Family Pictures

For Grandma Mim's birthday, we decided to get her a family photo shoot! In the 9 years I have been around, their family has never had professional pictures done. Thanks to facebook, I noticed a former cheerleader of mine does pictures so we booked her! It was a hot muggy day and all three kids had pink eye but surprisingly enough the hour shoot went great! We got some cute pictures both posed and candid! She did a wonderful job editing and if we have any picture needs in the future we will definitely ask her to do them again! Here are some of my favorite! 

Elias' Surgery

I am behind on some posts but people keep asking how Elias is doing so I figured I would bump this one up to the top of the list.

For those of you who don't know Elias' had his tonsils and adenoids out as well as another set of PE tubes in his ears. He had his first set of tubes in at 10 months and they fell out sometime during his 3rd year. He had a screening at school and the audiologist noticed fluid and recommended we get it checked out by his Dr. Well 4 appointments and 2 infections later, we went to an ENT to schedule the surgery. While there, we discussed his problems and it was decided that we should take the tonsils and adenoids as well. Friday July 20th was the big day! We prepared by stocking up on lots of frozen treats as well as practiced taking medicine every 4 hours( it was 5mL of sunny D). We knew the medicine was going to be a huge issue, even getting him to take the sunny D was a fight and that stuff is yummy!

We checked into same day surgery at 9am and immediately booked it to the play room. Elias played with the magnetic sand table until it was time to go back to get the pre-operation stuff taken care of. He did great getting his weight and blood pressure taken! On a side note, last year (before he began preschool) he had a surgery and this part was a nightmare! Ya for therapy working:) Anyways, after that we were supposed to have 20 min to wait until surgery....we waited 90 min!!uffda. Elias did great! He played with everything in the play room and I had a couple of tricks up my sleeve in the form of a train and new coloring book. We went back to get changed into his gown and this is where the meltdown began. He didn't want to put the gown on and became very whiny and tried to make a break for it. The nurses were great and just said that they would do it once he passed out. We listened to music and danced and took silly pictures while we waited for him to get wheeled away. A male nurse carried him off kicking screaming...so sad. 

The wait wasn't to terrible, about a hour in total and it went by surprisingly fast(thanks to Uncle Jordan for visiting..and bringing me food). I was there as Elias came into the recovery room and once again he was a sad sad mess of a boy. He drifted in and out of sleep as I gently stroked his forehead trying to soothe him. He didn't want to eat or drink and was so miserable. I called Brandon to come up since he was the master and getting Elias to take medicine. In the meantime, Elias drank water and was able to have his IV out which was one less thing to bother him. Brandon got to the hospital, Elias took medicine and then finally after crying and begging to go home, passed out. After 2 hours we left for home while Brandon went to fill 5 prescriptions for Elias. 

Brandon had bought Elias a new train set and he immediately ran to play with it. He was in so much pain and so groggy that it only took me suggesting a nap for him to bolt up the stairs. He zonked for about 2 hours and woke up not too happy. The first day home he was crabby, irritable and in pain. He had 5 medicines to take and getting him to take even one is a major event and completely emotionally exhausting! 

The second day home Brandon took Elias to his mom's house(she is out of town) where Elias was able to rest, play and munch on frozen treats without the stress of his wild child sister or terribly crabby and teething brother.

People say kids at this age bounce back and it is no big deal to get this surgery...well tell that to Elias!!! He is sick, has a low grade fever, is in terrible pain and hates medicine.  He is already a picky eater and so on top of everything else the poor kid is living off of soupy mac and cheese. We even have to force ice cream down him! Brandon goes back to work tomorrow night and I am just praying that Elias starts to feel better soon. Poor Annie misses playing with her brother and we all miss being able to look at Elias without him going into a meltdown of tears for who knows what reason...poor sad bear:(

 Elias eating a giant sugar cookie the night before surgery

 Annie kissing her brother goodbye

 Ready to go!

 Such a good boy!

 His favorite toy in the waiting room

 Doing a little building

 Good thing mom brought a new dry erase coloring book, this wait is long!

 Silly picture time!!!

 Check me out

 Don't you just feel so sorry for this poor boy? Right after surgery

 Trying a new position, watching a show on daddy's phone...didn't last long though.

 Fell asleep after getting some codine

 Ice cream for dinner, things were looking ok at this point, they went downhill fast. 

p.s. in this picture, notice Annie's shorts, they are Benjamins!! size 6-12 months and they fit!!! she is TINY at the waist.

soupy mac and cheese for dinner? OK!

Friends

When Annie and Elias ask where other kids are that they know( Chance, Logan,Carter, Isaiah etc) we usually tell them kids are either with their mommy and daddy or with their friends, aka daycare. Well apparently this was eating up Elias that he didn't have any "friends" that he was always play with and he started "crying" and said it was because he didn't have any friends.He obviously doesn't understand that he is lucky and doesn't have to go to daycare and gets to hang out with mom and  dad all day. There was no point in explaining to him that he does have friends and that is just how we explain daycare, but we didn't want to ignore his feelings so  we decided to set up a play date. A police officer Brandon works with has a son a few days younger than Elias and they love playing together. Chance just moved to a new house and has a snazzy play set and pool to go with it. Elias and Chance had a TON of fun! They swam, climbed and of course played with trains. Elias has been asking to go back since he left! It is becoming obvious that my kids crave other children interaction and we will be setting up a lot more play dates in the fall in addition to hopefully getting Annie enrolled in preschool after she turns 3. It is fun to see Elias turning into a little social boy rather than the incredibly shy boy he has been thus far.

Dancing in the Rain

Brandon always gives me a hard time because I don't like the kids to do anything fun a.k.a. dirty and messy. There is probably truth to this but anytime I see them tromping through puddles or rubbing finger paint all over their bodies, I get anxiety ridden. Last week we had a couple of rainy days so I decided to step out of my comfort zone and take the kids out in the rain. We went outside in between a couple of storm cells so we didn't get the whole dancing in the rain effect, but it was fun anyways. They kids found a teeny tiny puddle and "danced" in it. We then went for a short walk and found a bigger puddle and stomped and splashed. The kids enjoyed it so the next storm I think we will be heading outside!

 trying to splash in a none existent puddle

 CHEESE

 Showing off their moves

We found a puddle!

July 4th...Better late then never

Well I apparently went MIA after my last post and missed writing all about our happenings on July 4th. I know I have a huge group of followers who are dying to know what the Eberhardt clan did to celebrate our nation's birthday so here it goes. 

Usually we try to get downtown for the town festivities but this is it was wayyyyyy to hot to se didn't. Instead we started off the day with some kid pictures! I dressed the children in red white and blue and slapped them on the chair,bribing them with m&m's to smile for me...it didn't work. After daddy woke up we headed to Grandma's for some 4th fun! It was a hot hot hot day so we really limited our time outside. We let the kids go out long enough to do some poppers which they totally loved. While they were outside making lots of noise, grammy and I prepped our kid-friendly baking project. 

Earlier in the day while the kids were napping, I made sugar cookie dough and dyed it red and blue. Using an idea from pinterest, we rolled out colored balls and made swirled cookies! The kids had a blast rolling the cookies together and even more fun eating them. We grilled like 90% of the nation does on the 4th and headed home to relax before fireworks. After much debate we decided not to do fireworks since the kids were both a little sick and hot and exhausted...next year. Anyways it was a fun filled day none the less.

 My patriotic dough

 Playing outside with poppers

 Making the cookies

 The finished products, can you gues which ones the adults did and which ones the kids did?

Elias thinks they are tasty