Family Pictures

My sister in law took these pictures and I am so excited to have a family picture of all of us! I thought they turned out really cute! Thanks again!



Kate's quote of the day:

Kate after Jeff left for work: "He's a good boy." She sure loves her Daddy!

I'm changing my puppy's diaper...

We said, "Kate, what are you doing?"

She said, "Changing my puppy's diaper."

I knew this could be a priceless video moment.

...I also had some suspicions confirmed

Auction for Benson and Claire

I mentioned a couple of posts back about an online auction for Benson and Claire. Here is the website for it:

http://bensonandclaireauction.blogspot.com/

If you have anything you can donate, you can email Becca at bconlineauction@yahoo.com or just go to the auction November 2nd-November 16 and buy some cute stuff for a great cause!

A glimpse of the future...

This is even after Scott had let go with his other hand, and for some reason, Austin seemed to like it!

Friends again...

What we have been up to...

We have LOVED the jumperoo! Hours of entertainment (seriously--Austin has been known to stay in this for up to two hours--bad mothering, but so convenient!)

And both boys have fallen asleep at least once, this is Scott.

Scott left, Austin right--they love trying to play with the same toy.

Going to some BYU football, we love going to the games, and on top of that, a visit from my dad! Always fun to see them!
And sitting up!! (Almost!) They can both sit up for at least 10 seconds or so, depending on when it is, but Scott has sat up for about a minute, so they are so close. This is Austin, and he is doing pretty darn good too!

Scott

I spilled almost an entire BIG box of cheerios by trying to hit a fly with it. I would love to claim that Kate made this mess, but I did it (and I didn't get that stupid fly either!)
I have loved this little bike trailer where all these little skinny bums (well Kate is a skinny bum anyway!) fit. They like it pretty well too!
We have LOVED our raspberries. This is by far our best garden produce year out of the 4 we've had a garden. We got about 8 batches of jam, 2 delicious raspberry pies, some salsa, some canned peaches, and we have 18 big pumpkins (more pictures to come of that!) We have never had even close to this good of a production year, so we are thinking it was all that rain that came early and it being a cooler year. Anyway, it has been fun to see it happen.
The kids all love each other and that has been fun (we'll see how much they love each other in a couple years!)

I even got really brave and took all the kids to the zoo!

Carson, Kate, and Sadie.

The baby elephant was SO cute!

We have been taking Kate to all the BYU games, and she has been doing well, she loves going, and it's nice because it can be our special date with her.


We have bathed all the kids together a little bit. Each time we have had them all together, without fail, you will hear Kate scream, "_____ peed on me." I can't help but laugh!
Jeff has been studying SOOO hard for his PE. It will be over in 2 weeks, so we are glad! Jeff has been putting in so much time in trying to get ready!
LOVED having my mom here for a week! After she left, I was SO rejuvenated. It was just a really fun week!

Kate and her cousin Kyle

Kate is so sweet to her brothers (this is Austin)

Playing with cousins at the park.

The boys do this on a regular basis, somehow, they put their little feet up and pull this down.
Buying lots of diapers and wipes--here is about $400 worth! I love it (this does last a couple months)


And, this has been my big project--252 4 inch squares! It has taken a long time, but I think it turned out pretty cute. I just finished today. This is for Kate by the way.
Life is good though! We are starting to feel like we are getting in the swing of things--only 8 months! It's a good think I didn't know that in the beginning because that sounds like a really long time, but it has actually flown by! The boys are so fun and I am just enjoying our little family.

Benson and Claire

I found out about Benson and Claire from my cousin Sara and wanted to help, so I thought if I could get the word out to more people, that might do the trick. Their story is below

My cousin, Sara:
" Benson and Claire's dad is two years older than I am and lived just through the field from us. Some of you know Susan Skinner--he is her son. His two children have a disease called Primary Hyperoxaluria. It is genetic. Their livers produce way to much oxalate. Normal oxalate numbers are around 1.8. Little Claire (2 yrs) produces about 70-80 and has produced as much as 159. Benson (4 yrs) produces around 12. The kidneys go first as it is their job to filter the oxalate and since there is way too much oxalate, the kidneys get overloaded. Claire has been in kidney failure since she was 2 months old! She goes through dialysis 6 days a week. Benson and Claire both need a kidney/liver transplant.

Claire went into surgery a few nights ago to move her dialysis port to the other side of her tummy, since her other port kept getting clogged. During surgery the doctor punctured her heart. Her heart began to bleed into the sac around her heart. In the recovery room, her blood pressure dropped, so they rushed her back in the OR for emergency open heart surgery. They found a clot around her heart making it hard for her heart to work properly. They removed the clot and fixed the puncture wound. During this same time a liver and kidney became available, but she could not receive them due to the trauma of her open heart surgery. She is now recovering, slowly, but surely, in the ICU.

Please go to the blog her mom and dad keep to get more information on these kids. http://cotaforbensonandclaires.com/blog. They update it daily.

They need to raise $100,000.00 to cover the transplant surgeries for Benson and Claire ($50,000.00 each child). Their insurance will cover everything else as far as I know.

As a parent, I cannot imagine going through this. Claire is such a fighter and I feel like I need to fight for her. Little else has been on my mind for the last two weeks. I've been praying to know what I should do and the other day while going through my music, I came across all of my Marvin Goldstein books. All of the sudden a thought popped into my mind and I knew I needed to contact him somehow. Gotta love facebook, right?! He travels all over the world putting on concerts, so I thought it was worth asking him to do one for the Skinner family. Ya never know, unless you ask!

Since then, I've been able to get in contact with him and he has agreed to put on "a big show" in this area for this family and to give all proceeds to them. He thinks we can raise $50,000 to give them. This would be amazing! However, I need to come up with the expense of putting on the show and there is a ton of money involved in that...money for advertising, etc. My thought is to go to a few huge companies in the area and ask them to sponsor the concert.

I am writing to you to ask you to please pray for this little family--especially for little Claire as she recovering from open heart surgery. I know miracles happen because of prayer. If you would like to donate, go to http://cotaforbensonandclaires.com/ and click on the "donate now" button on the left-hand side. If you are interested in being involved in these fundraising efforts (the concert and others), please let me know. My mom and I are going to get something going officially and will start having meetings soon.

This has changed how I look at my children, at life, at everything. How can I complain about anything? My children are healthy and thriving. Nothing else matters. Please help me help these children!

ALSO,
Becca (the mom) is in the process of organizing an online auction for her niece and nephew, Benson & Claire. I know that MANY of you who read my blog are very creative and crafty and if you don't think you are, maybe you have other things you could donate to the auction. If this sounds like something you'd like to be a part of please leave a comment after this post or email her directly at travisandbecca@yahoo.com. Becca is creating a blog for this auction right now and as soon as it is ready I'll post the link here.

Today, it's Worth it

The last 8 months, I'll admit, there have been a lot of hard days. Occasionally though, there are those days that I am so glad I am staying home. Today it just struck me. I am so happy to be a part of my kids' lives.