stuff i would have blogged about if i would have blogged before i had a blog. alternately titled: deKorne's...the lost years

Walk down memory lane. Because I don't have any new pictures to blog. So I'm going all historical.

Mark and I never lived in the same state until we got married. We didn't even live within driving distance. Like, 6 states apart. We spent 9,302 dollars on plane tickets. I don't really know how much we spent-but it felt like that much. But ALL worth it. We had so.much.fun.

Mark lived in New England-which is a great place for day trips. And we didn't have kids then. So we could do crazy stuff like day trips.

New York City

Scalped tickets to Red Sox vs Yankees
Fancy work stuff
Gloucester
I LOVE FALL. I love it in Michigan. And we loved it in New Hampshire.
Out to eat for New Year's Eve. (past 9-woo hoo!)
Glen Lake. Always our favorite.
We went to looots of weddings!
We got to go to the White House. (thanks MJ!)
To Frederick, Maryland-my birthplace-and see my Daddy's picture on the wall of the administration building.
Foreshadowing.
More Glen Lake. Sweet Grandpa Jack.
I finally made the Christmas Card picture. :)
More foreshadowing.
More weddings of precious people!
More weddings. Come on, Mark! Get with the program! :)
Birthday celebrating
Wedding showers
Bachelorette parties (in my circle we paint pottery, nothing wild :))
FINALLY! Our very own wedding! :)
Then we were a happy family with a *CUTE* dog.
But not happy enough. We needed BABIES!!!! Thank you Lord for this first sweet angel. (Things you don't know when you have your first baby-that's the WORST material to wear because you are so HOT after you give birth and sweating like crazy!)
Love!
Taking that sugar to Glen Lake for the first time.
That was a tiny little baby we had. She didn't weigh 8 lbs til she was 3 months old!
Friend weekend in the early stages of procreation-now there are almost 11 kids between us!

And this was right before I actually started the blog for real. And started blogging about things that I should blog about.

Things I noted from this post:

*I liked that green uphostery dress a LOT

*My hair used to be way more curly. pregnancy has made it just gross enough to do nothing.

*I didn't used to have busted capillaries and age spots on my face.

*I have had a VERY happy 8 years. :)

My family came and I didn't take enough pictures which I regret.

My family has been very nice (worried about me) to come and keep me company here in this foreign land. I want to punch my own self though. So mad I didn't better document!

My sister Laurel...(they don't come any sweeter)

The donut tradition..
My dear mama
Ok so one thing that always upsets me about not living in Houston is that nobody makes their own tortillas. I made them once and the rolling them out part was noooot fun...so I got this handy dandy tortilla press. (only 20 bucks from sur la table!) Mr. Macho took care of this part for me. (he is awesome...if i've never mentioned that)

My friend Abby and I have been real good about meal planning this month. She's doing a week at a time and I planned the whole month. It's been nice to reduce my brain work a bit at the last minute. (Or feed my kids junk every meal. Now it's only half the meals. :)) Anyway-this night we had pork carnitas with cilantro lime slaw and home made corn tortillas. Um, yum.

Ok, Kaiya walked in my room at some insane hour when it was still dark, and said-"Mom, could you help me get these pants off? It's kind of tricky." I barely even looked and told her she could take her own pants off. (Like any mother would do at 6:05, right??)
The girl had FIVE pairs of pants on! I don't know how she could even walk!
Got the situation under control and decided to go with a skirt. :)
This picture cracks me up-this is the forced smile pic we most likely get..why I so appreciate that bench pic a few posts ago where everyone looked like they were happy and well fed. :)
This is how I am mostly. My poor family. (and yeah, berry berry crunch. don't judge me. i make dinner.)

This was fun to get a picture of-when Mark is gone we usually try and skype as often as possible. Laurel was there to capture our typical scene. :) (ps-body pillow in the background that i didn't get til my last pregnancy, deeee-lightful.)

We've come a long way, baby...

Kaiya and I have had a rough couple weeks. We have started to aggressively patch her eye again, and she also got glasses. She has liked these things about as much walking on nails. I have also had a rough time-because it's real hard to be a good Mom when it requires you to torture your children for their benefit.

I decided to take a look back though. And instead of feeling bratty about what we have to do, try and be grateful that she's here to torture. (you know what i mean :))

Welcome to the worst day of my life. (Actually, the worst might have been a couple days later when they still wouldn't tell us if she would live and she still looked like this and I was away from Ava.

This was the first day I got to hold her once she was off the ventilator.
This was our quality family time in the waiting room with the baby we left behind for 15 days. (and she was a BABY! 18 months!)
But God is so good and in just two short weeks we were already to this point! Smiling at Gram with one eye!
We had no idea if her eye would ever open again, or what it would be like, but in no time-God had healed this sweet girl and her eye was on it's way back. But then the patching started. Which wasn't fun then, or now.
Yep. That's how we all felt.
Fast forward to last week-she is basically legally blind in her left eye and while it looks mostly normal to most people, it has a bit of work to do. So...I put the patch on, and immediately she started screaming and sobbing-"I can't see Mommy I can't see." Now those who know me know I don't cry, but I just about couldn't handle it. Enter my Knight in Shining Armor. (Thanks Mom and Dad for praying so much for my husband. He turned out great.) Grabbed Kaiya, a patch for himself, went upstairs and by the time I got myself together-this was the scene I came upon.
We have made good progress from there. She is being a good sport about it! Not liking it mind you-but she gets a treat after she takes it off, so that helps. (Exactly why bribery was created.)
Then a few days later these fellas came on the scene. This was also mid cry. But we're trying.
And it's getting better.
And better.
So really we don't have it so bad. We did for a bit-but compared to many, many people who deal with situations more grave than we can comprehend, a little eye boot camp ain't no thing. We are so very grateful for this sweet bundle of joy!