Baby Luke is so Big -- 6 months!

Can you tell Luke has to put up with 2 big sisters??!

Luke loves his big brother!

Just learning to sit up . . .

Still a little flopsy!

I Love this little guy!!!

May in a Texas Minute!

Ok.  Think way back to May and I'll fill you in on the quick run down of that month for our family.  Happy Birthday #12 to my beautiful daughter, Makayla!  I can't believe how grown up and super smart and talented she is now.  We had fun making her yummy birthday cake together and she celebrated by going to Schlitterbaun with most of her 6th grade class.  She also graduated from primary and is now in the Young Women's program in our church. 

Logan completed another successful season of soccer and was a super soccer player, of course.  And we cheered Hooray for the end of another year of school!  Luke was a novelty at the gradeschool for the end of the year party day. I guess many Texas families don't go beyond 2.5 kids, so all the kids wanted to see the Baby!  

Pinewood Derby

Logan is now our registered cub scout and as a double bonus--I am his Den Mother!  I've had a lot of fun learning about scouts with Logan.  We were especially excited about the Pinewood Derby.  Logan made a super cool race car with his dad, deemed "Watermelon Logan," and his car rocked the races.  Logan won "The Fastest Car" award, which he and his dad were very happy about--actually I'm not quite sure who was more excited! : )

This is what we've been doing lately . . .

I've taken a hiatus from blogging this summer, if you've been checking my blog at all you will have noticed.  We've been a little busy in our family lately.  Mike has been recovering from back surgery and I've been run ragged trying to take care of my "two" babies. : )

Mike had hurt his back several times over the last 6 months hauling sheet rock, moving people, digging in the yard, but he finally really hurt himself in May when he kayaked up the river pulling all 3 kids in their tubes behind him.  He progressively got worse over the next few weeks to the point where he could hardly walk and was in shooting pain if he stood up for more than 5 minutes.  I finally made him go to the Dr. and at first he was just on some strong pain killers and muscle relaxers for pulled muscles.  But after 2 weeks of that not helping, he finally got a MRI and found out that he had 2 ruptured disks in his back and one that had broken off and was pushing on the nerve, hence the excruciating pain.  He was also losing function in his left leg by this point and we were worried he would suffer some permanent damage to his leg.  Luckily, we were able to get into a neurosurgeon the next day and scheduled surgery for the next week.  We felt so blessed to be in the right place at the right time in our lives to know the right people to find a state of the art surgeon so quickly who was one of few Drs. who does the microdiskectomy surgery to remove the broken  piece of disk through a tiny incision. 

The surgery went very well, but we had a scare with Mike not coming out of surgery as well as was expected.  What was supposed to be a out-patient surgery, turned into us staying in the hospital all weekend.  Mike was having an elevated hematocrit level and his heart kept racing.  They became worried that he had some internal bleeding and sent him for an emergency ct of his belly.  When they ruled that out, they started doing tests.  They had him do a colonoscopy, an EKG and echo of his heart, and multiple blood tests.  I was so worried that something else was seriously wrong with him.  But after a very hard weekend, they didn't really find anything seriously wrong.  He was sent home with some medicine for colitis and the news that his thyroid levels are messed up.  

Since the surgery, Mike is doing so much better. The pain is completely gone, but it has been a slow road to recovery.  He did suffer some muscle damage to his leg and lost some function in his foot.  He came out of surgery walking very slowly and with a limp.  He still walks with a slight limp but is getting better every day.  He has not been able to lift anything over 10 lbs., which has been killing him to not do anything, and me since that means he hasn't been able to lift Luke for 3 months.  He is still waiting on the results of some more blood work to see why his red count has been elevated, but we feel very blessed that he is almost back to normal.  I know the Lord has had a hand in Mike's recovery and I am so grateful for Mike and for all of our friends who have helped us so much this summer to do the things that Mike hasn't been able to do.  We are lucky to have such amazing friends that are our Texas family!   

This is how Mike spent most of May, June and July--flat on his back! 

Luke was also sick during that time with a double ear infection

and cough, so we spent a lot of time doing breathing treatments

and taking care of him too. Hopefully we are now on the mend

and back to normal soon!

South Padre 2011

 Hooray for Summer!!!  We have been loving the lazy days of summer with no homework and no running to lessons.  We've been spending our days swimming at the pool, playing with friends, doing chores from our new chore chart, and having fun just being home!  In honor of summer, I thought I would post our annual trip to South Padre we took with our friends, the Barlows, the Millers and the Gordons.  We had such a great time at the beach.  It was fun to watch all the kids playing in the sand, body surfing, or boogie boarding together.  With 15 kids between all of us, everyone has a buddy and they all have a blast together.

All of our 14 kids (minus Luke) from oldest to youngest.

Ages 13,12,12,10,9,9,8,7,6,6,5,4,4,3

Best buds!

Dinner at The Big Donkey--yummy mexican!

Walking along the beach, we found lots of jellyfish washed up on shore.  The kids thought it was hilarious when Mike would run over the jellyfish and pop them with the stroller .

Goodbye Beach.  We will miss you until we meet again . . .