Due Date

A lot of you have asked when I'm due. Well...we're not really sure! I'm thinking the end of Aug./Sept time. Which works out really well for a teacher!!!! Not the best timing, but it's all in God's plan!

NEWS!!!!!

Take a look:

You be the judge. How do you think Eli feels about it???

Christmas

Wow! There are a lot of pictures of our busy day! I'll try to condense them, but it was so fun to watch Eli open his presents. We found that as soon as the wrapping paper was off, the present had to be taken out of the box and played with! At least it entertained him while the rest of us openned presents!

His favorite! A battery operated 4 wheeler! Too bad it's so cold he can't ride it!
Stocking and couch from Santa!

Contents from stocking!
Chocolate chip pancakes on Christmas morning!
Harley Davidson big wheels bike from Papa and Grandma Zohn!

A stick horse that I wasn't so sure about until the next day! When you push the ears, he neighs and makes a galloping sound!

The truck was not made for him to ride in it, but he fit! This was from Grandpa and Grandma Kirtley!

We had such a good Christmas and are so blessed to have a wonderful family to spend it with. Hope you all had a great one too!

One down...three more to go!!

We have a tradition on my dad's side of the family to go to the farm on Christmas Eve day. Aaron was working, again, so we went with my parents. Eli LOVES to go the the farm. He loves tractors, combines, cows, horses, etc. So when he got a little tractor and trailer, he was ecstatic! So, here are some pictures of the family. I forgot about my camera until my aunt got hers out for the annual picture taking fest. Yes, there was a lot of grumbling and not a lot of smiles. You be the judge, but I would say that the Zohn genes are VERY dominant! More pictures of Christmas day to come...

The Zohn Family (Aunt Bec, Grandma, Grandpa, Dad, Uncle Rod)

Our family (minus my brother and his fiance and my husband!)

Rod's family

Bec's family
Cousins and grandpa and grandma

This is a baby calf they had at the farm. Great Grandpa tried to get Eli to ride it, but he wanted NOTHING to do with that!

My cousin Stephen was the first arms to reach for him and Eli went right to him! Of course as soon as we got back inside, he wanted "more!"

Merry Christmas To Us!!!!

What do you think of when you think of Christmas? The birth of Jesus, family, food, presents, lights? Those are the things I was thinking of until yesterday! Now I'm thinking of how to get us all healthy so we can enjoy these things in a couple of days. Aaron has a cold, I have a horrible cough and Eli has both of ours combined.


Last night Eli and I were up ALL night. I say Eli and I b/c Aaron was working last night. Isn't that how this always seem to work out? Not that Aaron got much more sleep with the way he was feeling. I think it was about 3am when Eli stopped coughing long enough to fall asleep. It was so sad. I knew exactly how he felt b/c I was right there with him. We were both hacking away in my bed.


Before we went to bed, I mentioned to Aaron about maybe calling the doctor in the morning and he told me to hold off. That we can't just go in every time he has a cold. I agreed and thought if it wasn't better after Christmas, I would take him then. Then we were up until 3am and there was no discussion about going into the doctor this morning. There's something about a mother's intuition. By morning he was still coughing pretty bad and had began wheezing.


We had an 8:45am appointment and...

That's right... Eli now has to have breathing treatments. The doctor told me that if I had waited to bring him in after Christmas, we may have been admitting him into the hospital for pneumonia. Poor little guy. This is one expensive Christmas present! But, it's well worth it. He has been breathing SO much better and hasn't coughed nearly as much as yesterday. When I went to lay him down tonight, there was NO coughing at all.

I just hope the rest of us can feel better and that we can actually enjoy our Christmas and think about what we really need to be thinking about...the birth of our Savior, Jesus.
Merry Christmas!

A New Tradition

Ok... so I stole this tradition from a friend of mine b/c it's such a great idea! Tonight we started a new tradition in our family that will continue to be fun as Eli gets older.

First...we popped some popcorn:

Then we changed into our pj's and loaded up in the car. I only have a picture of Eli in his pj's, but Aaron and I are in sweats! Just use your imaginations!

Doesn't he look so warm and cozy! He has his milk....
Then we went to get hot chocolate:

And lastly, we headed out to see Christmas lights. These are just a few of the houses we saw!

This isn't the best pictures, but this is what we call, "Christmas threw up in someones yard!" It's like they had everything you could buy at Walmart out in their yard. You know those houses!

This is one of my favorites! It's an old neighbor of mine and she always has her house decorated so pretty!

Anyways, we had a great time as a family. Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!

A work in progress

This weekend Aaron started working on finishing our basement. It's something we've been wanting to do, but it wasn't on our top list of priorities. Well... now it is! Eli is getting older and has more "bigger" toys and sometime (notice I said SOMETIME) there will be another little Kirtley running around and we are running out of room upstairs! So, here are some pictures of the progress. There is 1 wall and the kitchen bar that is left to do. That should be done sometime this week. Then it will be all framed out. I have to say thanks to Dave for helping Aaron. Amanda, can you pass that along! Without him, we would be no where near the stage we're at. And thanks to Amanda for lending us your husband! When it's all said and done, you can come and enjoy it with us!!!! Here are some pictures and I'll try to post more as we get more done. Oh yea, and of course Eli is helping out his daddy too!

Yep, I can help too!

Looking at one of the bedrooms and storage rooms.

After you come down the stairs and turn around, you see this!

How long do you want this one daddy?

Frustration

Well I totally jinxed myself. A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving break I said that my class was doing a good job of listening and following directions. I felt like they had truly made a come around and I was SO proud of MYSELF for all the hard work....

Sidenote: Every morning before work, I would pray for paitience. I would ask God to help me with my class and to give me paitience with my students.

So the week of Thanksgiving, I was telling Tim (Aaron's dad) about this. He says to me: "You know when you ask God for paitience, he will throw something at you to test it."

Well... he has done that to me this week and I feel like I totally failed. I took a personal day yesterday and came back to a complete mess...

Just some things I'm dealing with:

1. A student that will NOT sit anywhere and is ALL over my room.
- Pulled 2 different girls' hair
- Poked a 2nd grader with his fork at lunch
- Bit a another student's finger
*** This is just from today!!!!
2. A student that has Asberger's-- been hitting other students and yelling at them.
3. A student that is gifted --- can read ANYTHING you put in front of her, does 2nd grade math and writes the correct way(not phonetically) and NOTHING is being done.
4. A student that makes noises NON STOP
5. A student that is extremely low and doesn't come to school until 12 almost every day b/c she's not sleeping at night....
6. A student who is all over the place and can't focus to get things done (YES a different one).

This is just to name a few... Man I miss my class from last year. Ok, so I'm done complaining. I know, I just need to pray more! About 1:00 today I realized what God was doing. So I took some deep breaths and tried again. I know it's all in my attitude, but MAN!!!!!!!!!!

Any prayers wouldn't hurt! It's so hard when you have days/weeks like this and then all you want is to be home with your baby! I'm sure it will get better. It has to, right????

Christmas Program

Tonight Eli participated in our church's Christmas program. I was a little nervous about what he would do and how he would act. He did great...until he saw me as he was walking on the stage! He stayed up there, but through out the whole program, you can hear him saying, "mommy, mommy!" Here are a couple of clips of the program. It makes me so proud!!!

Tis the Season...

I love my house this time of year! Well, I love my house all year round, but when it's decorated for Christmas, it just warms my heart! I love to sit in my chair and look around at my tree, the lights above my cabinets and to see the lights from outside glowing through the windows. Here are are few pictures of what I'm looking at. My camera didn't take the best pictures, but you can get the drift!

Parade of Lights

Tonight we ventured downtown for Newton's Parade of Lights. It was cold, but the wind wasn't really blowing, so we decidedto do it! The parade started at 7pm and was over by 7:20pm. Nice and quick, but fun! Eli is enjoys looking at lights and I think he had a good time!

Family

I had been looking forward to our trip to Iowa since we had plans finalized! I enjoy traveling and visiting family. So Thrusday night I had things packed and ready to go. Went to bed early and woke up with a cold! Eli had one as well. Called the on call doctor and they let me re-fill his prescription for his sinus infection a week or so ago. So Friday morning Eli started a round of antibiotics and I started cold medicine! Needless to say, I was a little worried about the trip with both of us not feeling the greatest. BUT... it turned out great! We stopped in KC to see my aunt and uncle. I lived with them for a summer and while I student taught, they are amazing people! My aunt hasn't gotten to see Eli since he was a week old.

My Aunt Lynn and Eli!

Then we finished our last 2 1/2 hour trip up to Iowa. We had a blast!
Does it look a little cold? Yes, Eli got to ride a 4-wheeler with his dad and grandpa! He called it a "wheeler!"

Yes, he got to ride a pony! The pony didn't cooperate too much so Eli didn't get to ride too long. That was ok, since it was so cold!
Yes, Eli got to ride on a tractor! He's so spoiled! And yes, it's snowing now! They didn't have the horrible winds that we get, so it wasn't to bad out there!

Aaron gave his grandpa a haircut!

Great Grandpa Charles with Eli

Hanging out in their nice log cabin house!

Beautiful snow!

4 generation picture. Great Grandpa Kirtley, Grandpa Kirtley, Eli and Aaron

Thanks Grandpa and Grandma Kirtley for letting us come and stay at your house. We love seeing you and spending time with you!

E - L - I

Whenever Eli colors, we talk about the letters in his name and we write his name for him. Now, lucky for him, he only has 3 letters in his name! Here is a little video clip of him spelling his name!

Potty Chair

Ok, I know a lot of you are going to think that I'm crazy for having a 20 month old sitting on a potty chair, but hear me out! Eli loves the potty, I know it's not the greatest thing to love! He knows about them, knows what you're supposed to do in them ,etc. Every time Aaron or I say we're going to go potty, he runs to the bathroom. Sometimes he'll lift the seat or hand you toilet paper! So, I decided to get him a little potty chair. Not to start potty training, but just to let him experiment with it all. So today was the day! I bought a little chair that plays music when you go to the bathroom in it. The first time I put him on it, he sat a little while and then got up. The chair then spent the rest of the night out in the living room as a regular chair! Then before bed, I took his diaper off and had him sit on it. You're not going to believe this, but he went potty in the potty chair!!!!! I was TOTALLY surprised and SO excited! He was too! He ran out and told Aaron, "pee pee in potty!" So, here are a few pictures of the first time on the chair and then the pee-pee to proove it!!!!

Don't I look so cool on this thing!

So excited!

Here it is!!!! Peeeeeee!