Vernon Volumes text

Vernon Volumes text

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Easter Sunday



Today is Easter, and the kids are finally patient enough we were able to sleep in a little bit and not get up early to immediately find every egg in the house. Chloe had been in her kennel all night so she wouldn't eat the Easter bunny and any candy around the house. The kids ate their breakfast while sneaking peeks at all the eggs that the Easter bunny had hidden around the house. After breakfast, and everyone was up, the kids opened their Easter baskets and then they ran around like wild animals and found every egg in the house.







We got dressed, ate at Cantina Laredo for lunch, and then went to PVIC for an Easter Egg hunt. It was supposed to rain, so we weren't sure if we would go, but the skies looked clear and we got lucky that it didn't rain on us at all.






We waited around for a few minutes and then they released the kids to grab the eggs. I believe there were over 8000 eggs total and the kids were split in to different zones based on their ages, so Connor and Paige were in separate areas. I started my video of Paige a little late, but Andrea got a good video of Connor.




After the egg hunt we checked the eggs to see if we won any extra big prizes. No golden or silver eggs were found, but the kids got a bunch of candy and some little toys too.




Baby Griffin



On March 25th, Good Friday, early in the morning, Amanda gave birth to baby Griffin.  His official birth time was 12:13 am, and at the time of his birth he weighed 5 pounds 13 ounces.

Partway through the pregnancy, Griffin was diagnosed with Duodenal atresia, which is frequently linked with Down Syndrome. A few other tests had been done, but it wasn't clear whether or not he had Down Syndrome until he was born. Griffin was moved to the NICU after birth and on Saturday he had surgery to correct the Duodenal atresia. So far, he's been recovering well. I think Alli has been disappointed she wasn't in KC to be there for the birth of her cousin, but we've all been thankful we have Facetime on our phones and we've been talking to everyone quite a bit to get updates and to virtually visit with Griffin in the NICU.




Today, at lunch, the kids got to see Griffin on Facetime for the first time.



He certainly is a cute little guy, and we hope he recovers well from surgery and they can take him home and hold him soon too. We're looking forwards to meeting our new nephew/cousin soon!

Under contract, new house


On Saturday, we went under contract to purchase a house. We've been looking for quite some time, and this is actually the fourth house that we put an offer on. The house is in the exact neighborhood we wanted, on the North end of the neighborhood where we wanted to be, is a great layout and floorplan, and has all the rooms that we want and need. The current decorations aren't exactly to our taste, and we are planning to do some work to the house, but it has a lot of things going for it and we are very excited that the current home owner accepted our offer and that the timing should work out. If everything goes to plan, we will own the new house for a month before we have to move out of our current house. We're hoping that will give us enough time to do the projects in the house that we would like to do before moving in. We plan to get an inspection done early next week and will know for sure whether the house is going to work out. We've got our fingers crossed!






















Alli comes to visit


Allison flew in from KC on Thursday for a short visit over Spring Break. We've all been enjoying her company and the kids have really loved having her around. She's been staying in one of their rooms every night, and since both kids want to be around her, they all end up crashing in the same room. I snapped a pic of them all sleeping in Connor's room the other night.




We've been trying to do the things Alli wants to do, and went shopping for some Easter goodies.


The kids all got to pick out some goodies, and Connor was disappointed he couldn't find anything he was interested in. I went through some of the board games and noticed an NFL board game you play with dice. I've played through it four times with Connor now and he thinks it's awesome. He got upset the one time I beat him, but he loves picking out the teams, setting it all up, and keeping score. He tried to explain it all to the girls this morning and it was fun watching him be the referee.




On Saturday, we had our inspection for our house, so the girls went to do some shopping with Alli while Connor and I stayed home. After the inspectors finished up, we met the girls at the beach club and although it was supposed to rain we decided to try and enjoy the beach while we could. We were pleasantly surprised that it never did rain the entire time we were there.





The kids played in the cold ocean water as long as they could stand it and then we swam in the heated pool for a while.


There were lots of kids on the slide, but Paige and Alli both went down once.



Afterwards we ate at Barbara Jeans and of course had to get a pic together.




Paige got some water in her ear and it was really bothering her. Alli held her and loved on her for a while though, which definitely helped.


Alli is here through Tuesday and we still have a few days to enjoy her company.