Wrapping Up June.

Wow. What a month this has been. Full of highs and lows. The highs have included:

-A visit to my Granny's house in south Alabama. I all 88 years of her, and I love her house. It is the only house she has lived in since I was born and holds tons of good memories for me. I had always hoped she would live to know my children and that they too would be able to experience "Granny's house." Thankfully, that has happened. My granny is tough. She's going to be around for a long time!Great Granny Merle
Playing croquet in Granny's yard with the same croquet set I played with as a kid. On a "walk" down my Granny's dirt road. Looks like they were having fun, yes? (I of course was supressing throw-up on Granny's couch).

-Play-time with cousins at David's Family Decoration. See this post for an explanation on what Decoration is for those of you who may not know.


-A recent vist from one of my roommates from college, Sara, and her three children. I only threw up a couple of times while she was here, as opposed to throwing up a couple times a day before her visit. We were able to visit with a couple other college roomies and friends (Hi Laura and Jenny!) and went to lunch without our kids (what a treat! Thank you David!), went swimming, let the kiddies play together, and had a Scentsy party for products that my friend Jenny sells. It wound up only being the four of us at the party, but hey, it was fun!Ethan and Bliss are only two weeks apart.
Sara Katherine and Zade are only eight days apart. I swear we did not plan that. Sara just had her third, a girl, a few months ago. I'm behind this time!
Ethan had to go to sleep with Ethan and Zade every night then we would move him to his own bed after everyone was asleep.
Such a cute picture. They decided they wanted to watch TV and eat supper at the same time. Look at all those cute little butts.

I loved having Sara here. She took charge and because her kids are much earlier risers than mine, she'd usually have breakfast done by the time I got out of bed! I did make homeade buttermilk waffles one morning, but she was on breakfast duty the rest of the time. Having her around made me want to do more and you know, get out of bed before 11am. Laura and her kids came over one morning and everyone played and Laura and Sara made lunch for all the kids while I layed like a slug on the couch. We went swimming with Jenny Sue and her family one afternoon and it was SO much fun. We had the best of intentions to get a picture with all our kids, but after three hours in the pool, yeah, that didn't happen. We all had a good time. I was counting up the number of children that my college friends and I have between us, and of our little group we have 14 kids (I think),(a few of which are on their way). We've come a long way from the Yellow House for sure!

-David's parents visiting.David's mom has her vacation this week, so they came and stayed with us for a few days and treated us to dinner at the Olive Garden, a picnic at a covered bridge up near DeSoto Caverns, an afternoon at DeSoto Caverns, and a morning at the Montgomery Zoo. My father in law mowed ALL of our grass (a good 7 hour job in this 100 degree heat!) and my mother in law did my laundry, swept and mopped my floor, bathed my children, and helped me get my house in order after a month hiatus from all household responsiblities. We really enjoyed their visit.The Kymulga Covered Bridge and Grist Mill. Feeding the ducks.Picnicing with Paw Paw and Granny.Inside the cave. Ethan really wasn't as scared as he looked!


Mini-golf outside the cavern. I hope Ethan and Sara Katherine look back and realize one day that their dad was the patient one and without him, they would probably never have half the experiences they do!

-One night last week we went to my friend Laura's house and ate supper with them. Then our two families washed all our vehicles and then we went swimming in their pool after all the work was done. It was such a fun night. I love having my friends around me, and I know I will be sad and it will be a major adjustment for me when I have to make new friends after we move in the fall. :( This my friend Laura's youngest son, Matthew, and Sara Katherine. They are in nursery together at church. They are the only two in nursery at church. The nursery leader told me Sunday that Sara Katherine needed to work on keeping her dress down (she has a habit of raising it above her head) because Matthew was a boy and didn't need to see her underwear. She would have really died if she knew that they were skinny dipping together this night and ran around together in their underwear the rest of the night!

Matthew spent more time in the bucket than out of it!


Now for the lows:

-My dad is in the hospital, again. He hasn't been well since being released two weeks ago after his first heart catheterization. His cardiologist put him on Plavix to thin his blood and on a beta-blocker to keep his blood pressure low after clearing his last blockage and putting in that fourth stint. The medication just did NOT agree with him and he ended up having to go see his gastrointernologist since he's been released to try to give him something to deal with the naseau and how badly the blood thinner has upset his stomach. The cardiologist chalked it up to him just adjusting to his medicine. We saw him Saturday and he just did not look good. Sunday he made it through Sacrament at church and had to leave. He started having chest pains Sunday afternoon so he went to the E.R. in Montgomery and they admitted him. His cardiologist is on vacation, AGAIN, but one of the other cardiologists in the group is going to do another heart cath tomorrow to try to figure out what's going on. To look for more blockages, to see if his new stint has collapsed, etc. But he is not well. They took him off the Plavix and switched him to another blood thinner that seems to be agreeing with him more, so that's a blessing. He's had a couple bad spells since he's been in the hospital, one where they had to give him nitroglycerin after more chest pains, and another when after he ate lunch today he said it felt like somebody was stabbing him with butcher knives in his stomach. 4ccs of morphine and 2 ccs of Zofran and 30 minutes later, he was feeling better. When David and I went to see him yesterday in the hospital, I cried and cried. I've never seen my dad look so bad, not even through the first heart attack and chemo. He looked better today and was more lucid than yesterday but he still doesn't look like he's ready to run a marathon or anything. Hopefully this second heart cath tomorrow will lend us some new news and we can work on getting him better. Please pray for him and for his doctors, that they will know how to treat him. I can think of few things that can be worse than seeing your big strong father scrunched up in pain and pale laying in a hospital bed. It's awful. Ethan actually took this picture of my dad's hands playing around a few weeks ago. I like it alot. The folded hands are symbolic right now, for sure.

-The same day I found out dad was back in the hospital, we got a call from the girl's insurance company that hit my van telling us they're denying the claim. I am so angry about it, but can't waste too much energy on it right now. The insurance company is being very vauge, and I am waiting for the denial letter in the mail, hoping it will provide us more information. Apparently, the girl driving the car was not the owner of the policy, her mother was, and the mother didn't authorize the daughter to use the car, so they're denying the claim or something stupid like that. David can't focus on it right now when he's supposed to be focusing on studying for the bar, but when he's done with the bar, we're going to sue the owner of the car and the driver and we may sue the insurance company just for good measure. It took them a solid MONTH to decide they weren't going to pay the claim. Remember our van has been sitting in a wrecker yard all this time. The fees had accumulated to $800. The man that owned the wrecker yard listened to my sob story and gave me a "deal" where I only had to pay $450 and give him the title to the van, which is indeed totaled. We could've only gotten a couple hundred dollars for it if we would have junked it. So now I'm out a van AND $450 of our money. Like I said, somebody is getting sued. If their insurance company isn't going to pay for it, then they will take responsiblity for that girl's IDIOT actions behind the wheel of a car and make this right. There must be some sense of justice in all this.

-I have received other sad/bad news from different friends and family members this past week that I don't want to share on this blog, but my heart aches for them in all their situations, and they know who they are. My heart is just heavy now trying to process all this stuff. Thankfully, I am feeling better pregnancy-wise, and I am glad for that. I am still naseuous pretty much all day, but I'm throwing up much less often. I even made dinner tonight even though I didn't eat it, and am back to unloading the dishwasher and doing laundry. It's the small victories that mean a lot to me right now. I just say my prayers at night and kiss my children often and know that everything is going to happen just as Heavenly Father intends it to happen. In the midst of all the crapiness, I am counting my blessings, of which there are many. I have to look for the good so the bad doesn't totally overwhelm me right now, y'know? We are supposed to leave for New York this Friday for a wedding, but we'll have to see how things work out with my dad tomorrow.

Thank you all for being interested in my little life. Now leave me some sweet comments. That will help me feel better. :)

Not a whole lot to report.

So there's nothing really exciting going on around here these days. Ethan is still in swimming lessons and still enjoying that. We went to the pool earlier this week to swim in the afternoon, and it was definitely good for me to get out and get some sunshine. All this throwing up and feeling gross 100% of the time has really got me feeling down. I hate feeling this way, but I just can't help it. Even the smallest tasks, like folding laundry or unloading the dishwasher seem pretty overwhelming to me these days. I can totally see why chronically ill people often suffer from depression as well. I'm just over ten weeks pregnant now and the weeks can't pass fast enough to move me into the second trimester of my pregnancy where I hope and pray I will physically feel better so I can mentally feel better. With my other pregnancies I was able to take this wonder drug called Zofran which puts nauseau at bay, but as I'm in the process of moving my insurance, I can't afford the Zofran right now and insurance won't cover it, so I'm just here, battling it out every day. The sleeping pill/B6 vitamin combo seems to help some, and some days are certainly better than others, but on the whole, I'm a dark raincloud right now. Okay, enough with the woe is me. I know a lot of you are probably like, "Suck it up, Jeni. You're in the middle of a miracle for crying out loud!" I'm sure I will look back and feel that way, but I sure don't feel that way right now. David isn't getting much studying for the Bar done for taking care of the kids, cooking, and cleaning, and the guilt I feel for that just compounds the issue. I'll take any prayers you guys are willing to send me.

And, we still haven't settled things with the insurance company about my van. It's been three weeks since the wreck, and they're telling me we still won't know anything for another week. I am getting jerked around in the truest sense of the word, and there's a chance after all this that they still won't pay the claim, and that will be too bad for them. Somebody is going to pay us for the damage to that van, plus the inconvienece of me being without one for the past month.

There are a few bright spots coming, though. My college roommate Sara is coming with her kids next week to stay with me for a few days while we visit other college roommates and friends, so that will give me a reason to get out of bed before 11am. Then over the 4th of July, David and the kids and I are flying to New York for the wedding of one of my friends I did my internship with in England. My friend's name that is getting married is Aphrodite Economides (Frieda), and it is going to be a true big fat Greek wedding. I am SO pumped to experience one of those. She lives in upstate New York, near Buffalo and Niagara Falls, so we'll get to hit up some church history sites (this time when there isn't snow on the ground) and maybe do a quick day trip to Niagara Falls.

My dad has nine lives.

For those of you who have known me for awhile, you know that when I was in college, my dad had a heart attack. When they went to put him on Plavix, he lost pints and pints of blood, um, shall we say in a way that caused them to do a colonoscopy. They found a tumor in his colon that had already penetrated the wall of his colon and that was cancerous. As soon as he was recovered from his heart surgery, they did surgery on his colon to take out the tumor and other affected areas. It was followed up by radiation and 18 rounds of chemo. He was supposed to have 24 treatments, but the chemo was so awful he said if not having the last six treatments killed him, then it would just have to kill him. (And he has since told me if the cancer ever comes back, he will deny chemo treatments. They are that bad).

Anyway, I get a call from my stepmom this morning, early. I dread calls like this. Apparently, my dad has been in the hospital since Tuesday. When he got home from work on Tuesday evening, he changed clothes and drove himself to the ER here in Wetumpka. He popped a nitroglycerin pill on the way to the ER that probably saved his life. He was having chest pains. Deja-vu. They kept him at the hospital here in Wetumpka Tuesday night, and transferred him to Baptist South in Montgomery yesterday. His cardiologist is on vacation, of course, and there was a mess-up at the hospital because the hospital never called his cardiologist's office to let them know Dad had arrived at the big hospital in Montgomery. So he wasn't actually seen by a cardiologist until this morning. My dad and stepmom were trying to wait to talk to a cardiologist before they called kids and family and got everybody worked up. When the cardiologist saw my dad this morning they found that an area between two of the three stints he had put in last time had become almost completely blocked. Dad feels like a clot got caught in the blockage and that the nitro pill was able to widen the artery enough to let the blockage pass and that is why he didn't die (other than the fact, that you know, it just wasn't his time). The cardiologist did a heart catheterization this morning and cleaned the blockage between the stints and added a fourth stint. I was so worried they were going to come back and say he was going to need open heart surgery or something terrible like that, and I am beyond relieved that it is no worse than what it is. He was in the recovery room by the time we made it to the hospital this afternoon, and if he has a good night, he gets to go home tomorrow and back to work the middle of next week.

So please say some prayers for my dear ol' dad as he recovers from yet another heart scare. A massive heart attack killed my grandfather, my dad's father at 49, and the Hendrix side and my grandmother's side of the family is eaten up with heart disease. So naturally I get a little scared when things start going wrong with my dad's ticker. He was in good spirits and upbeat when I saw him in the recovery room today. Maybe this will help him to lay off those cheeseburgers.

Car and baby update.

Whew, it has been a rough couple days. Yesterday I spent all day either throwing up anything I ate or drank, or I spent it sleeping. I slept more of the day than I didn't yesterday. I was really bummed David didn't get that civilian job at Maxwell AFB this summer, but now I see it as one of the tender mercies of the Lord that he's been around to play mom AND dad here recently. I felt so awful yesterday and had felt awful for so long at one point I just burst into really pitiful sobs and tears and lamented about if I'd ever feel good or normal again. Sara Katherine came up to me and started giving me kisses all over my face and Ethan came up with a kleenex and started wiping away tears. I have wished and wished and wished that I could be a woman who wasn't so sorely affected and afflicted while pregnant early on, but that is just not my lot. My mom said she felt great through her pregnancies and only threw up one time with both of us. How I wish I could have inherited that. All I can do now is hope all this ickiness will go away sooner than the 16 weeks it took with Sara Katherine and Ethan. I am so ready to feel good again.

I found my mom's camera so I'll post a few pictures of the van. The other insurance company is still jerking us around trying to figure out if they're going to pay the claim or not. It's maddening. What they're saying is the girl's mom didn't authorize her to use the car, so they don't know if they have to pay it. I told the adjustor that hopefully it would be worth it to them to just settle the claim instead of have my husband the attorney take them to court. I told her it was an eleven year old van with 158,000 miles on it. We're not asking for thousands of dollars, here. Just do the right thing, and pay the claim and stop being a jackass. (Well, I didn't say exactly that). Hopefully we'll know something by the end of the week. We already owe the wrecker service/yard $400, and that goes up by $20 every day. If they end up not paying the claim, hopefully the wrecker yard will just accept the van as payment.





And in baby news, we went to the doctor on Monday. They did a whole bunch of stuff, including an ultrasound. They did not do an internal ultrasound as I thought they would, which would have for sure answered our twins question. She only found one sac, so she said if they are twins then they are identical. She only found one heartbeat, but she said since it's so early that they've been surprised before. I feel like there is only one, and I was relieved that there appears to be only one. They won't do another ultrasound until closer to twenty weeks when we find out what it is.

I love my husband.

Okay. I must take a moment to brag on my husband. As most of you know, I am not a joyful pregnant person. At least not through the first sixteen weeks or so. There's lots of naseau, lots of throwing up, lots of tiredness, and just lots of general ickiness that doesn't make me much fun to be around. I must say, that instead of complaining, David totally steps up to the plate. I know he needs to find a part-time job this summer, but I am really liking having him around so much, especially now. Yesterday, for example, he got Ethan up and dressed, fed him breakfast and took him to swimming lessons. He totally plays with and entertains the kids, wipes butts, changes pull-ups, breaks up fights, makes them lunch, gives baths, does the bedtime routine of story-reading and teeth-brushing, and then comes and cleans up the kitchen and folds two loads of laundry. That was what he did yesterday anyway. I did make supper yesterday, but that was about it. For the most part, I unpack a few boxes here and there, and then I have to take a break. And going anywhere with the kids right now by myself is very daunting to me. I am so glad we got through the bulk of our move before I started feeling sub-human. I try to tell David how much I appreciate all that he does for me and the kids, especially now when those things mean five times as much to me as they normally would, so maybe when he reads it here, it will reiterate how much I really do appreciate all the help he gives me with the kids and household things. I try to alleviate as much of those things off him as I can, especially when he's in school or working, but he knows when I'm fraying and needs to step in. And he does. And on top of that, he leaves messages for me like this on the white board in the office:
"Wonderful and beautiful wife = wonderful and beautiful life."

I really don't mean to rub it in how great he is, but I want it written down in the record books for my kids and grandkids to read one day. I'm so lucky to be married to someone as selfless as him. He teaches me so much about the kind of parent I want to be to my children. I joke with him sometimes and tell him he'd make a better stay-at-home dad than I do a stay-at-home mom, but I know there's things I do with my children that only a mom can, and I'm happy to stay home. I just don't have the patience reserve and the ability to truly play with my kids that David does. The kids are absolutely overjoyed when he comes home after he's been gone all day because they know they have a buddy who will really get in the floor and romp and play with them for extended periods of time. I may do it for a little while, but then I think of all the other million things I need to get done. I have been trying recently to focus on this precious play time while they're little that I won't get back and to the let chores wait. David has always been a good example to me of what spending quality time with your kids means.

I love you, David. Thank you for being so wonderful.

Ethan's First Swimming Lesson

Sorry to inundate you with posts, but I'm trying to catch my life up on this blog, as my personal journal is sadly neglected these days. The days and experiences of life are so easily forgotten if not recorded, and I say this blog is better than nothing when needing a way to record our family happenings. I move all my posts over to a memory book using blurb.com and I'm halfway through 2008, trying to catch up. It's really very cool. There's a free program you download on your computer and they transfer all your posts and pictures over and then let you format and edit them, adding scrapbook papers, backgrounds, adding special effects, etc. Then they print the book off and you have a "hard" copy of your blog. I try to do a post or two a day and then keep up with it once I'm caught up. I know my kids will like looking back on the everyday comings and goings of their lives when they're older, and I already enjoy looking back while I'm transferring everything over. I recommend it to everyone.

ANYHOW. We decided to start Ethan in swim lessons this summer. The kid is absolutely fearless when it comes to water, but he sinks if he doesn't have floaties. David wanted to teach him how to swim himself, but I convinced him that it would be a fun thing for Ethan to do with other kids his own age. And besides, it's cheap. We take at the Y, and it's only $20 for 8 days worth of 1 hour lessons. I know, right?! He's going to take six weeks worth. David can reiterate what the lifeguards teach him. He just finished his first week and is having a BALL. He is in the very beginner class where they still attach floaties to their back, but I'm impressed because they're already teaching him things like the back stroke and such. It's not just putting their face in the water and blowing bubbles.

There's about seven or eight kids in his class, so there are two lifeguards that teach it. That is still not enough eyes for a group of rambunctious three year olds, because any time the lifeguards were working with other kids, the ones they aren't working with are SUPPOSED to sit on the side of the pool and practice kicking in the water. Ethan decided it would be more fun to meander over to the kiddie pool and splash around in there, or cannonball into the big pool behind the lifeguards backs. They make all the moms sit out under a pavilion away from the fenced-in pool and I would nearly have a heart-attack everytime he would get up and start to do something bad. I would run to the fence and holler at him to sit down and not move until the lifeguards told him too. He would give me this cute smile and a "thumbs-up" sign like I was praising him for doing something. I guess he thinks the finger waving back and forth means 'good job' instead of 'bad boy'. I don't think he got it that he wasn't doing right. Finally the lifeguards were onto his ways and kept a closer eye on him. I was like, "Great. He's going to get kicked out of swimming lessons on his first day." It made me shudder to think of the trials we will likely have in pre-school in the fall. He is just such an excitable, curious, outgoing kid. It's hard to reign him in sometimes. I profusely apologized to the lifeguards at the end of the lesson and they said not to worry, that they had had much worse. So I guess that's a good thing. David and I both had a nice little talk with him on Monday and he's been good ever since. It's both fun and sad to watch my little boy start to grow up and do "big boy" things, like swimming lessons, and he is SO excited to start pre-school. He talks about it all the time. Poor kid, I just can't stimulate him enough, I guess. We don't know if we'll enroll him somewhere in Wetumpka, or if we'll wait and see where and when we get settled with the Air Force, but he is so adamant that he is going to school somewhere in the fall. If nothing more, I may find a good mom's day out program here until we leave Wetumpka. That'd probably be good for both of us!

Ethan and his two swimming teachers.



And I guess I haven't mentioned our move. Oh, the drama. I hate moving. We rented a 17' moving van and David ended up having to make two back-to-back trips to get all our stuff moved from Tuscaloosa to Wetumpka. We have SO much stuff. Honestly, we doubled the amount of stuff we had in the nearly three years we lived in Tuscaloosa. I attribute much of that to my Pampered Chef collection and my Christmas decoration addiction. I have to stop the madness, though, and will have weed out some of what we already have. We are settled in our GIGANTIC rental house (five bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths) and it gives me a false sense of security as to how much space we have. We are going to try to live on-base wherever we move, and that will be a severe downsize, even from our Tuscaloosa house, so I'm going to have to try to learn how not to be a "stuff" person. It's going to be hard, but it must be done. We love living in Wetumpka, but I have pangs of homesickness for my house in Tuscaloosa. I had to go by there a few times while we were in Tuscaloosa these last few weeks while David was finishing his final law interim class, and I would cry every time. We truly made that house home, and I miss it. Sara Katherine told David yesterday that she wanted to go to her house. When David said we were at her house she said, "then I want to go to mommy's house." They have so much room to romp and play here, but I think they miss their house too. Like I said, it's the only one they ever knew. But, we will have many houses we can make homes in our chosen career field, so I best get used to this!

David is officially done with ALL law coursework, and now is studying for the bar and looking for a part-time job here in Wetumpka. Life is moving on along for the Ennis Family!

"I need chocolate."

I have a verifiable choc-o-holic on my hands. She gets it honestly. Her Granny Ennis and her mommy are both chocolate freaks, so it's no suprise she is too. David would rather eat apples or fruit, and I want chocolate. All the time. Sara Katherine will wander aimlessly around the house, usually at least once a day, saying "I need chocolate, mommy. I need chocolate." Not "I 'want' chocolate," but "I 'NEED' chocolate." When my sister in law was making David's birthday cheesecake this past weekend, she made that little girl's day when she handed her the pot and spoon she had melted some chocolate in. What am I gonna do with her? Honestly.