Our Hershey Kiss

Well, we welcomed our sweet little bundle of joy into this world on January 12th. We had decided on a name.. It was going to be Avery Lynn. Back Story: Tommy had a sister who passed away 25 years ago and her name was Christine. I went to the hospital to be induced the morning of the 12th. Tommy's mother called and reminded us that the day we would welcome our sweet baby girl into this world, was the same day that they said goodbye to theirs. I knew immediately that our little girl would be Avery Christine.
Labor was well... labor. A little brutal at first but the miracle of an epideral made it a wonderful (but long) experience. They started the pitocin at 11 am and Avery was born at 8:17pm.
Now to the "Hershey Kiss" part of this post. As she was delivered we discovered that our daughter had a cleft palate. Boy did a gazillion different emotions run through my body.. but we can save that for another time :) Anyway... We call her our hershey kiss because...

.... her mouth is the shape of a hershey kiss :) 

Anyway, we went to the specialist today to learn what treatment will be like for her. At about 4 months they will repair her lip (and yes, Tommy and I are actually going to miss the hershey kiss). And then between 8 and 12 months they will repair the palate. Then we will be working with many different doctors for the next 15 years :/. I will be seeing a feeding specialist in the next few days and then we will have an appointment with a genetic doc and eventually an ENT (ear nose throat) doc. And when she is older if needed a speech therapist and orthodontist. Her cleft palate is VERY minor and we are very happy that with today's technology, this birth defect is one that can be corrected. 

Avery is such a blessing to our family. We are so lucky to have her and although there will be challenges we know we can get through them together. She has already brought our family closer together.

Sorry this is such a short post, I will do a longer one with more pictures later :)

I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW!!!!!!

Just to clear things up, I am not freaking out. We are all so excited and as ready as we can be to bring this little girl (still no name decided) into our family! I just realized that I better like, forget getting rested up and have some fun and do things with Maddox nonstop this week because I know things are about to change. Big time.
So, Tommy is out of town. (Yes, I am due in 6 days and he is in Dallas for a training meeting). We flew his sister, Stacey, out to be with me heaven forbid I go into labor or something! Fine by me... Stacey is just the right person to drag along to do all the things Maddox and I love to do! We have a fun week planned but today we went to the Aquarium. Maddox couldn't wait to go and see all the fishies....

He had so much fun!!

I love this little guy. As excited as I am to bring baby girl home, I am going to miss the mommy and Maddox time. We have so much fun and we have such a special relationship. I hope he always knows how special he is to me and he will always be my baby!!

*Christmas Fun*

Well, it was an unusual Christmas for us this year.. As many of you know we can hardly keep our feet on the ground and we travel almost non stop. However, with my due date a close 2.5 weeks away, we had to stay home this Christmas. It definitely had its pros and cons but we enjoyed it! My dad, stepmom, and niece ended up driving down for a quick visit. We had to cram as much fun into two days as we could! On Christmas Eve, we took them to do one of Maddox's favorite things... BOWLING! We all had so much fun spending time together!

 Kaley and Maddox

 38 Weeks Pregnant... Bowling? No problem.

 Loves his green ball!

 Cindy and Maddox

So, something that was fun for us this year was doing the whole "milk and cookies" for Santa. I don't know if we haven't really done it before cause Maddox has been so young or if its because we have never been home but we did it this year and it was so cute how excited Maddox was to decorate them and then leave them for Santa.

This is Maddox's note to Santa..... "Thank you for the presents. Love, Maddox" And then he absolutely insisted that his hand print be on there! :)

 Here is what we woke up to Christmas morning....

Maddox loved his tool set....

....and his basketball hoop......

He really loved his train. and his train hat. and his train whistle. :)

Grandpa was worn out after all the excitement :)

Later on Christmas we went and saw Gulliver's Travels and then spent the rest of the day stuffing our faces and watching more Christmas movies. It was great! It was wonderful to spend Christmas with my dad (We haven't since we were first married)

We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!!

Halloween Happenings & Thanksgiving Fun

Wow... I REALLY need to get better at blogging! Sorry this is SO late!

We had a really fun Halloween this year. We didn't travel anywhere (which is a first) so we got to take it all in and Maddox really enjoyed it this year! He was a pirate (again). At the beginning of October he began asking me if he could dress up in his pirate costume from last year. He LOVED it. Just as a back up, we got him Buzz and Woody jammies that could easily double up as back up costumes, just in case he changed his mind!

We went to our friend Sam's 1st birthday party. He had a bounce house. Maddox was in it the entire time!

Maddox painted a pumpkin that was "just his size".

Here is our little pirate for trunk-or-treat

Here are my boys...

My nerdy hunk of a husband!

Mommy and Maddox

Carving the pumpkin!

Pirate! Arrgg!

So, for Thanksgiving we went to Las Vegas to see all of Tommy's family and extended family. It was so much fun, as it always is! I am bummed I didn't take more pictures! It was so fun to see everyone. We got there on Tuesday night and spent the night with my roommate from college and it was awesome to catch up with her! Then as family arrived we moved to Tommy's aunts house and settled in. Turkey day was a lot of fun! There was LOTS of food. Maddox played basketball outside almost all day! And after we were all stuffed we went and saw Tangled which was really cute. Then, we started planning our black Friday outing. Little did I know there was a baby shower planned for me. I guess it was supposed to be a surprise but they had to tell me so that I would show up instead of being out shopping! The shower was beautiful and it was great to have all the girls together. We have such a wonderful family and I am grateful for all they do! After the shower, I got some light shopping done and then was beat!! The long days started catching up with me! Saturday we went over to a certain little pawn shop.. Some of you may be familiar with "Pawn Stars". It was fun to go and walk around the shop and see it all... and those were the only pictures I took the whole time!

Danny, Pops, and Tommy

Tommy, Maddox, and I

So anyway, there are our last two months. It has been so fun to watch Maddox learn about all these holidays and see how excited he gets about them. I am happy to announce that we won't be going anywhere anytime soon! I am home bound and I am perfectly ok with that! We are excited for the next six weeks. I can't wait for all the baking and wrapping and all the other Christmas things. I can't believe Christmas is so soon... After Christmas, its baby time! Thats right, I am 34.5 weeks pregnant.. I can't believe how quickly it has come upon us but it is time to get ready for this little one to arrive! Hopefully I will be better about updating on our Christmas activities!! Until later.... Merry Christmas!

Cowboy

 We went to a rodeo a few weeks ago. Tommy would tell you that it is THE BEST RODEO EVER. Which, it probably was... Maddox had mixed emotions about it....

 He started out a little bored...

 Then he got REALLY bored...

 Then he was excited to see all the big strong guys out there!

And then Grandpa got him a cowboy hat and he was the happiest little boy you ever did see.

(He was never really bored. In fact, he couldn't sit still.. I just thought the pictures were funny and had to come up with subtitles for them.)

We had a GREAT time with great people.

And Maddox really loves his cowboy hat... like REALLY loves it!

The End

Disneyland 2010 Edition

So, we wanted to take Maddox to do something special before the baby was born.... and well, before I get too big to enjoy anything! So, we were going to be in San Diego anyway so we decided to head on up and go spend the day at Disneyland and California Adventure! We had a LONG, GREAT day!!! Maddox was so excited to meet all these wonderful characters he sees on TV. It was so cute. It made me realize how grown up he is. Riding all the rides and wasn't scared of one of them! I guess I will just let the pictures show you how much fun we had!

Here is the group waiting for our tram. Maddox LOVES wearing his mickey mouse ears (even if they were on backwards like, the whole day)

 

 ALL day long Maddox was so excited to go to Mickey's house. This is Maddox in Pluto's bed. I guess he is pretending to chew on a shoe :)

 Maddox rode a big kid rollercoaster!

 Maddox and Stacey on the Dumbo ride!

 BUZZ LIGHTYEAR!!! Maddox was SO excited. Here he is showing Buzz a few moves.

 Maddox was so happy he didn't know what to do with himself!

 Probably the best thing that could have ever happened. Maddox "met" Lightning McQueen and Mater. Oh my gosh. He didn't know what to do with himself. Unfortunately there was a line for photos so he didn't get to stay and get more acquainted with them but, he was in shock and it was soooo cute!

He also saw Woody and Jesse, Mickey and Minnie... it was just a blast and he loved it!

Twenty Five

...... That is the number of weeks I have been pregnant. That's right, we are having a baby girl in January! We couldn't be more excited about it! Maddox always talks about his "baby sister" but I don't think he quite understands what is really going on. I watch him with our friends babies and I know he will be such a great big brother!
This pregnancy has been 100% different than it was with Maddox. When I was pregnant with Maddox I could hardly tell. I was a little sick at the beginning but it wasn't too bad. This time around I was sick for about the first 4 months. I have aches and pains like I have never felt before! And, I had no idea I could be so tired ALL. OF. THE. TIME. It is ridiculous! But, I wouldn't trade it for the world. We are so excited to meet this little girl!