Two Weeks of Fun in the Sun (Week 1 Pics)

We just got home from two weeks of fun filled vacationing! We started out down on the emerald coast in Seagrove Beach, Florida with my parents for a week of relaxation at the beach. Although we dealt with some strange weather while there it did not deter us from having a great time. There was a freak cool front the weekend we left (56 degrees the first morning we were there!) followed by a week of sunshine, mixed with gale force winds, and finally followed by a tropical storm/depression! Each day there was sun time though so we trucked down to the beach, lugging everything under the sun and had a great time. Landrum adored the sand (especially to eat) and was not the least bit afraid of the water. In fact she would be pleased to just crawl on out to see if you turned your back for a second! On Memorial Day we drove 7 hours to Savannah, Georgia to meet Jared's family. We stayed just outside of Savannah on Tybee Island. Jared's mom has always wanted to go to Savannah and since we are celebrating her remission for Leukemia we all jumped on board! We stayed right on the beach, which was a very different looking beach from Florida and spent several mornings playing in the sand and water. Most afternoons we went into town to tour Savannah and eat some of the best food in the world! In fact one restaurant was so good we ate there twice in the week for lunch. The first day we waited 30 minutes in line and the second time we waited an hour!!! I am telling you it was delicious! All in all it was a great two weeks with both families and we felt very relaxed! The 10 1/2 hour drive home Saturday was tough and as you can see at the end Landrum was exhausted - but she did great! Enjoy the pictures from week 1 - i will post another with pictures from week 2!

Fun Day at the Zoo

Wednesday was Earth Day and so to celebrate we went to the zoo with friends. We weren't really celebrating Earth Day it just happened to fall on the day we planned to go to the zoo but I did think it was fitting. We met up with our friends Melissa and Will and Jennifer and Ava for a fun filled day of animal sighting and picnicking. The Jackson Zoo - while not one of the top US zoos is really quite good. However, the way they have the exhibits - or habitats - or whatever you call them set up it is very difficult for the babies to see the animals from their strollers. Therefore our favorite animals were the giraffes and the elephants - those that could be viewed no matter what because of their height. We had a fun picnic and called it a day after half of the zoo - that is about all the kiddos could do. Unfortunately none of the kids would look at the camera at the same time but you can get an idea of our fun day!

Happy Easter

We had a wonderful day celebrating our risen Savior! What a glorious day of worship and fellowship! Landrum had a great day and looked adorable in her new dress from Bebe and Grandaddy. She had fun opening three rounds of Easter goodies and we managed a few good pictures in the yard before the rain came and flooded us out!

Fun with cousin Pace after lunch! Jayme's sister, Bethany, her husband David and cousin Pace are moving to Aurora, Colorado next week. David is a JAG lawyer with the US Airforce and they will be stationed there for atleast the next 3 years. We are so so sad to see them go. Landrum and Pace are four months apart and have so much fun playing together (although Landrum is sort of a bully right now!)

Birthday Party Bash!

We rang in Landrum's first year in style! We had a wonderful backyard party with family and some close friends. Landrum adored having so many people come over to play and loved being outside. She got lots and lots of fun presents and even a baby duck! She approached her cake with some trepidition and was really more interested in the icing than the cake. I finally dug into the cake with a fork and she took a big bite - but did not seem to be too enthusiastic about her first taste of real sugar. (That is fine with me!). We are so thankful to everyone who came and helped us celebrate our baby girls first year! She is such a joy!

Happy Birthday Landrum!!

Well, I have to say I cannot believe that a year has passed since our baby girl was born. We remember her 'birth' day so vividly - as if it were yesterday.. and now here we are celebrating her one year birthday! She has had a wonderful day and woke up to lots of "happy birthdays" from mama and daddy. She had a pancake for breakfast and then headed out to play with her cousin Pace for the morning. We are going to have her party on Saturday so I will post more pictures then. Today we took several on the front lawn so I have a few to share.

Landrum is such a wonderful, happy, and friendly baby. She loves to meet new people and her favorite word right now is "hi!" combined with a wave. Also, for those of you who know her - you know that for the first part of her short life she did not like to be held, cuddled, etc.. but that has all changed recently and she is the best hugger! She loves to lay her head on your shoulder and pat your back - she loves to give hugs and kisses - even to your feet! She is so sweet to all of her toys and animals and hugs on them all day. She is so loving and happy - we are so blessed to have her in our lives.

She still has no teeth and I am not sure she is getting any anytime soon! That does not stop her from trying all sorts of new foods though. She is not walking but is a mean crawler and can pull up on anything - I don't think we have long before she is off and running.

Our New Project

So we decided to build a garden this summer. We have been really wanting to grow some of our own veggies, especially tomatoes for the summer. So we scoped our backyard - which for the past year has just been an endless field of nothingness... with the exception of a terrible dog pen that was left so graciously by the homes' previous owners. We finally decided to rip out the dog pen and build our garden there. The grass was already torn up under the dog pen so it was an ideal place to build our raised bed. Jared did a lot of hard work to build us our bed and it looks AWESOME! Landrum and I went to our favorite Old Fannin Farmers Market to buy our new plants. We have 9 tomato plants, 2 basil plants, 3 cucumber plants, 1 bell pepper plant and 1 peppermint plant. We are so excited about it and can't wait for our harvest come June/July!

Here is our new raised bed garden!

Baby Chin-ups

When they are this age you just can't help but doing fun stuff with your children, just to see how they will respond.

Landrum Crawling

Landrum just turned 10 months and started crawling a few days ago even though we had asked her not to. I guess we'll have to go ahead and baby-proof the house now. As you'll see she is also quite vocal - she may look like her dad, but she definitely has some of mom's traits too.

News

Landrum has some news to share

That's right, in September, Landrum will be a big sister!

Straight A Student

Jared's dad made Landrum the most adorable little pink desk for Christmas - it is fantastic! And best of all, she loves it. She loves to sit in the little chair, which is shaped like a teddy bear, and read her books. I am not kidding. Here is the proof:

The Holidays

I love 'the holidays' you know - the two weeks you get of Christmas and then New Years - anyway I guess that is what folks mean by the holidays.. I am sure some people might even lump Thanksgiving in there too.. But I mean I love these last two weeks of the year. This year our Christmas week was sort of hectic. Jared had lots of work to do, Landrum had RSV, I had lots of wrapping etc to do and we just sort of got caught up in it all. Plus now that Jared is on staff at church we have to be at our church for Christmas Eve service so we had to come up with a new family schedule this year. It all worked out and we were able to be with both families on Christmas day. Jared's mom spent all day Christmas Eve in the emergency room with a high fever. She was fortunately able to be home on Christmas day but went right back in the day after Christmas unexpectedly and had to stay in the hospital for a week. So that was no fun! But she is doing well and feeling great. Landrum had a wonderful Christmas and was showered with gifts. She loved playing peekaboo with the tissue paper the most I think! We started on Christmas eve morning with opening her stocking where she got several goodies and it just went on from there. She LOVES her new toys (thank you everyone!).

We really have had a wonderful two weeks filled with family time and worship time and just time to celebrate our Savior and his birth. We are so blessed. We had such a great year last year with so many blessings poured out upon us. The birth of our daughter, Jared's mom being healed of her cancer, new work, new house, new friends and the list continues. Our Father is truely our Jehovah - Jirah, our provider! We look forward to all that 2009 holds!

Here are a few pictures from the holidays:

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas. We will be spending time with both our families over the next few days and are really looking forward to all the time together. We are excited about Landrum's first experience and watching her enjoy all the wrapping paper!

Treatment

Here is Landrum getting her treatment... she is getting better about taking it. A sweet friend lent us some Baby Einstein dvds and so as a treat Landrum gets to watch them during her treatments. It really does help her forget she is wearing a mask and makes the 8 minutes go a lot smoother!

The Dreaded RSV etc...

Landrum has RSV - she has actually had it all week. We found out she had the virus last Monday but she was really rather well - no real symptoms, so the doctor just told us to watch her closely to see if her status changed. Over the next few days she slowly got worse and worse until now she sounds like she has been a chain smoker for 30 years. Nice stuff. So Jared stayed home with her this morning and took her back in to the doctor. She now has to have breathing treatments every 4 hours -even in the middle of the night - for the next 24 hours. Then we will keep up a 4 a day regimen for the next 5-8 days... and she is also on an antibiotic for secondary bacteria. Good grief. Needless to say we will remain shut in the house a little longer. We might go crazy before this is all over.

On another note - Jared's mom went back into the hospital at Baptist this morning for her second round of chemo. This starts what they call the consolidation therapy. She will have chemo today, wednesday and friday and then will get to go home on friday. She should be home for 6 weeks before she has to come back into the hospital again. She was feeling well but not looking forward to a week in the hospital! you can also keep up with her progress at her caring bridge site. http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/debbieyates

Here are some other tidbits of information I have learned as of late: 1. There is a house in our neighborhood that has lots and lots of lights and apparently they are coordinated with the music on 107. 1 (or something) on the radio... we will have to check this out sometime this week. 2. There is a really great santa (with free photo and loads of activities for the kiddies) at Bass Pro - we made our first visit to the outdoor wonderland this past week for Landrums first photo with Santa.

Can't really think of anything else that needs updating at this point...

Lately

Well lately I have felt so busy.. with what I am not sure. I have gone back to mothers morning out after my 3 week hiatus while Jared's mom was in the hospital; so I guess that fills some time (6 hours a week!). I have been attempting to get my house decorated for Christmas - apparently in stages. The first stage - get everything out, wait 3-4 days before commencing with stage two, stage two - buy a tree and decorate said tree, stage three - place other items around house.. we have been in stage three for about 2 weeks now. I still have one lone nativity sitting on my dining room table because I don't know where to place it... otherwise mostly everything is finished. I have also been busy sewing lately. Mostly for other people, I have launched a little business - The Everyday Baby and I even have a website - see link at right, and business cards too! I feel so professional. I enjoy sewing a lot and need to get on the ball making more things for miss Landrum - I have only actually made her two outfits..

I am including a Christmas picture of Landrum in front of our tree - she is very excited about her first Christmas :)

Great News!

Mom got a great report today - her counts have been improving over the past few days, so she is getting one more blood transfusion today and then going home tomorrow! 4 weeks in the hospital is a long time and so she is very excited about getting back to Philadelphia and completing recovery there. She will most likely be back in a few weeks for another week of chemo but will hopefully be back home before Christmas. We can't thank you enough for the tremendous outpouring of love and encouragement. We really believe it was through your prayers that the LORD healed her and it was because of your support through cards, gifts and encouraging responses on CaringBridge that kept her spirits up. We owe you and Him a great debt of gratitude. I know He will bless you for being a blessing to us.

Thanksgiving Day

Wow - we have so much to be thankful for today. Not only are we praising God that he has healed Debbie of the cancer cells in her body, but today her counts finally began to rise!! We have been expecting her counts to rise all week; however instead she had to have platelet transfusions almost every day, has run fever almost daily, and her white counts have stayed at the bottom. But today, Thanksgiving morning, she received word that her platelets are on the rise, her red and white cells are also rising, and they are doing this on their own! YEAH! She is really on the road to recovery and as soon as her numbers get a little higher she will get to go home!

We spent the day in Philadelphia with Jared's grandparents, brothers, and cousins. We had a good day and everyone enjoyed some time with Landrum! We came home via the hospital to bring Thanksgiving dinner up to Stan and Debbie.

We have had a great day today and tomorrow we will do it all over again with my family! Gotta love the holidays :)

Tuesday - Day 21

Mom had another so-so day. Her counts went up a little and she got more platelets. If she can get her counts up a little more the doctor says she can go home soon, which may be where she needs to be to get completely well. That 10x12 hospital room is getting smaller and smaller. So please continue to pray that she improves enough in the next few days so that she can come on home. It would make for an even greater Thanksgiving.

Sunday - Day Nineteen

Debbie was not feeling well again today. However, she was not running fever today thankfully and her white count rose every so slightly. She received two units of blood and another platelet transfusion today. Hopefully these will give her a much needed boost as she was very weak today when we visited. Because her platelet counts are so low she has developed very large blood blisters in her mouth, thankfully they are painless. She did not have much of an appetite today, so we are praying she will eat more tomorrow. She still is in good spirits and knows that her body is on the mend slowly but surely! Thank you for continuing to encourage our family during this time. Please remember to send her an encouraging note this week as she is in the hospital over the holiday. We have so much to be thankful for this week!

Saturday Day Eighteen

Debbie did not feel that well today and we did not even go and visit. Her counts were down again today and she had yet another platelet transfusion. She was also running fever again today. The doctors told us that sometimes it takes people longer to start building up their counts and that it looks like it will be slow going with Debbie. Please pray that her body will start to make platelets and her white counts will start going up. We will go and visit tomorrow after church.