Christmas 2010 finally!

Well it has taken me awhile to recover enough from Christmas to blog about it.

Here is a picture of the Girls in their Christmas Dresses, I can't believe I got one with them all smiling and looking at the camera!

This next photo pretty much sums up our Christmas!

It is blurry and not the greatest. Somehow in the chaos of the morning, my settings got all mixed up, and all of the photos came out blurry. You think I would have noticed when taking them but that is the kind of morning we had. Shaun and I were both exhausted from the hospital experience he had the night before, and then to top things off, the first thing Sydnie did after waking up, was to throw up everywhere. The poor thing was really sick and didn't want to have much to do with opening her presents. But after seeing Kaylee and Brianne open a few she perked up a bit and decided to open some. Luckily one of the first things she opened was her pillow pet, she loved it and immediately laid down on it and started opening the rest of her presents. This picture makes me laugh because like I said it sums up our Christmas pretty well: there is Sydnie laying down opening her presents, the puke bucket in the bottom right corner, and my invalid husband in the background. All things considered we actually had a great Christmas. Believe me things could have been a lot worse and almost was!

We got a lot of snow over the holidays, and we had to deal with it both going to Idaho to see family and coming back. But at least it was good for something: Snowmen and sledding and the girls did plenty of that over the holiday.

Here is a cute photo of the girls making a snowman. I used a new technique I learned called "tilt shift" this really isn't the best photo to use it on but it sort of worked. You blur the top and bottom of the photo to make the things in the middle look miniature. It sort of worked. At least it worked enough to make me want to go out and take a picture that this was meant for and do some more experimenting.

As far as the rest of our holiday we had fun just hanging out around our house and relaxing. Shaun had the whole week off of work and it was nice to have some time together as a family. We also spent a few days in Idaho visiting family. We had a great Christmas party at my parents house. Once again my dad made great handmade items for all of the kids, this year was a fun little jewelry box made out of a single piece of wood. The girls love their boxes and have already put them to good use. The next night was spent at the Huls. We had fun unwrapping our "favorite things" gifts and then had great fun watching everyone dance to our new wii game, Just Dance 2.

P.S. I just updated my photoblog. I have some pretty fun photo's this time that you might want to see.

Two Birthdays!

I am so far behind with my blogging. I am planning on getting caught up in the next week so be prepared to get a bunch of post from me this week. I thought I would start with the Birthdays. We have two in our family right before Christmas. First is Brianne's then the next day is Shaun's.

Brianne had a great birthday. The Saturday before her birthday she had a friends Birthday party. She chose to go swimming for her birthday. So after cake and presents 5 of her neighborhood friends went swimming at the local indoor pool.

Here is Brianne ready to blow out her candles at her Birthday party:

A few days later we celebrated her real Birthday, she turned 7 this last year. We just got invited to the 8 is great meeting this Sunday. I can't believe she is almost old enough to be baptised. (well not for another year, but just going to that meeting reminds me it is getting close.)

Here is Brianne opening up here presents:

Is she all done? Nope there is another surprise dad is bringing up from the basement. What could it be?

Wow! She was surprised I don't think she had any idea she was getting this, just look at her face!

A new bike! Sorry this picture was out of focus not the greatest but the only one I got with her and her new bike.

Happy Birthday Brianne! We love you!

Shaun's Birthday

The next day was Shaun's Birthday and quite a story. It's also the reason I am so behind on my posts. My plan was to post about Brianne's Birthday and his Birthday on his birthday so I would be all caught up for the Christmas posts to come. Here is what happened instead:

Shaun called me early the morning of his Birthday. He has to be to work early and I usually get up early to exercise. He said he was going into emergency room to get some antibiotics for a cold. I wondered why he couldn't just wait and go to an Urgent care later in the day, he said he had time now and didn't want to wait. Well after the fact I think he wishes he did wait. Shaun told the emergency room doctors that he had a bad cold and that he though it was settling in his chest and he was having trouble breathing and even felt a little dizzy. With Shaun's family history of heart troubles the doctors immediately jumped to heart attack. They did a million test and found high levels of an enzyme that only is in your blood stream if there has been damage to the heart.

Well Shaun was in denial and the doctors were very poor at explaining things and we were left wondering what we should do. Should we do all the test they were calling for and miss out on Birthday plans and Possibly even Christmas (Christmas Eve was the very next day.) Or could things wait until after Christmas. After a lot of frustration on our part because of the doctors poor communication we finally decided to go ahead with all the tests. He had an ecocardiogram, x-rays of his chest (to check for blood clots) and finally on Christmas Eve they decided to do an angiogram. The whole family was really upset I had to calm the girls down from crying several times that day. Not only were they worried about their daddy being okay they were also worried about him not being able to be there for Christmas morning. Sydnie kept saying "Daddy's heart is broken!"

Well things ended up turning out okay. We were blessed and all of the test came back negative for a heart attack. He did have to stay in the hospital almost the whole day on Christmas eve. We got home from the hospital around 9:30 that night. Just in time to read the Christmas story out of the Bible and open Christmas P.J's. But we were all happy because it could have been a lot worse.

So Happy Birthday Shaun! It probably will go down in the record books as being the worst Birthday ever, but we are just glad to have a husband and a Dad who's "heart is not broken". We love you!