.

.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Holly Geollie Christmas!

This past weekend some of our very best friends, Geoff and Mollie (hence their celebrity nickname Geollie) got married in Abingdon, VA.  We were so excited to be able to share in their big day! Thanks to my parents/Ashley for watching Avery for the weekend so M and I could enjoy all of the wedding festivities without one of us being at the hotel with little Nug.

Geoff and Mollie, we are so happy for you!  We love you both and cannot wait to watch and support you while you begin your new life together.

Rehearsal dinner at a local restaurant called The Tavern.  Amazing!


Bridal Brunch

I hate that this turned out blurry!

Mr. and Mrs. Moeck!

So thankful for these wonderful friends!

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Tubes

As all 5 of our frequent readers may know, Avery suffered her 5th ear infection over the Thanksgiving holidays.  After being back a few days, I had this nagging feeling that we should go ahead and take her in to see an ENT to get a second opinion about going ahead with a myringotomy.  After discussing this with M, I called and was able to get an appointment for the week after Thanksgiving.  I was able to get the first appointment of the day, 7:45 am, which ended up being a blessing, because when I left the office 2 hours later the waiting room was packed.  Avery first had to do a hearing test and check for fluid in her ears.  The audiologist told me that both ears had fluid build up and that she was performing a little below normal on her hearing reaction times, which surprised me. I have never noticed her having problems hearing us before, and she has definitely not had any trouble developing language.

We saw the Nurse Practitioner first, who after taking a brief history, took a look into her ears.  She asked me as she was looking when her last ear infection was, to which I replied a week and a half ago and that she had just finished her antibiotic 5 days earlier.  She said, "Wow, that's amazing, because she has another one in her left ear... it is bulging with pus."  I literally about fell out on the floor in the exam room. At this point, I was over it and just wanted our sweet baby girl to get some relief.  After seeing the doc who reiterated everything the NP said, she needed tubes and she needed them ASAP.  His nurse came to schedule the surgery and told me that the NP had asked how soon we could get in for surgery because her ears looked so terrible, and the nurse told her it wouldn't be until January.  The NP basically begged the nurse to find something/anything because she needed them so badly :(  So, surgery was scheduled for 2 days later; his nurse just decided to overbook him, which was so very nice of her.

Fast forward to surgery day, we were thankfully the first case of the day for our doc and got to the outpatient center at 6AM.  Now, being a former OR nurse, I know how routine this surgery is.  I know that it takes all of 5 minutes, that they don't even have to intubate, just mask them down, etc. etc.... That being said, also being an OR nurse, I know risk exists for every single procedure, albeit a very small, teeny, tiny, minuscule risk.  It didn't help that we were able to carry Aves to the OR door and hand her off to a a tech who was to carry her to surgery.  Broke my heart as she kept reaching out for us, saying, "Mommy? Daddy?" as she was carried down the hallway.  Bless her bones.  Doc came by 10 minutes later to tell us she was great and already in recovery.  He asked, "Has she been sleeping?"  I told him she has always slept fine except when she has had a fever with an ear infection.  To which he replied, "I really don't know how, her ears looked terrible."  All in all, she did great, and was mostly upset after surgery because she was so hungry ;)

All that being said.  We are so thankful that it is now done and that this will hopefully prevent our baby girl from getting sick so often.  Now we can look forward to a sick-free (fingers-crossed) Holiday season!

So thankful to Children's Hospital for having so many toys to play with while we waited in pre-op.  She got to ride this around the hallways!

Home and happy that she was finally getting something to eat!

Friday, December 6, 2013

Thankful

We had a wonderful week last week getting to spend Thanksgiving with our families both in Cincinnati and Lexington.  This year I felt overwhelmingly thankful, mostly because we are just so incredibly blessed.  This Thanksgiving I am particularly thankful for:

- Living in Birmingham (being so much closer to both of our families)
- Our church family at Homewood
- Matthew's new job
- Living literally 5 minutes away from J, K, and the boys.  It's nice being able to say, "Oh yeah, we have family here too!"
- Thankful for all of our friends in Birmingham, Nashville, Decatur, Houston, Denver, Missouri, Ohio, etc... We are blessed by an abundance of lifelong friendships.  Something Matthew and I hold very dear.
- Being able to have the opportunity to stay at home with Avery almost full-time and go to graduate school.  I am very thankful for a husband who works so hard to provide for our family and support me in anything and everything.
- Our wonderful parents and grandparents
- Our siblings
- And last but most certainly not least, our sweet baby girl, who is a constant source of pure joy.  Our little family of 3 is the most perfect blessing.

Here are the pics from Thanksgiving.  Ashley, Buddy, Matthew and I went to Lexington first on Wednesday to go to the Kentucky game with David and Sandra.  Thank you David for providing all of us with tickets.  We spent Thursday and part of Friday in Cinci with my side of the fam. and then back to Lexington to celebrate with M's parents.  It was a crazy few days of travel (Avery got her 5th ear infection), but well worth it in order to spend time with our loved ones.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

*Anyone else guilty of not decorating for Christmas yet?  Whoops.  Hoping to remedy the situation tomorrow.

What's a trip to Lexington without pizza at Joe B's?




We honestly all wore polka dots on accident.


Hunger Games