Update on Grandpa

Thank you for all the prayers! The Lord is working on Grandpa, I am sure of it! He is slowly recovering from the stroke, but it is a long, painful process.

For those who don't know, he belongs to the Church of the Firstborn and they do not believe in medical intervention. This has made the process very difficult without the aid of medicine. Please continue to pray that he will improve and be able to function on his own. At the moment, there are always two people staying with him to help. He isn't able to talk or walk, but can shake his head yes and no. He is progressing. One of our cousins is an occupational therapist and she has been able to work with him some and it's helped immensely. He really seems to enjoy Cayson. Tonight, he was shaking Cayson's hand and making faces at him. He is getting stronger and seems to be getting more feeling on his right side. We appreciate all the prayers and support.

Happy First Birthday, Cayson!!!!

Our baby boy turned the big one today. *tear* I can't believe he's becoming a little boy and isn't a baby anymore. He opened his presents from us this morning... he's still not too interested in the whole opening presents thing.

Here he is riding his Tonka Truck from Nana & Papa
We went to the Oklahoma City Zoo this morning. The first thing we saw was swans when we first walked in. Cayson was fascinated by them. They were swimming around and squawking an he thought it was so interesting.
This is in front of their "Turner Falls" replica in the Oklahoma Trails exhibit.The alligators!In front of the Ape Escape exhibit Cayson enjoyed the gorillas...

We did a little shopping after the zoo and then came home. We ran out to my grandparents' for a visit. I think Cayson had a super birthday between his party and his day today.

Vroom, vroom!

Great-Grandpa Goldmann and his friend, Alvina, bought Cayson a Radio Flyer car. He loves it! Thought I'd share some pics from Saturday evening.

8 lbs 6.4 oz

On year ago...

The Big First Birthday Party

Whew! The big party is over! We're all a bit tired... well, Cayson's not all that tired since he had cake... he's more hyper than tired! Lots and lots more pictures to come.... my sister took all the pictures which was wonderful because I didn't have to worry about catching every moment on film. Thanks Rebecca!!!!

My Heart is Heavy

We had a terrible thing happen to our grandpa (my mom's dad) today. He suffered a stroke. He is not doing very well so I am asking for prayers. Please pray for a miracle - that he can recover. Also pray for the family and for wisdom dealing with the situation. There is much more, but I'll leave it at this for now. Please pray!!!!

Sitting pretty... errr... handsome

Crazy Sunday!!!

Wow! Today was sooo crazy! Okay, we just had one HUGE crazy event. Most of the day was normal - church, lunch, laundry, the usual. Dusty and Dad worked on installing our new screen door. It was a bigger project than they expected... it took about 6 hours but they did have an interruption. It looks great!!! I'll have to try to take a picture to post. I know Cayson will love being able to see out better since this one is all glass. Thanks Dusty & Dad!!! I know it was a pain to install.

After I put Cayson down for bed around 7 pm, I heard someone yelling "House fire!" I run out to make sure it's not my parents' house and smoke was billowing out of a house 3 doors down.... not the band 3 doors down... more like 3 houses down. I run in to grab my camera, of course, and Dusty calls 911. The lady who lived there got out with her three dogs, but everything in the house will probably be gone. It makes you really think about what's important in this world... not material things, but where we'll spend eternity.

Here are the pictures I took... the newspaper editor asked me to e-mail them to the paper so they may be in Tuesday's edition.

The crazy firemen - Robbie Penner and Chuck Meyer- fighting the fire without their gear!

The smokeDad sitting with the lady and her 3 dogs! You can still see smoke in the background coming from her house.I love the colors of this picture.

Here's what I saw when I ran out of the house... my camera was accidentally on video so it started shooting a video instead of pics. Kind of neat though.

A side note, Cayson slept through EVERYTHING! Dad was banging on the door frame with a hammer, we had sirens everywhere, and fire trucks with their lights parked on our street for hours and not a peep out of Cayson. What a great kid!

Saturday

I did a lot of running around and working on little things for Cayson's birthday party - it's less than a week away! So crazy! Dusty worked at the hardware store too. Oh, and imagine my joy when I discovered our son splishing and splashing in the toilet water. Oh, yeah. Time to start closing the toilet lid and the bathroom door.

We went to Rader Park for a picnic dinner and to let Cayson "play." We hadn't taken him out there before so we wanted to try out their big toy! I took a lot of pictures!

He loved the slide! Can you tell?

He's clapping in glee.

Friday

I got to work in my yard on Friday!!!! Thank you, Mom, for keeping Cayson. I planted flowers and actually planted a garden! First time that I've gone as far as planting a garden, kind of, sort of, if you count peppers, herbs, & pumpkins a garden. I've had Dusty till up a plot several years, but never planted anything. Oops! I had good intentions. Anyway, I was able to go to the nursery and buy some flowers and get everything planted. I need quite a few more plants to get everything done, but at least my yard isn't so winter dreary! Hopefully, I'll get some pictures this week to post.

Friday evening, we went to eat some bbq at the Bar-B-Que Shed and then headed to the Burcham Carnival (local elementary school carnival). The school was so jam packed with people! It was crazy. We didn't play any games, just walked around and visited some. We bought a few cookies to support the cause and then took little boy home for some Z's. Here are a couple of pics....

Kaitlyn Settles & Rylan Smith - always the best of friends Us! (yeah, my make-up was terrible. I look like a clown!)

A Series of Short... er Long Posts

We had a happening weekend so I decided to post a series of short posts except they will probably be long since I have a lot of pictures and such. I think I might need to write out some notes to keep everything straight! Oh, and I guess you probably won't read this until you've read all the previous posts... unless you are like me and read things backwards... well, not backwards exactly, but I do like to read my magazines back to front first and then front to back to make sure I didn't miss anything. Guess it's a firstborn quirk.

Too Cool For School

"Yes, ladies. I'm single."

C-town time

We took Cayson to Carnegie yesterday to visit his cousins, Korbyn & Kaci, his Aunt Kim, Uncle Greg, Nana, and Papa. Oh, he had so much fun. He loved walking/crawling everywhere, playing with everyone, and playing outside.

Gary and Louise made us a delicious dinner of grilled chicken & potatoes, corn on the cob, and salad. It was sooooo wonderful! Thank you, guys!

I had my camera set by the door to take with me, but walked out without it! I was so mad at myself. So, no pictures of the fun. :(

83 Years Old!

That's right! My grandpa turned 83 on Monday! I can only hope that I will be as active and healthy as him when I'm 80.

Last night we celebrated his birthday with a spaghetti dinner -his favorite. Of course I thought I should share a few pictures!

Cayson loved the noodles

Grandpa opening his gifts

We let Cayson play with his toy in the driveway and he loved it. He thought he was big stuff pushing it around outside.

Cayson also enjoyed an exciting ride on the spinning office chair. He just reclined and grinned the whole time.

Hope everyone is having a great week. It's been soooo windy here the past couple of days. It's been a little miserable to go outside. This afternoon we are heading down to Carnegie to visit Dusty's family.