Cannon turns 3

Hello all…Cannon turns 3 tomorrow, June 13^th. Thanks, as always, for being part of his life and our support system and for loving him for the unique, cool, funny, determined, smart, silly, stubborn, amazing kid that he is! Use this link to see his year in review!

Cannon Turns 3!

Photographer in the family...and it is not me!

We have a blooming photographer in the family...and it is NOT me! I am enjoying the new camera (a Nikon D90) and I have really taken some decent pictures, but Russ is really finding his groove! He's been doing a lot of experimenting with the camera settings as well as with photoshop for editing, and some of his pictures are looking pretty darn good for an amateur. Thought I would share some of my favorites with you. They are below.

We've set up a photoshop website with photo albums/galleries in it. You can access it at:
https://www.photoshop.com/user/texassharpfamily

PS: If you want to get notice of new postings, become a follower of our blog! I've only got 12 followers right now and I KNOW I have way more family than that!

Edited using photoshop

Las Colinas-Mustangs at Williams Square

Las Colinas- Mustangs at Williams Square

Marbles

I actually took the picture...Russ made it amazing using photoshop

Mission Accomplished!

Well, we did it. We made it through a year of Kindergarten successfully! Whoo Hoo! Congratulations Kelsey & Ethan! I think that both of them really blossomed this year and both are looking forward to first grade, which to their delight includes music time as well as lunch in the cafeteria. I hope they are still as enthusiastic about school 4-5 years from now. Report cards came home and both had 'Mastered' the majority of the subjects listed and all the sub-categories. I'm so proud of them! Both are reading at a 1st grade level or higher right now also. So they are ready for 1st grade indeed. The last week of school included Kindergarten graduation program, Kindergarten Field Day, and Kindergarten Carnival. Here are a few of the best pictures from some of those events.

Kelsey & Ethan Turn 6

On May 9th it happened.....Kelsey and Ethan turned 6. Can't believe they are 6 years old already! To celebrate the occasion, we took them to the Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine.

We got there on Friday night and managed to hold off the water park until after dinner and b-day presents. Then we enjoyed the water park from 6:00 until 9:00. It was a lot of fun! For those of you that don't know about the Great Wolf Lodge, it is a gigantic indoor waterpark inside a hotel. There is a four-story interactive treehouse water fort with slides, suspension bridges, spray stations and soaker buckets. The biggest of the soaker buckets is a 1,000-gallon tipper that sits atop Fort Mackenzie. Every few minutes, the warning bell clangs, and the bucket begins to spill over the roof and onto anyone standing below.

The favorites for our kiddos were the wave pool (watch out for the tubes!) and the crooked creak. We stayed until the park closed, and then returned to the room for some mindless t.v. and some rest. In the morning, we enjoyed powdered donuts, chocolate milk, and honey buns in our room (totally worth the cost savings!) and then returned to the waterpark. We did some tube slides and spent a lot of time in the wave pool and the crooked creek again. Despite the fact that we could stay the whole day, we manged to bribe the kids with a trip to Fuddruckers and left by 2:00. Ethan's poor eyes were sooooo red from the chlorine and Kelsey had a run in with a tube in the wave pool that left her with a nice scrape, so we were relieved when they took us up on the bribe!

All in all, it was a really good time! I am gearing up for them to be out of school. There last day is June 3rd. Cannon is in school a bit longer and won't be out till the end of June. Then I will have a full house until they all go back to school in August.

Success! Back to School After T&A

Well, we did it. We survived a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy! Whoo Hoo! Besides being a little tired still, Cannon is for the most part back to his normal, headstrong, silly, little self. He is starting to eat and drink more and more every day. He did lose what appears to be a few pounds. Hmmm...maybe I need a tonsillectomy! Anyway, the weight loss should actually put him at a healthy weight...before he was just a tad over where they wanted him to be. He returned to school today and did well! I think he will be glad to return to his friends at school not to mention the activities and challenges presented to him at school versus being at home and watching me do the dishes or clean the house. Who wouldn't! So now that this bump in our road is past, guess I'm going to have to figure out other interesting topics to blog about. I'm sure something will happen in the Sharp household that will prove worthy. Look forward to whatever that may be...good, bad, or ugly.

T&A Recovery: Quick Update

Just a quick update on how the last few days have gone. Cannon had a rough night on Wednesday and woke up in a a pretty unpleasant mood. Can't blame him though. He's handling this pretty well in my opinion. His throat is probably on fire! Anyway, pain meds helped some. I had planned a playdate with some of Kelsey & Ethan's school friends that day, thinking that maybe he would be past the worst of it by then. I was wrong and my little man was clung to me all day except when napping. Today he is doing better, although still my little shadow and still in cuddle mode. I have to admit, it's nice to have him snuggled up next to me...until I see the dishes stacking up in the sink. Then I do my best to distract him for a bit so I can get some stuff done around the house. Wish us luck...we have 'Revive' tonight. Revive is a program offered through Northwood Baptist Church in which they provide free babysitting for kiddos with special needs children and their siblings for a full 4 hours! WOW!!!!! It's their way of reaching out to the community. Pretty amazing if you ask me. The kids have a BLAST there. Cannon has a set of helpers to himself and then Kelsey & Ethan will each have their own buddy all night! The buddies are usually junior high age kids. So pray that Cannon will let us leave him for a few hours. I think he could use the break and I KNOW I could use the break. I'll make sure to have him properly medicated so that he is hopefully in good spirits.

Hugs to all,

Lisa

T&A Recovery Continued!

Well, after watching Cannon refuse pretty much all liquid and food for 3 days, we made a call to his ENT. Based on the fact that he was adamantly refusing anything even coming close to his mouth and that he was getting no more than 4-6 oz. of fluids a day (that's being very generous) we decided to take him to the urgent care facility for IV fluids. This was on Monday night. The fluids helped, and by Tuesday morning he was drinking some milk and even ate some very mushy pancakes! He's still not drinking a lot, but it's definitely more than before so we'll take it. He's in good spirits..most of the time that is. Today he has eaten some pudding and had some milk, so I feel like we are moving in the right direction! Unfortunately we know that the worst is to come...that would be when the scabs fall off. Eeewwwww....yuck! Cannon has been a trooper all in all. I'm very proud of my sweet pudding covered boy!

Recovery: Days 2-4

Well, we are hanging in there! Saturday was o.k. despite the fact that Cannon started off the day by throwing up. He has his ups and downs. Usually 20 minutes or so prior to when he is due pain medication is the down and then an hour or so after he gets pain medicine is the up.

A big THANKS to Grandma Connie and Alex who came over on Sunday to give Russ and I a bit of a break. That was so nice! We've got great family and friends! Sunday he was pretty normal in the a.m. pre-nap, but Cannon was very clingy after his nap and laid on my lap most of the afternoon. Kelsey & Ethan volunteered to lay down with him now and then, but energetic kindergartners don't stay put for very long. At least it allowed me a bathroom break!

As 0f today, Cannon is really not eating or drinking ANYTHING. He might get 8-10 sips from a cup with a straw a day. I'm hoping that by tomorrow he is getting more fluids as I am starting to worry about dehydration. Anyone out there that has tips for how to get some fluids down, let me know. And anything that involves a medicine dropper is definitely not going to work since he associates that with the actual pain medicine, which he does not care for. He's napping as I type this (see below picture) but unfortunately I will have to wake up in about 30 minutes when we have to go pick up Kelsey & Ethan from school. Maybe he'll take another nap this afternoon...wishful thinking? I hope not!
All in all, it's not been a terrible experience (from our perspective not Cannon's)...at least yet. But we are still awaiting the dreaded scabs falling off between day 7 and 10.

Cannon's T&A: Day 1

We arrived at the surgery center at 9:00 a.m. Cannon was super cranky as he had not eaten since 6:00 the previous day. Poor kid. Can't blame him for being cranky. I know I was and I had at least had a cup of coffee! The Cook Children's Mid-Cities Surgery Center is awesome. They got us in a room really quickly and it wasn't too long before he got his versed and was rolled away for the surgery.

Above is a picture of Cannon pre-surgery. He was enjoying the books and toys some great friends gave him to stay occupied!

The surgery itself was really quick (30 minutes max) but it took a little while before I was able to go back to see him. They tell me that was mainly because they had to reinsert his IV line. We were in a private room, as there was a possibility of us staying overnight, depending on how Cannon responded to the tonsil and adenoid removal. He was really quite the trooper and was only unhappy because he could not get out of the hospital bed! No signs of pain at this point really, but I guess morphine will do that to you. Ha Ha. He immediately sucked down a sippy of apple juice and shortly after had an orange jello. By the time we left he had had 2 juice cups, 2 apple sauces, 2 jellos and 2 popsicles! And thanks to my Dad, I was able to eat lunch around 2:45 also!

They decided to release Cannon at around 4:45. He was just doing so awesome. In fact, he was up and walking around with the nurses and they were all taking turns walking around with him. By choice, not because they had to. He had them wrapped around his little finger. Too funny. He even wanted to push the broom around that the nice gentleman cleaning the room next door had with him. So off we went to Walgreens to get the prescriptions and to head to the Sharp Recovery Unit. Cannon fell asleep on the way home and stayed asleep until around 8:00.

Unfortunately, the honeymoon period was soon to be over. At 9:30 It was time to give him his meds. Hydrocodone for the pain, an antibiotic, and ear drops for the tubes in his ears. He was not a happy camper. Luckily, after the trauma of medicine administration, he was able to go to sleep but it was a restless night for him. Up once at 12:45 and then I had to give him more paint meds at 1:45. Luckily after the pain meds at 1:45 he slept better and got up around 6:00. More on how day 2 recovery (Saturday) in a later post!

Thanks for all the prayers and wishes for speedy recovery!

Cannon's Bath Time Fun

Still playing around with blogging, so you are getting a post topic on something I might not normally consider eventful enough to post about...but oh well. I'm playing around with this and they are pretty cute pictures, so why not share them!

Cannon LOVES, LOVES, LOVES taking a bath. I sure hope that remains the case in a few years! For some reason, I have visions of me chasing an energetic 4 year old around on bath nights. Only time will tell. For now, he's quite the splasher! I try to stand back and let him have some fun. Of course I sneak in now and then to clean a body part or to wash his hair.

Here are some pictures I took of this grand event. Russ and I have a new camera and we are both taking some classes to help us learn how to take better digital pictures. Here are some pictures I took of this grand event. I'm actually pretty proud of these! Might need to do some color adjustment, but overall not too bad. I tried to follow the composition rules...rule of thirds, fill the frame, no lines through the head, etc. Hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed taking them!

Bubble Boy!

Ho Ho Ho, Merry Bath Time!

Bathing Beauty!

No Buts about it...he's got a cute tooshie!

Yes, I know he will hate me one day for including this one. Ha Ha.

A Morning at the Sharp Household

Sharp's morning routine:

Russ up at 4:45, get ready for the day

Lisa up at 5:20 (4:20 if I get the energy to work out!)

Kelsey & Ethan up at 5:30 and potty, brush teeth, get dressed, make bed, take laundry down

Cannon up at 5:45 for hugs and diaper change

Everyone downstairs for breakfast by 6:05

Russ leaves for work at 6:10

Kelsey & Ethan get Shoes on, set table for breakfast, eat breakfast, clear table and everyone is out of kitchen by 7:00

Cannon cleaned up and dressed by 7:15, ready to go to school!

End result, 3 beautiful, happy kiddos! Most days that is!

Giving this a shot!

Hello friends and family....This is somewhat of a leap of faith for me, but I have put together a family blog. I figured it would be something fun for me to do but also a way to keep you guys up to date with what we Sharp's are doing. I won't be one of those daily bloggers. Most likely it will be weekly or after a special day or occasion, but look for a few posts over the next few days and weeks so that I can get used to this blogging thing. I'm new to this, so give me a little cushion on the appearance and layout of the blog initially. It might not be "pretty" for a while. I plan on making it our own and will be tweaking it here and there over the next few weeks and beyond. Hope you all are on board with this and will enjoy this. Until then, here are a few recent pictures of the kiddos!


Lisa