Chi-Town!

Last Tuesday we headed north for our first family vacation! We decided to go to Chicago and see the big city and visit with my Uncle who lives in Aurora about an hour train ride away. Jaxxi did so good on the 15 hour trip there and the 15 hour trip back! I would have to say she did better than her daddy that's for sure! :)

We stopped at bass pro on the way there, She loved looking at the fish!

This is the sky deck at the Willis tower the tallest building in the western hemisphere! this is 103 stories high!

Jaxxi loved the tall buildings! She didn't seemed scared at all about this. It's a mind trick!

Here it is from the outside!

Chicago art institute

This is the bean it was something I really wanted to see and it was a sight!

our reflection

Family pic!

Jaxxi wanted those birds so bad! She wanted every pigeon we seen also!

All three of us in front of lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline in the background!

Dark pic but that's us up in the John Hancock building. You can see three states up there!

There was a lot of this going on in the train!

On Saturday we were all pretty tired so we decided to stay around Aurora and they had  a little free zoo you can go through and Jaxxi really liked the turtles!

Shane and I in front of Union Station

the skyline from a speed boat tour

the last day we spent our time on the navy pier. It was a lot of fun and we got to see the boat and air show! It's pretty awesome to see the blue angels fly so close!

We had a great time and are so thankful for Curtis and David to show us around and let us have a free place to stay! I think we are vacationed out until next year! :)

Can Not Wait!!

We leave for vacation next week!!! We haven't went on real vacation since 2007! It's going to be our first family vacation also so I hope we get to make lots of fun memories! We are headed north to Chicago! One major plus is the weather. in Oklahoma we have been dealing with 100+ temps so the mid 80's to high 70's will be sooooo nice! Has anyone been, and have some must see places we should go? The biggest thing is Jaxxi riding in the car for 12 hours or so praying it goes as smooth as it can with a toddler, any traveling tips with a small child are welcome also .:)

hopefully next week I'll have some pics to share!

Court

We had our Good Cause hearing yesterday, that is the hearing were they make sure there is no objection from any party for us to move forward with the adoption process. My biggest worry and stress was the tribe. We were only in court for a few minutes and everything went really smoothly, thankfully! I had a little anxiety about it. Our worker is thinking the adoption could be completely done in 3-4 months! Tomorrow will be exactly one year since we brought her home to live with us. Seems impossible it's been that long, and at the same time it's hard to remember life without her. There are times when it's just plain hard to be mom, but when she wraps her arms around me so tight and gives me a great big kiss all that pretty much vanishes. We feel truly blessed to call this little girls ours!

I seen this saying going through some things on Etsy
"I didn't give you the gift of life... but the gift of life gave me you"

I hope that as we embark on this life with her that she will always know that to us she is our own. I'm slightly nervous about all the emotions we will have as she grows, but we have a great support and I know we will all get through it!

Some of the 4th

We had a real low key 4th my Uncle was down from Chicago so mom made some fried chicken and then we headed to Keifer to watch the fireworks. They have a great show every year. Then Jaxxi and I stayed at Kass and Robbys, so Shane could meet us there in the morning. We all headed back to Beggs for a cookout the next evening. We were going to go to the Sapulpa firework show but the kids decided they wanted to have there own show. So we all set out in lawn chairs ate some watermelon and watch money literally blow up! :)





The whole crew at Keifer Fireworks on July 3rd!





We rode horses on July 4th... I haven't been on a horse in years but it was a lot of fun and we had nice little breeze.



This is what Sweets did most of the day. She also figured out that she could lead him around. I told Shane I think we bought an over sized dog! Ha

Jaxxi update

I haven't updated about Jaxxi for a while and since this is where I keep all this stuff I wanted to make sure I get all of this down. Jaxxi started walking at just over 16 months old. We went to OU for orthopedics and she was completely fine for now, we go back in 7 months for more monitoring. she has said two real words, Horsey, and Huckie. She still won't say Mommy and Daddy to either of us, so we know where we rank! ha! She has all of her top teeth I think and now she's working on the bottom ones. I haven't slept much in over a month. Oh well it's worth it, just wished she would start feeling better.

The biggest and best update is that on June 25th exactly 11 months from when she was placed in our home, the birth parents relinquished rights! I was in tears when they told us they wanted us to adopt her and take care of her. I can't explain what a relief it was when that was finally over with! Now we have to wait for a hearing to move her case from the foster care side to the adoption side, and have to make sure the tribe that Jaxxi was born into will let a member from another tribe adopt her. Our worker doesn't think there will be an issue with that, but it is another hurdler on this road. So Hopefully by 2013 she will officially be ours forever and ever!

First Love...

Since Jaxxi was nine months old she expressed an interest in horses. So we have encouraged her by letting her be around them and you seen on previous post we have her in a round up club even though she's only 16 months old. Anyways her first real word is horsey so I think the child is in love. :) My in-laws were looking into buying a pony for the grand kids and I went to pick it up on Sunday. Well while we were there looking at the horse they had picked out. I spotted a cute little horse I couldn't resist. He was so sweet and calm even in the feeding frenzy going on around him. So I decided to get it for Jaxxi. We messed with both ponies all day Sunday and it's amazing what one day of attention will do to help with horses.

Here's Dukes or Duke haven't decided yet. lol!

This is Scoot, He's got some spunk!

Here's sweets on Dukes for the first time!

We were sitting out around Pa's arena that we had been sitting at for two days and I looked up and see this on a tire! I have never seen anyone spell Jaxxon like we do. I think He could have been saying hi:) 

Our crazy week...

One Wednesday morning I got a call from my mother in law that Shane was in the ER with severe abdominal pain, They gave him some pain meds, and a GI Cocktail and he was sent home. So they made and Appointment with our Primary Care doctor the same day. He ordered a CT scan of his chest and ultra sound for the following Wednesday, so they traveled back to Woodward in the hopes of that Shane would start feeling better and could go to work as scheduled the next day. As the day went on it was clear that Shane was not going to get better. So they made another trip to the ER that evening, they did the CT scan and the Ultra sound both came back normal so they gave him more meds and sent him home. At 3:30 Thursday morning he again was in so much pain they went back to the ER, more of the same pain meds and the scheduled an Hida scan for the following morning but they didn't want him taking pain meds for 10 hours and Shane was barely making it 2 hours, so we knew that wasn't going to work. So we made the decision to bring him to OKC to see if there was anything they could do. They were convinced it was Gastritis and again doped him up and sent us home. Shane slept all night, then woke Friday morning around 10:30 and was in the worst pain he had been in. So we loaded up and headed to Saint Johns in Tulsa.

I was in tears at the ER begging them not to send us home b/c we didn't know how to manage the pain, and obviously something was wrong. By a miracle they decided to admit us. So we were in the hospital for 4 days and they did another CT scan, Hida scan, and a scope of upper GI everything came back completely normal... our hearts sank. So we went back to our Primary on Tuesday afternoon, and he order two more test one called a Meckel Diveticulum (sp?) and one for Ceilac disease. The Meckel scan came back normal still waiting on the Celiac dieseas. So it's day 9 Shane is still in pain we still have no answers! He will go Tuesday to see another specialist and hopefully this will be the doctor to figure out this mystery!