2012 Adventures

Our household has had quite a start to the year! In March we went on our first cruise in the Caribbean. We went with Colbert grandparents, uncle David, and aunt Sarah and uncle Mike and went to the country of Belize and to Cozumel, Mexico. We were so busy with the 2 kiddos that the week went by so fast. It wasn't until about a month or two later that we can look back and really appreciate our vacation and be thankful for it. I don't know if we will bring the kids on a cruise again until they are older or potty-trained at least, so that there is more for them to do. We were very lucky to stay healthy too, some other ships had gotten nasty, dangerous stomach viruses. One of the best times we had on the cruise was when we all went to Belize while Hudson and Annalise stayed with my parents on the ship. We were only gone for 3 hours or so, but I was still a little nervous leaving them on the ship. We met some really neat guides on the land who took os on a tubing adventure through some ancient caves on the river. They were so much fun to talk to, and we had fun figuring out what they were saying in their creole dialect. On Belize the primary language used is not Spanish but English, and everyone uses Creole as well.
When we got to Cozumel, Mexico the next day all of us including the kids went on land and to the beach. We had fun wading, snorkeling, looking at all the fish in the water and getting braids in Annalise's hair.
Looking back, the best memories I have of our vacation was being right on the beautiful ocean, hearing the water and smelling the ocean breeze, and of course the families being all together for a whole week!



After we got home from our cruise we closed on our new house and moved out of the apartment we rented for a year. We moved to a 2-story house with a basement and an attic, so there are lots of stairs to run up and down. It actually isn't as bad as I thought it would be, even with the kids up and down the stairs, and it gets us plenty of exercise. We have one large bathroom and it is on the 2nd floor with all the bedrooms. The only difficulty we have with that is for potty-training, but even that isn't too inconvenient for the kids. Another thing I am happy about is that the house is pretty loud and open, with the open staircase, and I can hear the kids wherever they are, upstairs or down. We live across the street from a park we can use, and we walk to lots of other parks too since we are right by the trail systems around the city, which we use a lot! Jeremy walks or bikes to work downtown everyday. We have been busy with painting and re-doing a few things around the house. My dad updated a few electrical outlets and lighting fixtures. They put in a rug runner on the wooden staircase, and Jeremy climbed on the porch roof last weekend to take out storm windows and put in screens so we can open the windows this spring. We also discovered that our refrigerator is plugged into a cabinet instead of the wall, and that is supposed to be bad. What this means for me is... we will have to have a kitchen remodel/reorganization within a few years since that refrigerator cannot stay that way :) In the meantime, I am going to make do with painting my kitchen cabinets green/brown to look better with the white appliances.
This is our 1920's home :)


Not long after we moved in to the house, the kids got sick with bad colds and coughs. Hudson had to go the the emergency room twice. The first time was in the middle of the night. He had woke up crying and didn't sound right to me in the monitor, and when I checked on him he wouldn't wake up and his breathing sounded really labored. When we got to the emergency room he was acting like he was having a seizure and it really scared us for awhile, and no one knew what was wrong. They gave him some advil drops and he started returning to his normal self within a couple hours. They sent us home by the early morning when he was running around the room. While we were there they checked his oxygen levels, took a chest x-ray, took several blood tests, made sure his blood sugar levels were normal, and took a nasal swab because I thought he might have a bad respiratory infection. They called us back 2 days later and told us he had RSV (a bad respiratory virus that can be dangerous in infants and small children if they are not able to breathe the appropriate levels of oxygen their bodies need). After several days he finally started acting like he felt better, but the next weekend he was getting really high fevers. We took him in again when his temperature reached 105 degrees and he had an ear infection. Now both kids are feeling much better and we are all getting lots of rest and trying to pace ourselves with all the house projects. Next weekend we will finally be back in church. The coughs can last up to a month and that is how long it has been almost. We definately don't want to spread this virus to other small children or babies!