All Things Thanksgiving

This is going to be a very long post because I have so much to get caught up on!  
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with both of our families and the week was full of fun and lots of eating! Tuesday, the girls had their Thanksgiving feast at school.  I love watching the girls interact with all of their classmates.  They had cute little hats to wear that they had made, but the girls refused to wear them during the party.  I did manage to get a pic once we were home though.

Wednesday evening we took the girls out to Santa's Wonderland and drove thru the lights. We figured it would be best to go now before the lines got crazy long!

Who knew that you could make so many things out of lights?

Brooklyn heading into Santa's Town....but no Santa sighting!

Checking out the petting zoo

Addyson watching the snow falling (the fake kind!)

Thursday, we had a nice lunch with my family and then headed to the ranch to spend the rest of the weekend with Brian's family. The girls got to play with their cousins, Mason, Hudson, Jackson, and our newest member of the family, baby Grant! The girls are officially outnumbered!

Brooklyn on the tractor

Caitlyn guarding her rock collection!

Sweet little Addy!

Caitlyn and the boys

"The Quads"

Caitlyn and Jackson

Brooklyn and Addyson with Grant....they were fascinated with him!

Another group shot. Dodie made all the kids the cutest Christmas shirts!

Last week went by super fast and I know the rest of the year is going to do the same. Thanksgiving has come and gone and now we are on to birthday and Christmas!

National Prematurity Awareness Day

Today over 400 Bloggers are participating in Bloggers Unite Fight for Preemies to raise awareness of the 20 million babies who are born prematurely each year.  The March of Dimes is fighting to drastically decrease these numbers.     

Something about the holidays and the fact that my girls will be TWO in one short month has made me somewhat emotional lately.  Two years ago next week, I quit working and went on complete bedrest.  I wondered what in the world I was going to do with myself for the next eight weeks.  I had a goal to reach 35 weeks and if I did, my doctor said he would go ahead and deliver the babies.  Little did I know that only three short weeks later, at only 28 1/2 weeks, one of the girls' water would break.  We rushed to the hospital but my doctor and nurses could not stop the labor.  So my girls were delivered that night.  I have never been so scared in my life!   Right before the girls were born we met with a neonatologist and he explained everything that we could experience with babies born that early.....brain bleeds, patent ductus arteriosis (PDA), chronic lung disease, retinopathy of prematurity, etc.  So you hope for the best but expect the worst.    

Meeting the girls today, you would never ever know that they were born at only 28 weeks weighing a combined total of eight pounds.  We are so blessed to have happy, healthy beautiful little girls.  I am so thankful for these girls!  So many stories do not turn out as good as ours.  It was amazing to watch the girls grow and fight for their lives everyday.  We had an amazing team of doctors and nurses taking care of them.   We are so thankful to The Women's Hospital of Texas and March of Dimes! 

Afternoon at the Zoo and a trip to the Emergency Room!

Well, so far our November has been pretty quiet.  The girls had a great Halloween and loved eating lots of candy, but I don't think they really understood it all.  Between parties and trick-or-treating, I don't think any of us wanted to get them dressed in their costumes again.  They were adorable little piggies but not fun to try and dress (and keep dressed) three of them.  

Brian was hunting this weekend so we went and spent the night with my parents.  Saturday afternoon we took the girls to the zoo because it was such a beautiful day.  They got to see a lot of the animals up close and really enjoyed it, particularly the elephants and giraffes.

  

I had to include this picture of Addyson.  My mom went to get her up from her nap and found her with her shirt off and her skirt pulled up around her chest, wearing it like a tube top!

Sunday, Brooklyn and I made our first trip to the Emergency Room. I will spare the details but it involved her hand and an elevator. It was one of the scariest moments of my life but thankfully her fingers were not broken and were all still there! God is so good! 

I hope that we don't have to go back to the Emergency Room for a very, very long time but I'm sure with three little ones it is inevitable!