My Ava is turning 3 and Fun Painting!

My baby, Ava girl, is turning 3 in a couple weeks. She is very excited! I haven't been doing hardly any stamping at all, but I can't forget about our little girl. I've actually had these in the works for quite a while, but then things came up and here it is just a little over a week before her party and I'm just now getting them finished! Oh well....it's the thought that counts right. I don't know if you remember my post from "It's in the Bag Challenge for PTI". Well, I made Ava a birthday bag with ice cream cones on it, so the invite goes with her birthday bag! Ava loves ice cream and would eat it everyday if I let her!

On Sunday, after we returned from a surprise visit to the ER on Saturday for a fever, Daddy and Ethan were hard at work out in the barn making Mommy a picture frame. I got home from picking up Ava from my Mom's house and Ethan was hiding his surprise from me, but then he wanted to come inside and get it painted, a dark blue! Here are some pics of Ethan having a good time painting my new picture frame. He is so proud of it!

Ethan is doing well. There is no change in anything and we are so thankful for that. He's had a cold and he got a fever on Sat night that ended us up in the ER, but luckily it was just viral so we didn't have to be admitted. He still has a lingering cough, but other than that he is doing great. We got to take him to see some bull riding on Friday and he was in his glory. They even let Ethan ride a bull after the show. It was very neat to see. Here is Ethan on the bull with Rob Smets, a 5 time world champion bull rider! Thanks once again for all the nice comments and cards that I have been receiving. It's so nice knowing there are people from all over the world praying for our Ethan.

Love my pictures!

So it's pretty early for me to be up, but I got this e-mail message from a stamping friend that I only know through her blog, but ran into her once at the hospital in St. Louis.....it was pretty funny because I ran into her on the elevator and I said, "Aren't you Carol?" That is how we met. Carol tagged me on her blog and I'm sitting on the couch, blogging, just waiting on my kiddos to wake up for the day. I'm fighting a sinus infection that I finally gave into and went to the walk-in clinic for last night. My headache today is a little less intense, but still lingering. Hopefully it will clear up by tonight thought. We are heading to yet another Bull Riding event. The kids are excited.

So picking a picture from my "stash" of pictures is hard, but the directions were

•Open your photo folder on your computer

•Open the 6th folder of photos

•Select the 6th picture

•Post the picture on your blog with a description

•Invite six friends to join the challenge

•Link your six friends to your blog post

(I quit at #4.....but if you read this and want to try it yourself, please send me a link.)

People that know me the best know that I take more pictures than the average person so finding a picture isn't hard for me. I just looked and I have over 31,000 pictures in my Pictures folder!The ironic thing is that the 6th folder in my photos folder is from Ethan's Make-A-Wish last September. These aren't pictures that I shot, but from the photographer that came to our house again on Monday to take our family photos. She is such a good photographer and I can't wait to see what she captured of our family and kiddos. Check out some of her work here.

Well, it's now a little after 7:00 so my day is about to begin. The kids will be waking up soon and we'll get to cuddle on the couch for a bit and watch cartoons....that is one of my favorite parts of my day. Thanks for stopping by and once again, thanks so much to all of you for stopping by and leaving a note to let me know that you are thinking about and praying for our son. Thanks Carol....this was fun and got my mind off things!

A big hello from our "Little Ass"!

I wanted to update everyone that has been sending prayers and well wishes our way. Ethan is still doing great.....THANK GOD! We see no signs or symptoms and we are so thankful for that. We've really been having a lot of fun, fitting all sorts of things into our days. Ethan got his new horse, Questions, on Thursday when he got home from school. Ethan received his horse, Sonador, last Sept from Make-a-wish, but he died the Monday before Christmas and we promised we would get Ethan a new horse. It just so happened that my uncle out in Colorado went to the vet that very day and they were getting ready to retire their daughter's horse that was a show horse and did all sorts of English riding and jumping. The horse's name is Questions because of the marking on her nose. My Dad and a couple other guys drove 15 hours to pick up Questions last week and arrived home with her on Wed night around 12:30. The first thing I thought of when I saw her was "All our Questions have been answered!"

Friday we just hung out around our house and put together a new jungle gym....a little early for my Ava girl's birthday coming up. Then on Sat we went on a horse back ride. That was fun. Ethan had a great time. We even got to go to a friends house on Sat to play Wii and Ethan loved it. Sunday though was a real highlight! My uncle got us a cart to put on our minature burrow. It is sooo cute. My husband and my dad hooked it up yesterday. The harness and cart didn't come with any instructions, so it was quite a site watching my dad and my husband figure it all out. I'm an engineer, my husband is an engineer and my dad is too, so the joke was "How many engineers does it take to hook a cart up to a little ass?" It was really funny.

Here's a couple pictures of our new horse and cart. I have a funny story to share from Ethan. On Sat while we were horse back riding, Ethan was asking his Daddy all sorts of questions about how horses grow so fast and how big they get. My husband told him that maybe sometime we could get Dusty bred so she could have a little baby. That was about all that was said and when we got back home and I was taking Ethan inside for lunch, he asked me, " Mommy, after lunch can we take some bread out for Dusty so she can have babies?" He was quite serious about the whole thing!

Thanks so much for all the thoughtful cards, notes, and prayers. I appreciate each and everyone of them. I may be taking a break from stamping, but we are still living life to the fullest around here. Hope you enjoy my new pictures as much as I do.

Prayer Request

As some of you know that follow my blog our son, Ethan, has cancer and he relapsed last August. I am saddened to say that Ethan's cancer has progressed and we did not receive a very good report from his Doctor. He is still feeling great and you can't see any signs of this physically, but we don't know what the future holds. So I will be taking a "break" from my stamping blog. I'm sure all of you understand that I'm needed elsewhere right now! Thanks to all of you that check in and for all your kind words. This will definitely be the hardest thing I've ever had to go through in my life. So go hug your kiddos and live each day to the fullest! Please keep my Ethan and our family in your prayers! GOD BLESS!

Hospital oh Hospital!

So....I'm sure by my title you can tell where we are at. So, I won't be getting to play along with this Saturday's sketch. I did bring along my supplies to work on my little girls birthday invites, so I have those designed...I just need my Mom to bring me more supplies from home so I can work on them. They turned out really cute! She likes them too so that is important!

Hope all of you have a wonderful weekend. We are probably going to be in the hospital most of the weekend. Ethan is feeling well though and is up playing mouse trap. He hasn't had a fever since last night. Thanks for stopping by.....one of these days life will slow down and I'll get back to stamping and scrapbooking!