Vernon Volumes text

Vernon Volumes text

Monday, December 31, 2018

KC Christmas 2018


For Christmas this year, we flew to KC early on Sunday December 23rd. We had to get up at 3am to get ready for the flight and thankfully the holiday travel was fairly uneventful. We ate at McAlister's for lunch and arrived pretty early in the day. Grandma's house was decorated for Christmas and she always makes it comfy and cozy for us.

On Christmas Eve we put on some of our nice clothes and went to Odessa for Christmas Eve service.








After Christmas Eve service we put on our comfy Christmas PJ's and played at the house. Grandma Genie got a foosball table and it's got a really neat illuminated ball.






On Christmas morning, everyone came to Grandma Genie's house in the morning and we ate Lamar's Donuts and opened gifts together.










After Christmas we spent a lot of time with family playing games, doing puzzles, having sleepovers, taking walks, decorating cookies, eating out together, and much more.





On Friday we went to the Main Event, which is kind of like a fancy Chuck E Cheese with bowling. We'd planned to bowl, but it was a super long wait and pretty expensive too. We got some unlimited cards to play games and we enjoyed that for a couple of hours.








Sunday morning we got up super early at 3am for another early flight. Thankfully the travel both ways was fairly uneventful, however it was definitely exhausting with the early flights. Merry Christmas!

Monday, December 24, 2018

Chloe and friends at Grandma's house


Paige and I dropped Chloe off at Grandma Alice's house on Saturday afternoon. Grandma is watching Chloe for us over Christmas and she also has a lot of other houseguests. There will be seven dogs there over the holiday! Chloe is doing much better, but not eating a lot lately. She's on prescription dog food and the vet said that he's never seen a dog starve to death, so we are trying not to worry about her.

Vernon Christmas Celebration in Florida


We celebrated Christmas on Saturday December 22nd together at home. We took a video of the kids coming in to the family room to see what Santa brought and then we passed out the presents and took turns opening. Santa brought the kids a volleyball set for the pool, a new American Girl doll for Paige and a Chiefs jersey for Connor.








Andrea and I both had a lot of boxes to open. Andrea did an awesome job picking out a lot of stuff that I wanted and needed, she definitely tried hard to make Christmas special for everyone. Andrea received mostly clothes as well as some Fruity Pebbles rice crispy treats. Thankfully she gave us some good ideas of what to get for her.






Paige's favorite gifts were the iPad, her American Girl doll, and her Unicorn Slippers. Connor's favorite gift was the iPad. They were both excited for the new iPads, their iPads have been well used and are getting fairly slow lately and are unable to play the new games. They actually have been very patient with their old iPads and haven't complained or asked for new ones, but we knew it has to have been frustrating for them. The new iPads have nice cases too that look more grown up and are more sturdy.



The Grinch that stole Christmas play - Paige's class with Ms Caldwell




Paige has been super excited about her class's Christmas play. They've been rehearsing, building sets, and working hard to get their production together and this last Tuesday was the big day. On Monday, Paige's class did a dress rehearsal of the entire play for some of the younger kids at the school and on Tuesday they performed for the parents. Andrea and I both went and I took a couple pics beforehand and then took a video of the performance.



After the play, Andrea stayed and helped the kids with their pizza party and Christmas centers and celebration.

Christmas celebration with Grandma Alice and Grandpa Vernon


On December 16th, we got together with Grandma Alice and Grandpa Vernon to celebrate Christmas a little early since we were planning to go to KC over the holiday. We had planned to get together the following weekend, but since Grandpa had prostate surgery scheduled the next week, we weren't sure what kind of condition he'd be in, so Sunday was the day. We ate lunch at Cantina Laredo and then hung out at the house and opened presents and did a Rudolph puzzle. Merry Christmas!!




Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Chris and Abby in Florida




On Saturday, we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house in the afternoon to see Chris and Abby. They went on a cruise last week and got back Saturday morning. We hung out for a while and then went out front to play pickleball in the driveway. It wasn't exactly real pickleball since we didn't have a net, but we setup some chairs as a net and had a lot of fun with it.


There were a few videos of the pickleballing. It got a little intense from some of the other players, but I tried to keep things calm and friendly, which you can clearly see in the video.

Champion Christmas Party


On Saturday night, Andrea and I went to the Champion's house for their annual Christmas party. It was our first time going, we missed it last year. They put on a very nice party and it was fun to catch up with some of our friends from the club.


Connor's contact lenses from Costco



Connor's eyes have been a little nearsighted, but not quite enough to do anything about it until recently. The school did a vision screen and recommended he get screened by a doctor. We took him to Costco and they did the whole vision test routine as well as dilating and looking inside his eyes. His eyes are healthy, but he has -1.25 on the right eye and -0.75 on the left. We picked out a pair of glasses and also wanted to have the option of contacts. Unfortunately, Connor really struggled with the contact lenses. The doctor was able to get them in fairly easily, but Connor's very sensitive with his eyes and he struggled to even get his fingers anywhere near his eyeball. As soon as anything made contact with his long eyelashes, his eye would reflexively close up. 



At the eye doctor's office, we were only able to get the contacts in and out if someone else did it for him. We've been working on it this past week and it's getting easier every day. Connor's actually gotten to the point where he can get the contact out on his own, but we're still helping him get them in. Hopefully soon he'll be able to do it all by himself.

We took a video on the first night when we were working on getting the contacts in, just so he could see how his eye wasn't open enough to work with.

Connor's ear infection, hopefully the last


Connor's had these ear tubes in for a loooong time now (http://www.vernonvolumes.com/2013/08/connor-gets-ear-tubes-again.html).

We are planning to get them out in early 2019, but for now we're still dealing with them. On our cruise, one of his earplugs came out a little while we were roughhousing in the ocean and some saltwater got in his ear. It got infected, and we went to the ENT to get it suctioned so we could get the ear drop antibiotic in to his ear and also just to generally clean up the ear canal. We are looking forwards to being done with the tubes soon!


A picture inside Connor's right ear after it was suctioned.


The closeup picture of the tube in his left ear, which wasn't infected.