Christmas at our Home

A few days before Christmas my Dad and Christine came to our house for Christmas on their way to New Orleans. They were headed to New Orleans to spend Christmas with Christine's family. We had a great visit and a wonderful First Christmas with Colton.

Chillin on the couch!

Grand Dude, Colton & Leland hanging out on the floor playing

Mommy & Colton

Our First Christmas together as a Family

Daddy and Colton playing

Getting ready to open up some presents

Grand Dude & Christine

Colton Loves his wooden blocks. Each block has a different nursery rhyme written around the block. Thank you Grand Dude & Christine for my blocks and all my other wonderful gifts!

What is this?

Shape blocks!

Yummy! This block tastes good!

Checking out his new color book.

Santa came and brought Lots of goodies for Colton!

Grand Dude & Colton

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve we drove to San Antonio. We went to the Christmas Eve Service at Community Bible Church, CBC, our church back home. It was great to be back at the church and take Colton there.We spent Christmas Eve with Cody's siblings at Toby & Stacy's house. We had gift exchanges between all of the cousins and then a gift exchange between the siblings.

Our beautiful family on our First Christmas Eve together! Colton had his church clothes on earlier but we changed when we got to the house because him and Cage had matching first Christmas outfits.

Opening presents from his cousins

Cousins and presents Everywhere! So much fun!

First attempt at a cousin picture. Colton was NOT happy!

Second attempt. What a Beautiful picture of all the cousins!

Daddy and his boy

Mommy and her little man

Toby with Cage (10 months) and Cody with Colton (4 months)

Riley hanging out in the laundry room with his new Handy Manny toy.

Reese and Brooks

Hadley making silly faces at us girls

Aunt Holly & Colton

Aunt Rachel with Reese, Hadley & Colton

Aunt Michelle & Colton

Reese, Riley & Hadley

Toby & Cage pointing

clockwise - Riley, Reese, Brooks & Hadley

First ER Visit

Well... Colton had his first visit to the ER the Monday before Christmas. He tested positive for RSV in November and began breathing treatments the beginning of December. We went to the doctor, it seemed on a weekly basis checking on him.

The Monday before Christmas we were back at Dr. Kisch's office and he was still wheezing even after the breathing treatments. They gave him an oxygen saturation test in the office and it came back as 85% which is very low, they want it to be 98%+. The machine was new so they tried it a few times but they did not like that it was coming back so low. Dr. Kisch said that we have a choice of either admitting him to the hospital so they could monitor him and give him breathing treatments. Or go to the ER and check his saturation level and give him a chest X-Ray and we would then make a decision based on the test results.

We chose to go to the ER and see what the results were. His oxygen saturation came back around 95%. They sucked his nose and cleared his lungs from all of the congestion he had. We had the X-Ray and it came back with the beginning stages of pneumonia. Dr. Kisch started him on amoxicillin and continued the breathing treatments with an additional steroid we would give him through his nebulizer.

We are very thankful that we were able to catch the pneumonia in time where it did not get severe. Although his wheezing did get pretty bad we were on top of giving him breathing treatments every 4 hours. Dr. Kisch said that Colton was one of her worst RSV cases and she was very concerned about him and thought about us often. She always mentioned that she loved that he still smiled and that he was not overly fussy considering how sick he was. Cody and I have been very happy with Dr. Kisch and the nurses in her office. They are very knowledgeable and genuinely care about us and Colton's health.

Dr. Kisch wanted him sleeping in an upright position to help with his congestion. For a couple months he slept in his swing in our room. Every night Cody and I would bolt upright in bed when he was coughing to make sure he was ok, this happened many times a night.

He struggled at first with his breathing treatments but he finally realized that they do help him breathe better. Cody was so good and always made it a game when he would give him his treatment. He made sound effects and pretended like he was flying through the clouds. He likes to hold onto the mask or the cord now and will usually fall asleep during the treatments.

Candy Canes!!

For Halloween, we took pictures of Colton with him dressed in his pumpkin costume with candy corn sprinkled all around him. I thought I would try it with candy canes for Christmas. Thanks to Jenn for telling me about the candy corn which has led my imagination to many different picture ideas!

He LOVES sucking his left pointer finger, it's his "security blanket!"

4 Months Old!

Info to come. I have to copy it out of his baby book. I have done really well keeping his baby book up to date but I am a tad behind with our blog. I'm working on being better about keeping this updated.

Santa at Bass Pro Shops!

We took Colton for his very first trip to see Santa. Of course, because of my wonderful husband we had to go see Santa at Bass Pro Shops! Santa looked so good next to the "reindeer" behind him. They had Santa's Wonderland set up with tons of different photo ops and many activities for the kids to do. The great thing was that they took a picture for you and then you could take as many pictures as you wanted with your own camera at no cost!!!

Here is how our evening went...

It was very cold so we bundled Colton up and had him dressed in one of his Christmas outfits and headed to Bass Pro. We waited for about 5 minutes or so, it was fabulous! We get up there and they took his picture and then Cody was snapping our camera while I was trying to get little man to smile. As we stepped to the side we were checking out the picture that they took for us and gave us for free and it was ok, the color wasn't the best so we were glad we took our own pictures. We turn the camera on... AND... no pictures!!! I had forgotten the memory stick in the computer at home!!! OPPPSSSS!!! Cody was not happy with me at all and of course I asked him if he would go home and get the memory stick so we could get pictures. :) Yep, the most wonderful husband I have went home and got the memory stick while Colton and I walked around the mall. Cody was back with the memory stick and we were already in line waiting Again. Luckily the line really wasn't that bad. We waited about 15 minutes. We were able to get the pictures!

Cody told me that I better be happy that it wasn't his wedding day or graduation day! I will never live that down and I have learned a very valuable lesson! Always check the camera before you leave the house! :) We now have a very memorable experience of Colton's first visit to see Santa that we will never forget!

1st time on Santa's lap

Take 2! Wish he was looking at the camera but he was loving the lights around him.

Christmas Decorations!

Our first Christmas in our first home with our precious new angel. WOW, we sure are having lots of Firsts this year! :) We truly have been blessed with so many amazing things this past year. Here are some of our decorations and some favorite ornaments.

Our beautiful Christmas tree! It fit so well in our living room with a very special friend peeking around the corner! This was the first year that we put the train around the tree. We got our Lionel train last year but never put it up in the rent house. The angel on top I made for us our first Christmas together after we got married.

My beautiful Willow Tree Nativity above our fireplace and all of our stockings. I made our three and I am working on the stockings for the dogs for next year. Shannon taught me how to make the stockings. The pattern is what her mom made for them when they were kids. The pattern has been in their family for many years. Thank you for allowing us to use the pattern and share in your beautiful homemade tradition. I absolutely love how they are personalized and homemade. I had such a fun time making them!!

Cody's Abominable Snowman stocking

Colton's Snowman stocking

My Rudolph stocking

Our family ornament for 2009

Colton's First Christmas ornament

Ornament from Grand Dude and Christine

Ornament from G-Mama & G-Pa

I started his very own series ornaments that I will collect for him every year. It is the first in the series and this year called, "Mickey as Bob Cratchit" I love Disney things and I am so excited that I found this brand new series to start for him!

Colton's foot imprint just a few weeks old.

We traced his hand and I sewed this ornament just like I sewed our stockings. I plan to do this every year for him.

At school they made this plate. I love it, since he is our little angel!

Happy Birthday USMC!

Happy Birthday to our United States Marine Corps. I am proud to call myself a Marine's wife and so proud of my wonderful husband. Cody was so excited for the two of them to wear their matching red USMC shirts. We got Colton his onesie while I was pregnant when we went to California and visited my Uncle Mark and Aunt Gay. While visiting them we went to San Diego and visited MCRD where Cody was for boot camp. We had a great visit and enjoyed walking around and hearing all of the stories Cody told us. At the time we didn't know that we were going to have a boy but we knew that we wanted to buy him/her an outfit. I wonder if we have a future Marine we are raising? May God Bless all of our troops from all of the branches fighting for our freedom!