Saying Goodbye to Grampy

On Febuary 17th, God gracefully called our Grampy back to be with him. His poor body had been suffering for so long and while we were glad that God had mercy on him and ended his suffering, we will all miss him so much. For my entire life, there has always been Grammy and Grampy, they are a unit, always together, so it is gonna take some getting used to that it's just Grammy, now, but we sure still need our Grammy. She is the best! and I'm sure we don't tell her nearly enough. She is an awesome grandma. A truly amazing woman. Sadly, it is often tragedies that brings families together and this was no exception. It was the first time ever that my Grammy had all 16 of her grandchildren together. The service was beautiful. It was neat to see everybody, despite the cirscumstances. We enjoyed spending time with everyone. The girls were really going through Pan withdrawls since he moved so it was so great to see him. We were planning on spending that weekend here in Fort Worth with the Pepper's, so we just had to change our plans to be there instead.

All 16 cousins together

Also, it was the weekend before Mardi Gras, so to help get the all day long car crazies out of the girls before the funeral, we decided to let them enjoy some of the Mardi Gras festivities. We had an awesome place to stay for the Thibodaux parades....thanks Monica Burch. I couldn't believe I never thought of taking the girls to Mardi Gras before. They had such a great time. They are still talking about it. Definitely needs to be an annual thing.



Thanks Maddi for sharing your wagon float with the girls and Ava



This was what Maisy thought about the parades. She slept through both parades on Monica's bed. The windows and door was open and the noise didn't bother her one bit. Perhaps it in no way compares the the squeals and shrieks of her too older sisters.

Kegan was so glad to finally get to spend some time with Ava

Throw me somethin Mista!!!

the kids are bead and trinket magnets

passed out cold from all the fun. Still sporting the beads.

Some Silly, Pretty, Girls

So this January has been about as odd as our lingering and long, hot summer. We have had so many days that feel like Spring, that Kegan and Truly have actually convinced their Dad to let them swim in their pool a couple of days....well, actually one only and the other two days, they just did it themselves. Little mischief makers actually flipped the 6ft heavy plastic pool over themselves and started filling it from the hose. 

These were the start of Maisy's little chubby thighs before Christmas....they are much chubbier now

Sweet baby happiness

My big girl in her new duds from Nana

Showing her baby sister all the animals

sunny day silliness

Sunny day smiles

and sunny day buisiness

Good thing this rocker was advertized as a grow with me to toddler chair. I think Kegan is testing its capabilities.

My hang out gang on my lazy mornings which come sometimes because of this....

while trying to nap before a night shift, I was woken up by this sweet thing trying to put her babies to sleep in my bedroom

and I come home in the morning to find this....already passed out from an exhausting morning

then up for the challenge of introducing cereal....went well

big sister is proud, but enjoys her pizza much more than that yucky cereal

we don't get to eat out anymore because of this....

and this......

and this....she kept everyone around us cracked up

notice who is the only one asleep?????

I swear I have no idea where these moves come from....maybe her sister?

Christmas Vacation, Two Sick Kids, One ER Visit, in Four Days

So if you guys didn't think we were crazy enough for having 3 kids in 4 years, well our crazy Christmas vacation may just convince you. I had four days in a row off from work and we thought that we should visit family since there was no way they would all come our way. Our burden for being the ones that left town and moved away I suppose. The craziness started with Truly being sick with the crud for a couple of weeks. It fianlly got real bad the Wednesday before Christmas so I took her in and took Maisy along since she started with a little cough that morning. The doctor said she might have RSV and gave us some antibiotics and some steroids just in case it wasn't and advised us to take our nebulizer on our trip. Maisy was fine that day. Friday morning before I left for work, Maisy's cough was becoming highly suspicious, but we had already arranged for Santa to pass in Raceland, so we couldn't mess that up this late notice. After all Christmas Eve was the next day. I worked til 5 and Madison spent all day packing the car. When I got off of work, we stopped to eat dinner then loaded up for our long drive to Raceland. We were supposed to switch off, but Madison made the 8hr drive by himself. The girls slept most of the way. Truly had a few crying bouts, but nothing too bad. We arrived in Raceland at 1:30am. We spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Raceland and headed 2.5hrs to Monticello Christmas evening. All this time, Truly still had a nasty cough and Maisy was getting worse. We started nebulizer treatments that night on Maisy. By Monday, Maisy was pretty much just sleeping and crying. That evening, I only had one albuterol dose left and she was working pretty hard to breathe. Kiley, Madison's neice who is a family nurse practitioner, and I decided it was time to go to the ER. So we sent Kegan to Aunt Kathleen's, put Truly to bed and we headed to the ER in Brookhaven, MS. They confirmed Maisy had RSV and gave her a breathing treatment there and they sent us home with enough albuterol to make the trip home the following day. Our 7hr trip home took us 10.5hours with very tired and sick girls. The ER called us to let us know that Maisy's chest xray from the previous night looked like pneumonia. They advised us to head to the nearest ER if she had any signs of difficulty breathing. Maisy held on just fine. We took her into our doctor the next morning and she had bilateral ear infections to add to it. Even with the sick kids, it still was a great visit. It was wonderful to see all the great-grandparents and cousins.

Truly feeling pretty pitiful before the trip

But as you can see, she was better with cousins there

Gotta love that monkey hat with the new shirt from Nanny Jennifer!



Christmas Eve at Grammy's and cousin Hannah is taking care of the little ones....they adore her!



The day after Christmas in Monticello, we got to spend time with Grandma. She is an amazing woman. We love our Grandma.



Truly showing the boys her new Leappad Santa brought her.

Poor Maisy not too happy that day.

But this is the next day when we stopped for lunch on our way home. Funny how they can still be so sweet when they are so sick?

mobile nebulizer treatments. So glad our car has a regular outlet that we could plug it in to.

Chesapeke Lights

Chesapeke, with all of their natural gas drilling way to close to homes and neighborhoods which often makes me question the health and safety of it, makes all those feelings disappear when you get to see their awesome display of Christmas lights. The girls love it. We walked it three different times and would have done it every night if it were up to Kegan 

Kegan had me take a picture by every color tree, but this one, the pink one, was her favorite! 

The girls would run up to each tree and make us all run around them. 

This tree was one of the most inpressive. It was huge! 

This is Truly running around. I think Kegan fell.

Later that week for my birthday we went to the mall for some face time with Santa and to get Maisy some much needed bling. Truly was all about Santa until it came time to get in his lap. She was having none of it, so Maisy and Kegan sat with him. Oh, well.

Maisy and her blingy little daisies. She hardly cried at all. She is such a good baby.

Then we finally finished decorating the christmas tree. Only a handful of broken ornaments, so a great success.

Madison figured why stress over bath time, we should just have the girls bathe themselves.....that is safe right?

Truly makes sure Maisy's feet are all clean. I think we may need a bigger tub for this.

Kegan and Truly's birthday party

We celebrated Kegan and Truly's birthdays the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It was a lot of fun because of the family from Raceland we had in town....Nana and Pawpa, Aunt Nikki and her crew. We also had the France clan and lots of friends from both Mommy and Daddy's work and friends from school. It was a great turnout despite the frigid windy conditions. Nana insisted the girls have a jumphouse (with a slide), so we had it tied down to the house and a few trees and it was great. The kids didn't seem to mind that it was so cold, the adults however would come inside to warm up periodically.



Silly birthday girl in her birthday suit....well in a diaper, but that is close right?

singin "Happy Birthday" to the sweet bday girls

Truly and Nick coming down the slide (special thanks to cousin Hannah for getting the kids all tossed up to the slide....it was kinda hard to get up there) 

Maisy says "hey whatcha got?" 

 Even though we requested no gifts, would you believe people still sent them:) Thanks so much to everyone who did. The girls loved opening gifts.....just sorry we did it after everyone left. Couldn't get the party-goers out of the jumphouse.

A monkey hat with a monkey doll and a princess tiara and a princess doll! perfect!


 

 Truy very interested in Kegan's Leapster, I guess that is how Santa knew to get her a LeapPad

Poor Daddy, he is just trying to get the baby to sleep

Pan and Pawpa decided while watching the LSU game that this is the new "honey badger"

 The next day when I returned after dropping Nana and Pawpa off at the airport this is what I found when I got home. Two sleepy girls watching Bambi.

Every blog entry should end with some sweet happiness....it is only right