What happened to my little boy?!

I can not believe that Jack is 8 years old today!! It seems like just yesterday we were hearing his little heartbeat on the ultrasound machine. He has truly changed my life for the better and I am so proud to call him my son! I am so proud of what an amazing little man he is becoming!! He has kept us laughing for the past 8years and I am sure that will continue for many more. He really has a heart of gold and thinks about everyone else before himself. He always has and I pray he always will. I haven't pulled out all the scrapbooks yet because I didn't want to make myself cry but, here are a few pictures to take everyone on a trip down memory lane with Jack. I wish I had some on my computer from when he was really little but, we didn't have a digital camera back then. hahaha Remember those days?!

Jack at about 1 month old

My Little Chunky Monkey

First Camping Trip!

Eating out with the Family

He used to LOVE sitting in there!

Playing with Daddy's Tie

Jack and Addison having fun in the tub

There's that personality coming out!

First Fair Corn dog

Some days it is just tough being Jack

My little baby is grown up now!! :'(

Victoria is 1!!!

At this time one year ago, I was sitting in a hospital bed loving on my little lady for the first time!

 As I sit here and type Victoria is walking/running around the livingroom just jabbering away and I am full of mixed emotions. I am so happy that God has blessed us with this little girl. I am relieved that we are no longer having to worry about her sweet little heart. I am a little sad that she is growing up too fast, and I am so thankful for all our friends and family that with God's help walked with us and sometimes helped carry us through this past year. I will never be able to thank you all enough!! I feel like we as a family are so much better now than we were a year ago and I think our little miracle had a whole lot to do with that. God knew just what he was doing when he let us become her mommy and daddy.

 She is still a little girl and I am not sure if that is from her heart condition or if that is just how she was supposed to be, but we love her with every ounce of our hearts! She is like a said walking now and she is working on trying to run. She is talking some and saying, momma, dada, hi, and bye bye. She started blowing kisses yesterday and gets so excited when her brother and sister walk into the room. They are so in love with her too and it just makes my heart happy to see them play with her! I am looking forward to many more birthdays with my little lady! Mommy and Daddy love you very much Victoria Anne Bastnagel!!

Kids Say the Darndest Things...

I am seriously considering setting up audio recorders all over the house and in my car! I am afraid I will never remember all the things they say that are sooo hilarious! Also, sometimes it is just funnier when they say it.

Tonight on the way home from our little trip to Target, I was checking Facebook as I do often. I am on a group called Arlington Resale where people post things they want to sell and you can find some amazing deals! Well, someone had posted an American Girl doll. Addison was being nosy in the back seat and started asking why I was looking at American Girl dolls. I informed her that they were selling it but it was $80 and that was too much.

Gene then tells Addison that American Girl dolls are like kids, you're only supposed to have a few because they are so expensive.
That was when Jack says, "Yeah then you will have to start paying the power bill and that is like $125!"
To which Addison replied, "Its all dad's fault because he had that car wreck and we don't have the money anymore!"
Jack, "That wasn't even Dad's fault!!"


Ok now the back story for the next funny saying....Earlier today Jack was at the church for an RA race event. He was racing his wooden RA car. He ended up winning the sportsmanship award (or as Jack calls it, the friendship award). The prize for that was, a nice red, Loud, remote control race car. That child has been running that thing all afternoon and evening.

Well, we get home and he goes straight to driving that car again. I have heard it so much today that it sounded like nails on a chalk board. So I asked him to please put it up for the night because I couldn't stand to hear that sound anymore. To which he replied, "Do you know what that sound is?" I said, "No. What?"
Jack: "That is the sound of awesomeness...."

Oh what a normal Bastnagel day!! I can't wait till Victoria is in the middle of this too!!

Yep they are all crazy...

Locks of Love

Addison has been wanting to cut her hair for about 6months now. I have tried to hold her off because she has such beautiful and long hair. But, it got to the point where she had to wear her hair in a ponytail all the time and if she left it down it would just get all tangled and make her hot. So, I took her yesterday to get her hair cut and she had enough to donate to Locks of Love! They took off 10inches and she still has a lot of hair left!

Before: it was 12inches from the bottom to the top of her shoulders!

Last before picture. Waiting to get it cut at Sweet & Sassy

Tying it off and measuring it

Victoria had fun flashing her smile for everyone while we waited on Addison

Very short but she loves it!!

All finished!

She LOVES her new hair cut! This morning after she ate breakfast she went and got my hairbrush to fix it. She was tossing it and everything. lol Too cute!

Making my childhood memories theirs too

I had to take Addison to her pediatrician today for her follow up to make sure everything was ok with the snake bite. I left Jack with Mamaw and Papaw while we went. Addison got a good report and was the talk of the office. lol Of course I was just in there Thursday of last week with Victoria and her digestion problems! After I got back to Mamaw's house I decided to take the kids to the famous Jerry's Sno cones. I have so many great memories at that place!! It is about 5 blocks from Mamaw's house and when I was little Papaw would load up all the grandkids into the back of his pick-up truck and drive us to get a sno cone. That was way before it was illegal to let your kids ride in the truckbed. We had so much fun! It was soo nice to be able to share that memory with Jack and Addison and hopefully start making that place a part of their childhood memories too!

Waiting to get our sno cones!

Jack got Rainbow and Addison got Cherry Bubblegum.

It is crazy how this place would get busy when I was little but nowhere near as busy as it gets now. I guess the word has spread all over Memphis about it. Check out the line behind the kids! It was actually double that but you can't see everyone in this picture! Thankfully it didn't get that long till after we got in line!

I got my favorite flavor, Coconut! I actually took this picture for my friend Leah. This is the flavor I always got when we would come here in high school. During the summer I think we were here at least once a week! But, it never failed that every time we came and drove off with our sno cones one of us would spill it in my poor car. lol I made it back to Mamaw's without spilling it but it did try to tip over while I was backing out of the parking lot. haha

The Bastnagel Adventure Continues

I am having a hard time figuring out where to begin on this post. haha Lets see....we will start with yesterday morning. Gene had decided to take all three kids for a walk so I could get a few more minutes of sleep. (He is a really good hubby!) He asked Jack to unlock the deadbolt on the front door. Jack broke the key off in it trying to unlock the door. So, Gene informed me what had happened and told me that he and the kids were walking to McDonalds for breakfast (don't judge I know it isn't the greatest breakfast but he needed to take them somewhere).

I got up and showered and went to leave to go meet them there. I was going to drive though. :) After getting all ready the dilemma of getting out of the house started. Our garage door is messed up too. I have tried for months to figure it out and I guess I am going to have to get someone to come out and check it out. It will open with the opener but will not close. So normally when I leave I close the garage and have to go out the front door. Only this time I went out the back door and was going to leave through the gate to the backyard. I didn't realize till yesterday morning that you can not open the gate from the inside. I tried to go back into the house only to find out that the house key I have apparently doesn't unlock the bottom lock of the back door. So I was stuck in my own backyard!! I had to call my wonderful neighbor to come let me out of the backyard. I knew right then that we were going to have a bad day!

Gene was successful in getting the broken key out of the lock so we didn't have to call a locksmith!!

Beach Family

We had a blast visiting our friends in Sarasota, FL. We didn't want to come home at all. Even though our first offical day there at the beach all of us were sunburned. My sister Patricia came with us and she was burnt so bad it hurt to walk. I was burnt even with wearing SPF 50 the whole time. I guess we just had not been out in the sun enough before we went to get a little base tan.

This was Victoria's first time at the beach. She loved it so much! She really liked just sitting in the sand and playing with it. It was so fun to watch! She did really good the whole time! It was a 14hr drive that took 18hrs to get there. haha But she didn't complain the whole time except for the last 30mins but that we figured out when we arrived was because she had on a dirty diaper. I am so happy she is going to enjoy traveling as much as our other 2. This is good because we like to take as many trips as we can.

 We left on Father's day, but before we got on the road we had a nice lunch at a Restaurant on the beach called Sharkey's. This was our family picture we took while we were waiting on our table.

 I know I mentioned before that Jack didn't want to leave. This was his face through most of lunch. He was really upset we had to leave. He wanted to stay at least one more week and also said he wants to move there. haha We have arranged another trip down there for the end of July so he can get his extra week. :)

Here is the kids with their Aunt Patricia. Sometimes I think they love her as much if not more than they love me! She has kinda been like their 2nd mom and I am ok with that. It gives me the reassurance that if something ever happen to me they would have someone to take care of them and she would probably do everything very close to how I would. :) I was so happy so got to come with us!

All About The Teeth

 Over the past month or so teeth have consumed my mind. haha That may sound really crazy but it is true. First I had Jack losing his front teeth, then I had Victoria teething for almost 2 months before her 2 bottom teeth finally came through and last but not least, Addison had been complaining about her lose bottom teeth hurting. I was not happy to see that her adult teeth on the bottom are coming in behind her baby ones! Looks like braces are for sure in our future for at least Addison.

Jack's smile is almost back to normal :)

Finally 2 teeth!!

This photo cracks me up! lol See her teeth behind her teeth? Ugh!

Blessings, Praises and Many Thanks

As all our friends and family have known, we have been dealing with a lot since Victoria was born. The doctors found a very large heart murmur 2wks after she was born on November 7. We didn't get in to the cardiologist till January and the news they gave us was not what we had prepared for at all. Until they were able to really look at her heart everyone had thought it was something completely different. I am not good with all the medical stuff and Gene could tell you in a lot of detail exactly what she had but I will give you the non-medical summary. :)

She had what they called a PDA. A valve in her heart that was supposed to close after she was born did not and it was causing extra blood to flow to things that it wasn't supposed to. We were told that this is actually very common and that they would try to fix it when she was a year old that way we could see if it would close on its own. Well, she has not been growing like she should and when we went to her 6month check up she dropped to the 10% in weight. They did another Eco on her heart and saw that the hole was causing her heart to enlarge. So instead of waiting till she was around 1 they decided that something needed to be done a lot sooner. We were facing a very high risk of open heart surgery. The doctor was really worried that the hole was too big to be able to close with just a cath and we would have to do the surgery.

That all seems like a lifetime ago and it was only a few weeks. Fast forward to today and as I type this my little squirt is happily playing in her jumperoo laughing as Addison makes faces at her. Because of the power of prayer and God's amazing grace we avoided surgery! We checked into Lebonheur this past Thursday May 31st at 6am. We had no way of knowing how things would turn out until after they started everything. The plan was to go in and check the exact size and shape through a cath in her groin and see if they could repair without surgery. If it looked like it was too big or not the right shape then they had a surgeon in the room ready to open her up. They did their measuring and the hole was a lot bigger than they had thought. It was 7mm long, 6mm wide at the small end and then 10mm at the large end. But, the valve was shaped just right to be able to try to put a device in to plug the hole up. The first device they tried didn't work at all and they switched to a completely different one. That one they tried a size 8 in and it didn't stay. They then tried the next size up and it stayed put. The size they had to use is almost the size of one they would use for an adult! It is a true miracle that they were able to avoid surgery! I know it was God's hand all the way!

We are so blessed and are praising God in all of this!! I was able to hand over my sweet little girl to the nurses and not cry one bit! That is huge for me! I know that I couldn't have done that without God and all our friends and family blanketing us in prayer. I was just at peace the whole time and it was wonderful. I was able to give up all control and let God take care of things. That is something I have been struggling with and I am sure that was what God wanted to teach me with all of this.

This photo was of her that night when Gene brought Jack and Addison to visit her. We were able to leave the hospital the next day and everything looks good! We had a follow up yesterday and the doctor said her heart has already started to get smaller!! There is still a slight murmur and they saw a small leak in another part of her heart but the doctor said that right now it is nothing to worry about and they will just keep watching it.

Thank you doesn't say enough for how grateful we are to have such an amazing group of support and prayer warriors! We love you all so much and are so happy to put this behind us and see what other adventures God has in store for us! :)

Philippians 4:6-7

New International Version (NIV)

⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.