Jack can wave!

The other day, Jack moved his arm at me. And so I was like, was that a wave? Well, he did it a few times and Wade and I are now certain he's learned to wave! Yippeee! I don't have it on camera yet but I will!

Zoo fun!

Charlotte looking at the Carousel...our friend Mel paid for her to go on! THANK YOU MEL! She had the best time!!!

These girls are so cute together! All born within 4 months of each other.

On Friday, we went down to SLC to meet up with our good friends the Tippets and the Wyatts. We spent 2 1/2 hours at the Hogle Zoo! It was Charlotte's first time at a big zoo like this so she had a fantastic time...despite the big fall she had. Can't go a day without a bruise on her face! Poor thing. It was a wonderful spring day though. Too bad today it started to snow...AGAIN. Sick of the snow!!! Here are just some pics of the fun we had! Our camera wasn't charged so these are all from my friend, Jen's camera. Thank you Jen!! We then went to dinner with them and stayed up til 2:30am *gasp* talking and playing guitar hero. The next day we spent with Wade's Uncle Gary who came to visit from Aussie. Found some great bargains at the Park City outlet stores! It was a nice weekend to get away and have fun.

One last one.

This is a picture taken of Charlotte at school. It looks like it's in the school gym. This is Carolyn-Kate. She is a year or so older and so is in the PreSchool 2 class but they get together with all the Sound Beginning kids during the day for some activities. This picture makes me so happy. She's got some great friends in the program.

Charlotte signing the alphabet. I love the exaggerated J she signs!

Charlotte signing 1-10.

Passport photoshoot

Saturday was awesome. We needed to get Jack's passport photos done. So we took them at home and took them to Sam's Club where they could use a program and get his photo to the right dimensions. Here's some of them that we took. So FUNNY!


I believe this is the one that we went with. We'll see what they'll say about it. ha ha. Of course, it looks proper as the passport photo...minus the arm. he he.

Jack and his Cheetos.

I let Jack eat some Cheetos the other day. He just enjoyed them. I can't believe he's able to chew on them. He's growing up so fast. Today he's 7 1/2 months old.

I just LOVE this picture. And her face IS clean...ha ha. No, she face planted the other day and couldn't stop herself because her arms were caught while taking off her coat. She bit her lip really bad...and her upper lip is totally bruised. I feel so bad. It's SO wonderful to have her walking but breaks my heart with all her injuries and falls.

Just wanted to share some pictures of Charlotte and her cups. I know I know...some are blurry. oh well. Who else can make a blurry photo look beautiful? : )

Valentine's project.

I know...it's March. But these last few weeks have been a bit busy. Especially because of Charlotte. Now that things seem to be getting normal in other aspects for us, time to post things that happened in the last month. I made this frame...well, I bought the wood frame at Michael's for $1. Then mod-podged and put this scrapbook paper on it. Antiqued it, stained it (edges). The flower...hardly can see but oh well. I'm not an expert! I blew up one of our wedding photos, changed it to b&w and added color to the flowers. Hope you like it! I LOVE it.

Cochlear Implant/Charlotte Update.

This is what a cochlear implant looks on the outside. Most of the kids in Charlotte's program has these and I'm quite used to what they look like. So I'm not worried about what it would be like for Charlotte. You get to choose between so many colors (for the device that looks like a hearing aid!) I'm excited for that : )

Okay, this is a little more complicated. This is what the implant is like inside of the person. I can't even describe what to think or to explain it. So just click here to find out more about cochlear implants. There are two MAIN companies for cochlear implants. There is a 3rd but not as common in America. We are looking into the Cochlear brand over the Bionic brand.

So as you can tell from the pictures above that we have decided to give Charlotte an implant. She is scheduled for June 5 to have it done and then "turned on" on the 25th. We leave for NZ on the 30th and we talked with the Dr. about it and he was totally confident there wasn't going to be any problems or anything if we go ahead with our scheduled holiday. We are waiting until June because the Dr. did say that if Charlotte had her hearing come back it would be within the first 4 months (information that was quite different when this first happened. We were told the first 10-14 days). He's the expert. He is one of the top 5 ENT surgeons in the nation so I believe him. So if that happened, we, of course, would cancel the surgery. He also said there is a risk with the facial nerve but he has never hit it...but that doesn't mean there's always a first. But he said the only time he's been in surgery where another surgeon had nicked the facial nerve. And that was before all the technology to show how close they are to the nerve. So even though we are really scared still, we are fully confident in Dr. Shelton's abilities. I was so glad this appt. went more smoothly and positive compared to the last appt. two years ago (Wade and the dr. got in a full on argument....)

Her hearing came back only a little bit. She pretty much only hears us call her name and that's about it. But she's adapted so well! She now knows the alphabet in sign and can sign for us different letters if we show her them. She knows 1-10 in sign and can tell us what number the sign is if we show her a number on something (we love doing this in Walmart with the aisle numbers or prices of food). She of course can sign her name too. A smart cookie! She's picking up sign language so fast! I love to see her learning more and more and understanding what we mean when we sign to her. Her new thing to sign to people besides a thumbs up and peace sign is the letter "x". ha ha. She's a crack up!