What a difference a year makes

I finally got out to Blake's soccer game and it just so happened to be the last one of the season. :-( I used to go to the majority of them last year (when Jack was in my tummy) but since he's been born, I haven't been able to make any. I know, bad aunt! I think it was a good thing that I didn't go to many because whew, let me tell you how stressful and mentally draining it was. It was a lot of fun but very intense. I think that it was more intense for me then the kids. I was screaming and yelling and getting mad at the ref (but definitely not as mad as my brother in law, who I think was inches away from "getting called out of the game" :-)). Blake is a stud. He is great at soccer and really gets in there and kicks the ball. I was very proud. Last year, the kids would all run up and down the field together kicking the ball any which way. It was pretty much chaos but super cute. When watching the kids this year, I couldn't help but think 'Wow, what a difference a year makes!' Here are some pictures from the game. I didn't want to include too many of Blake because I know my sister is going to post some.
Blake in an action shot

My sister, mom, and me

Amanda and Emily playing around

I'm finally caught up on my posts

Sorry to everyone that reads my blog and has been disappointed with my lack of posting. I've been busy and tired. On my list of things to talk about, I'll start with an update on my issues. I have pretty good news. The MRI on my brain looked great. I don't have any tumors or irregular looking things in my brain so that's good news. My headaches have decreased a lot in the last month (probably only about 5-6 in the whole month, which is down A LOT). I finally feel that after 15 months of struggling with a headache, almost everyday, that I finally may have a handle on it. On to the tummy issues. I met with my doctor a couple of days ago and he explained the different findings when he did the endoscopy. A lot of the terminology I didn't really understand but the gist of it is that I have a sliding hyatel hernia and some damage in my stomach and surrounding areas from acid. There isn't much that they can be done for the hernia. He wants me to continue taking Aciphex daily for the acid reflux problem and he said the medicine will heal the damage that is done. The good thing is that I don't have any ulcers but if left untreated that's were it would be headed. I'm glad that something is going on in my tummy and I'm not just crazy. After 2 horrible pregnancies and continued problems since Jacks birth, I'm glad that I found out some information.

On to something else. November 1st Matt, Bryan (my brother in law), Kody (friend), and Travis (preacher and friend from church) went hiking in San Jacinto mountains. They had an excellent time despite the REALLY cooled weather and rain! Matt came back with lots of fun stories and great memories with friends. He's ready to go back out and do it again, he seems to really like this hiking stuff.

Bryan, Matt, and Kody- camping in the clouds

Matt on top of the mountain

They made it... 10,834 feet.... Bryan, Travis and Matt (Kody taking the picture)

While the boys were gone and my mom was at the USC game, my dad decided to take my sister and I and all the kids out to dinner. We went to Islands. We had a really great time but it was loud and CRAZY (to say the least). It's great to have these fun family memories. My dad is such a wonderful and thoughtful man. We are lucky to have him in our lives! Oh yes, and did I mention that he made me a eggel (egg, bagel, bacon, cheese) sandwich for breakfast on Saturday morning (when Matt was gone). He walked over to my house and had a nice relaxing breakfast with the kids and I. It was like old times. We actually got to sit around and talk for a while. Those are the little things that mean so much to me.

Dinner at Islands

Anything else? Jack is really starting to talk a lot more. He is saying Hello, ByeBye, Mama, Dada, Papa, no, done, Don (for Donald Duck) and a whole lot more, mostly in his own little language. He is such a sweet boy. He can be grumpy but he has this soft, lovable side that I don't remember Emily having. He is very affectionate and caring. But he is all boy. He's rough, loud, strong, active, and did I mention STRONG! He's been sick for the last few days with a high fever but I think, I hope, that it is on it's way down. On Sunday night we were over at my parents house visiting with some old family friends in town from Washington and Jack got his little pinkie finger caught in the door leading out to the garage. It was terrible. He screamed and cried so loud and hard. Honestly, I have never seen anything like that. His finger was smushed all the way together. It was frightening. We rushed him to the ER and they did x-rays and luckily it wasn't broken. I swear, if it's not one thing, it's another around this place.

Emily..... she's just plain hilarious. The things that come out of her mouth. There are days that she is a constant battle but she is such a darling little girl. She is smart, beautiful, loving, and so, so funny. I can't wait to see what she is going to be like at 5, 10, 15, and dare I say 20. She's been up to the same old. Preschool, which is still a constant battle every morning. She likes it when she gets there, it's just hard leading up to it all morning long.

Well, I think that's about it. That's the family update and what's been going on lately. I think that I'm officially caught up.
Have a great weekend everyone!

Happy Halloween 2008

I love all holidays. Halloween included. So does Emily. She talked about it for weeks leading up to it and we even had to make a little countdown ring thing that she could tear off everyday and see it getting closer. I don't like to waste money on a costume that is only going to get wear out of it once but I'm lucky that my daughter loves to play dress up so I know it won't go to waste.
We kicked off our Halloween at Emily's preschool. My mother was nice enough to stay home with Jack so that I could give Emily my undivided attention for a few hours, and undivided attention is heard to come by these days. Emily loved having me all to herself all morning long. They dressed up in their costumes and had a parade around the school. I was for sure that Emily would not participate in it because she can be a little stinker about those things sometimes but she was great. She marched and waved to everyone and had a great time. Then we went inside for some fun Halloween activities, games, and songs. Then we had a party with lots of yummy food and treats. The kids had a wonderful time and were definetly pooped out by noon. Emily decided a long time ago that she wanted to be a witch so I found a really cute costume and she wore that for her parade and class party.


Some kids in her class

That evening we went over to my parents house and carved our pumpkins. Jack and my pumpkins were those stick in Mr. Potato head pieces. That was fun because it was easy and wasn't messy at all. Emily went for the silly face and Matt went for the bat. Matt actually ended up doing most of the work on both of them because Emily refused to stick her hands in the gooey stuff in the pumpkin. She thought that was absolutely disgusting.

The finished products

Then my sister and family came over, we had dinner, and got the kids dressed to go trick or treating. Emily decided a few days before Halloween that she REALLY wanted to be a rock star. She has this guitar that we got her almost a year ago that she has taken a liking too. It has a couple of songs on it that she likes to sing and it is hilarious. She doesn't really know the words so the song comes out how she hears it and it is FUNNY. The day before Halloween I went over to Party City and I thought if I could find a cheap rockstar costume I would get it and they had this one for $5. Can't get much cheaper than that. Jack was Mickey Mouse. He loves Mickey Mouse and Disneyland so I thought this would be perfect for him this year. My sister had the costume from when Blake was this age so I thought it would be perfect. He was a little too big for the costume and uncomfortable the whole time. He looked cute when he kept the ears up and smiled but I couldn't really capture it in a picture. They both enjoyed walking up to the door and saying Trick or Treat and getting their candy. After they would give Emily her candy, she would say, "Thank you and Happy Halloween." If they asked her to play a song, she would sing and play the whole thing for them. It was very cute. We had a great night but the kids were beat after a long day of fun and candy.
The kids before going out trick or treating

School carnival

Blake and Amandas school had a carnival last weekend and it was actually really fun. They had lots of games, a pet zoo (with a camel), hay ride, police car, ambulance and firetruck that you could climb in and all over, and lots more fun stuff. All the kids had a great time. Here are a couple of pictures from the carnival.

Hopefully Jack is never on this side of the law. Behind bars in the police car.


Emily holding a Caterpillar. Yes, her lips are blue. She just got done with a yummy snow cone.

My Issues

I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while. Things have been a little screwy in my body lately so I've been trying to get some things figured out. I wish I could say that I'm feeling better than I did 2 weeks ago, but that is not the case. The story is a little long to go in to but I'm having problems in my tummy (which I've had for almost 4 years now) and with migraines (which have been going on for about 14 months, headaches through out my life). I've also had a couple of weird things happen in the last few weeks that has made me see these doctors fairly quickly. In the last 3 weeks I've had a CT scan on my brain, and EEG on my brain waves, and have an MRI on Monday. The first 2 tests look good so I'm hoping for a positive outcome on the 3rd. If that is the case then I'll just need to get these headaches and migraines under control and I'll be set in that area. The tummy problems are a little more narrowed down. I had an endoscopy (where they go down your throat with a video camera and see what's going on) this past Wednesday. They found a hyadel hernia and said that I have chronic gastritis. He wrote a few more things that he found on the sheet that I'll be asking him about in a couple of weeks at our appointment. They took a few biopsies and should get the results within 2 weeks. The procedure on Wednesday was rough. I got really sick from the Demerol and I actually feel worse then I did before. I'm not sure why, but I'm hoping the stomach pain and discomfort go away soon. That's kind of a brief overview of my health issues. I'll post more when I get more information.
More posts to come. And I promise they'll be on a happier note!!!

Tanaka Farms

We had a busy weekend. On Saturday I went to a baby shower for Tracy Ventura. It was at a Tea House and it was lovely. It was like a tea part for grown ups. So fun. Jenny and I talked about taking the girls sometime for lunch. I think that they would love it. I also thought it would be really fun to get all the girls in the family together (like mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, etc.). Wouldn't that be fun. Anyways, the shower was a lot of fun. Good food, good games, and very good company. While I was at the shower Matt took Emily to a birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese. They had a great time there.

On Saturday afternoon, we went with my sister and family to Tanaka Farms. It is a pumpkin patch with tons of other fun things to do there. We picked vegetables out of the ground (carrots, onion, radishes, green beans, etc). I've never done that before so it was great. I felt like a farmer. Then we took the kids on wheelbarrow rides around the huge pumpkin patch. They had a pumpkin launcher that was really cool. They would take a pumpkin and launch it way up in the air into a hill and try to hit the target. Really cool. The whole experience reminded me of Roloff Farms. You would know what I was talking about if you watch Little People, Big World. We also did a corn maze, petting zoo, hay mazes, and all sorts of fun things. This pumpkin patch was huge and really a great time for the kids.


Emily running through the hay maze

After completing the corn maze

Hehehe.....

The kids picking vegetables

Emily and Amanda on a wheel barrow ride

The weekend just kind of flew by but we had a great time. I think that it's all catching up with me. I'm kind of feeling a little cold like today so I'm trying to take it easy. Jack also sounds like he's coming down with something. Hopefully we'll get some rest and it won't hit us because we have another busy week ahead of us.

Apple Pickin at Rileys Farm

Family Picture

I'm finally getting around to posting about our adventure to Rileys Farm for a day of apple picking and LOTS of hiking. We (my sisters family and our family) headed out around 10am and did a little caravaning in the minivans. hahaha... :-) It's in Oak Glen, which is quite a drive away. We got there and it was a little colder that I had anticipated. We threw on our jackets and went on an adventure through the apple farms for a few hours. I was thinking that the apple farm was going to be big but that is an understatement. This pace was HUGE! We walked, and we walked, and we walked some more. There was a ton of different things to do. They had hay rides around the farm, a petting zoo, a civil war reenactment, picking of other fruits (strawberries, raspberries, pears, pumpkins, etc), a place where you could make apple cider, a bakery with fresh backed apple treats, and a couple places to eat. We fed the goats hay and watched them make apple cider but mostly the day was spent picking apples and enjoying the beautiful scenery around the farm. The kids loved it. Emily had a blast the entire day. Jack just loves being outside so anything outside makes him happy. And both my kids always have a ball with their cousins. Emily enjoyed picking the apples off of the trees (ripe or not ripe) and Jack enjoyed picking up the apples off of the ground (mostly the moldy, bruised ones) and then taking a bite. Yuck, I know. After a few hours there, the kids got cold, tired, and hungry. It had started to rain so that was our cue to head home. It was fun. We will definitely do it again next year.

Cousins

This was as good as I could get of the 2 of them under an apple tree


They loved pickin apples







Feed goats hay

I'm back...

I'm back. It's been a while since I've posted a blog so I thought I'd fill everyone in on my last couple of weeks. First I'll start with Emily's accident last week. Last Wednesday (a week and a half ago) Emily was jumping on her bed like a little monkey and I asked her to sit so we could read books before bed. As she went to sit down, she hit the pillow the wrong way and did a major flip out of bed and hit her ear on the side panel of her bed. As she fell to the floor she let out an enormous scream and started crying very hard and holding her left ear. She finally settled down and I looked at her ear and couldn't see anything wrong, except it was a little red. We went on to read books, sing songs, say prayers, etc. Her mood changed instantly after she fell out of bed. That night was rough. She was in pretty severe pain. I asked Matt if I should take her into the ER but he said she would be fine. My advice to all moms is to listen to your conscience. That is why God gave us one, trust it. Anyways, I didn't listen and went through a pretty miserable night. She woke me up for good about 6am telling me she needed to get up because she had goop in her ear, which turned out to be blood and goopy stuff. I was freaking out. I took her into urgent care at 7:30am. They sent me to the ER because they thought she might need a CAT scan. Spent a couple of hours in there. The ER doctor did a very thorough exam and came to the conclusion that she did not need a CAT scan and that he was pretty sure that she ruptured her ear drum during the fall and bruised the side of her head and ear pretty bad. They also said she had a really bad otter ear infection. Strange coincidence?! Then we went home and she started getting the chills. Her temperature went up to 102 degrees and I was like what is going on. Called my doctor and they wanted to see her right away. Went in and they thought she had an inner and outer ear infection so they gave me oral antibiotics along with the ear drop antibiotics. That poor girl didn't smile for days. She was in severe pain for 3-4 days and then it started to feel better. Last week started out as a great week but on Wednesday night it flipped very quickly..... That was a lot of doctor visits all in one day.

Let's see, what else happened this week. Mostly the same old. Emily finally made it to preschool more than once this week. She actually went 3 times and had a great time. She is still having a hard time adjusting to it but she really enjoys it when she's there and loves her teachers. That I am thankful for.

We went over to my grandparents house on Tuesday for part of the day. It is always so good to hang out with them and my kids just love being around them. I am thankful that my kids have their great gaga and papa. We had lunch together, played outside on their swing and with their outside toys, and the kids helped them water the plants. Gaga made them cookies and the kids made a mess of their house. It was great fun!

Papa and Jack watering the flowers

Emily and Papa watering more flowers

Thursday we had a play date with Jenny and Maggie and Jenny and Maddox. That was a lot of fun and all of the kids played really well together.

Friday, Matt got off work early so we headed to Disneyland. It was kind of busy out there that night and it was nice to have my mom with us.
More Disneyland pictures



Emily (our little mommy) taking Jack on a walk. He did not enjoy that.

Saturday was a busy day. I'll do a separate post about our fun outing to the apple farm. Then this evening Stan and Ivy came over for pizza and playtime with the kids.

So that's what's going on in the life of the Doerrs. Hope that everyone is doing well. Sorry for my long post. I used to be so good at scrap booking and putting pictures into albums but I can't find the time to do that anymore so this is my little scrapbook of all the events going on in my life. This blog is more for me than anything else. It's an easy way for me to keep track of current events.

A well needed night out!

Wooohoooo......... that is the words that came out of my mouth on Saturday night. We had been planning this night for a couple of weeks so when it finally came, I was really looking forward to an evening out without the kiddos. No highchairs, no food all over me, no screaming or crying, no feeding anyone else except for myself... oh, how wonderful. We rarely get out without the kids but when we do, it's usually to a wedding or just the 2 of us (which is great too). So this was a rare treat that we are definitely going to do more often. We started the night off with an almost 3 hour! dinner at the Melting Pot with our good friends, Mike and Becky. Dinner was fantastic. Matt and I had been there a few times but this was Mike and Becky's first time and I have to say we were all very pleased with the scrumptious food. We were giddy the entire night and really enjoying our freedom. We had great conversation and laughed a lot. After dinner, we went across the street to the Improv. I laughed more and harder that night then I have laughed in a very long time. We really enjoyed our night out without the kids (we didn't get home until midnight) and it gave us a chance to have adult conversation with good friends. I really think that it is important for parents to be able to have some time away from the kids and to take a deep breath. Life with kids can get chaotic and it's nice to take some time out for yourself. But of course we did miss the kids very much but we knew that they were in very good hands with our parents. It was a break well needed, especially for Becky and me!






























And for our final course, chocolate fondue......YUM

Maggies pancake birthday party

Last week Maggie had her 3rd birthday. Jenny wanted to do something low key for her birthday this year so she had Emily over for breakfast and play time. It was a lot of fun. Jen made mickey mouse pancakes for the kids and they got to decorate them with lots of sprinkles, whip cream, syrup, and yummy stuff like that. All the kids were a little under the weather so you could tell they weren't feeling all that good. It was hard to get Emily to smile for the pictures because she wasn't feeling so well but this was the best I could get. We love Maggie to pieces and I'm pretty sure that these 2 will be trouble when they get older. I'm hoping we have many crazy stories of the two of them like we have of Jenny and I.