Halfway to 66: Happy Birthday Aaron!

AaronBoone is da' bomb. No, really.
He makes me laugh multiple times a day. He is a rock star daddy. He goes above and beyond for his family all. the. time. And, I just love him.
I still remember him walking into the restaurant where I was waiting tables in college. It was after the lunch rush and he and his friend were the only two in there. I thought he was THE hottest guy I'd ever seen and even told one of my friends I was working with that I was going to marry him (a little premature ... But, I'm nothing if not impulsive). I'm pretty sure it was love at first sight. Thank GOODNESS for the drug-head waitress that overheard me saying that and passed the info that I thought he was a cutie on to him. Clearly, a fairy tale romance from the start.
But 7 years later I'm so happy that he's mine!!

We don't really do a big to-do for parent birthdays around here. We usually individually treat ourselves with something we've been eyeing, but Aaron didn't even do that this year. Instead he took Avery, Dalton and Trip to see Brave today and then took THEM to all get happies. He even brought me home some cute running shorts ... On HIS birthday.
Aaron's not one to want a fuss ... Actually the first year we were married I did a surprise thing at our house with family and friends and he hated it; he is just not one for being the center of attention. But, because I have to make somewhat of a big deal about the man in our house I just want to proclaim, "AaronBoone, you are loved! And I think you're the greatest evah. Love you oodles!

We did a fun fishy dinner and then went out for ice cream. I think he had a good day.




Lots and lots of x's and o's, AaronBoone. You have my whole heart.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Always Something ...

A few weeks ago Aaron had planned to be out of town this weekend. Lynda offered to keep Sawyer and I took the opportunity to take Avery and Dalton to the lake with my family. Between weddings, our trip the beach and just general busyness, it was our first trip this year and we were all three so excited!
Mom picked us up and we left Friday afternoon for Lake Ouachita. We went to Shangri La to eat catfish per my request, swam and then went to bed early. I woke up early after a whole night of uninterrupted, glorious sleep and sat out on the deck looking at the lake.

It's just my favorite place to be- How beautiful is Arkansas?!?!? We spent the day swimming in the pool and playing in the lake and then swimming in the pool again after dinner. A and D are such water babies!
(P.S. There are a couple naked swimming pics of Dalton here, I feel the need to say they were all taken in about a 3 minute span before we made him put his swimsuit on there ... Just so ya know! Ha!)




We're trying to explain to Dalton he can't strip down all the time ... we're working on it.








Beiber






Waking up with Bubby.






Hanging out with some of my Wednesday Loves from this week! :)




Avery loves her Pop Pop!










After a full day on the lake, cooking up a yummy dinner, and almost having a heart attack watching the movie Taken I saw my phone ringing and it was Aaron. He could barely form a sentence, finally getting out, "I'm in the ER... I'm fine... Here's Lauren." Aaron had been umpiring all afternoon and helping with a baseball tournament that morning. He ended up calling behind the plate the last two games (meaning he had to wear a bunch of additional gear), and knew he was getting overheated, but thought he could tough it out. As soon as he got off the field he started getting sick. He went home, took a cold shower and laid on the couch- still didn't feel wellcontinuing to throw up. He called his friend Cody, an EMT and firefighter who lives across the street to come over and see if he should go see someone. Cody was gone, but sent his girlfriend, Lauren over who is an RN. By this time Aaron's hands and feet were cramped up and contorted, he couldn't stop sweating and his face was super pale. Lauren walked in and said the first thing she said was, "Can you get to my car? If not, we need to call 911." She said she knew he needed to go to the ER immediately. Cody met them there, they immediately hooked Aaron up to fluids and started running tests.

I left the lake around 11pm, got to the ER after midnight, and found them still in a trauma room in the ER. Expecting to get a couple bags of fluid and leave, we were surprised that they kept him until Monday afternoon. I think the final diagnosis was acute renal insufficiency, extreme heat exhaustion and severe dehydration. The doctors were really concerned and said it was right on the verge of a heat stroke as his kidneys were shutting down as well as his muscles. He was just saying the nurse told him they had given him over 1000 mL of fluid in 48 hours. The Doctors made sure we knew how serious it was and how important it was to take precautions from now on.
Dr.B said just to function on a normal day every person should be drinking half their body weight in ounces- so if you weigh 100lbs, you should drink 50oz of water a day. Limit yourself to one caffinated beverage a day. If you know you'll be in the heat the next day, double up on your water intake the day before. DURING your game, time outside or whatever you need to drink Gatorade/Powerade/Propel. Water is just flushing everything out and depleting your fluids- you need the electroltyes. He said if you're drinking during the day it's probably too late! Good reminders!!

He's finally home, resting up and drinking LOTS of fluids! SO thankful he's ok!!

Sawyer's Future ...

Here is a pic of a 5yr old AaronBoone at the beach ... Looks just like another Boone kiddo I know ...









If you can't tell, Aaron has a wee bit of Indian in him ... Feather not dot ... Obviously.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Here Comes the Sun!

For some odd reason, I really feel like I don't have anything of merit to tell you people ... seriously!
I will brag on my fabulous hubby for a minute. Yesterday I went to Little Rock for our wild and crazy playgroup. It got really crazy, because we were in the indoor playground and there were a lot more kids that usual. I stayed up in LR at my moms for the rest of the afternoon. Later in the afternoon, with all the stormy, yucky weather, I started craving some Paula Deen comfort food (shocker). I asked Aaron what he was in the mood for and he said steak, mashed potatoes, and fries (why did I even ask???). After talking him into going with only one potato, he offered to go to the grocery store, "um yes, please!!" So I made him a list and that man went to two different stores looking for all my items and then went by Target to get diapers and wipes. THEN he came home and grilled the steaks and fixed dinner! I just about melted. Never has he been as hot as he was walking in with all those grocery sacks in the pouring rain!! Bless him!! OK, I'm done ... but MY how that just made my week!!
Then today I woke up to the sun shining for the first time in goodness knows, how long. Maybe my Lillis might just bloom after all, they were in some serious need of some sunshine! I really want to be out there in it, attempting to tan my pale skin, but I really need to take a shower and mop before my kiddos wake up.
Speaking of my wonderful kids, Avery broke my camera yesterday. That's right, she accidentally knocked it off the counter while the zoom was out. It must have landed right on the lens, when it hit the tile floor and jammed it. It will NOT go back in and the picture is completely blurred. Ugh ... add it to the list.
If I think of my top 5 things I would hate to live without, my camera would definitely make the cut. There aren't even any holidays approaching in which I feel better about getting a new one. Another "ugh" feels necessary... ugh. After a lot of research, I did discover that digital camera prices are ever going down, so that is definitely a plus side. I will just have to get a new one before Memorial Day Weekend at the lake. That is a given. I'm hoping it's not a Kodak wind up one from the Shell station ;)
Well, peeps I think that's all I know. Dalton has done something, not so nice with my little prayer book and when I locate it, we will continue on.
What's For Dinner????
I'm altering Giada's recipe for Roman-Style Chicken tonight ....
here is the link to HER recipe, http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/roman-style-chicken-recipe/index.html
but I'm altering the ingredients, to what I have in my cupboard, which is pretty close (bacon, instead of prosciutto. Dried herbs instead of fresh, Green peppers instead of red and yellow, and I wouldn't be surprised if I added a little whipping cream and lemon juice- love it!)
...So Roman-Style Chicken over Bowtie Pasta, Salad, and Breadsticks ... I do love my pasta!

A Weekend to Remember

This past weekend Aaron and I went to Family Life's "A Weekend to Remember." It was in Little Rock at the Peabody. Even though it wasn't really a "vacay," it was such a treat to get away together and have some "us" time. (I'm getting kinda crazy with the quotations ... sorry about that.)
Greg Speck was the main speaker and I really think he is one of the best speakers I have ever heard. He touched on so many things that I needed to hear and delivered it in a way that I was actually receptive to- Not always the easiest thing to do with me. I think one thing that was so great about going to this marriage conference, is that sometimes there are things I want to talk to Aaron about, but I don't want to be that nagging wife, so I just ignore it and wait for a better time. But at the conference whenever you leave a session, you leave with an application project and they always have questions about what you just heard to discuss with your spouse. Ahhh-mazing. It was just really good for us. My sister and brother-in-law went and a couple from our community group, the Friedmanns and we all really really liked it. I'm still on information overload. I was seriously worn out by the end. But it was all so good, I'm just still trying to process everything I heard.By Sunday we were all kinda getting antsy, but still thinking it was a great weekend.

Here are some of my favorite "nuggets" from the conference ...
~ "Difficulties do not mean something is wrong with your marriage. Your response to difficulties will either drive you apart or bind you together."
~ My favorite thing from the whole weekend was this. It was seriously revolutionary to me:
"Always respond to EMOTION with EMOTION and FACT with FACT." He gave an illustration like this ... "If your husband looks at you and tells you, "honey, we aren't going to be able to spend $5000.00 on new living room furniture right now." and you have an emotional breakdown, sobbing "you don't love me." That's responding with emotion to fact ...I seriously busted out laughing ... GUILTY of that on so many occasions. I thought that was such good advice.
~ "The point in an argument is not to agree, but to understand."
~2 Things I want to work on in communication is "focus on what is being said, not the way it is being said." and to "think before I speak."
~ "If we don't purposefully find time to connect, we will accidentally drift into isolation."
~ Other couples fight too ... there are lots of times I think we're the only ones.
~ The idea of "unconditional respect," I had always just thought about unconditional love ... this idea of unconditional respect is much harder, but obviously of equal significance.
~ We talked about the word "submit" in our woman to woman session. She talked about how the word submit is also a military term having to do with two officials of equal rank, equal experience, same gender ... equal in every way. But one will submit to the other for the sake of the mission. I thought that was really really good.

We really had a great time and I just really enjoyed getting out of the house for a couple days with Aaron. It made me realize that it needs to be more of a priority. Today I went to a talk that Bill and Ann Parkinson gave at our church. They were talking about raising their kiddos and such. They talked about how there are 2 kinds of couples: Ones that made their marriage the priority and ones that made the kids the priority. It is so easy to let your lives just focus on the kids ... but we really want to be better about that!

I would highly recommend the conference ... for more info check out familylife.com/weekend and the main speaker has a website too gregspeck.com.
I know Family Life has the conferences all over. I think it would be fun to go to one in a fun city where you go to the conference for the first couple days and then stay and do other fun things for a few days too! :)

That's my plug ...