Copy Cat

So in the footsteps of my fellow bloggers, I decided I should too catch up on life. As Jenny put it, the longer you are away from it, the harder it is to start back up. Life is back to normal craziness after a summer that went by in the blink of an eye. The kids only had 7 weeks off this year due to starting so late last year so we have been back to school for 2 weeks now. Vanna is in 2nd grade and thinks she is grown. She already has the attitude of a teenager and can cut her eyes with the best of them (have no idea where she got it from because I was an angel - must be from dad's side). She is still in gymnastics and doing well. Tryouts are just a few months away for the competitive team so she is working hard for that. Tyler has left the 7th grade school which he hated and is now onto Jr. High. So far so good. Hopefully we will not have any homework issues like we had last year. He will be getting his permit next year so we are holding a car over his head every chance we get. He is the typical teenager, loving at one moment and moody the next. Jackson is a hoot and I can't believe he is going to be 2 on Thanksgiving. He is very tall - almost as tall as some of the 3 year olds at daycare. He has a head of curly hair and like his sister, thinks he is grown. He loves the movie Cars and anything that has Lightening McQueen and Mater makes his day. It is really surreal when I think that he is our last so I guess I appreciate the things he does a bit more. I have a really hard time staying mad at my baby, but trust me he does deserve it more often than not. The terrible two's have come early at the Lassey house.

Life is quite uncertain for the next few years. Donnie is on orders to Korea in March for a year. We are by no means complaining because he was on orders for Germany for 2 years with a year in combat, so we will take this new assignment without complaint. We are debating whether or not to put the house up for sale or wait until he comes back. He will have another duty station after Korea and it will not be here, so although we just bought the house last year, there is still another move in our future before our final move when he retires. Decisions, decisions. I'm sure we will figure it out, but for the meantime we are staying put.

Since I have always been bad about pictures, I am not even going to attempt to say I will upload some because the truth is I probably won't. But I do occassionally post some on FB. I will try to be better about the blog, but again my track record can speak for itself :)

Gosh it has been a really long time since I last blogged. Lots going on here in southern Alabama. We closed on the house and finally got moved in, which was quite a feat since Donnie was gone the entire month. We are still unpacking boxes slowly, which makes the house somewhat unsettled. We bought new furniture that will be here today, so at least the house will not be quite so empty. We also got 2 new cats to keep the mice away (not that we have a mice problem, but we have woods around the house and would like to keep it mice free). They have been an adjustment. Not that we are new to cats (but we are preferably dog people). Anyway they have been inside for the last week in order to get accustomed to the house before we let them out. Let me tell you - 2 cats and one litter box makes for contant clean up and lysol spray. I am hoping that will get better once they can go outside. We went and bought the expensive litter that advertises for multiple cats - you know the one where the cat gets the bloodhound to find the litter box.....yes well that is a nice advertising trick because trust me, we had NO problem finding the litter box. OK off my soapbox for now on that subject.

We have friends coming into town tomorrow. They have been in Panama City Beach and I took Tyler down last night. They will only be here for one night but it will be nice to see them. Donnie's dad and Dori and Dori's daughter will be here next week. We got a place on Pensacola Beach for the weekend, but I fear there will be no ocean time for us. The beaches have been closed in Pensacola and Fort Walton due to the oil. It is really sad because Donnie grew up on those beaches and we have become quite fond of them as well and now they will never be the same. I guess we will have to be content with the pool and hanging out at granny's house.

Jackson is getting big as ever. He weighs 15 lbs. and is 29 inches long. He looks like he is at least 1 except for the fact that he can't walk yet. He has 3 teeth that have surfaced in the last week. Hard to believe he is growing up so fast. Vanna will be in 1st grade in the fall and Tyler will start 7th. I remember 7th grade at Bailey Jr. High and I just can't believe Tyler is at that point already.

I will do my best to get pictures these next few weeks (if I can find the camera). More than likely I will post on facebook, but I will try to remember to put some here as well.

Once again I have fallen behind the curve ball....been super busy with life in general. News on the homefront.....we are looking for a house to buy. We were not going to buy in Alabama since we don't know how long we are going to be here, but since we are on a month to month lease now, the property mgmt company raised our rent almost $100 a month and the house is pretty crappy so we decided we would try to buy before the end of April to get the $8,000 tax credit. We put in an offer on one house Monday but the seller came back with a full price counter - not exactly a counter offer in my opinion. But yesterday we found (well I found since Donnie is out of town) a house and I am going to put in an offer this afternoon. I sent some pics to Donnie but he hasn't seen it in person. Hopefully he trusts me. It was not even listed yet. Our realtor is their realtor so she wasn't listing it until this morning. Hopefully they will accept it since they already bought another property and they have to move soon. Kinda exciting.....will keep you posted.

Donnie is almost done with another 2 classes. Only 7 more til he graduates. Unfortunately he has to take some quantitative reasoning course. I looked up the description and it is math, algebra, functions, statistics, etc. UGH!! Unfortunately math is neither of our strong suits so we will have to put some effort in this together. Other than that, we are both trucking along in school.

Jackson is getting so big. I am putting some new pics on FB this weekend from easter. Hard to believe he is going to be 5 months at the end of the month. Time flies. Well I am at work so I should probably go work.

Boy have I been a slacker on the blog front - I guess b/c I tend to Facebook more. I will try to be better at updating the blog. Jackson is doing great - He is 8 weeks old today! Hard to believe how fast they grow. He is getting sooo big and he wants to eat all the time. He goes in for shots in 2 weeks, which is not a pleasant experience for either of us. He slept thru the night all weekend so I think we are making some progress in that area. He is doing great at daycare and all the ladies there love him. Vanna and Tyler are doing great as well. Report cards come home today so that will determine how our evening goes. Tyler is on break from football but wants to do bowling which starts next month I think. Vanna is still in gymnastics and is loving it. She told Donnie and I this morning that when she makes the gymnastics team we have to pay for alot of stuff and she gets to stay in hotels! How cute is that? She is getting pretty good - Olympics here we come!

Been busy since Jax arrived. Donnie is back in school finishing up his bachelors in business and I started year 2 of law school last week. Have a pretty heavy load this year but hopefully working in an attorney's office everyday will help out.

He's Here!!

Baby Jackson has finally arrived and we are totally in love with him! We checked into the hospital yesterday at 5am, got an IV w/ pitocin around 6:30am, broke my water at 8:30am, endured labor pains long enough to say I did it and got my epidural around 10am. Of course only 1 side of me got numb so they gave me more medicine and fixed the epidural and before I knew it I could not move me legs, which was completely awesome when it came to pain, but a bit troublesome when the pushing came. Unlike my other 2 who came out with a max of 3 pushes, it took about 30 min of pushing to get him out because he was "sunny side up" - which means he came out with his face upward instead of facing downward which is why I was having so much trouble. But my doctor said if he did not come out with one last push, the forceps were coming and if I remember correctly, Katie said that was pretty uncomfortable for all parties involved, so I just pushed and luckily he came out at 12:28pm. He weighed 7 lbs 12 ounces, which was a nice surprise. Of course he is a week early so he probably would have been over 8 lbs had I not been induced. I am very sore b/c I tore pretty badly so I am all stitched up and the cramping has been almost as painful as the contractions, but I have some pretty cool drugs so it is tolerable.

He is so quiet and calm (knock on wood). He cried for just a minute after he was born, but has had shots, blood drawn, circumsicion done and just does not really cry. Of course when it comes to the diaper changes and the doctor messing with him - he lets them know he is unhappy. He sleeps about 4 hrs at a time, drinks his bottle and goes right back to sleep. I know it is too early to tell, but I would not be disappointed if that trend continued. He looks just like his dad and has the trademark Lassey smirk already. I have pics on the camera, but I brought the wrong USB cord to the hospital so I will have to download this weekend after we get out of the hospital. The civilian hospital experience has been great. I have this huge private corner room that looks more like a hotel suite than a hospital room. The nurses have taken care of every need and then some, the food has actually been pretty good too. They bring a dinner for Donnie as well as me for each meal and even brought us thanksgiving dinner on a white tableclothed table with flowers and sparkling cider. Donnie had 2 ribeye steaks and I had turkey with all the trimmings. Definately cant complain about it. Vanna is spending the night with me in the hospital tonight. The nurses gave her a blanket and pillows and she is chilling on the couch watching Home Alone while i mess on the computer.

I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving today. We will be doing Thanksgiving dinner this weekend at the house with some friends, but I don't think anything can top this.

Just thought I would share that a name has been decided on-as of right now that is :-) We have decided to call the baby Jackson Walter. Walter is Donnie's great grandfather and Donnie's dad came up with Jackson a while back which I liked back then, but like it even more now since Jackson is one of my favorite characters on Sons of Anarchy (which in case you have never seen it, is a bad ass show on FX about a motocycle gang, if you like that kind of thing). Anyway at least the little guy has a name now and is not just baby. Hopefully it will fit his personality. And apparently I like to have some kind of rhyme or reason to my kids because all of them will be exactly 6 years, 2 weeks apart, all born on a Wed and depending on how you look at it all named after cities: Tyler, Savannah and Jackson.

Time has certainly flown. I did not realize I haven't updated this since Sept (not that I am very good at updating it). Anyway lots to report. First of all, the baby is doing well and will be here on November 25 if he does not show up before then. So that means only 23 days left to go! Seems like just yesterday I found out we were having a baby and now he is almost here. With that said, these last few weeks are DRAGGING by! I do go to the doctor tomorrow so maybe we will see if there is any hope of an earlier arrival, but I doubt it....Lassey kids tend to hang around as long as possible. If all goes as planned I will get out of the hospital the Friday after Thanksgiving so we are having Thanksgiving that weekend and hopefully will have a full house. We have some friends down at Ft. Rucker for school with no where to go for the holiday so we have invited them to join us with their families. Nothing like a house full of friends, good food and football!

Thursday was Tyler's bday. Hard to believe he is 12 already. We had a football game Thurs. night so we celebrated on Friday instead. Vanna's bday is in 10 days so of course she is asking everyday if it is her bday yet. She will be 6! It is kind of cool because all of the kids will be exactly 6 years and 2 weeks apart and all of them born on a Wednesday - did not plan it that way but its pretty neat how it worked out.

Halloween was great. Donnie is out of town so I took Savannah, who was batgirl, and we went for over an hour and I can't believe how much candy she got. Tyler went with one of his friends and he loaded up a pillowcase full! The neighborhood was packed with trick or treaters, which is something I have not seen in a long time. It reminded me of when I was a kid and everybody was out and about. There was even a house tailgating halloween style. They had a grill, hotdogs, drinks, candy and a surround system set up playing halloween music. They were handing out food to all the trick or treaters for free. It was pretty cool. I do have pics and one day I will get them posted but you know how good I am at that :) -