Taegan's Finally Crawling

Taegan has been doing this weird form of crawling for about a month now. He will be on his belly, push up with his arms, sometimes get on his knees and then flop back down. He didn't ever make it very far with this form of moving, but this was fine with Mommy!

This is how he starts out - He is sitting and then flops forward and catches himself with his arms.

He gets up on his hands and knees...

And then flops forward on the floor - inching along slowly.

And then he starts all over... but he never seems to care.

He really is a happy baby and so handsome even if I do say so myself!!!

Well, as of Friday - Taegan is now really crawling - the correct way - and now can get around a lot quicker. He has already proved to be quite the trouble maker. Ah, the joys of a mobile baby!!

Trisomy 13 Awareness Day

Today is Trisomy 13 Awareness day. March because it is the 3rd month of the year and trisomy stands for 3 copies of a chromosome. And the 13th because that is the chromosome that is affected in Trisomy 13 or Patau Syndrome. March 13th also just happens to be the day that I went into labor with Reese, who was born 2 years ago tomorrow, with Trisomy 13.

I have always wanted to do more to help educate people about this disease. Don and I are still working on some of these ideas. In the mean time, I thought I would use my blog and facebook to help bring some awareness today.

Trisomy 13 is the presence of an additional 13 chromosome. Having a third (extra) number 13 chromosome, occurs about 1 time in every 5,000 live births. Trisomy 13 children have multiple abnormalities. Some include heart defects, brain defects, cleft lip, cleft palate and many more, including even more severe issues. Because of the many abnormalities, all of these children are survivors if they reach their mothers arms. They are true miracles of life. Many only survive outside their mothers womb a few short minutes, hours or days. While others can go home and survive months. Sadly, many of the children with Trisomy13 (Patau Syndrome) do not reach their first birthday. If you would like to learn even more about Trisomy 13, please visit http://www.livingwithtrisomy13.org/index.htm. Don and I leaned on this site nearly every day while we were pregnant with Reese.

Reese's memory page is on this site as well - http://www.livingwithtrisomy13.org/MemoriesOfReese.htm.

Also, here is a link to a news broadcast where Don and I were asked to talk about Reese and Trisomy 13. http://www.ktka.com/news/2007/jul/12/losing_infant_rare_disease_parents_want_help_other/

Recently Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, signed a proclamation stating that March 2009 would be Trisomy Awareness Month. Here is a copy of that proclamation - http://www.gov.state.ak.us/proclamations.php?id=1676.

My goal on this March 13th is to spread awareness of this rare diagnosis. By increasing awareness, I feel I am keeping my baby's memory alive. I know Reese's life had a far greater purpose, and maybe this was part of it.

Mommy loves you Reese.

"Held"

I added a song to my blog today. It is "Held" by Natalie Grant. I am going to leave it on through the weekend. Please take the time to listen to it and the words sometime. Today is Trisomy Awareness day. Tomorrow, March 14th, is the day my third baby girl was born. Reese Lorene Engel was born at 7:29 am and stayed here with her Daddy and Mommy and 2 adoring sisters until 8:38 am. And Tuesday, March 17th, is the day we said goodbye at her funeral. It will be a hard weekend, but I know she is in a better place. And as this song says, we are all held by God through everything - and we aren't promised a life without problems, we are promised that He will never leave us, no matter what.

Our Flooring Project

Whenever we found out that we were going to have our fourth baby, Don and I knew we were going to have to get new flooring in the dining room. It had carpet at the time and our kitchen table was too small for all 5 of us to eat at. So, after we received our tax refund this year we went floor shopping. We found some great wood laminate on sale and bought enough to re-floor our entry way, kitchen and dining room. Here is what those rooms looked like before our week of chaos...

Our kitchen with the lovely linoleum - I hated this floor! It showed everything and never looked clean. One time I sat and scrubbed every inch of it with a magic eraser and it was clean for the first time ever, but I also took the top coat off of it and it never really looked the same again.

Our entry way was fine, it just wasn't our favorite tile.

And our dining room, with the carpet. (Not the best idea if you are going to have 3 kids eating in there!)

The whole process was supposed to take around 3 days max, but they started on Tuesday morning and didn't finish until the following Monday evening. One of the days he was sick and of course, he didn't work over the weekend. As many of you know, I have some OCD issues and the fact that we were practically living in our bedroom and that my house was covered in dirt, debris and dust really took its toll. (They literally jack-hammered the tile out of our entry way!!) Here are some pictures of the mess and what we lived like.

This is where we spent all our time. My bedroom became Lily and Taegan's playroom and living room. Our master bedroom is not big enough for that!!

Before he left on Friday Don asked if he would be doing anything messy on Monday and he said no. He would only be installing the toe-kick and trim and finishing up a few things. So on Sunday morning I spent 4 hours cleaning my kitchen. Everything had to be cleaned - it was bad! Then Monday came and first thing he went to fix the cabinet above our fridge. (After we laid the floors, the fridge was too tall!) That would have been fine except he didn't take the cabinet down like we thought he was going to do, no, he did it right there in the kitchen. Needless to say, my spotless kitchen was now a total disaster again. All of my dishes, plates, cups, everything, were covered in sawdust, and wood shavings - and they were in the cabinets!!! So, on Tuesday I had to re-clean my kitchen, another 4 hours later it was done... again.

When everything was finally complete, we were very happy. I love the look and we are both so thrilled with our purchase! 3 days later, we finally have our house cleaned and put back together. It took a lot of work - that dirt and debris can fly everywhere!! Here are the final pictures!!

Brick Oven Update

I finally gave up on my husband calling Brick Oven to complain about our Valentine's day experience, so I called and spoke to one of the managers yesterday. She listened to me vent about our horrible evening and then apologized about how her restaurant had contributed to it. She said she was appalled by the thought that one of their waiters called us at home. She said they should never call a customer, but especially if it was their fault that they wrote the credit card number down wrong. She also admitted that the $50 extra that the waiter said it would cost the restaurant if we waited to process the bill till the next day, was a total lie on his part. I explained that we were so disappointed that we weren't coming back and she said she hated that this experience was the last time Brick Oven would have to leave an impression on us. So, she offered us a $50 gift certificate to make it up to us and hoped that we would take advantage of the offer and come try them again. I agreed to take it and come back some time. So, in the end I got want I wanted that night, someone to admit that what was going on was ridiculous and offer to comp our meals. This way they covered the cost of our meals plus some extra. So, hopefully the next time we return, we will have a much better dinner.

My Valentine's Day Experience

I had such an interesting Valentine's Day I just had to blog about it!! All the adventure started when Don and I got to Brick Oven. It has become a tradition with us to go to Brick Oven on Valentine's Day and wait for an hour (sometimes even more) to get seated and then eat and go to a movie. Well, this year we had an hour and 40 minute wait. We ran a couple of errands and then returned. While we were waiting, I grabbed Don's blackberry and started checking facebook. I saw my husband's nice status ("Don is proclaiming to the facebook world that he's in love with his wife! Happy Valentine's Day!!") and thought I should comment on it. So, I wrote "I'm in love with you too!!!" and hit comment. Well, for whatever reason, it added that comment to EVERYONE'S status that already had a comment on it. I freaked out!!! I had just written on approximately 15 people's status that I was in love with them. Don is trying to calm me down, telling me at least it was something nice... Needless to say, it didn't work! He is frantically trying to reload facebook to see if it was just an error. It wasn't. So, then we start going through the process of deleting the comment. The problem is that on a blackberry it is a long, drawn out task and it takes forever to do it once, let alone 15 or so times!!! I was still doing this when we were called back to our table. This is when the second part of our night began...

We could tell right away that our server wasn't going to be all we had hoped for. Is it too much to ask that when you go to a nice restaurant that you should expect good service? Well, it never happens to Don and I. Every Valentine's Day it is the same thing. We've tried many different places too! Well, this time our server was trying to rush us through every process. We just waited an hour and a half for our table, I was going to take my time and enjoy myself!!! On top of that, I was feverishly trying to save myself from total humiliation on facebook!! I refused to order until I had everything deleted. (Thankfully my brother called and I had him log on as me and finish. Whew!!!!) Without going into every detail, the waiter only refilled Don's water once, even though he sat there for 80% of his meal with an empty cup, he tried to take our appetiser from us even though we had at least a third of it left (and we're still eating!!), when he did refill my pop, he sat it on the end of the table and just slid it down, saloon style, to my end of the table (thankfully not into my lap). Our food was okay, not what I wanted because they took that off the menu, oh, and increased the prices too!! If that wasn't bad enough... the worst is still yet to come!!!

It was finally time to pay and get out of there. He brought us our check and Don gave him his credit card. We sat, waiting and waiting and waiting. Finally our server comes back and tells us that they are having trouble with their credit card machine and wants to know if we have another form of payment. Don tells him no, not unless they can take a check. Well, no they couldn't do that. (I don't carry that much cash on me!) He disappears for a long time and comes back again saying it is still not working. So, he says he will go talk to the manager and try again. He finally comes to our table with one of the old credit card slips and has written down our credit card information and we just need to sign it. We asked to speak to a manager and she acts as if she could care less what problems we had that night and barely apologizes for the fact we waited 40 minutes to pay!! During all of this time you would have thought maybe we would have been offered a free dessert or at least a drink refill, but nope. We sat there with nothing. Don and I were so furious that we just sign the slip and got out of there. I had wanted to go get smoothies from the mall, but it took so long to pay that we didn't have time. I was so upset!!! They had ruined our meal. We both decided to not let them ruin our entire night, so we went and got drinks from Starbucks and went to a movie.

We chose "Confessions of a Shopaholic" at 10:00. So, you would think we would be safe at the movies right? Wrong!! The previews had started and I went to put my phone on silence and noticed my mom had tried calling. My parents were watching my kids, so I immediately called them back. She was calling because Brick Oven had called there, waking them up! They needed us to call them back because our credit card wasn't going through. Why? They wrote the number down wrong!!!!! Yes, after all of that, they were still ruining our night!! My mom told them that we were at a movie and they said it wasn't a big deal, we could call on Sunday with the correct number. So, Don and I settle in for the movie. You would think our story would end there, but it doesn't!!! About a half hour into the movie, Don's phone starts ringing. It was my mom again. Brick Oven had called our house again, waking everyone up, again! It turns out that if the transaction waits overnight to be completed, it will cost the restaurant an additional $50. So, we really needed to call them back before midnight so they wouldn't have to pay the extra money. So what you say? Well, if it hadn't been for my parents at our house, we would have just told them too bad also, but with them continually calling my house, we felt that we had to finish it then so my family could sleep. So Don left the movie and went to call Brick Oven. Don was gone for a few minutes and came back. He had talked/yelled at our waiter and at the end of the conversation our meal was free, but only because Don was mean. Well, after a while, Don calmed down and felt bad for how he treated the waiter on the phone, so he left the movie, again, and called back and gave him the correct credit card number. We finished watching the movie and went home, trying to salvage the rest of our night.

I'm still not finished with Brick Oven yet. I intend to call back and speak to another manager about our evening. I still can't believe how poorly everything went. I have never been so horrified by an experience at a restaurant in my life. And that is saying a lot because Don and I have horrible luck with restaurants.

Oh, by the way, I loved the movie and Don enjoyed what parts he did get to see. And we will never go back to Brick Oven!!

A Big Day...

We had a big day around our house today. First, this morning we had dentist appointments for the girls. This was Lily's first dentist visit and she did great! She looked so big sitting in the chair. We had no problems and came away with beautiful teeth!!

Here she is in the chair... she is growing up so fast!!



Here Madison and Lily are waiting for the dentist to come check Lily's teeth, so they are watching a movie in the chair! How high-tech have we gotten?

Also today, we had Ignasio's birthday party at the skating rink. This was Lily's first time skating. She was super excited and had a great time. Madison just loves any chance to go skating and she had a wonderful time too! And for those of you who know Don well, you know he wasn't going to miss a chance to skate/dance!! Here are some pictures of the fun-filled evening.

One of my favorite parts of the night was the hokey-pokey. All the kids tried it and here are some of the moments we caught on camera...

Here is Madison trying the first time and Caden skating away like a pro!

Brennen - he made it all the way under and then fell at the last minute.

Lily- she kept skating, and skating, and skating...

until she ran right into it!

KayLynn - she's going to make it.

And here is Jason... what a cutie and look at this pose! One hand on the cup and the other in his pocket!!


And of course I have to throw in a picture of Taegan!! Here he is in his new stroller (an early birthday present thanks to Nana and Papa). What an adorable smile!!