At Home in the Mountains

I received this message on facebook from one of Tammy's friends. She is so sweet. If you are interested in donating to their team you can click on their team link. Hey Holly, I just wanted to let you know that this Saturday I am running in the March of Dimes walk/run. I am doing it in HONOR of Maddy and lots of my other friends that have had babies born early or with any other complications before, during and after birth. Sorry I didn't let you know sooner. This is my 7 year walking or running. And this year I wanted you to know that I will be running for Maddy. Pray that we make our team’s goal. Here is some info I have sent out to our schools and friends and family. It also has our teams info, so if you have anyone who would like to make a donation in Maddy’s honor you can do it all on line. Hope you all have a great weekend. Hey everyone, just one last update before the walk on Saturday. We are almost at our team’s goal of $250.00 we are at $140.00 as of

Add corn oil to her food! So we will try that. We spent about 45 minutes this morning at the nutrition appointment and that was about all the lady could come up with. She was very nice and personable but just didn't have much ideas about what is going on with Maddy's poor weight gain. They often add oil to preemies food who are having trouble with weight gain so hopefully this will be a good solution. She said it works very well most of the time. She also mentioned that Maddy's breathing may be causing her to burn extra calories. Maddy does breath pretty heavy. We are not sure why. We'll be seeing a craniofacial doc about that in a couple of weeks. Hopefully their will not need to be any serious procedures or anything like that to correct the problem, if it is a problem. Think it's nap time for both of us!

I'm up at 1 a.m. with Maddy upstairs because for some reason she is wide awake and ready to play. I tried to put her in bed with us to get her to go to sleep, but no luck. Instead she decided that it would be fun to "share" her paci with me. She kept holding her paci up to my mouth and then taking it back and putting it in her mouth. She got a big kick out of that. And then she got bored and started crying so we are upstairs, happy,....and unfortunately still very awake. Looks like we won't be making PT tomorrow. We had a whirlwind weekend, as we always do it seems. Friday we cleaned house, mowed the yard, and then headed off to DBU for a carnival they put on every spring. We didn't know what it was going to be like but it was actually better than we expected. They had quite a few games and rides. Aaron took Maddy down the gigantic blow up slide. I think it was called Konga Krazy or something weird like that. She was not impressed. She didn't cry but she just

Well did you really think I wasn't going to experiment with homemade shampoo and deodorant just because I said I wasn't in my last post. Well you don't know me very well if you believed that. After researching all that stuff, even though I was kind of hesitant about it, I just couldn't leave it alone. I had to try it out. First I tried a thing that sounded wonderful--a dry shampoo. I hate washing my hair with water right now because it goes absolutely insane and is completely unmanageable for several days after I wash it. If I could somehow wash my hair without water that would be great because I could keep it straight and under control like I want. So experiment number one was under way. The recipe simply said 1/2 a cup of cornstarch. You were supposed to sprinkle the cornstarch in your hair let it sit for a few minutes and then comb it out. I thought 1/2 a cup sound like a lot so I decided to be conservative and use a 1/3. I went to the bathroom and proceeded to rub a

We all know that doing a project yourself can save you lots of $, but I never thought about DIY beauty products or cleaning supplies until after a conversation with some friends this weekend. I was surprised to learn that they make their own shampoo and deodorant! I also learned this weekend that you can clean just about anything with vinegar, baking soda, and lemon. Here are some links to some interesting recipes for making your own deodorant, shampoo, and cleaning products. While I don't think I'm ready to go for homemade deodorant, especially with a Dallas summer upon us, I will probably try a lot of the suggestions for the cleaning products: Homemade Deodorant Homemade Shampoos Cleaning Products

It has been a weekend of showers in all ways. It has rained here all weekend and I spent the weekend going to a wedding shower in Abilene and a baby shower in Cross Roads. The wedding shower was for Jenna, my brother's fiancee. It was great to get to meet Jenna's family and be a part of her celebration. It was also nice to have a few hours on the road of just me. Today I went to a baby shower for my friend Beckie. Another great celebration. They had several party games like guess the mints in the bottle, take a clothes pin from someone if they say the word "baby", etc. all of which I am abysmally bad at and never win the cool prizes for winning the game. Oh well. Beckie got lots of nice gifts and she had a beautiful cake that one of her neighbors made. I enjoyed my weekend but I hope that is all the showers for a while; I am worn out...except we can have more of the rain shower kind of showers. I am excited to see how great my garden looks after all this great rain!

Well after the crazy weekend and several practically sleepless night because Maddy is teething right now, we were exhausted on Monday. Maddy was supposed to go to therapy but I called and rescheduled because she didn't wake up in time. She slept til 10:3o on Monday which never happens. After she woke up, Tammy, Maddy ,and me packed lunch and headed out the door to go to DBU to eat lunch with Aaron but before we even got anywhere he called and said he was so exhausted he couldn't even function and he was coming home. So we changed our plans and went shoe shopping for Ethan and Jenna's wedding. We both found a pair for us plus a pair for Cindy so it was a success. Aaron took a nap with Maddy and Tam and I went on a walk. Maddy really enjoyed playing with Aunt Tammy. We both enjoyed having the extra company around during the day. Monday night we went to Babe's Chicken in Carrollton. It is a yummy place but way too much food. I always come away from there feeling like a bli

Our weekend started out with Maddy getting new splints on Friday at Scottish Rite. They took the molds for them last week and then we picked them up this week. She was having some problems with the knee immobilizers rubbing her skin. These seem to be helping a lot with getting the reds spots cleared up. They make her look so tall. Aaron and I were just in shock over how long she looks when she has these on. Maddy got this duck from Dr. Griffith for Easter. It quacks. At first she was scared of it. When it would start quacking she'd push in away from her as fast and far as she could but now she likes him and gets a huge smile when he quacks at her. Jessica bought this cute shirt for Maddy last summer. It could have been a dress on her at that time but now it fits great and looks so cute. Tammy flew in on Saturday. We picked her up from the airport and went to the Ft. Worth Arts Festival. We also walked through this really cool fountain area they have down there. This fountain you c

Nothing soothes my soul like getting my hands in the dirt and planting something. This past week we worked on getting our vegetables in and getting the fence up around the garden plot in the back yard. This is our third attempt at gardening since we've been in Dallas. The first two attempts were major fails so hopefully the third time is the charm. It sure looks nice right now. Can't wait for the squash and cucumbers to pop up. We put in tomatoes, okra, and peppers as plants. Here's hoping for a great season of gardening!

That is in the Bible somewhere. Sadly I don't know where it is. This time of year always fills me with joy and appreciation of new life. Today I reflected on the miracle of new life that God has made possible for us with the promise of heaven. I also reflected on God's power to grant new life as I thought about how last Easter Maddy came home from the hospital and we had Subway for Easter dinner. This year was vastly different. On Saturday our neighborhood association put on an Easter egg hunt for the kids. The sign said from 1-3. Maddy was still eating. (As you can see in one of these pictures we gave her some actual chicken pieces for part of her lunch. She did a great job chewing them and really liked the chicken.) So we didn't get down the Easter egg place til ten minutes after 1. By that time it was over. Everyone was counting their eggs and redeeming their prizes. Fortunately Maddy had no idea that she'd missed out on anything. Someone from our church lives in our

It has been birthday city around our house the past couple of weeks. Last year Aaron's birthday got pretty much ignored because Maddy had just been born and we were actually coming home from the hospital today without Maddy. This year Aaron has to work until 8 or later tonight so there won't be much celebrating today. BUT I just wanted to write a blog to say happy birthday and what a fantastic person Aaron is. He is a great husband, dad, and teacher. He got up at 6 this morning to work on his power point so he could have a good class for today and he stayed up until 11 last night working on notes for his lecture. He is super busy all the time but he makes a consistent effort to carve out time to spend with Maddy and me. He makes sure all the bills are paid every month. Sometimes if I've had a busy week he helps clean up the house, especially if people are coming over. He doesn't care how the house looks but he knows I don't like to have people over to a messy, dirty