BIRTHDAY GIRL!

 Her shirt says it all!  Look at that toothless grin! She is missing 4 teeth across the front and nothing coming into replace them yet.  Poor girl can't eat corn, apples or much of anything! :)

 She had 3 of her best friends over to P.A.R.T.Y! Emily, Laiklie, Ava and Kaiya

 I can't believe my baby is 7. SEVEN!!  It amazes me how fast time goes by! I just can't get it to slow down no matter how hard I try!

 I know this picture and these next few pictures are fuzzy, but I LOVEY, LOVE, LOVE the faces she makes as she opens her presents.  You can see she LOVES them all!

We took the party to Blastoff and they had a BLAST!

I love being Laiklie's mom.  She makes life so much sweeter.  She has so much love in her little heart and she loves big!  She likes to joke and be funny.  She gets along great with the girls and the boys.  She mothers anybody that will let her.  She is and has always been our "icing on the cake!" Love you baby girl!

My Scouters!

At pack meeting September 26th Dallin and Rhett both got big awards!

 Dallin earned his Webelos award!! Yay! He is now working on his Arrow of Light.

 Rhett got to be in the skit.  Isn't he (far right) the cutest indian you've ever seen?!  I love that in this picture he still looks little to me.  :)

Rhett also earned his Wolf award. Another Yay!! I am SO PROUD of both my boys and the hard work they have put into their scouting.

A1C

Every 3 months we take Oakley into the diabetic doctor to get a check-up and get her A1C.  An A1C is a 3 month average of her blood sugar numbers.  We have been around 8.5-9.0 for the past 2 years.  The letter that we get tells us that if you have "Good Blood Sugar Control" that the perfect number is 6.5.  So we have run HIGH for 2 years now and we have known that Oakley's blood sugar control has been crappy.  We have tried and tried and tried to get her pump settings right and we had got to a point that we were praying for extra help because we no longer knew what to even try.  That help came this summer in the form of an educator at the diabetic center who took just 10 minutes one day when we were filling out paper work for a trial study to stop when the numbers didn't sound right and adjust Oakley's pump.  There was one setting on Oakley's pump that we didn't even know about!!  She showed it to us....made some adjustments and OH MY WORD all of the sudden after 2 years of crappy blood we finally had great blood numbers.  And they were consistent!! So I was really looking forward to this A1C and was bouncing off the walls when it came back at a 6.6.  SIX POINT SIX!!!  That is GREAT BLOOD SUGAR CONTROL!! Yay!  The past 3 months have been so much better than the past 2 years.  We do have more lows (we are seriously in the 50's at 1:30 a.m. EVERYNIGHT and I am still trying to figure that out!) but otherwise it is so much better!  Heavenly Father hears and answers prayers!

Rhett is 9!

Oh, my kids are all growing-up on me! My little guy isn't so little anymore.  He turned 9 on Saturday.

 He begged for a party and so we had his two best friends Raegan and Kylie and his friend Jackson over for cupcakes after school Friday before we headed into Blastoff.

 I love the look on Kylie's face as she watches him blow out the candle!

 I love in this picture that he put his arm around Raegan.  He is so blessed to have these two girls as his best friends and we are so thankful that we have found Jackson to be a new bestie too.

And this is typical Rhett.  Such a monkey! Look at him scale that wall!  He made it to the top SEVERAL times! They also played in the play land, mini golf and laser tag, plus the arcade.  Rhett is such a special boy and we are so grateful Heavenly Father knew we needed him in our family!  Happy birthday buddy!

Walk 2 Cure 2013

This year we put together TEAM OAKLEY again for the Walk to Cure Diabetes.  We are SO BLESSED to be surrounded by such incredible people.  We were able to raise just over $1300!! It is such a humbling thing as we watch the emails come in stating that we have a new donation.  We also had great support from friends and family again on walk day!

 What would we do without her best friends? Lauren and Katie were both able to be there this year.

 We also had Grandma Hawkins, Yvonne and her girls, Grandpa and Grandma Romrell (who walked the ENTIRE 3 miles after walking 2 that morning as part of a walk to the temple! What GREAT great grandparents!), Grandpa and Grandma Jacobson, Jessica and girls, Hollie and girls (plus she brought her sister-in-law and her girls) and the Barrie bunch. 

I cry at the walk every year.  Diabetes is so very real to us because we live with it every second of every day and to see so many other precious children that live with it just like we do is very heartbreaking.  We are blessed to have so much love and support and we know we are not in this fight alone.  And we will continue to fight UNTIL WE FIND A CURE!! 

Volleyball

We are right in the thick of it!  We have one month down and one to go! We are LOVING watching Oakley and her team.  They are a good little team.  Oakley has come SO FAR this summer/school year.  She has INCREDIBLE coaches that have taught her so much.  Her strong point right now is her serve.  She served 25 points one game.  That is an ENTIRE GAME! She served 14 in a row the first match (she was on FIRE!!) and then four at one time and 7 at one time of the next match...including game point!  After the game her coaches said they were worried we might lose and then they saw Oakley was up to serve so they were no longer worried. :) She is even learning to place her serve.  She truly is a super talented girl.  We are so proud of her hard work!

FINALLY!

After 14 1/2 years of marriage and four kids later Ryan and I FINALLY have 2 bathrooms!! It's about time!!

We had a storage closet next to Oakley's room in the basement that was just under the other bathroom so it was easy to get to the plumbing.  The plumbing was a NIGHTMARE though! It was all old cast iron that had to be replaced.  I swear we made 100 trips to Home Depot and Scotty's True Value.  Can I just say that Home Depot with your husband is like gouging your eyes out!! ;) 

 

 

And here is the after! Yay! It even works and we have been using it!!! SOOOO NICE! Ryan still needs to hook-up the sink and hang the towel racks and the trim, but I don't even care.  The fact that we have a second toilet is like heaven!!