My baby turned 8...

I just can't fathom that my baby is already 8. WOWSA...will be even worse when Sami turns 5 this month. Where has time gone...weren't they just babies? 8 days after my due date, I remember Tom and I eating dinner at Denny's (I know...) March 15, 2001 before going to the hospital. When we got there at 8pm, they gave me meds to soften my cervix. The morning of the 16th about 7am, they gave me pitocin to start the process flowing. I was only 1 cm dialated at this point and had been for weeks. Contractions started almost immediately. I had visions of laboring without drugs. Around 2pm, I got the epidural and was progressing nicely. Finally at 10cm, I started pushing. 2 1/2 hours of hard pushing, she still wasn't coming out. I have a rounded cervix, so she wasn't coming down. They made the decision to do a c-section and they just gave me a higher dose in my epidural. Off to the OR I went. Tom and Charlene were able to be in there with me and see the whole process. I kept waiting for her to cry, that way I knew she was out and all was well. I got worried when I didn't hear the crying. Tom and Char were almost on the other side of the room watching. Hannah came out not breathing, so they were doing everything possible to make her breathe. They took her into the other room and got her breathing and I could hear her little screams...talk about the longest moment in my LIFE! Tom finally brought her over to me, a perfect little angel. I got to kiss her and then they whisked her away to the nursery, along with Tom and was able to tell Tom that was his birthday present. Did I mention that Tom's birthday is March 16th too...what a gift. My baby was born at 10:41pm. The main thing I remember after they left was hearing the staff count all the items.....1 scaple, 5 gauses, etc...at the time I thought it was funny...but working in the medical profession now, I realize they were accounting for everything to make sure I didn't aquire anything "extra" before they stitched me up :)! I can certainly appreciate that! I spent almost 2 hours in recovery by myself..which is how I wanted it..I wanted Tom by Hannah's side and not let her out of his sight.

I finally got to my room and THEN was able to finally see and HOLD my baby girl. She was perfect....I checked for the obligatory 10 fingers, 10 toes, perfect in every way. Every test that they did for her, her 1st bath, etc., Daddy was right there. They would come in to take the bassinet and he'd make sure he was right there beside her walking down the hallway. I can honestly say for the first 3 days of her life, Daddy didn't let her go anywhere without him. Several naps were taken on the pull out bed with Hannah on his chest. Very very sweet.

On our way home from the hospital, we stopped at Walmart to shop. My c-section was so easy and compared to most, a breeze!

Fast forward to March 15, 2009 - Hannah and Tom's party. But does he really get to celebrate his birthday much...nope, but he did get a candle on a cupcake! :)! She had a great party and a great birthday the next day.

Happy 8th Birthday Hannah and Happy 36th Birthday Tom!

Pictures: In order from top to bottom:

1) Hannah's first Mother's Day, May 2001

2) Us singing Happy Birthday to Hannah on her 8th Birthday (baseball themed of course)

3) Kids playing twister at Hannah's party

4) Party room

What will you celebrate?

You know you are a Disney fan when you blog about an awsome Disney Celebrations box you got in the mail before you blog about your husband/daughter's birthday party and your front door/storm door that you finally replaced after 11 years of being in the house!

Ok, onto my box. I entered an essay contest that the Mickey Mom's Club had a few weeks ago and WON....well 1,000 of us did..so I'm not that special. They were mailing us a party package so that we can host our very own in home Disney Celebration. Let me just tell you how wonderful the items in the box are.....the girls were just as excited as I was to open the box and peek at the contents! It came in a beautiful red box..unfortunately, it looked like fed-ex had dropped the box a few times, so the end was smashed which in turn smashed the beautiful colored fortune cookies in the box...but we had fun eating the remnents :)! There were 11 "goody bags" that are canvas bags that say "Celebrate Today" and inside are a mickey ear straw, magnets and a sheet for the magnets to stick too. Very awsome. Also there are 11 things to go inside the goody bags...that includes a mickey hat (like Burger King Birthday hats), coloring book and crayons. There are Disney napkins, beautiful lithographs for the Mom's of the birthday kids, fortune cookies (what's left of them..hee), balloons you can blow up for the party, a bingo game, trivia cards and a wish maker kit. There were also Hannah Montana magnets for all the kids, a WDW DVD vacation planner and a beautiful photo album for the hostess - ME! ALL in all, it was a wonderful surprise.

Samantha's birthday is April 16th, but we'll be camping that week for Spring Break, so we are doing her party on the 11th, day before Easter and doing a big Easter egg hunt in the backyard (pray for good weather for us...when I post about Hannah's party, you'll understand). So she'll have an Easter Disney theme for her party...she's very excited and was listing all 19 kids in her class. Explaining to her that she cannot invite all of them was a bit difficult, but hopefully we'll work it out!

For the rest of the 999 Disney souls that recieved the box, hopefully you are just as excited as I am :o)!

Updates....

I wanted to update on the mouse situation...happily reported hopefully we don't have a situation anymore involvoing mice :o)!

We caught 2 live mice (or since Tom let the 1st one go..he may have come back for more). Since the neighbor nor I liked the idea of touching a live mouse, we got new traps.

So we got the traps that "kill" the mice. Believe me, while I wanted to get rid of them in a humane way..I'm sure the neighborhood did not like a grown man (neighbor) and a grown woman (me) screeching everytime we saw claws come out of the live traps :)! Eventually we tossed the scared mouse into the garbage can and hopefully he was picked up by the trash man the next day because we haven't seen him around lately. We have seen NO mice in our traps, nor have I had to clean up their "left behinds". So I'm thinking positive and the mouse problem is GONE!

As for the $50....of course I didn't win..I never do :o)! I hope Darcie wins though :)!

Time flies.....

Man, time sure does fly by. You blink one minute and your kids are babies and the next thing you know they are graduating from college. Ok, so we aren't on the college front yet..but it certainly is in the distant future. We are smack dab in the middle of grandchildren birthday's. My parents only have 4 of them...2 from me and 2 from my sister. Her son was 14 January 14th and her daughter just turned 7 on February 23rd. Hannah will be 8 on March 16th and Samantha will be 5 on April 16th. Then after that, they are sporadic.

I had to take a picture of me with Samantha for her dance recital on May 30th. Their theme is "My Mama had a Dancing Heart", so they wanted to do a slide show in the beginning with the girls and their mom's, grandma's, etc. Being the ever conscious parents, I couldn't just take a pic of me and Samantha...I had to interject Hannah in there, so we did a pic of all 3 of us that I submitted (I also have one of my Mom with Sami to submit). Seeing that pic reminded me of a favorite pic of me and the girls that was taken a long time ago. Now realize, I'm the one behind the camera....so very rarely do I get to actually be in the pic. Here's the pic from about 3 years ago when Hannah was in preschool and they had a Vday dinner.

Now fast forward to now....my girls are growing up so fast, it's scary.

It brings tears to my eyes to know that they are growing up and unfortunately there's not a darn thing I can do about it!

$50

Darcie (Disney World Mom's Panalist) is giving away $50 for voting for her blog.



Check it out!

M-O-U-S-E

Nope, I don't mean Mickey and unfortunately I don't mean Disney World-I mean the real rodents. We have mice in our garage - and YES! I'm making myself believe they are ONLY in the garage. I've seen no evidence of them being in the house. I spent most of Sunday afternoon cleaning out the garage so that we could even see what was going on in there. Now, it's all clean, no more mouse poo as far as I can see and we put down these traps. You put bait in them and set them up, the rodent crawls inside, eats poison and the trap closes. Now, you would think, once he/she ingests the poison, they would die. 2nd night with the traps out, I excidedly told Tom we caught on, the trap door was closed. So I proceed to pick it up with a bag (Tom still can't bend from surgery) and hand it to him and proceed into the house. He takes it out front to dump into the garbage can and realizes the thing is ALIVE! Since he has such a good heart, he takes it across the street and dumps it in the neighbors ditch (Sorry Tony and Ellen...lol). Now, what's to stop the thing from coming back and bringing friends is my question to him. Tom says that when he gets water in his system, he'll die. (whateva!)

So this morning, the same trap is closed again, so looks like we've caught another one. I told Tom that if he wasn't prepared to kill it if it was not dead or tag it so we can see if he comes back (lol), then he should leave it alone and I'll find a willing man in the neighborhood to dispose of it tonight - ewwww.

Our preacher is coming to take Tom to lunch today...what are the chances he's not squemish about killing a mouse? hmmmmmm. Stay tuned...

Keeping Busy

Trying to keep busy in the midst of all Tom's surgery issues hasn't been easy. One way I kept busy was to paint and move the girls rooms around. They were sharing a room with the bunk beds and the other room was a playroom. We decided to give them their own room, since they really were not keeping the playroom cleaned, Mom was. One room was painted a light pink with dark pink sponge paints and the other room was the opposite. Hannah detested a pink room, so she choose her color - Cornflower blue. Took 2 coats of primer to cover the pink and 2 coats of blue to cover the primer.

Here are their finished rooms. Sami's is the bigger room, so it made more sense for her to keep the bunk bed in there and Hannah has Tom's old headboard from when he was growing up on the twin bed. Sami now has a little play place underneath her bed where her doll house is stored and Hannah gets privacy to do her homework at the desk (which is the last thing my Grandmother gave me before she passed away over 25 years ago). Right there between the bed and the wall, she has pillowed piled and if you can't find her, she's there reading a book or playing her DS. Nighttime is definately easier because Samantha's not climbing the ladder pulling Hannah's hair and singing keeping her awake. My sister and I each had our own room with bunk beds that stacked on top of each other. So we would go months with our own rooms and then decide to share and move everything around. Yes, we fought like cats and dogs, but we really enjoyed each other's company, I hope the same for my girls.