great deal!

Hey my Canadian friends! I just wanted to fill you in on a deal I found!

If you're like me and you don't print pictures for a year at a time....and then realize that it's going to cost you a fortune to print your pictures because there are so many.

A few weeks ago I sorted through all the pictures from the last year and decided which ones I wanted to print. I realized I had FIVE HUNDRED pictures to print.

So.....guess how much this box of pictures cost to print?





.......there's over 500 pictures in that box and it only cost me $39.95, including tax and shipping! I saw an ad on the internet for kwikpix.ca and thought I'd check it out....and they have a promo right now that you only pay $0.05 per picture for your first order! Yay for me. After your first order pictures are $0.10 per picture.

At Wal-Mart for $0.19 each, it would have cost me $95. Yikes.

So....check it out! Save yourself some money. :)

quite a scare!

Jaxon has a peanut allergy!

About a month ago, he had a bite of the chocolate part of my Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup ice cream, and a few minutes after got red, puffy eyes, sneezing, and runny nose. It cleared up in about 2 hours. The same thing happened 2 weeks ago when he had 1 bite of my PB & Jam toast. So then we knew it was the peanut butter.

On Wednesday, Jaxon had 1/2 a piece of Chex cereal snack mix at youth group, and as soon as he ate it I realized it had PB in it! So I watched him carefully and he only got red splotches around his mouth, nothing else. I came home and put him to bed, and he woke up about 15 minutes later coughing. He has a cold so I went in and gave him a drink of water and for "some reason" decided to take him and let him lay with me on the couch. Then I realized he had the red puffy eyes and red face, and hives on his belly...and his breathing was a bit wheezy.

We headed for the hospital right away, and within 2o minutes we had 3 nurses and a doctor standing around us, giving him Epinephrine, Benedryl, Ventalin, and Prednisone. Crazy!!!!!!! Things cleared up pretty fast after all the drugs, but they wanted to keep him overnight incase of a rebound after the Epinephrine wore off.

Thanks to the Benedryl, Jaxon fell asleep as soon as we got to our room, and slept until 4am. He woke up chipper and chatty and curiously examining the wires attached to him. :)

So, we are now the parents of a child with a peanut allergy! We have to become quite familar with an Epi Pen....especially since his allergy seems to get worse each time he has PB.



Jaxon's room :(


Future doctor maybe?



Dr. Kristina....we found out while we were there that she was with us in Sudbury with Mya! She did CPR on Mya for 9 minutes and said she still thinks of Mya often.

It was such a blessing to meet her and talk about Mya with her.....and it was so ironic that she was taking care of Jaxon here in the Soo! Especially since she's only up North once & a while...she normally works at CHEO.




Obviously feeling better!

...And just for fun...a classic spaghetti face picture :)


ps. THANK YOU to everyone who gave me advice for weaning! It was so helpful to read your ideas. As of now, we're still having 3 feedings a day but I think we're getting ready to drop 1 more. I bought a straw sippy cup and he's starting to get used to that, but is still not drinking tons of milk out of a cup. I've decided to go to the women's retreat....Dan is set to brave the weekend by himself! :)

weaning tips, anyone?

So....Jaxon is 1 year old now and I'm thinking it's time to get him off the breast. There's 2 weekends in October that I have the opportunity to go away without Jaxon (Wonderland with the youth and a Women's retreat) but I really don't see Jaxon being done with me by then.

In those first days of breastfeeding, I never thought I'd get to 6 months, let alone 1 year! Well here we are and I love it and Jaxon loves it. But I didn't think it would be this hard to wean him! He has shown no signs of wanting to be done with it, in fact...he's starting to come to me signing "please, milk!" which is so cute and so hard to say no to! However......it's TIME! I told myself that when my kid starts to be able to pull up my shirt and ask for it, it's time to say bye-bye to breastfeeding. And I'm afraid that time has come.

We've successfully gone from 4 feedings a day to 3 in the last five days, but I've had to distract him quite a few times this week after he signed "please milk" to make him forget....so I don't see dropping 3 more feedings in under a month to be possible.

The biggest issue for me is that Jaxon doesn't really drink enough milk from a sippy cup (and he won't take a bottle at all..never has!) to replace his milk feedings. Since getting rid of the 12pm feeding, I've been offering him Homo milk in a sippy cup. He'll take sips but definitely not enough (or so I think). He's also not eating a ton of solid food right now so I worry that he's not getting enough. What are the milk requirements for a 1 yr old?

Any advice?? Should I just prepare for a tough 2 weeks and eliminate the feedings one-by-one, hoping that he'll eventually drink the homo milk or should I give up on the idea of going away in October????????

Thanks for your advice!

ps. any moms out there have any tips for picky eaters? It seems like we have to pretty much force feed Jaxon his meat & veggie meals. He's pretty picky with his finger foods too.

visiting the cemetery

We were glad to be able to visit the cemetery where Mya is buried while we were in Goderich. Especially since her 2nd birthday, we were really wanting to go and visit her grave site. We always go there hoping to get some feeling of comfort or feel close to Mya, but we usually get there and just see the stone in the ground and realize that it's really just her body there. We know that she is far from here...rejoicing and having a grand time in Heaven with Jesus.

This time though - I think because it was the same time of year as her funeral - memories of her funeral and the time surrounding her death flooded back. I looked over to the tree that we set her tiny white casket under and remembered the feelings of numbness and disbelief combined with the feelings of torture.

There is a picture that I will always have in my head - the picture of Dan carrying her casket from under that tree to the place that she would be buried. We had a ton of people walking behind us, supporting us and crying with us. Whew. What a dark time that was.

On a lighter note...our visit this time was somewhat of a blessing. It was a beautiful day...the sun was shining and the big leafy trees were shading us and blowing in the breeze...we were looking forward to taking Jaxon and sitting by Mya's grave. Dan and Jax went ahead and I took a couple pictures.

This one blew us away:


Just one ray of sun shining on Mya's grave. We're not the kind of people that say "oh...it's Mya looking down on us"......but we do feel that it was a little blessing from God saying "it's going to be okay, she's safe here with Me".


The entrance to "babyland". I wish I had a "before" picture. It has come so far. Dan's parents really took ownership here and got things into shape. Before there was no flowers or plants, there were tree stumps sticking out of the ground, there were ugly white pillars, sparse grass (or should I say WEEDS!), and it was just not a pretty place. But now, there are beautiful flower beds, trimmed trees to let the sun in, and green lush grass. It's a much nicer place to visit, and it feels like a better more tranquil place to be.

a visit to Goderich

Last week we packed up and headed to Goderich for a quick visit with our families. It was so nice to see everyone again - we had a really nice visit. We brought our bikes which was great....the weather was PERFECT so we were able to take advantage of it. Here's some pictures from our visit!


We had a birthday party for Jaxon so our families could celebrate with him too!


A new favorite picture!


I love my sister!








We visited my Grandma on the way back! We brought her KFC which she was thrilled about, and played Skip-Bo. :)


The zoo with Ange