a post about....everything....

Lots of things have been happening around here. Above are pictures we took of us going up with Granna and Papa to Yosemite for the day.

Below are some pictures of us carving pumpkins and enjoying 2 different Halloween festivals.























Below we have some pictures of Austyn's 2nd birthday. Can you believe he is going to be 2 already!?! My baby is growing up. We had some of our friends over to the house and had a little birthday party for him.

I feel like lots have been going on around here. There is so much to update. But not quite sure where to start. Last time I updated it was 90-degrees and still felt like summer. Now we have already gone through our 2 weeks of wonderful 70 to 80 degree weather and have hit fall. It's now cold with an average high of 50 -degrees. We are approaching living here in fresno for almost a year. And in case you were wondering, yes, we still love it here. And we love being home owners.

I decided after Penelope had another bout with her stomach trouble to have her checked out. I have a co-worker who has a gluten allergy and when I was describing Penelope's symptoms she was having a lot of the same symptoms. After talking to her Pediatrician and then going to see a specialist we got her tested for gluten allergy and we are tring to get stool samples to check many other things. The gluten allergy came back negative. Her stool samples are hard to get. (You can stop reading if this is TMI for you and skip to the next paragraph.) They gave me a little container that would catch any droppings. For whatever, reason she is scared of it. I begged, and bargained, and tried talking her through it. She sat on it to go pee a couple of times. She even sat on it while she watched a movie on the portable DVD player. And still nothing. Someone had the idea of putting saran wrap on the toilet and she wouldn't notice. Let's just say it didn't work. She noticed and there was a big mess. Then we drained the toilet several times in an attempt to "cetch it". In about 2-3 weeks of it, we caught 1. ONE! Ugh. I was hoping once she saw that was all she had to do the other samples (we need a total of 3) would come easily. But nope. I called the doctor, she doesn't have any other options or ideas. Just keep trying. Can't move forward until we have the samples. So we are hoping, praying, that we can get on with it already.

Russell took the kids to the zoo with some friends. And Penelope was climbing on something she wasn't suppose to and fell back and hit her head really hard. I ended up meeting Russell at the Children's hospital and a great friend picked up Austyn for us. She had a "mild" concussion according to the ER doctor. Looking back I don't really know what was mild about it. She had a horrible headache, nausea and vomiting. Through the night we had to wake her up every 2 hours to make sure she was ok. Being a nurse I know the reasons why we do things. What I am really looking for is if she is having a small brain bleed. What really happend to her is that she hit her head so hard that her brain actually bouced around in her skull and caused small microscopic connections between her nerves to tear. It was awfull for me. And probably something as she gets bigger that she has a small memory of but will eventually be no big deal. She of course recuperated fine.

We are going to vacation soon. yay! Can't wait. More details of that when we get back.