Brent's 33rd Birthday!

We celebrated Brent's birthday last week. He turned the big 33 on Thursday the 24th. He loves the fact that I am almost 3 years old than he is, and he and his brother rub it in when they get the chance! I just tell him that whatever he does to me on my birthday, then I have almost 3 years to plan my revenge! Nah, he's always been very loving and thoughtful on my birthdays...

We had dinner at Ruby Tuesday...just so happened that we had a BOGO coupon...you know I love a coupon! We really LOVE their salad bar! It was fun...Harry of course, must announce himself to any public place that we go...with his HIGH PITCHED, EAR PIERCING scream. We are kind of use to it, but I have witnessed him scaring the heck out of some people with his outbursts! There is no warning...just NOISE! It's kind of funny. We can always tell who has children and who doesn't by the reactions we get. Mostly laughs and giggles at what we are going through.




Brent enjoyed his cards and opening his gift. He doesn't like to be the center of attention and may be embarrassed that I am dedicating a blog to his birthday, but he will take it in stride. He is such a humble person and I love that about him. Much different than myself and I try and learn from his example.

We had birthday cake at home that Henry and I made and decorated. We decided that since our daddy is such an awesome daddy that we we would make him our own superhero birthday cake. SuperDaddy! At first Henry wanted to do "Batdaddy", but we decided that black icing might not taste too good. So, we decided to do SuperDaddy! After all, superman could fly!



blowing out candles!!

The boys really enjoyed the fruits of our labor...well the dessert of our labor! Harry just about finished his cake and ice cream and Henry preferred to eat the icing from the cake using a candle as a utensil.

It always fun to celebrate birthdays! We don't get to take an entire day to honor someone that we love and cherish very often. I want our birthdays to be memorable because of the time we spend together on those days, the little things we do to make it special and because for that one day of the year, the birthday honoree gets to be the center of attention! We love you Brent and Happy Birthday!

Apple Picking

We made our first visit of the season to an area apple orchard...Minnesota Harvest. We woke to a cool Saturday morning and our neighborhood decided to head out apple picking. It was a great orchard, filled with tons of apples trees and an abundance of beautiful horses! You could even go on trail rides through the orchards ...seems like a lot of fun!

A very loud green tractor pulled our wagon out to the orchard...the kids loved that. We would stop at one area and pick from those types of trees and then the wagon would come back and get us and we'd head to another kind of apple trees. The kids couldn't pick the apples fast enough. Its so much fun to see their eyes light up when they see a tree just dripping in apples! I remember instances like that as a child...thinking, 'this is it...I've found the greatest thing ever!'

I think we got three different kinds of apples that day. McIntosh, Haralson and I can't seem to remember the third! I made an amazing apple pecan pie with the haralson apples and have enough to make an apple crisp this weekend. YUMMY!!

After the wagon ride and apple picking, we headed to the petting zoo and had a funny time in there. Henry and Harry aren't timid at all when it comes to most animals and loved being that close to the goats, mini horses, a cow and even a donkey. There were some llamas also, but they seemed to shy away this day.

Bought some awesome local honey and headed home for a bbq with the neighbors. It was a really fun day and we made some great memories...I hope its just our first trip of the season. I LOVE the fall!

Interesting Night...

Well, a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday night, Brent and I were just hanging out together after the boys were in bed. All of a sudden, we heard this scared, high pitched scream/cry from upstairs. We knew that it was Henry and thought he must have woken from a nightmare. He was already making his way down the stairs when I got to him. I asked him what was wrong and he could hardly answer me because he was so upset. Then he told me..."I swallowed a coin"..."you what?", I said!!! Again, he told me he swallowed a coin...( I love that he calls money coins...)

Brent and I weren't sure if he really did swallow a coin,or if he did indeed dream that he swallowed a coin. So, we began to ask him questions...are you sure? can you breathe? do you remember what the coin looked like? where did you get the coin? He could answer all of the questions without hestitation, so I knew that he was certain he did swallow one. He said he had his wallet in his bed and was playing with the coins... so I checked...sure enough, there it was.

I immediately was scared silly and so thankful that the coin didn't get stuck in his throat and we not know it...he had been in his bed for a while and we thought he was fast asleep! Thank you GOD for keeping him safe! I have to admit, I thought he was past doing something like that, but I guess I was wrong... he said "I wanted to see what it tasted like.."

So, off to the ER we went. We got there aroumd 9:30pm and sat in the waiting room for about 45 minutes (not too bad). As we checked in, he told the receptionist that he "swallowed a diamond!" He had calmed down by this point..we all had... and was quite talkative and excited to be receiving so much attention! We pulled out examples of coins to see which he swallowed. He pointed to the nickel and called it a freckle...so cute.

We were called back and taken to triage and he cooperated very well. Finally, the doctor came in...he was the 10th person we saw so far (one reason healthcare is so expensive???) and told us we needed an xray to see where the coin was in Henry's body. Henry was so brave! Brent went with him, but still had to stand outside the door. He didn't seem to be scared at all!

The xray came back and it was clear that the freckle...I mean nickel, was already in his bowel!! So, we were ok to go home and to check for the coin to pass. Needless to say, this was not fun. It would not be 'fun' in any circumstance, but during a pregnancy it seems to have another level of ....yak, barf, earl, to go with it!

Five days passed and each day an opportunity to check to see if the coin had passed...which it had not! So, we trecked back to the doctor and had another xray done to see where this infamous coin was! Luckily, we had just missed it....it was long gone!

So, this is one that we'll tell Henry's wife one day. Still when I think about what could've happened, I get chills. I am so thankful that he is ok and that it scared him enough that I don't think he'll be tasting money again. However, we are taking even more precaution to make sure nothing like this happens again. It was pretty scary. I will say though, that both of our families had experiences like this with my brother and brent's sister and they both survived as well. I think it helped to keep us somewhat calm to know that they had done the same thing.

Pretty cool x-ray, huh?