal-Mart buying food for the baby. Then he told us the baby was in her belly. So if I am adding correctly, in this tale, Luke has 6 kids and has one on the way.

And as Luke is telling the story about the mommy having a baby in her belly, Eli chimes in by saying "Congratulations." Luke says "Thanks".

Really there is never a dull moment around here. Sorry this post is so long but I wanted to write down these stories so that I wouldn't forget them.

Heaven is a little sweeter

2008-11-28T14:13:00.000-08:00

Heaven became a little sweeter last Saturday night, November 22, when Nanny, my grandmother, went home to be with her Lord and Savior. She lived a long full life that she used to serve the Lord. She used her love children and cooking to further the Kingdom. She taught Sunday school for over 30 years and kept children in her home. She also served as the food committee chairman at her church, Brister Baptist Church, in which she made sure that everyone that had been in the hospital had food. She also made the bread for the Lord's Supper for the church. She made her house a home by making everyone that walked through the door feel welcomed and loved. I miss her so much already but I know she is much better off. Her heart doesn't have problems working now and she is walking tall on the streets of gold without her back being all humped over due to osteroporosis! What a legacy she has left for us!

2003 with Eli

2005 with Luke

May 2008 at the Rehab Hosptial in El Dorado, AR with Seth. She had just had hip replacment surgery.

You might be a Redneck if......

2008-11-19T12:19:00.000-08:00

...you kill a wild hog in your backyard.

Last night as I was getting the two older boys ready for bed, Kevin calls me to come with him outside to hold the spotlight. There was a wild hog in the pasture at the back of our house. So with my steady spotlight holding hand, I aimed the red beam right at the target. Then with a pull of the trigger, Kevin brought the beast down. The boys were in the house, so after the shot, I went in to check on them. They were excited and wanted to see the hog. Kevin went down in his truck and got the hog. It ended up being a boar (male) that was pretty big and had a very fowl smell. The pig probably weighed somewhere around 150 lbs.

I am sure this will not be the last wild hog kill at the Dickey house since the hogs are about as plentiful as field mice.

Weekend Celebrations

2008-11-11T12:16:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, we traveled to Hot Springs, Arkansas to have the annual Dickey grandchildren pictures made. Kevin's sister, Christi, was under the assumption that and her son, Will's baptism was the reason for the trip. Little did she know that we had planned a 40th birthday party for her. Saturday, the 8th, was actually my father-in-law's birthday. So his birthday was the cover up for her surprise party. We had her friends that were invited to meet at a restaurant in Hot Springs at 5:30. Christi thought that we were going out to eat for Bro. Joe's birthday. The Dickey's were already at the restaurant when Christi, Charlie, and the boys arrived, along with three sets of friends that could make the event. Her friends put their menus over their faces and when she walked in lowered them and said surprise! And Christi was surprised! Kevin and I were late getting to the party because instead of going to the picture session and going to the restaurant with the family as we had planned, we went to Little Rock to see Nanny. I am glad that we were able to go see Nanny and make it to the party.

This is a picture of the napkins that I used for inspiration for her cake. I thought the napkins were cute and fun. Not over the hill drab

Here is a picture of the cake. I thought the cake turned out looking like a gay pride flag rather than like the napkins. Everyone ate it none the less.

Christi and her 40th tiara

Reading glasses were the only "over the hill" gift she received.

To end the weekend, Sunday night, Will, our 5 year old nephew was baptized. He asked Jesus into his heart a couple of weeks ago. It was such a blessing to get to see the Lord at work in his little life. His cousin, Robert (from the Zumwalt side) was saved after the service. So it was a great service.

Oh and we did celebrate Bro. Joe's birthday as well. He didn't mind giving up "his day" for his baby girl!

Nanny

2008-11-11T11:45:00.000-08:00

Please be in prayer for my Nanny. Last week, they had to readmit her to the hospital for congestive heart failure. After a day or two in the Magnolia hospital she was transported to the Arkansas Heart Hospital in Little Rock, to be close to her heart doctor. After a series events over the weekend, Dr. Beau, her cardiologist, is suggesting that she be placed in the Hospice House in El Dorado. She will be transported their either today or tomorrow. She will have 24 hour care at thie facitility and it will be closer for the family. I would also ask that you remember my Dad, Troy, and his two sisters, Joyce and Donita, as they make, sometimes not so easy, decisions regarding Nanny's care. Nanny's heart is very weak and it is just a matter of time before she goes home to be with her Lord and Savior. Thanks for your prayers.

8 months old

2008-11-05T08:28:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday, November 1, Seth turned 8 months old. To make the day special, Seth cut his first tooth! He also ran his first fever over the weekend - just in time to ruin Mommy's plans of enjoying a day at First Monday Trade Days in Canton with her sisters and mom. I think he had a virus because after the fever broke, he broke out with a rash. He is fine now. He is already working on tooth #2.

Here are some notable things that Seth has done in the past month.

Rolled over - he rolled from his back to his belly two or three times and that has been it. He tried it and I guess he doesn't like it!
Said his first word - DA DA - of course he said Da Da first because Kevin wakes up with him two and three times a night every night. Oh wait a minute....that is ME - MA MA- who gets up with him every night.
Ate his first solid food - he spit, spewed, and cried the whole time. Decided to quit and try again later. Couple of weeks later - he made faces and then refused to open his mouth. Now I would spit and spew at rice cereal too but I even gave him applesauce and bananas. So for now we have stopped and will try again in few days. I called the doctor and he to just keep trying and that if he was still having problems at 9 mo. we would worry about it more.
Cut his first tooth - after what seemed like months and months of excessive drooling.

See what I mean by excessive drooling!

Ha Ha Ha Ha Hallelujah

2008-11-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

I promise that I am not going to post a video of Eli and Luke every time they sing in church. But this one of Luke's preschool choir is so cute because they made guitars out of cereal boxes to play along with the country hoe down music of the song. They sang this past Sunday night, November 2.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Treats on the Square

2008-10-28T21:39:00.000-07:00

There are three things that Eli pretty much lives for - Christmas, birthday parties, and Treats on the Square. He constantly talks about all three things. This past Saturday night the Gilmer Police Department hosted the annual Treats of the Square. Eli decided that he wanted to Luke Skywalker (he considered Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenoi, Han Solo, and Optimus Prime). Luke decided that he wanted to be a cowboy (after spending the week with Valerie's girls, I think he should have gone as Prince Charming!), and Seth told me he wanted to be a pirate. So pretty much the whole fall break I was making costumes. Thankfully, Luke's was extremely easy. TOTS started at 5:00 on Saturday. At 3:50 pm on Saturday I finished all the costumes! TOTS was very crowed but the boys had a good time.

If I had another week (or even a couple of days) I would have made Seth's stroller into a ship.

As we were leaving Eli told me that he loved his costume. He said "Momma, me, Luke, and Seth had the best costumes in the world." That one quote made all the late nights worth it! By the way, Eli started planning for Treat on the Square 2009 last Friday (before TOTS 2008). He says he is going to be Bibleman. We will see!

Fall Break

2008-10-28T21:12:00.000-07:00

Last week Kevin took a week off of work and we took a week off of school and went to North Arkansas on Fall Break. Kevin and Eli were wilderness men. They floated the Buffalo River through the Lower Buffalo Wilderness area, which is a 31 mile float trip. They floated it in 2 1/2 days in Kevin's kayak and camped along the way. Luke, Seth, and I went to visit my friend, Valerie Gunter and her girls. Valerie and I were best friends in Baton Rouge. Her husband Matt was a year behind Kevin in vet school.

Kevin and Eli floated put in at the Buffalo Point at the National Park and floated to the mouth of the Buffalo where it feeds into the White River. They planned on floating down the White River 12 miles but a bad thunderstorm was coming Wednesday night and the White River was running extremely fast. I made a slideshow of some of the pictures that Kevin and Eli (guess which ones are his) took. They saw deer everyday they were out and got to see three bald eagles. I asked Eli what was his favorite part of the trip. His reply " Eating marshmellows, eating Transformer fruit snacks, and eating the trail mix snack." Sounds like my kind of camping trip, full of snacking!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I am having trouble downloading the pictures from Valerie's. Once I get them downloaded, I will post them.

Nanny's 87th Birthday Bash

2008-10-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, October 19 the Waller side of the family gathered together to celebrate our Nanny's 87th birthday. Nanny is the only grandparent that is left on the Dickey or Waller side. Last spring she fell and broke her hip which required surgery. She hasn't recovered very well from the surgery. We thought it would be fun to surprise her by us all getting together for her birthday. My dad had to tell her on Saturday that we were all coming. She seemed to enjoy the day with her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. We all enjoyed it as well.

Children's Choir performs

2008-10-18T20:30:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday night, the Children's choir at church performed "Open the Eyes of My Heart Lord". The choir is made up of children in Kindergarten through 4th grade. This is the first time Eli has ever had to stand in front of church (or any group). I was a little worried on how he would respond to being in front of people. He can be a bit on the shy side at times. I am glad to report (and show) that he sang and signed his little heart out! We told him that he did a great job and he said with a scrunch nose and nodding his head "I did pretty good. I messed up my motions a little but I did pretty good."

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Cutting and Stacking Firewood

2008-10-18T20:02:00.000-07:00

Every night the past couple of weeks, when Kevin gets home he starts cutting and stacking firewood. Of course, a job like this can not be done alone. One needs a 5 year old and 3 year old to help cut and stack firewood!

Cutting firewood with sticks.

Such a manly man!

Last week's news

2008-10-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

Just pretend that this blog post was posted earlier this week or even the end of last week. Because it all happened last week, September 29 - October 5. I wanted to blog about it earlier in the week but I had to catch up on my housework before I started catching up on my blog work!

Nanny

Late last Monday night, September 29, my mom called me and told me that they had taken my grandmother, Nanny, to the hospital with congestive heart failure. Nanny was very very sick and they weren't sure if she was going to make it through the night. The doctors were able to get the fluid off her lungs and heart and she slowly started to get better. We haven't been home in a while so I had not seen Nanny since my cousin's wedding in June. So Tuesday the boys and I load up in the van and make a trip to Arkansas to see Nanny in the hospital and visit my folks for a couple of days. When we got there she was in the ICU and the boys were not allowed to go back to see her. Nanny was very disappointed that she could not see the boys. But on Wednesday, she was moved to a regular room so we headed back up to the hospital after we did our school work. She was tickled to get to see them. I forgot my camera so I didn't get to take any pictures.

Nanny is doing some better. She got out of the hospital Sunday the 5th. Back in March, around the time that Seth came home from the hospital, Nanny fell and broke her hip. She just has not been the same since. Next Sunday, October 19, she will turn 87. We are planning a big family to get together for her. It should be fun. Maybe I want forget my camera this time. But if I do, my blog queen sister will document the event!!

Enjoying Fall and the letter Pp

Fall and spring are always such welcome sites. They each have things that I love about the season. The last couple of weeks, you could tell that fall was in the air in east Texas. To me that means jeans and long sleeves, trees turning those beautiful fall colors, soups, and fall foods - soup, pumpkin, and sweet potatoes.

I had signed up to take breakfast to our Bible Fellowship group the first Sunday in October. I decided I was going to make some thing out of pumpkin and/or sweet potatoes for breakfast. I found a recipe for pumpkin apple dip on a blog of one of my sister's friends. So last Friday morning, I went to the Peterson's blog to find the pumpkin dip recipe and she had a new intriguing post on Romance in the Seasons. I read the post and thought that is a good idea. I thought to myself that after being gone all week long, I would have to wait another day to surprise Kevin with a picnic and really didn't give it another thought.

Later that morning, Eli and I were working on his school work. His letter last week was Pp. In one of the activities he had to look at the pictures and decided what letter each word begun with. Well if one of the pictures wasn't a picture of a picnic, I am not sitting here typing. I just couldn't get away from the idea of having a picnic. So I made a call to the clinic to see when they thought Kevin would be freed up for lunch. So I kicked it into high gear, made a picnic lunch for me and the boys and we headed to Hughes Springs Veterinary Clinic to surprise Kevin with a fall picnic and to celebrate the letter Pp.

We went to Daingerfield State Park and enjoyed a picnic at a park under the pine trees eating on paper plates!

Kevin pointing out ants and termites to the boys.

Priceline.com Rocks!

Kevin had to get a few hours of continuing education at a veterinary conference in Dallas on Saturday. Our original plans were to make it just a day trip. But at 8:30 pm on Friday night, the plans started to change. Kevin just suggested that I see what kind of price we could get a room for Saturday night. So I went to priceline.com and did the name your own price option. We wanted cheap so we put in $50 bid for a four star hotel in the downtown area of Dallas on our first bid. No big surprise, the bid was rejected. So I tried again at $56 for a 3 1/2 star hotel in the same area. Our bid was excepted. For $56 plus tax (which came out ot be $70) we had a night at the 4 star Hyatt Regency Hotel in Downtown Dallas! This was one of the three conference hotels. If we had of booked a room there through the convention, we would have paid $165 a night plus the 15% tax. We saved over a hundred dollars!! To bad we could not priceline parking and tips also!!

While in Dallas, the boys and I went to Grapevine Mills Outlet Mall. I found some pretty good bargins at Children's Place. I didn't get to go to all the stores that I want due to time but mainly due to children melt downs. Kevin went to his classes that morning and afternoon. Saturday evening we went to the LSU SVM reunion. Then a group from his vet school class went out to eat. We had a good time catching up with some of the gang.

So now you see why I had to catch up on my housework. Hope you all have a good weekend!

Like Father - Like Son

2008-10-10T20:27:00.000-07:00

Seth is learning at an early age how to fall asleep in a recliner. He couldn't have pick a better person to teach him either. Kevin is a pro at falling asleep in the recliner.

First Taste of Solid Food

2008-10-06T18:20:00.000-07:00

Well if you can call watered down rice cereal solid food, then Seth took his first taste of solid food tonight! Here are some videos of him gumming/spitting out his food.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

In the next couple of days, I plan to make a couple more posts from last week and the weekend. We finally have something a little worthy of telling!!

For the Grandparents - Preschool Choir Singing at Church

2008-09-15T16:09:00.001-07:00

This post for Nana, Poppa, Big Daddy, and Granna so they can see their favorite three year old grandson singing (even if it is just for a few short seconds). They sang "I Can Do All Things" and "Lord I Lift Your Name on High".

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Puppet Show

2008-09-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Benjamin Rabbit played by Eli Dickey

Luke Sidney Dickey Rabbit played by Luke Sidney Dickey

If You Give a Moose a Muffin

2008-09-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

This week at the Dickey Primary School we are learning about the letter m. We went to the library yesterday to check out books that would enhance the letters that we will be studying over the next couple of weeks. Today we read If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff. After the moose eats all the muffins, gets ready to go to the store to buy more muffin mix, and sews a button on a sweater, he wants to make sock puppets like he and his grandmother did when he was younger. When I read that line, I remembered that my mom had bought sock puppet kits for boys over a year ago (if not longer). I dug them out and after we finished all of the school work, we made the sock puppets. The boys enjoyed making them. The eyes and ears of the puppets are having technical difficulties staying on (the fabric glue isn't gluing to the fabric). I am sure that once fix the problems we will have a puppet show just like the moose did in the book!

By the way, there are several books in Numeroff's If You Give series. If you have preschoolers I highly recommend these books. They will be a big hit because they are cute and silly.

Kevin's Birthday

2008-09-08T06:47:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Kevin!

Yesterday was Kevin's birthday. We didn't get to do anything big because it was Sunday and he was on call. Bless his heart, his day was FULL of different ministry commitments and he was called out to the clinic for an emergency. But he wouldn't have had his Sunday any other way. He enjoyed getting to minister to so many different groups. We tried to celebrate it as well as we could. I made a cake for him and took it to our Bible Fellowship group and the boys also decorated a cake for their daddy.The character on this cake is from 321 Penguins, from the creators of Veggie Tales. There are four penguins on the show - Fidgel, Midgel, Zidgel, and Kevin. Guess which penguin this is!

The more sprinkles the better!

The boys and I went shopping Wednesday night after church to try and find Kevin something for his birthday. Eli and Luke really wanted to get him a Transformer or Star Wars toy. Eli just couldn't understand why I would let him get his daddy a toy that he (meaning Eli) really wanted. Then they wanted to get their daddy either the Transformer or Star Wars movie on DVD. I also vetoed that idea. I suggested a new shirt or something of that nature. Well the selection was slim so that idea fizzled. I just decided we would look another day but Eli was upset that we didn't buy his daddy anything. As I was checking out at Wal-Mart Eli was looking at the end cap that was near the checkout. He brought me a Colgate 360 Sonic Power toothbrush.

Eli said "Momma can we get this?"
"For what, sweetie? You don't need that." I said
"I want to get it for Daddy's birthday." replied Eli

I gave in so the boys gave their daddy a very nice toothbrush for his birthday! They were so excited about giving it to him. You should have seen the look on Kevin's face. He didn't expect to a toothbrush but he loved it as if it was what he always wanted!

Our family is so blessed to have such a godly man as the head of our home. We love you Kevin!

Happy 1/2 Birthday!

2008-09-06T07:18:00.000-07:00

On Labor Day, little Mr. Seth turned 6 months old. A half a year old. That is hard to believe. It doesn't seem like it has been 6 months since that Saturday morning I got the call from Dr. Martin saying that we needed to take the baby because he was in danger.

Seth went for his 6 month well visit on Wednesday. He weighed a whooping 16 lbs 9.5 ozs and was 26.25 inches long! He was moved even further up the growth charts. He is in the 50 percentile in length and somewhere around 35-40% in weight for 6 mo. old boys. He does have some developmental delays mainly in gross motor skills (like rolling over) but the doctor isn't worried about it. But he is on target in social development. Seth has learned that his hands can grab things. He loves grabbing his piggy on his exersaucer and loving on it. The down side of this newly found development is he has started grabbing my hair! He has also turned into a drooling monster. The boy has more drool than any one baby should. He keeps his clothes and bibs drenched all the time. I guess this is the early stages of teething.

Since Seth was early and we had just moved to our house, we didn't have his room ready. I had planned on setting it up during Spring Break when our family could come down and help me. We spent Spring Break at the hospital with Seth. I tried several times to get the room ready by myself over the past 6 months but I would get a good start and then get pulled away to tend to the boys or to the rest of the house. So for the past five months (he was in the hospital for nearly a month) Seth has slept in our room either in the cradle, bouncy seat, or with us. He is the first one that has slept with us. He is growing bigger and becoming more active so he was taking up what little space we had left in our double bed (yes, Kevin and I sleep in a double bed). Kevin and I (especially me) were ready for him to get his own bed. So last Saturday when our family was down for Luke's party, my sister in law, brother in law, mother in law, my mom, and I put Seth's room together.

Seth's first experience in his exersaucer earlier in August.

Seth finally has a room that is set up and ready to use!
We are getting good use out of the denim and gingham red bedding and Raggedy Ann and Andy decorations.

Thank you Aunt Christi, Uncle Charlie, Nanna, and Granna for helping Mommy set up my room. I love my bed!

Luke's Birthday Party

2008-09-05T21:23:00.000-07:00

I am a week behind but what else is new? Last Saturday we had Luke's 3rd birthday party here at the house. It was actually a combined birthday party with our new Children's Minister's son, Greg, who turned 5. Both Luke and Greg's parties were cowboy themed, were scheduled for the same time, and we both invited some of the same people so we decided just to combine the parties and have a big ol' time.

Luke's cowboy cake.

Cowboy Luke opening his presents.
The little cowboy wanted to play with everything as he opened it.

Cowboy Greg Compton turned 5!

Luke was finally able to play with one of his presents. This chainsaw wasn't tied down to a box so he took the opportunity to start using it. He is trying to get rid of stump in the back yard.

Birthday boy Greg opens another present.

Luke loves his blanket that Granna made for him.

Greg and Luke blowing out their candles. Greg's dad, Bryon, made his cake. It was a cowboy hat. Very impressive! The cowboy hat did get bucked around on the way to our house but it didn't effect the taste!

Luke eating his cake topper that was made of candy chocolate.

The guest watching Luke and Greg open presents.

Kids waiting on cake. I guess Brooke decided that she wasn't a cowgirl and made her cowgirl hat look more like a gardening hat!

First Day of School

2008-08-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

Whether I like it or not, my children are growing up. Seth is starting to laugh out loud, Luke is learning to dress himself (I wish I could report he was using the potty but not yet), and Eli has started kindergarten.

About two years ago, on the way home from Dallas, I asked Kevin about putting Eli on the pre K at our church's Child Development Center. Our two hour drive home became a two hour argument home. He was against enrolling him in preschool and said that he would like to see me homeschool. I wanted to enroll him in preschool and was NOT going to homeschool our children. I was absolutely apposed to the idea. I knew we would probably have another baby by the time he went to school and I wasn't going to be weird and homeschool. The school issue became a very touchy subject for Kevin and I. We both wanted different things. I knew that we both needed to be on the same page dealing with the our childrens' education. I begin to pray that the Lord would either change my heart or change Kevin's. As time went by, the subject started getting a little easier to talk about. We decided to explore public, private, and homeschooling to make our decision. Looking at our finances we knew private school was out. So that left public and homeschooling. When we moved in January, we moved to a different school district that we knew nothing about. I had heard a lot of negative about Pittsburg High School but most said that the elementary was fine. We intended to visit the school in the spring but we spent our spring in the hospital or confined at home. We did get to visit a homeschool co-op meeting in Longview. But the meeting wasn't the best meeting to attend because it was bookfair.

Sometime this spring, my prayers concerning the issue were answered. I realized that homeschooling was what we needed to do for the moment. My heart and attitude had been changed. Kevin and I aren't signing on to homeschool K - 12th grade. We are going to take it year by year. I know people think I am crazy for doing this with two younger ones at home also. But to me, I think it is easier to homeschool than to have to drive 16 miles one way twice a day to take Eli to school with two younger ones in tow.

We are going along with Gilmer ISD school calendar since most of our church activities will revolve around the district's calendar. We have a four day school week and spend about an hour to an hour and a half on phonics, math, and Bible. For phonics, we are using Explode the Code. Saxton Math is our math curriculum. For Bible we are doing daily devotionals that he gets from Kids Klubhouse (children's church) and reading Egermeier's Bible Story Book.

So after all that explantation here are our pictures from Eli's first day of school!

Special First Day of School Muffins made especially for a red headed Kindergartner.

I must confess, this picture was taken the second day of school! I tried to get a picture of him by his books on the first day and he was not cooperating. I didn't want me forcing him to take a picture to ruin the first day so I didn't press the issue.

For lunch we went on a picnic in the back yard.

When Kevin came home, we blew up the pirate ship and the boys played.
I guess you could say Kevin was the PE teacher!

Happy Anniversary

2008-08-17T00:16:00.000-07:00

August 17, 1996

Twelve years ago, Kevin and I were married in my home church, Brister Baptist Church, in Emerson, Arkansas. It doesn't seem that long ago but then it seems like we have been together forever (in a good way!). In those 12 years, we have earned 3 degrees, lived in 4 different states, have had three children, moved 7 times, and have changed jobs 6 times. We couldn't have made it through all of that if we hadn't relied on the Lord to see us through the ups and downs of it all. I love you Sweetie. Looking forward to many many many more years together.

Learning to be independent

2008-08-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

Luke has recently figured out how to dress and undress himself. This morning, I got his clothes out to dress him. I left out of the room for a few minutes and before I could return to his room to dress him, Luke came out dressed. I was so impressed with him and started to praise him. That was until he turned around. Then I started laughing.

Look who is 3

2008-08-05T23:50:00.000-07:00

Happy 3rd Birthday Luke Sidney!

This past Sunday, Luke turned 3. To celebrate his special day, I made Diego Cupcakes for his Sunday School class and then for lunch we went to the ultimate birthday party place, Chuck E. Cheese. Luke and Eli enjoyed their Sunday afternoon running around playing all the arcade games. He will have his "real" party at the end of the month. Our mission trip and Dr. Brockway's mission trip to Venezuela have Daddy's weekends tied up until the end of the month.

Fighter Jet from some good friends

Pirate pool from the family

The Pirate Ship Pool came with two swords, two shields, two pirate hats, a treasure chest, a pirate flag, cannons, cannon balls, steering wheel and a plank slide -- and I had to blow
ALL of them up.

First Sunday in Nursery

2008-08-05T21:22:00.001-07:00

I put Seth in the nursery for the first time this past Sunday morning. He was all dressed up for the occasion. The nursery ladies took his picture for me. Can you believe that he is already 5 months old?

Mission Trip 2008 - Kerrville, Texas

2008-08-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

Last year our church sponsored a family mission trip to Creede, Colorado. It was so well received that our pastoral staff and the missions committee decided to have an annual family mission trip. This year the family mission trip was located in the Texas Hill Country in a town called Kerrville. Fifty-four of us left Saturday, July 26 and came back on Friday, August 1. We partnered up with Southern Oaks Baptist Church in Kerrville to do construction on a mobile home, paint a house, help paint SOBC Children's Building, make appreciation bags for civil servants and conduct VBS for a small church in the Kerrville. We had a lot to accomplish in the 3 1/2 days we had to work but with the Lord's help we got it all done to best of our abilities.

I worked with the children. We made the appreciation bags for the civil servants. The children drew pictures on the bags that we stuff the goodies in. They also made bookmarks to put inside the bags. Inside the bags we put beef jerky, package of peanut butter crackers, chap stick, bookmark, a brochure about SOBC, hand sanitizer, kleenex, and a CD that our church hands out to visitors. We made around 200 bags to hand out to the Kerrville Police and Fire Departments and the Kerr County Sheriff's Office. When we took the bags to each department, they couldn't believe that we had made the bags just for them. The Fire Department actually gave us a grand tour of their fire department.

Sunday night through Wednesday night we held a Vacation Bible School at Western Hills Baptist Church. This church is full of senior adults that desperately wants young family to join their fellowship. We had a high of around 15 one night. The pastor was so thankful for the two or three good contacts that they were able to get out of us holding the VBS. Several members from Western Hills helped us in different areas and they seemed to love every minute. Even though they were senior adults, they didn't mind our youth praise band playing loud!

Kevin helped with both construction projects during the morning and part of the afternoon. In the afternoon, he would get cleaned up for VBS. He played bass guitar in the praise band (he is the geriatric member) and was over the opening and closing assemblies. Kevin knows pretty much nothing about reconstructing a house. But he was able to learn how to sheet rock through the help of others.

We stayed at host families for Souther Oaks. We stayed at a home with 15 others from our group. A total of 23 people were at the house during the week. Our family actually stayed in a pop up camper outside. No we didn't have an air conditioner in the camper but neither did the people that stayed in the house. The lady that we stayed with is allergic to air conditioning. We actually had the better of sleeping arrangements of those at the house, because the lived right on a creek with a water fall (very pretty) so their was pretty much a constant air flow during the night. The Mentch's home at night was filled with laughter, singing, and just all around great fellowship.

On Thursday afternoon, we went to historic Fredricksburg to shop and eat German food. While in Fredricksburg, we got to meet up with Ms. Rachel, our host home from Creede. Rachel lived and worked in Creede last summer. She had just graduated from college and was living in her family's summer home. This past fall, she moved back home with her family in the San Antonio area. Her parents and herself just moved to Fredricksburg earlier that week. So we got a chance to drink cream soda and root beer with Ms. Rachel at an ice cream parlor in downtown Fredricksburg. By the way, I am glad I am not German. The meat was fine but the veggies .. well not much on cabbage and hot potato salad.

We enjoyed our week in Kerrville very much, even without air conditioning! The boys were great. Seth had a horrible night Saturday when we arrived at our house. He screamed for at least an hour and half. After a dose of tylenol, he settled down and fell asleep. He was fine the rest of the week. Although he started fighting getting in his car seat after such a long drive to Kerrville. Eli fell of some playground equipment and busted his chin on Monday. Several of us thought he was going to have to have stitches but Dr. Daddy came and checked him out. Dr. Daddy said that no stitches were needed. Luke also fell while wearing a batman mask. The mask cut into his face under his eye. So we had one with a black eye and one with a busted chin. But through all the falls, screaming babies, and many dirty diapers, I had a wonderful young lady, Meredith Elms, that helped me tremendously. Meredith helped me out even when I didn't ask for help. She just saw what needed to be done and just did them. She was truly a blessing to me.

I will hopefully get a CD of pictures from "Big Luke" (that is what Eli calls him). Big Luke took hundreds and hundreds of pictures of all the work sites. When and if I get the pictures, I will put some of them on the blog. But for know, here are some of the pictures I took at VBS and when we delivered the bags.

Rocket Jump House that we rented for VBS kick off.
The Rockets went along with our VBS theme - Cosmic City!

Rusty bagging popcorn at VBS kickoff.

Luke being his silly self.

Mohawk Jayden
Jayden became Eli's new friend at VBS.
Jayden's little brother Jake also sported a mohawk.

Some of the cute little girls at VBS.

Meredith Elms
I asked her Dad Sunday night if we could adopt her!

Dusty on guitar and Eric on keyboards

The pastor of Western Hills Baptist Church
and the snack ladies.

Space Aliens Caleb and Maggie helped with
the Bible Story drama

Sweet Laney colored more on herself than she did the bags!

Kerrville Fireman in full gear.
They actually got called out on a medical call while we were there.

Our kids and the three fireman that showed us around.

Kerr County Sheriff's Department and FBC children.

A Major Milestone

2008-07-18T07:55:00.001-07:00

Last night a major milestone occurred that I have been waiting to happen. Seth FINALLY slept through the night!! From 10:30 pm to 7:00 am. I checked a couple of times to make sure he was breathing and he was. He was just enjoying some good zzz's!

On July 2nd, I took Seth in for his 4 month well visit. As you can tell from the picture above, our little peanut has packed on some pounds. At his appointment, he weighed 13 lbs 8 oz. and was 24 inches long. Dr. Delisi was extremely pleased with his weight again. In two months time he jumped from being in the lower 5th percentile in weight for his age group to the 20th percentile. I am amazed at how God has taken that frail little baby and made him into a normal baby that shows no signs of being a preemie.

Seth has also started doing push ups! He started pushing up on his hands this week. He is growing and developing by the minute! It is so fun to watch.

Seth is also taking after his uncles. Take a look for yourselves.

Uncle Chuck

Uncle Charlie

Uncle Marty

and Seth all have Male Pattern Baldness!

First ER Visit

2008-07-06T21:45:00.000-07:00

Thursday night, we kicked off our 4th of July weekend by taking Luke to the Longview Regional Medical Center Emergency Room. Our friends, Matt and Valerie Gunter and their girls, stopped by to visit and eat supper with us on their way to Matt's parent's house. Matt, Kevin, and the children were outside playing. Around 7 pm, Eli and the girls came in the house and Luke stayed outside with Kevin and Matt. Eli, Claire, and Kate hadn't been in the house but a couple of minutes when Kevin brought Luke in crying. Kevin told me to look at his foot. I saw two swollen puncture wounds about an 3/4 to 1 inch apart. I knew immediately what it was -- SNAKE BITE!

Earlier that morning, while Kevin was having his quiet time out at the shop, he killed a 2 1/2 cottonmouth snake. He has seen rat snakes out there but this was the first poisonous snake that he had seen. We have been educating the boys on what to do if they saw a snake while they were playing outside. They both knew what to do. But Luke didn't see this one. He was out by the shop with Kevin and Matt. The grass out by the shop had not been mowed yet so it was thick and high. We think he stepped on it without even knowing. He just started screaming and saying his foot stung. Kevin took off his rubber boots and saw the puncture wounds but didn't want to believe it was a snake bite. But when it started swelling like wheels, he knew it was highly probable it was a snake bite.

Matt and Valerie stayed with Eli and Seth while we rushed Luke to the hospital. Luke was calm and pretty quiet on the way to the hospital. He was alert and aware of his surroundings because he made comments about the blue gorilla at the used car dealership. He also told us when we got to the hospital that he did not want to lay in a bed. He remembered me in the bed at that hospital. His foot was still swollen and was red when we arrived at the ER. Around 8 pm we saw the doctor. He examined him and said that it looked like a snake could have bitten him but he didn't think that he had been envenomed if he had been bitten by a snake because he would have had unbearable pain. He went ahead and ordered blood work to check for DIC and gave him tylenol with codeine. They also observed him for a couple of hours. The blood work was fine and he never showed any signs of being envenomed.

On the way to the hospital, we called our family and church family had them to start praying for Luke. Some of our friends from our Bible Fellowship group to come to the hospital to be with us. We are so thankful and blessed to have such loving and caring family and friends. Kevin and I believe that their prayers were the reason Luke faired so well with this accident.

Kevin educated me on the differences in poisonous and nonpoisonous snakes during our wait. There are four poisonous snakes in the United States - Rattlesnake, Water Moccasin (cottonmouth) , Copperhead, and Coral. A poisonous snake bite will leave two puncture wounds from the fangs which inject the venom. Non-poisonous snakebites leave teethmarks but no fang marks. Also the bite itself can cause just as many problems as venom due the nasty snake's mouth. Kevin also reread a journal article that he got sometime ago on snakebites. The article said that 25% of the time, poisonous snakes do not inject venom when they bite. Also, the puncture wounds on Luke's foot were pretty far apart, which meant that it was a pretty big snake. Big snakes also do not have as much venom in their bites as small snakes.

If you saw Luke today, you would never know anything had happen. His foot isn't swollen and the bite now looks like a two small scabs. I tried to take a picture of his foot on Friday but I couldn't get a good picture and he was ready to go and play. It is only by God's grace and healing that Luke didn't have any major problems from the snake bite. We praise God that Luke's speedy and complete recovery! We are also very thankful that Matt and Valerie Gunter were here to take care of our other boys. It is so awesome how the Lord takes care of little details before we know we need them.

Luke's friends, Brooke and Jack Tanner, came to the hospital and brought him a
Spiderman coloring book and a giant lollipop. The coloring book made our wait not seem so long.

Luke is always a clown but the codeine added fuel to this fire.
Here he has the cold pack that we put on him at the house on his head.
And no he isn't naked, you just can not see his diaper.
(Yes, he is nearly three and still in diapers.)

Before we left the hospital, a nurse put ointment on his foot and bandaged it up.
Luke told Eli Friday morning that he was like Curious George.

This is the picture Luke was referring to from the book
"Curious George Takes a Job" by H. A. Rey

You Sure Have Your Hands Full

2008-06-30T20:36:00.001-07:00

Anytime me and boys go out in public, I always hear "You sure have your hands full". I never really know what to say. I always just grin and say yes I do and then wonder why they made that comment. I know I have three kids under the age of 5 but I still think I am handling things pretty well considering. After hearing it a million times I have started to wonder if I really look that frazzled.

This past Friday when I was in Shreveport, I got to visit with my cousin Cheryl, who know lives in Ohio. Cheryl and I were talking about how strangers comment on kids and the different things they comment on. I told her that the "hands full" comment was probably the most popular comment that I get. Cheryl shared with me that she read how someone grew tired of hearing that comment and she has started saying to people "My you are very blessed." That hit a chord with me. I have been blessed with three sweet, precious boys. My hands aren't full, my cup runs over. So I decided then and there that my response to all those "hands full" comments would be "Yes I am very blessed".

After we all (my mom, sister, aunt, and two cousins) split up and went our separate ways, I had to run by LifeWay before I headed back home. We got what we needed in LifeWay and was loading everyone up in the van, and a lady came around the back of the van and said "Boy, you sure do have your hands full". My response "Yes, I am very blessed!" :)

Vacation 2008

2008-06-28T07:16:00.000-07:00

Last week, we went to Arkansas for my cousin Jody's wedding. Kevin took off a few days so that we could visit family and do a few touristy things, which we called our vacation. We had my older sister's son, Wyatt, for the week. Here are some pictures from the trip. Hope you have as much fun looking at the pictures had we had making the memories!

Saturday
Eli was one of the ring bearers at the wedding. Here is a picture of Eli, Jody, and Samuel- the other ring bearer.

Isn't he handsome!

Sunday
We spent he night with Kevin's parents in Bryant. But due to their schedule, we weren't able to attend church with them. So we took the opportunity to visit with some old friends. We went to church in Benton with our good friends, Mark and Kim Hall. Mark and Kim played a big part in getting Kevin and I together. Of course the Lord had more to do with it but He used Mark & Kim. We haven't seen them in several years but you would have never known it. We just picked up where we left off!

Kim and I were best friends in college.

Mark & Kim's children
Bailey (entering 1st grade), Trace (almost 4), and Madison (entering 2nd grade)

Little Rock Zoo

After lunch with the Hall family, we went to the Little Rock Zoo. I was very excited that I found coupons for the zoo in the Little Rock yellow pages! One free children's admission with each paying adult. Saved us $12! I love deals!!

Can you tell by the red faces that it was a hot day?

Luke wanted to see the Elephants. Eli wanted to see the Monkeys. Wyatt wanted to stay away from the flying pest that stung him on the chest at one of the monkey exhibits. Seth wanted to see the back of his eyes. He slept the whole time.

Monday

We went to Hot Springs to spend time with Kevin's sister. Christi, Charlie, and Will have season passes to Magic Springs. On one of their earlier trips to the amusement park, a thunderstorm caused the park to close. When this happens, everyone that is there at that time gets a Sunny day complimentary ticket. The Zumwalts were generous enough to give their three Sunny day tickets to us. So with those three Sunny day tickets and a $15 off general admission coupon from the Sunday paper, the Dickeys plus one were able to enjoy a day at Magic Springs at VERY low cost!Magic Springs isn't the Magic Springs of mine and Kevin's youth. It now has a nice water park called Crystal Falls. We spent most of time there.

Christi, Will, and Wyatt going down one of the kid water slides.

Wyatt under one of the many water sprinklers.

Eli called these water falls "showers"Luke shooting the big water gun. We got the park somewhere around 12:30 - 1:00. That is Luke's nap time. He was SO sleepy but never took a nap (we left the park at 7:30). He was a clingy most of the day due to the lack of nap but was very good despite the fact he didn't have a nap. His favorite activity was the lazy river. He would have stayed on that tube all day! He rode a few rides but not many. His most exciting ride was the log ride with Kevin and Eli.

Charlie and Will

Big Bad John Roller Coaster! Lots of screaming and giggling from the boys!

Seth's favorite ride of the day - his stroller!

Tuesday and Wednesday

We went to Magnolia/Emerson on Tuesday to see my family and got haircuts from my sister Denise. My mom's two sisters from Shreveport/Bossier were down also. We came on home Tuesday night. Wednesday Kevin and Wyatt worked in the yard. I washed laundry!

Thursday

Kevin had to go back to work but after he came home, we went to a little creek down from our house to fish. Wyatt loves to fish and that was one of the activities that we had promised him.

The boys fishing.

Seth finally awake for an activity!

THE BIG CATCH OF THE DAY!

Friday

My younger sister, Ashley, had Wyatt's sister, Karaline during the same time period we had Wyatt. So we met, Ashley, Karis, Karaline, and my mom in Shreveport for my mom to take her Arkansas grandkids back home.

I think after having Wyatt for the week, Kevin and I are ready to adopt a 12 year old! He was lots of help to both of us. He helped Luke get dressed, buckled Luke into the car seat, helped load and unload the luggage, feed Seth a bottle going down the road, and helped with yard work. Wyatt is a very sweet boy and was really good with our boys. We were glad to share our little vacation with him!

All six of the Waller Grandchildren
Luke (2), Karis (9 mo), Wyatt (12), Karaline (8), Seth (4 mo), Eli (5)

Old Recipes

2008-06-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

In about 6 weeks or so, Kevin and I will celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary. As is customary these days, we had several wedding showers leading up to our big day. Kevin's sister, Christi, gave us a kitchen shower in Hope, AR and asked all those invited to write down their favorite recipe and share it with us. We gathered up all the recipes cards and packed them up with all the nice gifts. But somewhere in all the hustle and bustle of wedding plans, moving, and all the other things going on, the gifts made it to our place but the recipe cards got lost and were never found ..... until this weekend.

We took some time off for a mini vacation that coincided with my cousin Jody's wedding. (pictures of wedding and vacation activities will be up in a few days) The last leg of our journey was to my parents' house. Any time we visit my parents, my mom always sends us home with food and/or household items that she finds on sale. She is a very giving person. Well last night after we get in, I am unloading our "Granna" items and I see a ziplock bag. I pull out the bag and see that it has recipe cards inside. I thought Momma had written down some recipes for me because while I was there, she was writting out recipes to share with her sisters that were also there visiting. But when I opened it up, I saw a recipe for a Twinkie Cake from the kitchen of Kim Otwell. Kim and I were best friends during college. I was puzzled as to why my mom would had a recipe from Kim Otwell. For one thing Kim goes by Kim Hall now (and has for the past 10 years). Plus Kim doesn't live around Emerson anymore. As I started looking through the rest of the recipes, I noticed names of people on the cards were from the Hope area. Then I realized that the recipes from my Hope Kitchen shower had finally been found 12 years later! I now have several new recipes to try. The majority of the recipes are for desserts. So if you see my family gaining weight you will know why!!

Yucky Fever, Sore Throats, and Coughs

2008-06-18T12:43:00.000-07:00

This past week the older boys have been under the weather. Eli started running a low grade fever last Tuesday and by Wednesday had a severe sore throat. I took him to the doctor on Friday. He had some sort of infection in this throat but it wasn't strep. He continued to run fever through this past Saturday. Sunday he didn't run any fever so he got to go to VBS!

We all went to VBS Sunday night and came home and discovered Luke was running fever. Monday he sat in my lap most of the day. When Luke is still, there is something wrong. He had a higher fever than Eli and I had a horrible awful cough. I took him to see Dr. Delisi on Tuesday and he conformed what I thought, Luke had croup. Dr. Delisi put him on 5 days worth of orapred (prednsolone) and zithromax. It is amazing how fast the medicine worked. By Tuesday night Luke felt better. He still isn't back to a 100% put he sounds better and is fever free.

We are very blessed to have a Christian doctor, Dr. Craig De Lisi, that handles our family healthcare. Dr. De Lisi is a family practice doctor in Pittsburg. His practice has a high percentage of pediatric patients. I think people mistake him for a pediatrician because he has 7 children of his own! Dr. De Lisi views his medical practice as a ministry rather than a job/career. He prays with each of his patients before he leaves the room. He is such a caring doctor and friend. The boys love going to him. But I really think that has more to do with the Spiderman tattoos that they get out of the treat-vending machine for being good!

Kevin and I are praying that Seth stays well and doesn't decide to get sick. So far he is doing great. I weighed him at one of the recent visits. He weighed 12 lbs 7 oz!

We are leaving this Friday to got out of town. My cousin, Jody, is getting married in Arkansas on Saturday. Eli is the ring bearer. So this isn't a good weekend for sick kids. We are also planning a couple of days of family fun after the wedding. Please pray that the older boys continue to heal and the Seth will stay healthy.

Baby Look-A-Like

2008-06-09T10:21:00.000-07:00

Everyone says that Seth looks like his brothers. Most say he looks more like Eli than Luke, which I agree. Here are some baby pictures for you to make your decision.

Seth 3 mo. old

Luke and Eli both 2 mo. old

I am 3 months old and my how I have grown

2008-06-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

On June 1, Seth turned three months old. That is just hard for my mind to wrap around. I can not believe that three months has gone by.

He is starting to interact with us. He is smiling really big and is starting to coo a little. He smiles the most after he has gotten his belly full is just laying on the boppy pillow. He will lay there and look at the lamp that is by the chair and just get the biggest grins he can muster. He must think that is the funniest lamp ever. He is packing on the pounds too! No more skinny baby. When we first started taking him in public when he was about 2 months old, we got lots of comments and questions about him being so small. But now, no one can tell that he was a preemie. The Lord has truly blessed his little life by making him so strong in a short amount of time. TO GOD BE THE GLORY! Our lives have been blessed as well by him and his two big brothers!

Here are some picture showing you how he has filled out over the past couple of months.

3 wks old ~ 5 lbs 2 oz.

1 month old ~ 5 lbs 12 oz.

Seth visiting his new little friend Drew the day after Drew was born.
Drew's Mom, Natasha, and I were due about 10 days apart.
Drew weighed 6 lbs 11 oz at birth.
At 7 wks old (which was his actual due date), Seth weighed 6 lbs 11 oz.

2 months old ~ 8 lbs 12 oz
Eli weighed 8 lbs 12 oz at birth. Luke 8 lbs 3 oz.

3 mo. old ~ approx. 11 lbs 9 oz
(according to the vet clinic scales!)

A 2 year old's fashion statement

2008-06-03T05:27:00.001-07:00

These are just some of the fashion get-ups that Luke comes up with. You never know which boots or which hat he will put on. It wouldn't be a far stretch to say that Luke is a mess and half! You never know what he will be up to next. But I wouldn't have it any other way. When the Lord blessed us with Luke, he gave us a fun loving boy that loves to make people laugh.

Texas Rangers

2008-06-02T08:26:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day weekend we took at trip to Dallas because Ivesco, a veterinary distributing company, that the vet clinic buys from, invited their customers to a weekend of free Continuing Education classes and family friendly activities. We got to go a Texas Rangers baseball game on Saturday night. Baseball isn't the most exciting event to keep the attention of a 5 year old and a 2 year old so Kevin took them for a walk. While out, Kevin bought all three boys Texas Rangers hats.

Isn't this the sweetest picture!

Eli's 5th Birthday

2008-05-31T09:31:00.000-07:00

Eli celebrated his 5th birthday on April 16. I made strawberry-vanilla pancakes the morning of his birthday. Kevin went into work a little late to enjoy the birthday breakfast. Since his birthday fell on a Wednesday, we took cupcakes to church for him and his friends to enjoy during Mission Friends.

But according to Eli he didn't have a birthday until he had his party. We invited his friends and their families to Eli's Jungle Book birthday party. We had the party at Daingerfield State Park on Saturday April 26. We served hotdogs for lunch and, of course, cake and ice cream for dessert. Everyone enjoyed the afternoon. Several took advantage of the lake by going fishing and paddle boating. Some went hiking, while some played on the playground.

Eli's birthday cake

This is the cake after Kevin put 6 lbs or more of hotdogs on top of the cake box. Mowgli and Baloo ended up mutilated. I was not a happy camper when I saw it. I came close to blowing a fuse! It might have altered the looks but it didn't affect the taste.

Playground fun

Hotdog Chef or a wannabe Beatles band member? Hard to tell with that shaggy hair!

Just hanging out enjoying the day.

Eli had PLENTY of help opening his presents.

Boys playing with the golf set given to Eli.

Oh and while on the subject of Eli, he lost his second tooth a day or two after he turned 5. And yes this tooth as well turned into money.

The four legged members of the Dickey family

2008-05-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

Sorry it has been a while since I have posted anything. It isn't from the lack of news or photos. It is mainly from the lack of time! These three boys keep me busy. I am exhausted by the end of the day. I promise I will post somethings about the boys later. Kevin has all the pictures on his laptop (another reason for the post delay). But for now I will update you on the new four legged members of the Dickey family.

Meet Podoe, the stray Catahoula dog Kevin brought home for the clinic.

A day or so after Bonnie was run over, Eli announced that he wanted a boy dog and he was going to name him Podoe. So as soon as Eli saw the dog, his name was Podoe The Doedoe Dickey. Podoe is probably the laziest dog in East Texas. His favorite past time is laying in the flower bed. He doesn't even get excited about the wild hogs coming in our yard. He may not be much of a guard dog but Luke and Eli both say Podoe is their best friend. Aaahhhh..

Meet Sally, Mowgli 1, Mowgli 2, and Mowgli 3

Sally and I have a lot in common. We are both are mothers to three boys (actually Sally had a couple more but they didn't make it). And a lot of times, I feel like Sally in this picture. All three boys needing something at the same time. Our pet namer, Eli, got her name off of the movie Cars. All the kittens were named Mowgli after the little boy in Jungle Book. We are just hoping that the Mowglis and Sally will keep the mice (or in my opinion rats) away.

Meet Summer, the Blue Heeler Puppy

Kevin couldn't go with out his favorite type of dog. We got this puppy last week. She is 8 weeks old. We finally named her yesterday. For the past week she has been Summer for a couple of days and then called Blue Belle a few days. Kevin couldn't make up his mind so he let Luke pick the name. Luke picked Summer. This is our third heeler and all three have been named after the city that we got them from. We got her in New Summerfield, TX, thus the name Summer. I think Summer is going to be a good dog for all four of the boys.

Bonnie the dog: 2004-2008

2008-04-08T11:56:00.001-07:00

This past Monday night while we were eating supper our dog Bonnie was hit by a car. Our new house doesn't have a fence so she had the run of the yard (and road unfortunately). Bonnie was a Australian Cattle Dog (Red Heeler). We got her in January 2005 when she was just a few weeks old. She was very good with the boys and was very loyal. The boys took the news very well -- so well that Eli is already planning and naming our next dog.

Bonnie as a puppy.

Snaggle Tooth Eli

2008-04-08T11:51:00.000-07:00

To my surprise, Eli lost his first tooth this week. Kevin and I did not have a clue that it was loose. I didn't even knew that a child could loose teeth this early. He turns five this month. I was in the kitchen getting supper ready and the boys were watching Jungle Book. Eli was eating an apple and he came to me and said "Momma, my tooth came out". I was in shock. My first initial thought was all that rough housing that he, Kevin and Luke do had some how caused his tooth to be knocked out. Unfortunately, I had to realize that my first born is just growing up and isn't a baby anymore. A hard lesson for a mom. :(

Eli put his tooth under his pillow. He says that his tooth turned into money!

Pictures from the past month

2008-04-08T10:43:00.001-07:00

Seth in NICU on the day he was born.

Momma finally gets to hold her baby!

This pacifier is specially made for preemies but it still takes up half his face!

Striking a pose at 2 weeks old.

All dressed up to go home!

Big Brothers are so happy to see their little brother.

Family picture. Eli is already showing Seth his superhero moves.

Eli dotes on Seth!

Luke loves to sing to his baby brother.

Now for the Rest of the Story....

2008-04-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

A month later you are getting the rest of the story! We have been "internet challenged" since we moved to our new house. So without internet readily available to us and plus spending more time on the road and at hospitals rather than at home, is the reason for the tardiness of this story.

Seth was born seven weeks early at 33 weeks gestation. We knew that their was a chance that he would have to be transported to a NICU nursery due to the fact that lungs aren't generally fully developed at this stage of gestation. Also white males have more of a problem with lung development (nicknamed Wimpy White Boy Syndrome). Thankfully, Longview has a NICU at Good Shepherd Medical Center. Seth's lungs, as expected, were underdeveloped. He was given surfactant to keep his lungs from collapsing. The transport team from GSMC came and took him to the NICU. Before Seth left Longview Regional, they started him on iv fluid and intubated with a ventilator. He was only on the ventilator for 24 hours but had oxygen support for a week. He dropped a bit of weight while in the NICU. He dropped down to 4 lbs 6 oz. before he started to make turn and put on weight. He was in the NICU for a week before he was moved to the NIMC (intermediate care) nusery. He got to start "nipple"(bottle or breastfeeding) feedings every other feeding when he was moved to the IMC. He had a NG tube that they feed him the other times. When I was there at feeding times, I got to breastfeed him. Nursing would wear him out very easily because nursing takes a lot of energy for preemies. Also with him being a "wimpy white boy" did not help. After a week and a half, they decided to let him be on full nipple feedings to see how he would do. At full nipple feedings he was able to maintain and gain weight. So on Good Friday, March 21, (exactly on month to the day that I was put in the hospital for the first time) Seth Benjamin was discharged from the hospital! He was in the NICU/NIMC for a total of three weeks. His discharge weight was 5 lbs 2 oz. A week later at his one month well visit, he weighed 5 lbs 12.5 oz. A pound over his birth weight!

He is 5 weeks old now and doing great. He is starting to fill out. He is nursing much better now. The nurses keep telling me as he got closer to full term he would start to nurse better. They were right. Last week I could tell a big difference in him. He was 37 weeks gestation, which is considered full term, and he started nursing much better and started doing more newborn type things. It is amazing how God created babies in the womb to do certain things at just the right time.

Eli and Luke have been troopers through all of this. They have dealt with this as well as any 4 year old and 2 year can. They did not understand why they could not go to the hospital to see their baby brother. Once Seth was moved into the intermediate care nursery, they could peep in at him through a window. After seeing him, Eli started praying that Seth's nose and feet would feel better. Eli took it that since Seth had the feeding tube in his nose and a band aid on his foot that Seth had a hurt nose and foot. Luke would pray that the doctors would make Seth feel better. Luke also would sing a song about Baby Seth and the doctor make him better. Such sweet boys we have! They were very excited when we drove up that Friday afternoon when we brought Seth home. Both boys ran out and met us. They climbed into the van and started loving on baby brother. The loving has not stopped either! Eli helps me burp Seth. Luke is amazed that Seth has the same number of eyes, ears, fingers, etc... as him.

Kevin and I are so thankful for such loving parents and grandparents. Both of our parents took time off work to help us with the boys and with my recovery. Our loving church family also stepped up to help us by providing spots for the boys in the church's daycare facilities while Seth was in the hospital. Our Bible Fellowship group brought us supper again when Seth came home. I honestly don't know what Kevin and I would have done with out such a wonderful support group. We have truly been blessed and ministered to over the past six weeks.

Kevin mentioned in the first post that I was tired and ready to go home as to the reason for ending his story. I had a horrific headache and was just generally tired. I didn't realize it at the time but I had spinal headache caused from a spinal fluid leak in the injection site of the spinal block. Every time I was upright, I had a terrible headache that would at times bring me to tears. When I would lay down, the headache subsided. On Wednesday, March 5, I went in as an outpatient to have a procedure called a blood patch to stop the spinal fluid leak. Using a real time x-ray, they went back into the injection site and injected the site with my own blood to cause a blood clot to stop the leak. The procedure took probably 10 to 15 minutes and the headaches were gone. But other than a few minor and pesky aches and pains I am doing great. I probably have about 85%-90% of my strength back now.

We are glad to all finally be together as a family. We give God the glory for all that he has entrusted and blessed us with.

Welcome to our blog!

2008-03-03T12:44:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

We've created this site to provide updated information on Seth and his progress, but also to let you know what's going on in the Dickey family.

Seth Benjamin Dickey was born Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 4:39 p.m. in Longview, Texas. As most of you know, this came as a bit of a surprise to everyone. Seth wasn't due until mid-April, but we were reminded of how there are just some things out of our control. However, we are commanded to "fear not" and that our wondrous Heavenly Father is in control of every little detail of our lives.

Sherri had been diagnosed with gestational diabetes about six weeks ago. Her condition was effectively controlled by modifying her diet. The condition can cause the baby to grow very large, especially in late gestation, so her obstetrician ordered ultrasound exams of Seth every two weeks to monitor his growth.

On February 21, her ultrasound showed the baby to be doing great, but her amniotic fluid (the fluid the baby is surrounded by in the uterus) level was lower than it should be. She was hospitalized for rest and IV fluids. A recheck the following Monday showed all was back to normal. No problem, right?

Last Thursday, she went back for a recheck only to find that the level had dropped to an unacceptable level again. She was hospitalized again, this time until delivery with ultrasound exams every other day. The only problem was her due date wasn't until April 17. Eli, Luke, and I were looking at the possibility of my cooking for six weeks - YIKES!!! This is where our Bible Fellowship group mobilized like a military squad. (Personal note: If you live anywhere around Gilmer, Texas, and you need a bunch of crazy people to get all up in your life and love you unconditionally, I encourage you to check out Adult 1 Bible Fellowship at First Baptist Church Gilmer. WE LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH!) Anyway, the second ultrasound, performed on March 1, showed the amniotic fluid level had dropped to a critical level. Seth had to be delivered by c-section that day. I was at work when Sherri called me about 9:15 Saturday morning. Saturdays are typically very busy at the vet clinic, and this day was proving to be no exception. But after she called me and said we were having a baby today, my work was done. So with a waiting room full of people and a parking lot full of cars, I bid my staff farewell and wished them a good day.

Well, we are at McAlister's Deli in Longview, and Sherri says she's tired and ready to go. I'll finish my story later...

KD