Monday, October 26, 2009

Bye bye piggy!!

Phew, I'd say we are a pretty lucky swine flu family!

H1N1 came in and out of our house, but no more than just like a cold. Was it a mild case or does tamiflu just ROCK when you start it super early? Honestly, I can't even say if Kaisley and mommy caught it, because we did have some coughing and congestion, but was it a cold or was it mild H1N1? Who knows. But what I do know is Brookston was confirmed "Flu A", but it acted like no more than a cold. YAY!

I know that H1N1 is VERY serious for many people. And even in our group of friends there was a variety of severity. Nothing like you hear on the news, but ranging from major flu to Brookston's minor cold like symptoms. So, I consider us very lucky, since we did come in contact with the virus, but it was so easy on us!

The worst part was being bored and not seeing our friends. We are normally out and about at least 3-4 times a week, not to mention Brookston now goes to Mother's Day out 2 times a week. When thinking about how much worse the acutal sickness could have been, I won't complain too much. But it did stink missing school, story time, Little Gym, 2 birthday parties, and an LSU football game.

Back to our old routine!! I hope!

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Evil Piggy

Well, H1N1 has attacked my circle of friends! So far, 3 little ones that we know tested positive and we were hanging out with them on Saturday (before anyone had symptoms so who knew!!!). So we went to the doctor today after very very mild symptoms for Brookston (little cough and a 99 degree temp in the wee hours of the morning) and what do you know...Brookston tested positive!
DARN IT!
We didn't even test Kaisley...maybe I should have. But at her age, she can't have the "good meds" like Brookston can. So, I pray she doesn't get it!

Send us healthy and mild vibes please!!!

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Fun Family Weekend

Our fun family weekend recap through pictures (well, mostly):

For starters, we had a birthday party at the Little Gym...

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Brookston felt right at home since he goes weekly for classes

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Enjoying himself

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A party activity that he's never done...he thought he was super cool!!!

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Kaisley rolling with Daddy

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Kaisley was pretty excited...usually she's in Mommy's backpack just chillin!

Then we had a Halloween party with friends...apparently it was too fun to take too many pictures, but here is one that is just as cute as can be....

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Our little bumble bee

Then on Sunday, we went to "Boo at the Zoo"

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Can you believe it was cold enough here in mid October to need a hat! Well, for us southerners we needed a hat...it was in the 50's and 60's afterall!

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"Handy Manny" and the M&M pumpkins

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Brookston had to sit on the blue one!

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Little baby Rhino...born in September! How stinking cute!

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Feeding time!

Our next few weekends are just as busy...can't wait to tell you about them!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Two Tags in Two Days

I got tagged by two different blogging friends for 2 different posts...so I better get busy.

First, my high school friend, Heather tagged me in the "Baby Names". I'm supposed to explain how our kiddos got their names:

Brookston Carter:

Brookston: We were on a LONG car trip, about 14 hours long to North Carolina. My college best friend, Lian was getting married. We were almost 9 weeks pregnant at the time. During this 14 hour drive Richard and I tossed around baby names on and off, the entire drive. Richard was getting creative and for chunks of time with every sign he saw, he'd start rambling off ideas. I'm not good at it, but for example, if he saw a Pepsi truck, he'd start saying, "Pepsi, Pepi, Perdi, Pipi, Piper, Pinter, Rinter, Sinter, Linter"....okay, no, none of those names were actually considered (although Piper is cute and the name of my newest niece) :) he would just ramble ramble ramble until SOMETHING came along. Like I said, I wasn't good at it so this was a pitiful example. But, Brookston became an idea when we were listening to a Garth Brooks CD, then a Brooks and Dunn CD.....then randomly after that came "Brookston". We put it on our short list until we found out he was infact a "he". Richard was set, it was Brookston. It took me maybe another 1-2 weeks to say, yes, that's our son!

Carter: Well, that's just a name I really liked. Richard said, "okay, sounds good!" :) Easy enough on that end, right?

Kaisley Reese:

Kaisley: Well, after having what we think is a pretty original son's name, we wanted to have an original daughter too. We both really like Kinsley, but after looking on the Social Security site and seing the top 1,000 baby names, we noticed the name was increasing in popularity. Here's what I mean:
2005 - Kinsley was #943
2006 - Kinsley was #881
2007 - Kinsley was #756
2008 - Kinsley was #566 (although we didn't find this one out until after Kaisley was born since it takes a number of months for the most recent year to come out...but this big jump confirmed to us the increasing popularity of Kinsley)
Now, we're aware that there ARE other Kaisley's and Brookston's in the world. And one day, who knows, it may even become a top 100 name, but for now it's not even in the top 1,000. And that was our goal.
So, while liking Kinsley so much, I got REALLY stuck on the first letter "K" and ending in "y", particularly "ley"! Yeah, giving a lot of wiggle room, right?
Well, we were at our neighbor's Christmas Party, "Bad Christmas Sweater Party" and while talking to another guest, we came up with Kaisley. It immediately became the only name on our short list. And a number of weeks later, while enjoying a 3D ultrasound, the tech asks us if our baby had a name so that she could write it on the CD. I said, "No, not for sure!" :( Richard said, "Yes, it's Kaisley!" I was so happy that he was finally set, because I was a number of weeks earlier.

Reese: This name was just like Carter (for Brookston). I just really liked it and Richard said, OKAY! :)

Okay, moving on to my second tagged post. It was an award given to me by my PAL friend, Tracy, called, "Over the Top". You can only use one word for each question.

1. Where is your cell phone? table
2. Your hair? brown
3. Your mother? retired
4. Your father? science
5. Your favorite food? pizza
6. Your dream last night? forget
7. Your favorite drink? water
8. Your dream/goal? family
9. What room are you in? living
10. Your hobby? what?
11. Your fear? accidents
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? happy
13. Where were you last night? Gatti's
14. Something that you aren’t? sleeping
15. Muffins? elglish
16. Wish list item? camp
17. Where did you grow up? Cary
18. Last thing you did? phone
19. What are you wearing? clothes
20. Your TV? big
21. Your pets? none
22. Friends? amazing
23. Your life? kids
24. Your mood? drained
25. Missing someone? always
26. Vehicle? white
27. Something you’re not wearing? shoes
28. Your favorite store? Target
29. Your favorite color? purple
30. When was the last time you laughed? yesterday
31. Last time you cried? today
32. Your best friend? Richard
33. One place that I go to over and over? grocery
34. One person who emails me regularly? Angie
35. Favorite place to eat? Gatti's :)

I'm supposed to tag a particular number of friends to do this, but I want all of my blogging friends to join in...if you want!

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Beach Pictures

Our Family
(not the professional pictures, but our version at least)

Brookston saw an airplane

Sweet sibling moments

Kaisley & Brookston

Kisses for baby sister

Kaisley on the beach

Brookston on the beach

Nana & Papa enjoying the water

Gigi, Nana, Lucas, and Kristi playing in the water

Mommy & Kaisley at a beautiful sunset

Lucas and Brookston enjoying the back porch

Cousins!!

Brookston & Mommy enjoying a little tide pool

Brookston & Daddy coming back from fishing

The moon at sunset

Sisters at sunset - a must picture for mom! :)

Kaisley doing a little fishing with Daddy & Papa

Daddy & Kaisley

Kaisley enjoying the beach


Mommy & Kaisley under the tent enjoying the shade

Below is just a slideshow of some more pictures of the kids at the beach...

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Our Beach Countdown

Well, we're back now...but I wanted to share the little countdown that Brookston and I did before we left for the beach! He was getting excited about his visit to see Nana and Papa! Aunt Kristi, Uncle Adam, cousin Lucas too! Along with some of Aunt Kristi's inlaws!


We were gone for a total of 11 days, so pardon my lack of posting...now I have a LOT of pictures to share! It was a fun, fun week! But a long, long drive!

We left on Friday, September 25th and we drove about 11.5 hours. Saturday we finished the drive up with another 6 hours. The kids did pretty well. Brookston better than Kaisley, but that's because he found a new love for the movie "Cars"!!! Kaisley would do okay for about 2 hours, then she'd get really cranky (til she finally gave in to sleep!!). So I spent a number of hours cramped between two car seats...not quite the most comfortable way to spend a 2 day car trip! But we all survived!

We enjoyed an entire week at the beach with BEAUTIFUL weather almost every day. We left the beach on Saturday and drove through Savannah, GA (took us a little under 6 hours) to visit my best friend from high school and finally meet her ONE YEAR OLD daughter! We actually arrived on her birthday! We spent all day Sunday, which was nice to hang out and enjoy each other's company and families. It was also a nice break before we tackled our 12 hour day!!!!

Like I said, TONS of pictures to come...but here's one that we took of our side of the family!