Merry Christmas from the Noonan crew!

Breathing

Many months ago Jeremy started a blog at http://musingandmotion.wordpress.com/ or click HERE. His most resent post is one of my favorites and was an encouragement to my soul in the craziness of life. A wonderful reminder this Christmas season about what is important. I encourage you to take a deep breath and visit Jeremy's blog to read a good reminder as you prepare for Christmas this week.

Laughing

OK - I'm trying to stay afloat here...just gotta laugh at life. This might not be funny to anyone else but I saw this on a blog and as sat in my disaster of a living room after disciplining my children for throwing pencils at each other (trying to poke each others eyes out) I just laughed. Maybe its just the pregnancy hormones.... HERE. http://pregnantchicken.squarespace.com/pregnant-chicken-blog/2010/12/10/awkward-pregnancy-photos.html

And baby number three is...

...a girl!

This is the first time we have found out the gender before delivery day. It's a whole new experience for us to know the gender but, as before, we will still be keeping our names to ourselves until we meet her. For now Lucy has named the baby, Butterfly Kitty Noonan, with the nickname "Moosey" because it rhyhms with Lucy. Samuel is still thinking we have time to change the gender.

Today was the day Jeremy and I got to see baby number three. We saw the femur, the hands, feet, spine, ribs, brain, skull and the little heart just a lub-dubbing. We were referred to a maternal fetal medical clinic because of the cogenital heart defect Lucy has and they want to check baby number three out. So far the doctor says she looks healthy but we will have a heart echo in 4 weeks. She is about 10 oz right now and about 20 weeks along. Amazing.

Lucy and I actually got a peek at baby number three last Friday when we went for my check up with the mid-wife and she couldn't locate the heart "beep", as Lucy calls it. After hunting and not finding it she did a quick ultrasound and we saw the little girl and the heartbeat was fine. Lucy was not surprised. She knew it was a girl all along and couldn't understand what the big deal was.

So there it is ... the big news. Baby number three is a girl. Name and hair color to be announced at birth.

Nurse Pinning Ceremony

A tradition with nursing programs is to have a pinning ceremony where the new graduates receive a nursing pin. Our ceremony was this past Friday and it was a great time to celebrate with our class and our loved ones. Here are some pics from the evening...

My faithful family who have loved and supported me through the last 3 years including my two miserable children who were still sick.
Thanks Mama and Daddy for everything!

My amazing preceptor, Laura

Sweet friends!
My back row gang. Great friends and I'm proud of us all.

Graduation 2010

In January of 2008, I started back to school with the hopes of becoming a nurse when I grew up. The end is finally here, I'm not sure if I'm grown up yet but I am an official nursing graduate. Due to the flu (and one tired graduate), I decided not to actually walk at graduation but thought some pics in front of the Christmas tree with my little ones would be plenty of a reminder of this milestone. I hope this degree will be a blessing to them over the coming years...

What we've been up to

Around here its been a week of couped up kids, the flu for 4, lots of games of crazy 8s and Old Maid, movies, naps, grandma and Papa visiting for graduation and lots of kleenexes, snot and fevers.

Sharing the couch
Playing Old Maid with Papa
Clowning around with Mama...laugh therapy to get us all through.

The kiddos are recovering nicely and after a week out of school I think Samuel will be back in kindergarten tomorrow. We are all still feeling the aftermath of the congestion but no fevers means we are finally on the mend. Hopefully we will be well for Christmas.

FYI: A note on sharing

A Note on Sharing

I want to let all of you we've been around in the last several days know that we were probably sharing more than some Christmas cheer...both of the children have the flu. Good news, the vaccine this year will protect you from the strain we have. Bad news, the children haven't gotten the vaccine and I only got it last week (usually takes 2 weeks to have total effect). I'm grateful that the flu found its way to our house this week instead of last week - finals week. All I have to do is stay home and take care of my sick little ones. Praise the Lord for HIS timing and little bit of Chicken Noodle Soup.

Lucy update

Lucy was such a trooper yesterday. She endured 5 doses of Miralax, an enema, and a juice and jello only diet all day. She threw-up after the last dose of Miralax last night and started running a slight fever. It wasn't looking good. Well, this morning she woke up, after enduring a difficult day, to a fever. (Samuel has a fever too and is home from school for the first time all year!)

I called the doctor and they canceled her procedure this morning. AH! Poor thing. She threw-up again this morning. I'm sure now that she is nice and dehydrated, with enough Miralax in her system to send anything running out the nearest passage we'll have a bumpy day but I guess we'll know what to expect next week when we do it all over again. What's worse than having to go through the prep process once - having to do it twice. I do not like seeing my kiddos hurting..praying for peace and comfort as we cozy up at home today. Thanks for your prayers.

Quotes

After walking out of the store yesterday that had automatic sliding doors

Lucy: "Mama, those doors are so polite."
Mama: "Yes, Lucy they are, they always open up when we want to go out."

Prayers

We've had this on the calendar for a while but Monday is the day. Lucy has had intestinal problems since February and we've tried all of the less invasive measure I can think of but I finally took her to the doctor and we decided to make sure there isn't anything major wrong.

Lucy has a colonoscopy scheduled for Monday midday and we would appreciate your prayers for her (and me). I'm thinking the prep work necessary to clean her out on Sunday will not be a pleasant experience and then a long day Monday - we have to be at Scottish Rite at 11:30 and her procedure isn't until 1:30. I'm expecting routine pics of my little girls insides and home we go...I'll let you know how she is when we get home.

St. Nicholas Day

We celebrated St. Nicholas Day today. We exchanged gifts, decorated our tree, read this St. Nicholas book, watched a VCR tape about St. Nicholas and watched the St. Nicholas Veggie Tales on Netflix instant (the It's a Wonderful life veggie tales is on instant too). We made cookies to take to the policemen and hope to enjoy the advent season with each other - reminded about the joy of giving and how rich we have been blessed. "Every good and perfect comes down from the Father of heavenly lights" James 1:17

Can I have one of these Mama?

Christmas Parade

This evening I took the children to the Christmas parade in our town. We had a great time enjoying the sights, the rigged up racing lawnmowers, the bands and the lights
Lucy enjoyed the hot chocolate before the parade
The children enjoyed the lights on the square and the really big ornaments

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree...

Last night we went to a nearby Christmas tree farm and got our family tree (we like supporting local businesses!). We aren't perfectionist when it comes to picking out the tree. The first one I saw that looked decent I said "what about this one?" and the kids quickly replied "It looks perfect!" The fact that we found several lady bugs in the tree when we got home only confirmed to the children that this tree was special. Lucy the stylish one of the family helped with the knee board and Samuel carried the saw. We played hide and seek in the trees and took our little tree home. This morning we decorated the tree and enjoyed its beauty. Samuel exclaimed when we were finished " This is a magnificent tree!"