Kinsleigh's 1st Field Trip...EVER

So...it's been a long time.  Like a long, LONG time since I've blogged.  It just hasn't seemed to be my specialty lately.  With a busy summer all done with and getting back into the swing of things with school, it just never seems to happen.  And not to mention our little miss Kinsleigh going to school five days a week this year really keeps us on our toes! (but in a good way of course!)  But what better thing to present you with as a welcoming back to the blog but a glimpse at Kinsleigh's FIRST of many field trips for this school year.  Her Excel class is so beyond amazing that I'm beginning to get a little frightened knowing that most likely no other class in her lifetime is going to come close to comparison.  

Going to play and learn with her about apples and pumpkins at the Livesay Orchard in Porter, OK was such a blast for both of us.  Her teachers did an awesome job at incorporating lessons into their trip in a fun and exciting way and it's simply just a great group of kiddos!  

We kind of have to work on our bowling skills...

This would be the first and only way she's even come remotely close to milking a cow. She wanted to water the ground with it. Us city folks don't get out to the country enough these days. 

 Excel class 2013-14!!!

Who they really are...

Many days I'm reminded through conversations with others and then in my own human nature comparing my children to their peers that they don't measure up.  Or at least that's what I begin to believe. (This rings true more so for my sweet Kinsleigh.  Unfortunately I believe her fearful past has come back to haunt her and others are unable to see how far she has come.  Kinsleigh's struggles don't even have to be a topic of my conversations anymore.  At the same time others lift my spirits by pointing out the huge strides she's made and making it known that she's a totally different kid than she was even 1 year ago. Yup, I can breathe now.  Cause she's gonna make it!) More quickly than I'm able to try and convince myself of this, I'm reminded who they really are.  Not only WHO they really are but WHO they were made by and WHO they were made for.  Not only am I proud of who my children are simply because I'm their Mommy but because who they truly are is great and something that anyone who takes the time can personally see. 

I am beyond blessed to have a child like Kinsleigh.  I have never known a child of her age to have so many characteristics meshed into one.  She's got charisma, sass, tenderness, silliness, seriousness, she's super intelligent...you name it...so evenly balanced. She knows what it means to help others in need.  She seeks after knowing Christ and actually longs to be with Him.  She knows He died on the cross and what put Him there.  She knows what it means to be given grace and be forgiven.  She knows she's deeply loved and beautiful because her Daddy and I remind her of this every day.  But yet she also sadly knows that the fears she has experienced both in her past and her present are sometimes "not normal" because it's the message she is constantly given and gets thrown in her face.  What is normal anyway? No 4 year old should ever have to feel out of place. And she also knows that she can't make those fears go away no matter how hard she tries.  And believe me, she wants them to.  I walked in on her in her room one night, out of her bed, down on her knees talking to Jesus about taking her scared feelings away.  When the fears strike, I can only imagine how much it hurts her little mind and only this Mommy and Daddy can stand by her and somewhat try to understand what she is going through. But, she is going to continue to persevere and I refuse to do anything but to lovingly help her through it.  At times it has had to be "tough love" but LOVE nonetheless.  She has come so far in 2 years with all she went through and she's almost got them all under control. I'm so proud of her.  Bravest kid I know.  

Kyla is my "How did I deserve to be so blessed?!" child.  In the confines of our own home she is one crazy, silly, cuddly, loving, imaginative, talkative, active child.  In a more formal setting, she is shy, reserved, submissive...totally opposite of big sister.  She is my 2nd smarty pants.  (I seriously don't know where their intelligence comes from. It's almost ridiculous).  When she runs around the house, her little curls bounce and I squeeze those little cheeks of hers every day and look into her GORGEOUS big blue eyes and tell her how she too is beautiful and deeply loved by her Daddy and I.  When the topic of Jesus arises with her, the response is more of a "oh, haha" followed by some other random thought. It's darling.  At her age, all that matters is that she knows His name.  And in this house, you can't go a day without knowing His name.  He is factored into all the choices and decisions we make.  She has struggled with some of the sensory issues her sister has battled as well in regards to being extremely cautious on playground equipment.  But nothing in comparison.  You should see this girl fly down the stairs!  We've got another broken bone in our future I'm sure.  She is super independent.  I'm talking, insists on doing EVERYTHING herself if it's the last thing she does.  You go for it girl! She likes making friends and other people mean the world to her.  

So there you have it in a nut shell.  Who they really are. Not a cookie cut kid.  Not a text book child.  Not a nuisance free kid. Not a worry free kid.  Just kids who have their priorities straight and know how to love on others.  I don't know about you, but that's all that matters to me.  When the day is done, I don't have to feel shame for the Mommy I ultimately am.  In complete humility, I know I'm doing things right when I hear the heart of my children.  

It's only human nature to care what others think about your children because of course you want them to be loved just like you love them.  But realistically, that won't always be so.  So I like to come back to reality and remind myself that, "oh yeah, I don't have to care what others think." Because God knows who they really are, even more so than me and He believes and knows they are kind, compassionate, and beautiful.  Not just beautiful might I add, but STUNNING.  Just imagining what He feels when he looks upon them gives me goosebumps.  They are preciously dear to Him. Absolutely nothing can change that. NOTHING. No words or actions anyone may say or do.    Thank you God, for being such a loving God, full of grace.  

Kiddie Park

Welcome to quite possibly my children's favorite new place on Earth...Kiddie Park! (Clearly we've never been to Disney World, but even if we had, this place would maybe still win because here, they can do ALL the rides and it makes them feel so awesome! haha) It's located in Bartlesville so it's a good hour long drive but so beyond worth it.  I  can't believe we have lived here for almost 4 years and had never heard of this place! We are no longer missing out. Highly recommend it! 

 Just having a little talk about how amazing this place is...

   Train rides. Always classic fun.  Yes, my children were drenched in sweat.

                                   

 Yes! Remember these?! Flashback Frontier City...miniature style! 

And I sooooo wish I could have gotten a picture of them both riding the roller coaster but that ride Mommy and Daddy had to participate as well.  Kinsleigh actually BEGGED to get on the roller coaster.  We've got a thrill seeker here folks and I think this roller coaster ridin Mama is gonna like it! I think I'm going to hear begging to go back to this place often. 

Tornado Relief

A couple weekends ago my husband and I went and helped with tornado relief in Moore, OK.  The devastation you see on T.V. is remarkable, but once you see it in person, it's even more unreal.  Growing up in Oklahoma, I've been close to large tornadoes like this before and even gone and seen the massive messes they leave behind. But this was the first time I actually put on my own gloves and got out there to help those who were affected personally by the storm.  It puts a whole new perspective on what these people went through that horrific afternoon. 

We helped through a group named "Samaritans Purse."  It is a christian based disaster relief team that works all across the nation in events such as this.  Amazing organization. This particular day we helped clean up a large lot of land that had been already picked up and cleared out for the most part but we were helping get all the remaining debris removed so that it would be ready for this family to rebuild as soon as possible. Most are not that lucky because their homes are in neighborhoods and it will take MONTHS before they can even get all the homes cleaned up, let alone even thinking about rebuilding.  

We were actually able to meet the homeowners from this land but we were only told so little about them.  Mainly they described the afternoon of the storm and what it felt/sounded like from within their storm shelter underground.  But sifting through all the debris behind where their home once was, much more of their story could unfold.  For one, we could clearly tell they had grandchildren as many items belonging to small children were found.  Among them were sandbox toys, buzz lightyear slippers and a wizard of oz tin filled with figurines that you see below.  We also could tell somebody must have had quite the baseball card collection as many were found.  You don't think about the things flying through the air at 100+ mph like a saw blade and kitchen knife like we picked out of the ground either. 

Once we were "finished" with our work at the property we'd been at all day, we headed over to the location where Plaza Towers Elementary was once located.  The memorial they have created for those who lost their lives at the school that day is beautiful.  You can't help but mourn for those families who lost their little ones.  To think that on the day of the storm, only several hours earlier they had just been sending their child off to school like any other normal day, only to have their lives completely flipped around.  It's heart wrenching. 

In the neighborhood across from the elementary school

Since making this trip to Moore, Kinsleigh has asked so much about tornados.  What they do...what they look like.  She even talks about what she could do to make a little girl feel better who lost all her toys.  Not only that but she has added "tornado worker" to her list of things she wants to be when she grows up.  She refers to what we did as "Mommy and Daddy are going to clean up the tornado mess" and she actually requests to do the same.  She prays for these people at night. It's remarkable.  The experience of going to Moore was one that I don't want to quickly downplay and forget.  It was eye opening for me and it was another incredible lesson to my 4 year old of what it means to have compassion for others.  My things are just things and they just don't seem as important to me as they once were.  I'm trying to remind myself of this daily so I can stop focusing on the things I want to GET and instead refocus my mind on what I can GIVE.  Only God knows the capacity of which I have to offer and I can't wait for Him to show me what that is. I can't wait to go out and do something like this again. I hope what actually seemed like a small amount of work in the whole scheme of things was as big of a blessing to someone else as it was to me. 

Story behind the Break...

Since many of you have been asking and I know I will continue to be asked how Kyla broke her wrist, I thought I would just take a moment to share the journey of our week this way.

Monday night actually is when my week began to go downhill.  It was a typical night, everyone exhausted and ready for bed from a fun summer day. Only 15 minutes after I had fallen asleep for the night, I was awakened by my 4 year old throwing up due to a coughing fit.  She's completely healthy, just getting over an ear infection/icky cough and when that girl gets a coughin, she gets a coughin!!! And she just kept coughing, throwing up, coughing, throwing up for a good 20 min. Poor kiddo. Everything cleaned up, new sheets on the bed, battled a fly in her bedroom for another 20 min so that she could calm down to go to sleep. Yeah...needless to say, I finally got to bed by midnight which if you know anything about me is WAY past my bedtime.  I thrive on sleep!  Then Kyla decided after finally having 4 nights in a row of sleeping through the night (woo hoo!)  she was going to wake up multiple times again.  Yippee. I awoke Tues, exhausted, but upbeat and ready to tackle another summer day.

That all changed at about 10:15 am.  The girls and I were having a great morning doing puzzles, playing with play doh, you know the usual.  Then Kyla decided to bring out her 2 year old karate chopping leg tantrums on her sister.  I tell ya, dealing with the hitting/kicking/biting of a 2 year old is exhausting and not to mention totally new for me.  I didn't have to do this when I only had one child.  Geez! Kyla just doesn't like to put up with that sister of hers and she can be vicious. I give Kinsleigh the credit that she was using her words the best she could to tell her to stop and I was too until finally she just wouldn't stop so I used my arm to move her legs real quick and get them out of the way from Kinsleigh to keep her from hurting her.  Still don't know exactly how it happened but Kyla was sitting on her bottom while she was kicking so when I moved her legs, sent her into kind of a pivot and what probably happened was she was leaning back supporting herself on her arms and when she turned, her wrist twisted. =( Ouch! Next thing I knew she was fallen over on her tummy with her armed turned backwards, screaming. I thought it was her shoulder based on how she landed but she just kept holding her wrist screaming...and screaming...and screaming.  I knew this wasn't an ordinary ouchie so we had the pediatrician called within minutes.  Sean sped home from work to watch Kinsleigh (for what ended up being the rest of the day) so I could only have to deal with one child at the Dr.  Ended up being in the office for an hour and a half then finally got sent over to the imaging center for xrays.  This part went fairly quick but keep in mind it was now 1:00pm, kid still had had nothing to eat, was missing nap, and in terrible pain. Got her home, stuck her in our bed to try and get a little rest in her and she ended up sleeping there until near dinner time.  Dr. called back and said xrays looked ok but we should check back in a couple days if she still wasn't acting better. Now sleep patterns are obviously off so yay for that!  Another bad night of rest.

How we spent our entire day...

Wed, awake to another day of pain.  Still not using her hand at all.  Completely swollen and couldn't move her fingers.  She cried ALL DAY LONG!  Oh and I forgot to mention that she hasn't been eating this entire time either which I don't come to discover why until Thurs. morning when I notice a sore on her bottom lip. She does take a ridiculously long nap that afternoon and looked mighty adorable if I do say so myself as you can see...

...only to wake up with a 100 degree fever. What?!  When it rains, it pours right??? Toughed out the rest of our evening followed by another awful night of sleep.  Big sis was an awfully big sweetie in taking care of her though.

Thurs., wake up.  Fever gone. Acting a little better but about 10am we start going downhill again and start crying NONSTOP. Kid is so upset she can't even go to the bathroom.  It was that bad.  Try a lunch, nothing.  Down for a nap, 30 min later, wake up screaming and can never go back to sleep.  Call back the Dr. since it has now been over 48 hours.  Tell her the condition.  She immediately refers us to a pediatric orthopedic Dr.  They said bring her over right away.  Since she's not napping, that was quite easy to do so got her going in a snap.  He took a look at her for literally 2 minutes.  Said she had a "nursemaids elbow" first of all and just snapped it back in place without me even knowing it.  That was causing her a lot of pain I'm sure.  Then moved on down to her wrist and could tell just by feeling that it was broken. Said she has a "blah blah break" (some medical term I clearly do not know).  Apparently since it was a minor break and the location of it, in small children it can be hard to see in an X-ray.  I seriously felt like this dude was a miracle worker. He did such an amazing job.  Had no doubt what was wrong and had her bandaged up and out of there in minutes.  So if you ever need a referral for a child injury, I've got the man for ya!

Let's just say, the kid didn't cry again for the rest of the evening.  She's such a rough/tough trooper!  Praying for a good nights rest and to get our sweet little Kyla girl back quickly.  I mean she does just have the cutest smile on the face of the planet, ya know?

And yes, I've had to keep reassuring myself that I'm not a bad Mommy because I made this happen.  The nurses let me know that stuff like this can happen all the time.  If you twist something just right, it can even be ever so slightly, and it just snaps.  It has not been fun however having to tell the story over and over to every nurse/Dr. we've seen and start crying about it.  But I think I'm good now...thank heavens!!!