Luke's 4th birthday and hospital visits

Eliza is so beautiful! She is starting to show a little personality with her little smiles and "laughs." It's so fun having another girl around here!

I love getting her dressed in the morning. She always wants to wear pink! She's so adorable.

Luke turned 4 on Nov. 17th (yes, we are a little behind on our blogging. Expect another entry in the next couple of days.) Luke is a good little helper. Luke apparently knows what a good helper he is. The other day he was saying, "mom, do you wish you had more boys like me?" Ha! Yeah, except the other day when Luke got mad at Jensen when they were playing outside. First I heard Luke say, "fine Jensen!! You're not on my team anymore!!" Apparently that didn't affect Jensen at all so Luke said, "Fine, I'm going to throw a rock at you!" He nailed Jensen with it before I could run out there. Luke's got a pretty good arm and Jensen's got a pretty big head - bad combination. Jensen had blood running down the back of his big head. So yeah, where can I get more boys like that?

Luke didn't mind the Christmas wrapping paper for his birthday presents, he was just excited for all the gifts! Jensen was too till he realized he didn't get to open any...

Birthday cake: Chocolate with tons of frosting and a hot wheels on top = Every toddler boy's dream.

Toy Story 3 figurines?! He was raisin' the roof, lowerin' the floors - right Haley?

BFFs Eliza and Mommy

Poor Austin has been in some horrible pain the past 6 weeks - basically since Eliza was born. He finally went to the dr., had an MRI, had a consultation with a spinal surgeon which resulted in surgery - removing 2 herniated discs (can you believe how small the incision is?)! So painful! He was a real trooper through it all. Especially the surgery part. We are happy that he is on the mend and grateful that he seems to be recovering so quickly. Still got some stitches though!

He was home from the hospital that afternoon - pretty much unheardof for a person with the surgery he had. He got home and immediately started studying for his exam in 4 days. True dedication. You can see in his face that he still has kind of a swollen face from the fluid pumped into him and laying on his front for the surgery. He did awesome on the test by the way.

A few days before Austin's back surgery, I had surgery on my eye. I had this zit-like thing on the bottom lid of one of my eye's. The eye dr. said she had to cut it out to make sure it didn't come back. It was probably one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. First the nurse put this painful drop in my eye. Then the dr. stabbed a needle almost right in my eye to numb the area - ouch! Then the nurse held my eye open while I watched as the dr. brought her scissors over to my eye and started cutting! All the while I can see the nurse is dabbing up tons of blood with q-tips. Ugh! Not cool or fun. Then she put a stitch in it.

Luke LOVES Eliza. Even when she's crying he wants to hold her and cuddle her and try to make her happy. He is usually successful too. He'll just cuddle with her on the couch and sing to her. This time he was so soothing he put himself to sleep too!

Eliza had to be tested to see if she had cystic fibrosis (CF) as a screening came back high for her. They a sweat test on her to see if she had it. She cried quite a bit but at least I got to hold her. She does not have CF, which we are so grateful for.

Eliza Kramer, President of the Girls' Club at our house