A Few Recent Moments

There are so many recent moments that I could share. Here are just a few:

Halloween

Well, this year Dave worked again on Halloween which always makes me appreciate the times when he is around to help me out with the little ones. We were invited to the Thorn's house for the evening and so I decided to dress the boys up for the event. Austin was a chili pepper and Noah was a Lion. The chili pepper turned out to be a bit small as it ripped the moment I first put Austin in it. It said that it was for 0-9 months, so I figured a 3 month old would be safe, but I guess my 3 month old is just that big...I am not too sure. That is why you will see that Austin cried in one of the photos. And as for Noah, we were so excited to put him in his lion outfit as he has all of the sudden taken to bursting out in a roar. Of course being a 2 year old, he didn't really like it when it first was put on, was only happy when I offered to draw on his face, and never roared once the entire time that he wore the outfit. I just had to laugh...sometimes I wonder why we as parents do this to our children when they are so young...I think that it is mainly for the parents...they certainly don't seem to be very happy at the whole dress up idea at this age. Oh well...makes for fun pictures.

"Where Go God?"

Yesterday I had my first encounter of my son asking me about God. It all began when I was talking with him about lying. His greatest temptation to lie is when I ask him if he has a big potty in his diaper and he almost always says "no" no matter what. And then I ask him if he is telling the truth or lying and explain to him that lying is a sin. He then decided to ask if daddy and myself lie and if we sin which was very humbling in and of itself to have to answer him the truth that yes we do sin against God as well. He then got curious as to where God was and asked "Where go God?" As I began to think about it, it would be a natural question to him. He is always hearing about God, but where is He? It was such a little conversation, but a great reminder to me of the great responsibility that we have as parents to lead our children to a true knowledge of who God is. They have questions and they are watching.

Baby Reese

My cousin's sweet baby Reese arrived in heaven on her 1st birthday. As a mom, I can only imagine the struggle that my cousin Ashley & husband Todd have had this past year watching their baby struggle physically the entire year of her life, never to be brought home from the hospital. I find myself looking at my 3 month old imagining what it would be like to watch him struggle and it always brings tears to my eyes. I know that only the Lord can be the one behind their amazing reaction to this hard phase of their life. For those that did not attend the service, it was amazing and a great reminder to me that this life on earth is not where we belong. Those who believe in Christ will all be perfect just like Reese is right now. It is so easy to be content with where we are at, but heaven is so much better. And as it was pointed out in the service, being a baby, Reese was fortunate to never even deal with sin like we do...can you imagine never uttering a lie, never feeling the shame that comes with being guilty of sinning against a holy God...as we all have had plenty of chances to do. She was spared from such things which truly is far better. I can only imagine the sadness of having my child pass on before me, but there is comfort in knowing God and His promise of an infinitely better life with Him.

Kissing Boogers

Yes, you read that correctly above. I still can't believe that it happened. I am still rubbing my lips. Oh the fun we have with a toddler. My bedtime routine with Noah started out normal. We always read a story, pray, and then I turn the lights out, try to kiss him, and he dodges out of the way. I can't wait until the dodge move changes, but that's besides the point. This time I was so excited because he did the predictable dodge move, I forcibly kissed him on the cheek anyway, and then he suddenly put his fingers out for what I thought was an indication to kiss his finger. I was so excited that he wanted me to kiss him that I of course went to kiss his finger right away. I remember immediately rubbing my lips because I couldn't figure out at first what that hard object could be on his finger. Remember it was dark, so I couldn't see what it was. So I asked Noah and was quite sickened when he told me that it was a booger. I now realize that he was simply putting his finger out for me to take care of his booger for him and it had nothing to do with him wanting me to kiss his finger. So sad and disgusting, but true. The life of a mother is not always glamorous, but it sure can be funny.

Another Light And Heavy Note

"No Honey, I'm Still Working"

So one would probably assume that this title is going to describe my husband's answer to me at some point in our recent lives, but it actually has nothing to do with my husband. This was the reply that I received from Noah tonight when I asked him to come into his room to change into his pajamas. "No Honey, I'm still workin' ". It was one of those rare occasions when I actually thought his "no" reply to me was quite funny and I couldn't resist laughing to myself in the next room especially with the way he said it. It wasn't said in a defiant sounding voice...just matter of fact. I still can't believe how much my little 2 year old grasps at his age. For him to say a complete sentence like this is amazing enough to me and then he comes up with such funny things.

Grandpa Jack

What a year it has been for my family. My grandpa Jack (my mom's father) passed away this past Thursday evening. My grandpa Jack has struggled with Alzheimer's for a long time and has recently struggled with other health issues as well. We knew that the time was nearing for him to pass away, but it is always so surreal when it does happen. He so struggled in the end that I am so happy for him as I know that he is in heaven with no pain or suffering. I love my grandpa Jack and will miss him as he was a great grandpa to me, but I think that seeing him change so much with the hard disease of Alzheimer's has made it easier for me to deal with as he was not the same person in the end. I am so glad for his sake that he is done struggling. My biggest concern is for my grandma Terr, his wife. If you ever want a good example of a loving wife, I believe that my grandma Terr is it. Anyone that saw her interaction with my grandpa could attest to her constant love and care toward him. She will miss him greatly. The date has not been set, but I will be going to the service in California in a week or so.

Life at the Neufelds

Again, life goes by so fast and before I know it, another month or 2 has passed since my last update. We are loving life as a family with more sleep and each day brings us closer to getting us out of the infant stage...yeah! I must admit both Dave and I are not fans of the newborn stage. Don't get me wrong, we are so grateful and blessed to be able to have children and that both at this point are healthy. We have so much to be grateful for, but the whole little sleep with not much of a response from your child stage besides crying for food or sleep is one that if we could so choose, we would skip over. We are so grateful to be even at the point that we are with Austin. He is 2 and 1/2 and is making lots of noises now as he tries to communicate, is so smiley, and is becoming a good napper and night sleeper. He truly is such a good baby. And Noah makes us laugh all of the time and continues to amaze us with his understanding of life. Above are some pictures to catch you up on our life. Below is a little commentary on each one to better explain:

1. Las Vegas Bible Church friends - So sad to be leaving LVBC. Through much thought and prayer, we have decided to stay in town on a regular basis for church. We will still be helping church planters as they begin their churches in Las Vegas, but it will be for shorter periods of time and more of a focus on the pastor and his wife versus the church. At our stage in life with infants, it was so hard to continue our commitment to commute such a ways to church.

2 & 3. My boys - I am so outnumbered here! Number 2 picture is reality of how the picture taking process went. Noah was crabby and didn't want to be in the picture. Number 3 picture is a tolerant Noah to the whole picture taking process.

4. Noah spraying bugs - It is his new thing. No longer is he shooing bugs. He has found a better way to deal with them by spraying them until they drown. What a boy!

5. Swaddling my boys - Noah sometimes asks us to do some of the same things with him as we do with Austin. We don't always humor him with this of course or else I would be feeding him a bottle every 3 hours and cradling him in my arms all of the time which would be quite tiring, but we do have fun with it sometimes and humor him on some occasions.

Very Cool Video

This will take about 10 min of your life, but well worth it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e4zgJXPpI4

Fire In Mesquite

Below is a slide show of a fire I was at this week in Mesquite. Me and my partner were on a medical call in a complex beside the one with the fire. We cleared the call and were the first on scene. The truck came in second, set up an attack line, and got ready to go in. My partner and I were outside as a RIT team with the first guys inside. They ran out of air before getting to the fire. My partner and I were second in and were able to go directly to the room on fire and extinguish most of the fire before having to exit the building. It may be the best fire that I have been on since I started in the fire service.

Another Day At The Office

My Day Is Made

My day was made today when the words "Noah like baby Austin" came out of Noah's mouth without any prompting from me. I have really tried hard to still pay attention to Noah in addition to paying attention to our new little one. He has been such a helper like in the picture above where he is helping me make pizza dough. And I have also tried to make Austin a fun part of Noah's life. Austin claps for Noah as he does things and is already learning how to do things like crawling and running from his big brother who is such a great teacher. Okay, so Austin isn't really a super baby and doing such things at his early 5 week life, but Noah sure seems to like it when I make Austin a part of his life in this way. For all of you moms out there, I am not naive to the fact that my jewel of a son today who says he likes his big brother will one day not like him at times and will be great at fighting with his little brother. And things aren't exactly perfect even now with Noah and his dealing with having a big brother. He has started a couple of new approaches to getting attention. Why is it that many of the times that I am working with Austin to continue his nap time that Noah decides that it is a good time to play with his loud toys and bring them into Austin's room? He has tried to ride his motorized ATV into the room and his loud ringing ball most recently into the room during Austin's nap time. Yeah...the ATV has now graduated to the backyard. It belonged there anyway. Another new one is that Noah has decided that he should go potty during his diaper changes just like his baby brother. Really, I can't complain as Noah has reacted far better than I ever imagined to his new little brother. I am still so hopeful that they will be good buds as they grow up together...we shall see. For now, I am enjoying Noah's simple words of "like" toward his new brother. Above are some recent pictures of the boys along with their Nama & Papa and cousins.

Life With Our Boys

Since I actually had a wonderful nights' sleep (6 hours total when you add all of the little doses of sleep together! Yeah!), I thought that I would write a little update.

Life With Austin

It is definitely a huge adjustment bringing a newborn home from the hospital. You are immediately thrown into the sacrificial role of a parent as you learn to function on little sleep. I think that this time around my attitude and reaction to this sacrifice is so much better. I now realize that this period of time actually does go by very quickly and is well worth the sleepless nights. I was hopeful that Austin would not take after his big brother in the area of taking a long time for each feeding, but it seems that he might be a spitting image (oh my exuse my pun which you will see in a moment). When each feeding is met with the challenges of major spit up, major sleepiness (which I still cannot figure out how to combat...I have tried everything that I know of), a hatred for burping and the changing of the diaper which results in lots of crying, a need to go potty in the middle of a diaper change, and I think that is it. It makes for a very interesting time in the middle of the night! But that's ok...again, it is all worth it.

Life With Noah

One area that has been such a pleasant surprise is Noah's reaction to his little brother. I was a little afraid that he would not take to him so well in the beginning as anytime he would see me holding a baby in the past, it would result in jealousy. Thankfully, he has taken to Austin so well. He loves to hold his little brother (only on his terms though...when he is done, you better be ready to take Austin away right away), he loves to be my little helper in a lot of ways including burping his little brother. Don't worry, he is very gentle. Noah continues to be such fun at his age and loves to help his daddy outside as he does yard work. I attached a few pictures to show you what a big helper he is. He loves to put on his "globes" and work with his "shobel" beside daddy "fixin" everything that he sees.

I should probably stop right here as I have already written way too much! Enjoy the pictures!

Austins Birth Day

Austin Is Here

This is just a quick one to get it started, there will be lots of pictures to come.

Austin David Neufeld was born on July 16 at 1:31pm. We weighed in at 7lbs 4oz and was 21 inches. It was a great delievery and Austin is a healthy. Mom and Austin are home now and we are going to have to get use to those sleepless nights.

Thank you for all your prayers.

Family Update

Before I knew it, a month had passed since our last blog entry. My how time flies! This past month has been all about getting ready for our new little one, Austin, to enter this world which could be literally at any moment. My doctor will induce me this Wednesday, July 16th, at 7am if I do not have him before and he said he would not be surprised if it did happen earlier as I have begun showing signs of beginning the birthing process. It is so strange to have this moment be so close, but we are so excited to add another personality to the family. We love our little Noah so much and can't wait to love another as well.

Since our last update, we celebrated Noah's 2nd birthday. He is such a big boy now. He actually blew out his candles on his own and tore through the wrapping paper this time…a marked difference from even Christmas. I am attaching some pictures from our fun little celebration. We celebrated about a week early as Gramie & Grampie were in town and we were lucky to also have family friends Mike & Mandi Sheppard, and our friends John, Brooke & Parker over as well to celebrate.

I just wanted to write a quick update. We will be updating our site once our new little one arrives!

Santa Rosa Trip

A Light & Heavy Note

I will start with my "light note" as it just doesn't seem appropriate to talk about light things after talking about a "heavy note", but life is so interesting at how even though heavy things happen, life does just keep going and my child just continues to learn things...both the good and the bad. I am either laughing or shaking my head at yet another "no no" to add to the list. This week's first learning adventure was in learning how to "shoo" flies. Noah does not like bugs and flies at this point thanks to his mommy. If daddy is not proud of this, he is going to need to spend a little more time with his son in the outdoors as at this point all he has heard from mommy is that bugs are yucky and he is constantly wanting me to move them out of his way when he is playing in the outdoors. He can't seem to understand that he can just walk around them and avoid them. Flies are a different story as you can't walk around them and avoid them and sometimes they even hit you in the head which is what happened to Noah while eating lunch recently. He didn't seem to like this very much so I decided that maybe it was time for him to learn how to "shoo" the fly away. He seems to love this new game. Sometimes the word "shoot" comes out instead of "shoo", but no matter...this is now a new thing that he really enjoys. The bad thing that he learned is that he can move a kitchen chair around the kitchen, climb on top, and reach any counter that he wishes in the kitchen including the stove top and many new drawers which is a very scary thing. He even tried to move the chair into the pantry recently which I have very purposefully organized to put all breakable and dangerously sharp objects up just high enough for him to not be able to reach. Oh the fun of parenting!

My "heavy"note is that my papa Don did pass away yesterday at 1:17pm. It is still a strange concept to me that he never saw this new day, June 4th, and all the days continuing. And the hardest part of all to me is not knowing where he stood with God. I am so grateful that he had many opportunities to hear about God and respond to Him even up until the end. He never verbally responded favorably to anyone who spoke with him about God, but the only hope I have is in not knowing what was going on in his heart. Unfortunately his words and actions didn't seem like his heart had turned toward God, but the heart is something that only God knows...he knows our hearts and we all have up until the very end of our lives to respond no matter how we have responded earlier in our lives. We will be leaving tonight to spend a week in Santa Rosa and there will be a small service on Tuesday for my grandpa.

Visiting Grandparents

I have been so fortunate to have had all of my grandparents still living and I always knew that the time would come when I would hear that 1 would be nearing the end of their life on this earth. With the news that my grandpa Don was given an estimate of a few weeks left to live and the news that my other grandpa Jack was not doing well either, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go visit one last time. Well, in all honesty, the idea of traveling with an almost 2 year old by myself with a big pregnant belly almost deterred me...which is so selfish. I had to remind myself that the possibility of a few hours of my child being a nuisance to an airplane full of people with me by myself looking like a horrible parent was well worth the end result of visiting my grandparents. I truly had to keep reminding myself of this. In all seriousness, after having finished the trip, I cannot believe that I would even debate such a thing, but unfortunately that struggle with selfishness can be there and can unfortunately win many times. I am so glad that I was able to see both grandpa's again...and I was able to spend some time with the grandma's and my parents as well which I loved. Below is a slide show of my visit.

Visiting Grandparents

Noah's Big ER Visit

Dont fall with something in your mouth. This happened 8 months ago, but a a good reminder of what can happen when walking with something in your mouth. Noah had a ambulance ride to the ER in town and another ambulance ride to a Pediatric Hosp. in Las Vegas. Dad got to hold that beater in position for 3 hrs before he was in the Operating Room to have it removed from his soft pallet. After a night stay in the Hospital he got to go home. On the way home he took the beater and put it right back in his mouth.

Day At The Park

So here is my first attempt at blogging. I never understood how hard it was for the elderly to catch on to new technology, but I am beginning to understand as the whole idea of blogging is a bit overwhelming to me (especially with my horrible communication skills :) But I do think that it is a great way for others to be able to catch more of a day to day picture of our lives as I really love to look at others' blogs to catch a glimpse of their lives as well. Today was Dave's last day on his work shift, so it was just me and Noah again. I decided that I really wanted to take Noah out to try a new splash park which just opened in a nearby town. With our hot weather, it is really the only type of park that you will want to visit in the summer. I was so sad as it is going to be closed for awhile as they had drainage issues. Oh well! We had a great day anyway with friends Janine & Brooke...and Noah didn't know any different...he got to play with his friend Parker who you can see pictured above. For Noah, a day with Parker is a good day. Oh how he loves to talk about his friend Parker!

Dave loves these rare moments of naptime with Noah

Here it goes

Well this is our first try at blogging. I (Dave) will get Kristy all up to date on this and she will add all the fun pictures. We want to use this as a place where Neufelds and Smothers and those related and those close to us can come and share. Let's see how it goes.