B.Russ vs. Leukemia

I am tired and will edit this post later to explain more. I just wanted to go ahead and get the link on my blog for those who are interested in staying up to date with how Bryan is doing. I am still having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that this is real. It just doesn't seem possible that my big brother has cancer. I must be too tired at the moment but I can't sleep...I will write more when I have myself pulled together a little better.

http://brussversusleukemia.blogspot.com/

Please feel free to add a link to his blog on your blog if you would like.

Happy Birthday GG!

Today is my Grandmother's 80th Birthday. All of the grand kids call her GG (Great Grandma). For her birthday I stayed up to post a couple different events so that GG would be sure to have lots of pictures of the grandkids to look at on her computer. Blog stocking her grand kids is her favorite pass time. For her birthday she is getting a new bigger computer screen to make it even that much more enjoyable. My mother was her only child. My parents had 10 kids. Now she has 18 great grand children and, hopefully, her 19th great grand child will be born today on her birthday. At least, my sister-in-law, Emily really hopes so. :)

All of the grand kids love to visit GG. She is always good for a hug and laughs at all of the silly things they do. She even has a special candy drawer just for them. She always has a fun puzzle going at the table and little dancing frogs for the kids to dance with. Pa Pa puts food for the squirrels out on their back deck so there are often animals to watch out the sliding glass door.

GG, thank you for always loving and caring for us. We hope you have a wonderful birthday. The following pictures are some random pictures of the grand kids being silly. Hopefully, they will make you giggle.

Brett at Chucky Cheese

Gavyn with his tough surfer face.

Makayla

Tyler

Hannah

Eliza

Abby and Zack (Johnny too)

Haley

Emily

Dancing Dreams

Hannah has been waiting and waiting to be three so that she could go to dance like "Hiyah". (She can say Eliza clear as day but still calls her Hiyah instead.)

She constantly does that move and says, "Debbie Plee-A" She clearly already knows more about dance than me.

Emily, Eliza, and Makayla on their first day.

First day of Preschool

Eliza had been waiting for this day for a long time. She had a very hard time going to sleep the night before because she was so excited. I almost did not even get a hug as she walked into her classroom holding her head up high. I was excited for her because of all of the fun things she is going to get to do but sad to see how fast the past four years have gone. She ran across the room towards me crying when I came to pick her up. When I calmed her down, she explain that she was sad because I had picked her up early and she was still learning. I took a mental note never to be 10 minutes early again. She has stayed on green for the first couple of weeks which is great.

This is her right when she woke up in the morning with her backpack.


This is Hannah with her new lunch box. I pack her a lunch every morning, too. I did it at first so that she would not feel left out because even Daddy gets a lunch. It has turned out to be quit handy because she has a meal where ever we go. We often go for a walk along Lake Minneola if any of the other local mommies want to join me. Shhh...just don't tell Eliza. She thinks we just do chores the whole time she is at school.

Russ Family Reunion

Brady and Eliza

Haley

This was when I realized that Hannah had grown out of her favorite strawberry swim suit. She didn't think it was too small. She was heart broken when we somehow lost it that night and she couldn't wear it the rest of the week. ;)

Bryton holding somebody's pet bird. A man had brought his bird from home and it just sat on his shoulder the whole day...maybe he was a pirate...now that I think about it.

Eliza balancing the pirate's bird on her head.

Makayla is a natural with all animals. Eliza and Hannah constantly follow her around to see what creature she will find and pick-up next.

Emily is showing us some "sand crabs". They must have caught thousands of them throughout the week. They are not really sand crabs...that is just what the kids called them. They are more like the mix between a roach and a crab and live just below the sand right where the waves crash.

Uncle Brandon letting all of the kids bury him. Brandon did a good job entertaining all of the kids at the beach. I am sure that he is excited that Uncle Blake will be back from his mission by next summer to help.

Back Row: Shawn, Robert, Tiffany, Amy, Melanie. Front row: Brandon, Dad, Mom, Johnny. Seven of my parents 10 kids made it for their 40 year wedding anniversary party. Blake was on his mission. Bryan and Paul had to work. Our theme was. "40 years and the party continues..."

Hannah and Daddy

Pouty faces make such cute pictures

Eliza wrote her name in the sand. She was so proud and we were too. :)

Sadly, I didn't get a picture of all the kids together. Come to think of it, I don't think they were ever all the the beach at the same time. That is probably a good thing since there were 18 of them.

Hannah's 1st Hair Cut

Hannah must rub her head around in circles all night while she sleeps because each morning she wakes up with a HUGE lump of knots on the back of her hair. The biggest problem with this is that her Pa Pa is the only person that she will willingly allow to brush the huge knot out and he lives in Washington.



Well yesterday, I was not in the mood for the battle so I took her to Nikki's Hair salon and let her comb it out and cut it off. We are going to the beach for a week and I was nervous to see what would happened when we mixed tons of Chlorine with her knot problem.

She was very good and loved having a puppy dog cover. Nikki is a hair stylist in my home town who has been cutting my family's hair for years so it was nice that she was able to fit Hannah into the schedule.

I love my girls to have long hair but I have to admit I am loving her hair short! Hannah recently turned 3 years old and is growing up way to fast.

Our first Dance Recital

Eliza has always loved to dance. Her favorite family home evening activity is to dance while Josh plays the keyboard. She corriographs everyones moves. She often has to correct me because dancing is far from one of my talents. It comes very naturally to her. She was so excited to finally get to take dance class. I titled it our first dance recital because I feel like I was more nervous than her and that I was the one who had to learn the most. I think it took me over an hour to get her ready on the first day. I never new so much went into making a simple bun. I had to master the art of hair nets, bobby pins, and hair spray and putting lip stick on another person. I would have known exactly what to do if they would have asked me to put her beautiful hair up into a ball cap.


We drove down to Leesburg once a week all year so that she could take dance with her cousins. Basically, it was a really good excuse for me to drive down to Leesburg once a week to see my mom. Eliza looked forward to that day all week because she got to play with her cousin Brady and then go to dance which are two of her very favorite things. My sister, Amy, babysat Hannah during dance which was a huge plus for me. Getting to watch Eliza dance was totally worth the drive each week. Dance Recital week is a long and stressful week for the moms and girls. It was really nice getting to share that experience with Amy and Amanda. I am hoping to tweek my schedule for next year so that Hannah and Eliza can take dance down there again... a little crazy but totally worth it!



She was so excited to put real make-up on. Wearing mascara was not as exciting as she had once thought. I was surprised how much I enjoyed getting to play dress up with her. I could hardly recognize her when we were done. It took her awhile to beg to wear make-up again after four days of wearing it. We are so proud of her for having the courage to get up on stage and dance.

Potty Training Torture

Hannah finished potty training a couple of months ago. (Are they ever really completely potty trained?) Let's just say that I got the nerve up to leave the house with her in her panties on a regular basis. There are so many funny things that I don't want to forget that I am going to blog our experience.

(Side Note: After 5 years of not actually completing a scrapbook page, I concluded that I was only a scrapbook poser with a huge scrapbook collection that I will probably never get around to using until my kids are grown. Then I heard you can get your blog printed into a book and that is what gave me the nerve to enter the blogging world. I was torn as to if it was a good idea to do a long long post on PT and then I decided that people don't have to read it if they don't want to. There are just too many funny memories that I don't want to forget about PT Hannah. Readers be advised that if you don't find the subject of potty training interesting then you should stop reading this post now and skim the pictures if you care and move on with your life. In other words, if you are a male then you have already read to far. If you are crazy like me and could talk for hours about how to help your child accomplish the only dreaded and disgusting milestone that young children face then I hope you enjoy this post.)

I discovered that Hannah had potty trained herself last October after a week of running around the house with a dress and no diaper due to a bad diaper rash/ eczema problem. After a day or two, we had zero accidents for the remainder of the week. I thought I was going to be able tell that annoying story that I am sure you have all heard about the kid who potty trained herself in a day and how it was so easy. So the next time at the store, I get her some cute princess panties. She completely goes #1 and #2 in the panties for a whole day. So, I think, I'll just let her wear her dress around the house with no panties for a couple more days...zero accidents. She is loving doing this sticker reward thing. We put panties on again and she is 100% not potty trained. I persevere for a couple days and she is still 100% not potty trained when wearing panties and 100% potty trained without. This goes on for 5 months. Whenever we were home she ran around with a dress and no panties and we had zero problems. Because of her eczema, I didn't want to go back to diapers all day. I didn't want to pay for diapers all day either if she didn't need them. One day, after sitting and watching her play with her cars and dinosaurs with her little naked bum sticking out from under her dress the answer came to me. I needed to take her to the little boys underwear section so that she could pick out "panties" that she really wouldn't want to pee on. Here is a picture of her proudly wearing her new "panties" for the first time.

I told her not to pee pee on Lighting McQueen and it worked. She obviously did not esteem the princesses as highly as lighting McQueen or Nemo. She also picked out Spiderman "panties" which is especially funny to me because she has no clue who he is.


My favorite part of any of her photos in her princess dresses has been knowing that under her fancy dress she was wearing Nemo, Spiderman, or Lighting McQueen "panties". She wears nothing but dresses so people often get a peak at our little secret. I have enjoyed seeing the looks on people's faces as they see her "panties". Most people laugh and know that Hannah must have a wide variety of interests. Some Grandma lady glared at me like I was a cheap-o that didn't want to buy her girly panties and just made her wear her big brothers or something. I am just ecstatic that I finally found a solution to the stand off we were in. I was willing to do anything to not have to buy those pointless expensive swim diapers this summer.

We had been promising her that we would buy her a real fishy when she was completely potty trained. So, after we had successfully made a trip down to Grandmas house and back, it was time to go to the pet store to buy a real fishy. She picked out a gold fish and named him "Princess Nemo." (I am so upset because I can't find the picture of her with him right now.) She loved that fishy even though he was way more boring than I ever fathomed possible even for a fish. He wouldn't eat his food after the first day and barely swam around. We thought he may be suffering from shaken fish syndrome because she insisted on carrying him home. He turned black and then died after about 5 days. The sad thing is that she loved him more dead then when he was alive. He did not flip upside down when he died and he finally started moving around the tank thanks to the water filter. I heard Hannah laughing hysterically over by the tank and when over to see him dead. Eliza could tell but Hannah couldn't. I didn't have the heart to tell her because she was loving him soo much dead. She wanted to feed him before she went to bed...I felt kinda like a sicko letting her but I did. Then I quickly called Josh and had him pick up a new fish on the way home. We googled a few things and decided that even with water softener stuff that our water still had too much chlorine and that new fish tanks need time to build up the right balance of bacteria. I didn't know having a fish could be so complicated. This fish is a pampered bottled Spring Water fishy and he is still alive months later. She had no clue the next day and so all is well.

We have only had two big accidents. The first was at the pet store because she was so excited and didn't want to let go of the fish bag. That one was very ironic to me and I was wondering if we had jumped the gun but then she did great after that.


The other was a Disney and she was sleeping so I don't think it really counts.

A few other things I don't want to forget about PT:
1) I always disliked changing the potty chair for Eliza. Eliza still prefers me to help her every step of the way if I will. I have wished that I could convince her to be more self sufficient in this department. We should be careful what we wish for because Hannah constantly "tries" to dump the potty chair out herself. This is WAY more messy and disgusting than me getting to do it. I consider myself lucky when I catch her going so that I can do it. She also wants to close me out of the bathroom or stall and do it all by herself.

2)Hannah prefers to climb up onto the toilet all by herself. She does this by facing the toilet and climbing up with both feet and hands on the toilet seat then she scoots around on all fours until she is facing correctly and them plops down on her bum in the normal position. I am amazed that she has never fallen in. I wish I had video but it never seemed appropriate to record.

3) It took me about a month of Hannah screaming "I have a wedgie!" and having break downs to realize that her definition of wedgie was not the same as the rest of ours. I kept trying to fix her panties with no success. Then I realized she said it when she was not wearing panties. Hannah says it when her stomach hurts. This could be because she is hungry or has to go. I absolutely love two and three year old language. It is like playing a never ending guessing game.

Monsters vs Aliens

Weird things happened to the kids when I fed them Chic-fil-a.







Tyler and Eliza spent about an hour playing in that funny mirror. I was laughing so hard at them my stomach hurt. I had a hard time getting them to leave.

Fun with Counsins

I had to cut a toy boat out of Tyler's hair.

The funny thing is that he wound it up, put it right back on his head and got it stuck again about 5 seconds after I handed him the boat back. I guess he was as curious as me as to how it got stuck the first time.
Don't worry...I caught her. Hannah loves this slide even though this is how she looks each time she goes down it. She has serious thrill issues.