Our little Sick Pig

The night before we left Idaho Quincy woke up at 1:00AM throwing up chili.

It was SO gross.... and it will be a long time before I work up the nerve to eat chili again.

He managed to throw up on everything.... and I spent a good half hour at 1:30AM trying to de-stink all the floors and linens that were contaminated by the remainders of Quincy's chili. I also had the pleasure of scooping everything up with my hands because it was so thick and throwing in the trash or toilet, which ever happened to be closer, as I fought back the urge to vomit myself.

Needless to say, Quincy was one sick pig. He didn't feel well at all and we noticed that the next day on our ride home he was unusually quiet and calm.

We thought the worst of it was over at Tyler's parent's house, but OH NO! He threw up the next night in our apartment at 2:00AM. This time it was chicken nuggets which he had from dinner at Burger King on our drive home. Again, I managed to hold back anything from coming up.

Anyone who knows Tyler well, knows he has a weak stomach. Now, imagine me..... 8 months pregnant scooping vomit off the floors and bedding in my son's room, while Tyler's in the bathroom telling me he can't handle it.

At our house, Quincy sleeps with a little bear and that night's episode of vomiting didn't spare poor baby bear. He was covered in barf.... it was so disgusting and I thought we might have to throw him out.

I instructed Tyler to shower him off as much as he could in the bathtub and I would try and see what the washer could do for little baby bear. As I threw Quincy's throw up bedding into the washer and put on clean bedding for him to go back to sleep in..... this is what I saw while passing the bathroom:

I couldn't help but laugh.... because at 3:00AM in the morning I was witnessing a stick up involving a barfed on baby bear, my husband, and a Fabreeze bottle. Even looking at the picture now makes me laugh!

You would have thought this poor little bear had it bad when he was barfed on, but then Tyler drowned him in the bathtub and squirted him in the face with a Fabreeze bottle repeatedly.

And do you know what?

He couldn't look or smell better today.

Luckily we are all over the flu bug that Quincy had..........I wish it on NONE of you!!

Howard family Photo Shoot 2009

Let me preface all these family pictures by saying.... it seems to become more and more difficult to get a family picture of the whole group. This year we went to a photo studio that prints the pictures within an hour of taking them.

Because it was the day after Christmas it was a little busy in there. We had a little downtime before our actual photo shoot and so Quincy and Jakoby got some quality block time.

Did you happen to notice that in every one of these pictures that Quincy is being a total little ham? Can you tell that he's a first child and demands to be the center of attention? :)

Okay, on with the real pictures:

It's hard to believe that this Howard Family.............

............Became all this..............

While it was great to get a picture with all the siblings and theirs kids and everyone... this picture will be outdated in about 6 weeks. Maybe we can take another one in the spring?? Ha ha!

Siblings, spouses, and the kids. Heather and I told Kelly she needed to have a kid so the picture could be more balanced. :) LOL

The "young" Howard Family.

Our little Quincy Man.

The Hess Family.

Little Jaokby.

The Williams Family.

There could have been a picture of Derek here... but he feel ridiculous taking a picture by himself and insisted there were enough pictures with him in them.

The proud GRAND parents.

And lastly, these are the picture we attempted to get of the kids. Notice that it was nearly impossible to get a decent shot of the both of them..... both boys were not really digging the photo session and clearly were done.....

We ended up choosing this last picture to print of the boys because it said everything that we couldn't..... maybe next year we'll have better luck. :)

Our little boy is growing up....

It seems that Quincy is looking older every year....

He was super proud of himself for doing this puzzle and wanted his picture taken.

His grandparents got him this cute Christmas outfit... which he wore the Sunday after Christmas... but it was still so cute to see him in it.

I still can't believe how it seemed we were just celebrating Christmas with Tyler's family and Quincy looked more like Jaokby does this year.

My little baby is sure growing up...............

Family Photo

This was the only photo we took of all of us during the break.... I'm sad, I ALWAYS do that. I mean to take more pictures of everyone and somehow end up with a bazillion on the kids. I guess they're just cuter. :)

I can't wait until little Pipa joins our family photo.

Family game time....

While we were in Idaho we managed to do more than just talk/watch/play sports, eat, watch movies, and play XBOX..... we also did one of my favorite things.... and played games. I thank the Lord for having a sister in law like Heather who's always up for forcing everyone in to some good old fashioned fun of playing board games.

Grandma Teesy thought it would be fun for Quincy to play CandyLand. So Grandma, Tyler, Heather, Quincy and I played. Aunt Heather and Dad thought it would be funny to try and cheat by telling me some made up rules, since I was winning. :) Despite their efforts, I still won.... even giving them the benefit of the doubt about some questionable "rules".

We used to play this game all the time as kids and I forgot how much fun it was, not to mention simple for a kid Quincy's age to play.

Jakoby wasn't interested in the game, he preferred to spend him game time like this:

We also played the game Tri Bond together as adult couples (Derek being the exception to couple, was the judge and reader).... Tyler and I won this game too (at a point during the end which we decided we'd play a winner takes all question).......

.... But still, we won none the less. :)

Christmas in Idaho

****Just to warn you, there are lots of pictures!******

With that said... I will tell you how our Christmas events went down.

Tyler worked December 23rd until 5:00PM, came home to load the car, and then we left Portland at 6:00PM to drive to Idaho. The roads were relatively nice to drive on, hardly any snow, and little ice.

We arrived to Fruitland at midnight and stayed up for another 3 hours or so catching up with all the other family members who were there (which was really everyone). It was one crazy night and poor Quincy was a little confused as to what was day and when was night.

Amidst the chaos of having 9 adults and 2 kids under the age of 2 in one house... we had a few problems with Quincy. If we know one thing about Quincy it's that he's not about to miss out on ANYTHING when there's a party going on. Thus, Christmas eve it was difficult to get him to go to sleep early. He's been doing relatively well in the potty training process. He is almost always accident free during the day, but we are still keeping him in diapers at night.

On Christmas eve Quincy was having a bit of a difficult time. I took him to the bathroom to try and go before bedtime and we had a showdown. He was very sleep deprived and decided to make a bad decision in biting his mom. Boy oh boy did it hurt! It took everything in me not to lash out at him in pain. After it happened he got a spanking and then we went downstairs to have a time out--where I showed him what he had done to me and explained how much it hurt. He immediately realized his mistake and was nice enough to apologize and give me a hug. However, the damage was done... and to make sure it didn't happen again he was restricted for the remainder of Christmas eve night.

This picture doesn't really capture the full aspect of how it looked. I took this right after he did it. It later puffed up and later bruised pretty shade of purple and green. Luckily he's only 2, so Santa decided to let it slide this year.... because Santa had already 'made' Quincy's presents......

Before Quincy went to bed we had the usual Howard Family tradition in sharing one special thing that happened to us within in the year. Our family's good news was that we are expecting another little bundle of joy and that Tyler was blessed to find a wonderful new job.

Christmas Day went much better than the night before.

We all slept in until 8:30AM or 9:00AM and then headed upstairs to see it Santa came.

Quincy was pretty excited to see that Santa had left some things in his stocking.... and even a few presents. ....

Quincy and Jakoby in their new Christmas jammies.

With so many people in one household the amount of gifts was unbelievable..... this year the Christmas tree was in the dining room.

Not even all the gifts fit under the tree.......

It seemed that everywhere you looked there were presents....

Perhaps that's why it was difficult to get Quincy to focus on each task at hand.

Santa's stockings...... and a few other small gifts.

I was glad to see that Quincy was equally excited about the new Snoopy toothbrushes and Gummi Bears that Santa brought him.

Undoubtedly the stickers beat out the toothbrushes and candy though..... this kid can't get ENOUGH of stickers!

Quincy kept saying..... "There's more?" As we reassured him to dig further in his stocking to see what else Santa left him.

By far the best gift this year from "Santa" was this Mega Blocks red firetruck. Quincy LOVED it..... and if I remember right Santa happened to find this beauty for a smoking price of $2.00 at the Salvation Army. (With a little bleach and elbow grease it shined up like new.) Boy that Santa is a great shopper.... he sure knows when he sees a good deal. In fact, I doubt his elves could have made this for 2 bucks!

Even Jakoby seemed to enjoy the Santa firetruck.

Gotta love those early Christmas morning pictures huh?

Quincy seemed to have the most fun taking off the bows.... he even fond some creative things to do with them.....

These were just OUR family's piles of Christmas gifts! Man, I guess we must have been pretty good this year!

Jakoby and Grandma Teesy.

It was funny to watch Jakoby as he was nearly buried alive in all the wrapping paper mess.

Quincy also approved of Jakoby's new toys.... they both LOVED this ball popping toy!

Because there was so much going on..... we had a hard time getting Quincy to focus long enough to open his pile of presents. He was more interested in the name tag stickers.

By far, Tyler's favorite gift was a new XBOX.... well, new to him. Derek, his brother was kind enough to give Tyler his old XBOX since he bought a new one this year. Tyler has already been putting it to use at home.... and maybe, MAYBE one of these days I'll make his wildest dreams come true by playing it WITH him. :)

THANKS DEREK..... TYLER LOVES IT!

Grandma Teesy and Grandpa Kent didn't disappoint in spoiling all of their children, but especially the GRAND children. Quincy made a haul. Surprisingly, he LOVES these books that they got him. By far, his favorite book is the 'Mr. Grumpy' book. I personally can't get enough of hearing him say "Mr. Tickle".... because it sounds like Mr. Ti -tull.

Kent and Teesy, you'll have to tell me where you found those books because I think we need some more. :)

Jakoby lucked out from his grandparents, who got him this push and go toy. Boy, I think Heather and Trevor have the Howard's to thank for Jakoby's most recent progress in taking several steps at a time..... It won't be long before Quincy and Jakoby are running circles around each other and playing basketball out on the court.

We had a wonderful Christmas!! I hope all of your family's did too!