We have had a pretty rough and long winter up here in the mountains. So needless to say we have a bit of cabin fever! So I decided to put the kids in there swimsuits, fill up the bathtub and color the water a pretty blue, and we pretended we were on vacation in the tropics! I know it sounds silly but the kids loved it!

I also decided to make the kids valentines this year instead of just buying the ones at the store like everyone else does…to all the other mothers this is another one of my ideas that sound good in theory but kind of turned out to be not so fun, I forgot at 2 and 4 they would loose interest pretty fast and I would be the one who did all the work! But I’m still glad I did it and I will probably make this a tradition every year. Both of my kids are amazing and they deserve all the special things I can possible do for them! Taylor picked out a flower valentine that she wanted for her class, and Drake decided to take a fruit rollup and wrap it in scrap booking paper and write “I like the way you roll” on it! We then traced there hands on construction paper and I cut them out and wrote “you deserve a hand” on the cut outs and we glued them to the side of a bottle of hand lotion they bought for each one of there teachers. Of course Taylor had to make four even though she only has two teacher because we made one for the director of her school and the coordinator.

 
They are truly amazing up there at Pitter Patter Pathways, we have such a great relationship with all of them and they all love Taylor to death, most of them even call her Toot! I am really hoping that they decide to start offering classes past pre-school. That would be an answer to a lot of my prayers. I have always disliked the school system up here and Jason will not allow Taylor to go to a private school. But I know he would like for Toot to continue her education under Sarah’s care. So lets pray they do decide to expand!

Ok so I’m not forgetting to update my blog this year, there is just a lot of things going on right now that I can’t talk about! Hopefully in a few months everything will work out fine and I will be able to fill you all in on what has been happing.




But one thing I can talk about is my new endeavor I have decided to work on. I have decided to fallow in my favorite cousins footsteps and try to start my own photography business! I have been looking at her pictures she has been taking over the past couple of years and I have been so impressed! She has decided to upgrade her camera and I am planning on buying her old one from her. There have been a few bumps in the road trying to get the money for the camera (again hopefully I can fill you in in a few months) but I am praying it will all work out and the money comes in time to get hers.



But I have already been scouting out great places to take pictures around Smyth county and I can’t wait to get started! I have been teaching myself the basics of photography and think I’m doing a pretty decent job if I do say so myself! When I do get this thing off the ground my company will be named Amazing Memories by Brooke (that’s diffidently a working title if anyone has any ideas!) I have already made a few contacts to hopefully get my name out there to the community. I have talked to a gentleman at the Adwolf Fire Department and he mentions taking the pictures of the staff this year and I also talked to the director of Pitter Patter Pathways and she has agreed to let me take pictures of the kids and put a sample picture in each of the kids boxes so the parents can get an idea of my work and hopefully call me to do more work for there family! I am so excited about this, I just hope I can hurry up and get this silly camera so I can get used to it and hopefully be able to start working by summer! Wish Me Luck!!

It has been a really rough winter for us up here in the mountains, we have had a lot of snow and overall yucky weather. We are all starting to get a little but of cabin fever! So the other day I decided to do something new with the kids. They put on there bathing suits and I turned the water in the bathtub a pretty blue and we pretended we were on vacation in the tropics! I know it sound silly but the kids had a blast and that’s all that matters to me!

My kids are so funny!

My cousin has a blog and every once in a while she will share a few funny things her kids have said, its my favorite part of her blog (besides all the pictures of her beautiful children of course.) So I thought I would share some of the funny things that my kids say:


Tony has this burnt CD that has some weird purple print on it and he wrote “dirty Christmas” on it. Well because of the purple print on it of course it was going to catch our kids attention, sure enough a couple of weeks ago Drake hands it to me and ask me to play it. I looked at it and told him “sorry son but that’s not for you and Taylor to hear, it’s daddy’s “dirty CD.” and without missing a beat Drake responded “well you can use Taylor’s new baby doll dress to clean it off!” I didn’t know weather to laugh cause he misunderstood what I meant by “dirty” or scold him for offering up Taylor’s new baby dolls dress to be the object to clean it with!

If you follow me on FB then you may have already heard the next couple.

This past summer we had bought a watermelon and decided to let the kids tear into it after dinner one night. (there’s actually a picture of this exact evening on my last post.) some of my favorite memories are of when my parents would put us in our bathing suits and toss us out the back door and hand us a watermelon. When we were done they would just hose us down and off we went to the next thing that caught our attention. So I put Drake and Taylor in there swim suits and let them dive in. after they were done Taylor kept messing with her top so I just took it off of her. About that time the little boy who lives next door (mind you he’s 7) came outside and yelled “Taylor why’d you take your bra off?!

Taylor got a fisher price medical kit for Christmas and she was giving me “shots.” after giving them to me all up and down my arms and legs she tried to giving me some in my face. After about 4 or 5 rounds of yes you do/ no you don’t she finally very sternly stated “otox mommy!!” I’m still trying to figure out where in the heck my 2 year old learned about botox!

A girlfriend of mine from college just had her 1st baby on new years eve and I was looking at her pictures and decided that I wanted to look at the pictures from the day Taylor was born. I came across a picture that Jason and I had taken the day before she was born. I asked her who was in the picture and my sweet little princess stated…”that’s my daddy! And that’s my mommy!…Whoa mommy you had a BIG pot belly!!!”

Sorry Ya'll!

I'm not going to make any excuses...I litterly forgot about this whole blogging thing this past year! but i promise to try and do better from now on. so much has happend in the past year, Drake started Pre-School, I went back to College, Taylor and Drake both had surgery and I guess my body didn't want them to go threw it alone so I had 3! But everyone is doing well as we close out 2010. Taylors father and i have an agreement that neither one of us will move away unless we can agree on an area that will benifit everyone involved, so i'm still living up in the mountains of Va close to the Tenn. border. But jason and i often discuss wanting to get out of this area so hopefully i can talk him into moving closer to my family on the other end of the state at some point soon...but don't hold your breath on that one! but here is a quick summery of the past year for us...

March was a big month for us. Drake had his tonsils taken out, and the next day i had my 2nd laproscopy done. (the 1st one was back in 2000) that weeked Taylor turned 2! she had a Dora Birthday party and receved all those fun little toys that make every annoying noise known to man. but theres some weird force in my house where they work just fine one night and then the next morning the batteries are misteriously missing! The fallowing week i had my 2nd transplant done on my left shoulder. (the 1st one was 2 years ago when toot was 3 months old.) all of our surgerys went well.

We had Drake Baptised in April (Jason and i had Taylor Baptised when she was a year old) i transferd my membership from my church back home to the 1st united methodist church here in town. That same day Tony converted and also joined the church. (he was catholic) So it was a big day for us!

Taylor had her adnoids and tubes put in both ears in may. other than that 1st night she did suprisingly well.

We had a fun summer of swimming pools and playgrounds and lots of cooking out with the neighbors. We don't have any little girls living around us but there are lots of boys, even though they were all 4 and 5 years older than Taylor she would just chase behind them with little play guns and try her best to keep up! it was the cutest thing! although her daddy didn't like it too much when he would come and get her and she would strongly protest by saying "I WANT TO PLAY WITH THE BOYS!!"

My grandmother passed in september an although it was under sad circumstances it was very nice to be able to see members of my fathers family that i haven't seen in MANY years. Tony and i celebrated our 1 year anniversury. And Drake started Pre-School.

In October i turned 29 on the 26th Tony turned 29 on the 27th and that fallowing weekend was halloween. Toot was a pink butterfly and Drake was Iron Man. The county that we live in does not reconize Halloween if it falls on a sunday (i love that by the way) so the town had all there celibrations on sat. Taylors school does a HUGE thing for the kids with games and the blow up jumping castles and horse back rides. i'm deffinently going to have to get toot into lessens because she LOVED it, she didn't want to get off!

November we went to Tonys aunt alma and uncle terrys house for thanksgiving (Tony had a falling out with his mother last feb and they haven't spoken scense)  but we had a fantastic time with his aunt and uncle. I just love them to death, everytime i get to spend some time with them i learn more about them and i think so highly of them both

This christmas was Jasons year to have Taylor so we went down to my moms house in NC the weekend before and had round 1 of christmas. Christmas morning Drake had his santa time (round 2) then when toot got home at 7 she had her santa time. (round 3) my father should be comming into town this week so he can give the kids there presents also (round 4!) Christmas day was really hard this year because i always go back home for christmas and i wasn't able to this year. but overall we had a GREAT time making ornaments, and reindeer food, decorating gingerbread men, making snowglobs, and decorating the house and tree. this was a fun year because Taylor was old enough to understand what was going on. I think she is going to be old enough next year to be in the Christmas play at church. that will be sooooo adorable!!!!!!!!!!!



Toot~Toot was so proud of her letter!





They were writung letters to santa!

Making Christmas Ornaments

Making "reindeer food"

My Cousens and Taylor and Baby Willow

Arn't they cute AFTER santa brought them half of Toys R Us?!



Bare With Me, I'm New At this!!!

OK ya'll I'm gonna try my hand at this whole blogging thing. i don't know if I'll be able to do it or if I'll actually stay on top of this so just bare with me while i figure this whole thing out!!

so as ya'll all know i have had some pretty crappy luck the past couple of years when it comes to my health. but i am VERY happy to say that has not been the case here lately! 1st i found out on the 7th that i only have a few more treatments and they will most likely be declaring me CANCER FREE!!!!! then i found out last week on the 14th that my doctors in Richmond have agreed to try another muscle transplant (the same surgery i had when Taylor was 3 months old)one more time before they decide to do the bone fusion on my left shoulder. and that is REALLY great news. the last thing anyone ever wants is to loose the use of a arm! so i am EXTREMELY happy they are willing to try this transplant one more time. so please pray along with me that it works this time! i also found out yesterday that i got my health insurance back! it's completely amazing/ridicules how much medications are these days. you have no idea what a burden this takes off me!

The Story of Me And Tony

As you all know i have been dating Tony Addesso for a while now. he is truly amazing person. after 28 years of never being IN LOVE i was starting to worry that i was unable to TRULY be in love. of course i have loved boys before but i was completely aware that i had never been IN love yet. well that has certainly changed! Tony is the most amazing guy i have ever met. he treat me great and most importantly he is fantastic with Taylor. she loves her "nony" and "dake" to death! we have seriously been discussing possibly getting married. but nobody needs to worry we would never do it before next spring/summer. even though everything is picture perfect right now marriage is permanent and we still need some more time to really get to know each other before we make it official. so nobody needs to worry about us "rushing into" anything legal anytime soon. it is almost scary how easily our two families have come together. our children love each other and have made the transition extremely well. almost to easily to be honest. but i can't tell you how lucky i feel to have the opportunity to marry and spend the rest of my life with my 1st love. there isn't a whole lot of people who are able to say that.

it turns out that tony had been interested in me for quite some time. he is able to tell you EVERY TIME he ran into me out-and-about over the past year and a half, what i was wearing, and even how i was wearing my hair! he was just too intimidated to talk to me! the very 1st time we ever met he came up to macados and when i got off work Jason,Chris Buckingham, and Amanda came up there and we all hung out for a little while. anyway, when Tony got there he saw me and came up to talk to Chris and sat with us for a little while. he was asking Chris about me and after everything he told him he finally told Tony that i was engaged to Jason. the extremely ironic thing was that tony made the comment that he just wanted to find a good girl for himself and Jason pointed to me and i jokingly said "what the hell are you offering me to him!" to Jason. who would have ever thought that not only would he be the next person that i dated but that i would fall head-over-heels in love with him and be spending the rest of my life with him!!! i had been checking out his myspace page for a good while just looking at his pictures and stuff and finally one night i just sent him a random message. he wrote me back and as i was reading it he was still online and sent me a instant message. we started talking and exchanged phone numbers. we started texting each other almost immediately and met up at macados three days later. we sat there talking and getting to know each other for a while and i had other plans that night so i had to leave. but i really didn't want to. i went to my friends house and was texting Tony the whole time i was there! finally at 1am we decided i was gonna come over to his house and watch a movie. (anyone who knows me now knows i never really hang out anymore much less "late night" like that so i obviously had a pretty big crush on this guy to do something so out-of-cariter and spontaneous like that!) we watched 8 seconds and i knew right then that i was in trouble! but i had no clue how much my world had really changed for the rest of my life. i can't began to tell you how much i love this man and how happy he makes me. we started seeing each other about 2 weeks before i started getting my chemo treatments and he has been so amazingly supportive threw all this. the day i washed my hair and a huge handful of hair came out (luckily i never lost too much) he just held me for the longest time and promised me that even if i lost it all he would still think i was beautiful. when i get really sick from my treatments he is always right there bringing me anything i may need, carrying me back and forth to the bathroom or the bedroom, and even emptying puke buckets! he has just been soooo sweet, patient, and overall amazing threw this extremely hard and stressful time. i don't know if i would have been able to do this without him.