Better Late Than Never

So I'm late as usual, but I wanted to write a quick post to tell Mike Happy Father's Day!  He is the best dad in the world!  I knew he was going to make a great dad but I never imagined he would be so good as to make me enjoy parenting so much as well!  Seeing him with Grant always makes me want to be a better mom!  I love how much he loves Grant and takes the time to figure him out, have fun with him, teach him, discipline with love, etc...the list goes on and on.  I think anyone who's seen them together would agree!  I love being in another room and hearing he and Grant playing and talking. The conversations are usually still pretty one-sided and almost always consist of Mike calling Grant his buddy and encouraging him to try something then telling him good job and that he's proud of him.  I love how Grant's little face lights up whenever he sees Mike or even just hears his voice and excitedly starts to yell "Doddy, Doddy, Doddyyyyyyyy!!" They are best buddies, it makes family life and parenting so easy and fun!

Seems like at this point in our lives, the question everyone can't help but ask is how many kids we plan on having.  I can honestly say that with a husband as involved as Mike, I'm willing to have as many kids as we're blessed with!  Mike has never put anything else above being a dad and I respect and appreciate that so much because it gives me so much support as a mom.  I'm so happy/excited/ grateful that we've already been blessed enough to have another one coming our way!

Happy Father's Day Mike!!  Sorry it was another lame day for ya but I hope you know how much Grant and I love you and appreciate everything you do for us!

Timber!! Tristan's Brush With Death

If I was ever asked, 'what is the scariest thing that has ever happened to you?', I would have to answer when I woke up from camping to a full size tree landing on my little brother.

Before we left to set up our site Ashley felt inclined to tell me she didn't have a good feeling about us going camping, and when I told my brother Ryan about her concerns, he echoed her concerns instead of writing them off like I was wanting to do. While setting up our tents I kept looking around for possible dangers and never considered what eventually happened.
Ryan and Guillermo (my parents foreign exchange student) were going to sleep in the tent with Tristan, but both ended up finding reasons to stay in town for just the night. I decided that Grant and I would share the tent with Tristan. We rearranged the tent for Grant and I to join him and Tristan was trying to sleep on a cot that was lifted off the ground but couldn't get it to work, so he switched to a pad.
Later in the night I woke up around 2 in the morning and the wind was blowing pretty hard. Because our tent was missing a cover I noticed all the trees blowing in the wind. I even looked at the tree that would later fall on our tent and wondered if it was something I should actually be concerned about. I told myself the tree wasn't a dead tree and I was crazy to be worried about it. Instead I decided to say a prayer to get us through the night safely and went back to sleep. I woke up again around 4 in the morning and I looked at the tree again. I kept thinking about whether I should just get everyone up and head home when I started to doze off again.
While dozing off I heard a cracking of the roots of the tree and turned to see it falling straight for us! I grabbed Grant while yelling at Tristan. Tristan rolled off his stomach and onto his back toward the roots of the tree while I rolled out of the way with Grant. The tree landed right on Tristan's waist and he just started screaming! I frantically tried to get out of the tent while my mom and dad rushed to see what was happening. My mom said that because of the screams she thought she was going to see Tristan and me standing over Grant who had died somehow, and my dad was sure it was a bear.  My mom ran to Tristan while my dad and I tried anything we could to lift the tree, but it wouldn't budge. My dad without explanation jumped in the truck and drove off to a neighboring camp in hopes to find a chainsaw. When I looked at Tristan again he was still screaming and I honestly thought he wasn't going to make it. Just after that Tristan murmured he might have gotten loose. I jumped down and pulled the blankets off and my mom and I helped him get the rest of the way out from under the tree. Then I grabbed the cot out of my mom's tent and by the time I got it ready to put Tristan on my dad was back. The three of us set him on the cot and into the back of the truck. My mom rode in back with Tristan asking him questions to keep him calm while we headed to the hospital. About an hour after the tree landed on Tristan, he was being medevaced to Scottsdale urgent care.
I cannot express how much it scared me to see what I thought was my brother dying. I still have trouble believing he is alright and in recovery. He ended up breaking his pelvis, fracturing his tail bone and suffered some other internal injuries. I still feel this whole thing should have been avoided, and I needed to listen to the warnings to get us out of that tent. On the other hand if Ashley and Ryan hadn't made me overly cautious, if I hadn't uttered a final prayer, if we both slept through the whole thing then the tree would have landed on Tristan's back and my head and shoulders, if our tent had a top cover blocking our view, if Tristan had slept on the cot raising him up off the ground, if Tristan had rolled the other direction where the tree would have landed lower to the ground and close to his neck and chest, if the tree was just an inch lower to the ground, if he hadn't had just enough space to get himself out, if the doctors didn't get to him in time... In spite of how bad the situation was, we were extremely lucky. I'm so thankful that my little brother is still with us, and expecting a full recovery. I'm sooooo thankful nothing happened to little Grant. You can take what you want from this story, but I am completely awakened to the fragility of life. There's nothing we can do to always stay out of harms way, but we should do our best to make the best use of the time we have.

This is Grant next to a cut out portion of the tree. The tree was around 82 feet tall and about a foot and half wide at the portion that landed on Tristan. My brother googled it to find it probably weighed roughly 10,500 lbs. If the roots hadn't propped the tree up just enough it would have definitely crushed Tristan.

We all visited Tristan and sort of lived at the hospital over the past couple weeks. This is my mom and Grandma trying to celebrate their birthday while he was there.

Here is Tristan with Guillermo. Guillermo even surprised himself with how much he cared and wanted to stay and support Tristan. He left to go back home to Spain shortly after this picture. We are all going to miss him around here, especially Grant who formed a great friendship with him.

Tristan is hoping to be home soon, and planning on playing a lot of Modern Warfare 3 on xbox while getting better, which means he will be basically going back to his normal routine for now.