kids

I was reading my cousins blog about a very trying emergency room visit. It reminded me of a similar experience we had at an appointment. Caleb was supposed to have a hearing test. They checked his ears and one ear was too full of wax to see in. So they had to send him over to ear nose and throat. So Caleb wouldn't go so I had to carry him and Samantha in. So the Dr. took Samantha, while I held Caleb. The Doctor spent a long time showing Caleb all of the equipment and finally Caleb let him look in his ear. He wouldn't sit still. So after about at least a half an hour, they decided they had to papoose him. If you don't know what a papoose is, it is a board with straps around that were used for people to carry there babies. It keeps their body, arms and legs all together. Even with that they had two Dr.s that had to hold Caleb down, while the main Dr. was up by his head. Caleb kept screaming Can you please get me out? over and over. Very nice manners. Luckily it didn't hurt me as much because he wasn't talking to me. Then he changed to if you don't let me out I'm going to scream. Why, you ask, did I subject my son to this? because they then told me he had something stuck in his ear. It turns out he had a popcorn kernel stuck in his ear. The last time We remember having popcorn was when we were in Utah, in July, watching Wall-E. Apparently Caleb thought it would be fun to stick a kernel in his ear. Amazingly his ear feels much better now.

aaa short kids with small heads...

...are nothing but trouble. Most of you will remember that Samantha is almost 7 months old. She is just starting to crawl and can sit herself up. She is considerably shorter than Caleb and Charlotte and doesn't have nearly as big of a head. She has started to try and climb up things. I have found her a number of times at the bottom of the stairs with her hands on the second step and she tries to use chair legs to stand up. Today she went to bed and screamed and screamed and screamed, then Charlotte comes out and says Samantha is standing up in the crib. Alas it was true. Here is our precocious baby.

Labor Day Weekend

Well we have made a tradition in the family, two years in a row makes a tradition right? We had a Texan Grindstaffs family reunion, (the tradition is that we have people over to OUR house over Labor Day). We had 28 people in our house at one time. We had Chelle, Shawn, Jonathon, Timothy, BreeAwnnah, Alanna, Amymarie, Ashley, Heidi, Tavian, Scott, Maggie, Patrick, Ella, Amy, Aaron, Tess, Ivy, Mom, Dad, Isaac, Aaron, Anita and the five of us. Samantha has met everyone in the immediate family now. Meeting Amys Aaron and Scotts family for the first time this weekend.

Sadly we were missing Matthew and Kara and their kids. The boys were seriously outnumbered. We were also missed Sandra, she had to work, so she couldn't come. We had good old Texas BBQ, with a Kansas City flair, (thanks to Scott). We did have the addition of Scotts family since they moved to Texas. They also live less than two hours from us.

Today we were able to get seven ceiling fans in, Shawn and Chelle helped us with 4 and then Sam did 3. Our house is more comfortable now. It would have been better to have them in before everyone came but we needed Shawns Expertise. We were able to get in very good conversations and even a few games.

However with all of the commotion, we did not take any pictures, not a one. Maggie did though and soon you can see on their blog the fun we had. Thank you everyone for coming. We had a lot of fun and hope everyone else did too.