Just Checking In...

Just wanted to post and let everyone know that I'm doing ok. Physically I'm ok - still a little pain, but not bad at all. Emotionally - it will just take time. I have plans to start counseling soon, so I'm hoping that will help. We celebrated Peter's birthday yesterday, so I have pictures to post soon for that as well.

Please keep praying for us.

Baby Hazen

Baby Hazen was delivered at 17 weeks this morning at 10:35am. We were able to come home around 4:30 this afternoon. Please keep our family in your prayers as we continue to process this.

To our family and friends - thank you so much for all that you have done for us over the past few days to help us during this time. You are amazing, and we love you very much.

A Boy and His Dog

Peter and Homer have always had a love-hate relationship. Peter LOVES Homer most of the time, but Homer doesn't always interpret Peter's actions toward him as love. That makes Homer a bit snippy, and then Peter decides he really doesn't want him around.

A few days ago, a new level of friendship between the two of them was reached. For the first time ever, they both shared the same pillow. It was such a sweet picture of the love between a boy and his dog. :)

A Lesson Learned

Danielle is now mobile. She's not crawling yet, but she gets around. She scoots around on her tummy, and she turns herself around in circles when she's sitting. She also half-crawls, half-scoots as she's trying to get to something that she wants on the floor. She is sooooo close to crawling - I bet she has it down in a couple of weeks!

So Peter must have left an orange highlighter out on the floor the other day. He also must have left it open. Danielle must have found it. If you look closely enough, you can see lovely orange marks on the legs of her sleeper. She looks mighty proud of her first art project!!

Note to self: Do not leave ANYTHING on the floor that Danielle shouldn't have!!!

Tropical Storm Hermine

You may not know this about me, but I absolutely love following the weather. Meeting our local weatherman would be the equivalent of meeting a movie star in my book. When we had cable, I would watch the weather channel for hours on end. Peter knows that we turn on the news to watch the weather. I diligently followed the track of Hurricane Earl as it headed toward the east coast. Fiona was next, and next came Tropical Storm Gaston. Another tropical wave was close behind but still closer to Africa than the US.


Um, so where in the world did Tropical Storm Hermine come from? I didn't even get to follow its formation. It wasn't there one day, and it was bearing down on the Texas/Mexico border the next day. Then, here in Austin, in the middle of Texas, we are hit with a tropical storm. It has been raining for almost 24 hours. I have enjoyed all of the weather coverage of the storm. The weatherman keeps interrupting America's Got Talent to show the current radar and talk about flooding. Now this is interesting television!!


Apparently Peter doesn't get the same enjoyment from watching the weather as I do. He was getting antsy this afternoon, so I let him go out on the porch. He stood close to the front door for a little bit, but I could tell he was itching to get out into the rain. Since we had not seen any lightening, I told him that he could go out and play in the rain. He was sooooo excited!!! We don't have gutters on our house, so the rain falls pretty heavily off the roof right in front of the door. He kept running through it, laughing the entire time. He wanted me to run in the rain with him, but I was trying to distract an exhausted Danielle from remembering it was bedtime. I didn't want to make matters worse by getting her all cold and wet. Peter played until Daddy got home from work. Then it took major convincing to get him inside for dinner. He had a blast!

To Tropical Storm Hermine -

Thanks for the excitement with the weather coverage, and thanks for giving my son an enjoyable afternoon. :)

Look Mommy! I made a "P"!!!

I've been debating lately when to start "preschool" with Peter. With my work schedule, I can't put him in a traditional preschool program. At this point, my plan is to do preschool-type activities with him at home. Although he's picked up on some basic letter recognition and math skills, I haven't really done anything formal with him. Peter's birthday is at the end of September, so he misses the cut-off for starting school by less than a month. If I start preschool with him now, he still has three more years before starting kindergarten. Quite a few of the kids that will be in his class just recently turned 2. Anyway, it's just been a debate I've been having with myself lately - start preschool now or wait another year.

Until today.

The debate ended today.

Danielle and I were sitting on the floor when Peter came to show us this.

Peter: Look Mommy! I made a "P"!

Mommy: (honestly not really expecting to see the letter P) Let me see. Wow! You really wrote a "P"! Good job Peter!!

Peter: Now I'll make a "T".

At that point, he went off and "wrote" some more. It wasn't really legible to me, but he said he wrote his name.

Um, so I'll be starting preschool with him in October. We'll spend 26 weeks focusing on all of the letters of the alphabet. I better get started finding letter activities. :)

Future Raiders

Thanks to a former coworker, today we had the chance to visit Cedar Ridge High School, the newest high school in Round Rock ISD. We have watched them build the school from the very beginning, and Peter has been asking forever to go inside. Well, today he got his chance.

He was SOOOO excited to finally be going inside. Here was our conversation as we pulled into the parking lot --

Peter: The new high school!!

Mommy: Yes. Would you like to go inside?

Peter: I can go inside today? Is Ms. McLinden here?

Mommy: Yes, and she said we can go inside.

Peter: (excited) OK!!

So we walk in, and Peter acts like he owns the place. Karen took us on a mini-tour of the campus - I think it would take forever to actually see everything! Peter LOVED running down all of the hallways. It's so new that they are still installing things. He loves "workers", so he was so excited to see some of the workers still working on the building.

We got to see where the food will be served. Peter's favorite part was yelling down into the trashcans and listening to the echo. It was so funny!

The campus also offers culinary classes. I thought this was very neat because it will give interested students a taste of culinary arts in high school to see if they would like to pursue that career path. Peter loved looking in the ovens and opening and shutting the doors. We saw many classrooms, walked by the campus coffee shop, met the campus police officer, saw one of the gyms through a window (Peter was disappointed he couldn't go in and even tried to find a "worker" to open the door for him), climbed stairs, and ran down many hallways. I think in a word, I would call the school "amazing". It really is a neat building, and I know that the students are going to love it!

The last place we visited was the central courtyard. It's an outside area that is entire contained, so students can eat out there, visit between classes, or even have class outside. Peter found some stairs that led to a little wall, and he said that he was on the stage.

Thanks to Karen for letting us visit. Peter had the best time exploring the school he might attend one day!!! Hope you guys have a great school year!