In the clear!

We had Caleb's consultation with the neurosurgeon on the 23rd, and while he does believe that caleb's sutures fused early, he doesn't think that there is any pressure on the brain. Therefor, NO SURGERY NEEDED!!!!! I can't tell you how much of a relief this is for Paul and I. We go back in 6 months (Oct 24) for a check up to make sure the Dr. still believes that no surgery is needed, but for now i'm considering that a win for us :)

 On another note, as of this past weekend, Ty is officially training wheel free on his bicycle! We went to max's 10th birthday party, and he wanted to ride 

Reeds' bike. Well his bike doesn't have training wheels... so i figured i'd let him ride it and just told on to him. He got on and took off, when i figured he was doing good steering himself, i let go of the handle bar and just held onto his seat. Then i figured that he was doing well with his balance and let go but ran beside him, and off he went with no training wheels, just like that. It took maybe 10 minutes. So of course when we got home he just HAD to have his daddy take off his training wheels from his bike. He's been riding "baby wheel-less" (as Ty calls it) since.

Baby Love

Caleb has a new girlfriend. Her name is Addison, and shes the most adorable blonde hair, blue eyed little girl around. Her mommy and daddy are good friends of Paul and I, and I currently watch her on Wednesdays while her parents are at work, and will soon be watching her m-f :)

Battle Ship Of Texas

I don't know if you've ever been to the battle ship of Texas, but it's a really cool thing to go see. If you're ever in Houston, you should go.
Ty has this thing about boats, cars, planes, motorcycles, four wheelers, ect. He goes absolutely nuts over them, so Paul and I thought it would be a great idea to take him down there and tour around the boat. As we walked pulled into the parking lot the first thing out of his mouth was "oh. my. gosh!" As we were walking up to the boat he said "Oh WOW! Look at this boat!" Needless to say he was super excited, so excited in fact i could barely get him to hold still long enough for pictures. I did get a few however.

We plan on buying one of those back pack carrier things for kids that people who hike use so we can go on more of these family outings. As much as I love Caleb and all of his chubbyness, he sure does get heavy and FAST, especially when you can't take a stroller to wherever your going, or there are a billion stairs up and down. So hopefully I will have more fun pictures come to you soon.

Happy Easter!

We had a blast for Easter, as usual it was packed with traveling between houses and trying to visit as much with family as possible.

I hope you all had a great Easter as well :)

Its that time of year

It's tax season! Exciting right? NOT!! If your like us the only reason that you even have a shimmer of excitement about this time of year is for your *hopeful* tax return. Since Paul and I have gotten married, well hell since we both started working when we were 17 and had to file taxes, we have always done our own through turbo tax. This year though Paul insisted on going to H&R block because "turbo tax doesn't allow you to get all the $ your entitled to and a professional will". Heck one less thing that I have to worry about right! So to H&R block we go. BIGGEST mistake ever! I'll go more Into detail why in a minute.

We get there and we give her all of our paperwork that their website said to bring and give it to the lady. She goes through it, sorts it out and starts inputting into. She asks us for the kids info and all that jazz. Then she gets into Paul's paperwork... She didn't know what an Hsa was, then she tried to tell us it was additional income. When we explained to her that it wasn't, that it came directly out of Paul's paycheck and his employer didn't contribute to it, she shot us down and acted like we didn't know what we were talking about. Okay whatever she's the professional right? So she should know what she's talking about. An hr and a few arguments later she finishes our taxes and tells us we are getting right at 2k back. We tell her thank you and that we would like to get a second opinion on it before we file it, and she informs us that she has already filed it. WHAT?! How did she even know what bank acct to put it into? Well she had used the same acct # that we had used for our last years taxes. We don't even have that acct anymore!!! So she 'tries' to change it, and tells us our check will probably just come to their office where we will have to pick it up. Yea we are not happy but it seems like there's not much we can do.
Fast forward 2 days later, I'm messing around on turbo tax just to see how close I would have come to the refund amount that she got. Can you guess how much I got that we were getting back? Over 3,300!!! Thats a HUGE difference. I bring it to Paul's attention and we decide to go to Jackson Hewitt and get a free second look. They get back close to the number that we got, on turbo tax, and said they could get more, but until they typed it in like an actual file instead of practice then they couldn't give us the final number.
So we make an appt to talk to the h&r block manager that night (yesterday). We get there and a regular tax person brings us over, reviews our taxes and said she did nothing wrong and everything was filed correctly. We then ask to speak with the manager, wait 45 minutes and finally talk with her. She goes over the paper work and says she sees nothing wrong, so I show her my turbo tax print out and she insists that I did something wrong. So we show her the jackson hewitt estimate and she says "they don't know what they are doing, they only take a 2 week course and we take a 6 month course then a 6 week revision course each year, we are professionals and know what we are doing". So I ask her to walk us step by step through our turbo tax report and show us exactly what I did wrong. Can you guess what I did wrong? NOTHING! The h&r block lady who prepared our taxes, the lady who looked them over, and their manager all missed stuff!!! In fact the manager had to go step by step with my turbo tax to even figure out what she missed and how to fix it, and they still couldn't figure everything out. Originally they forgot to put in our property taxes, Paul's IRA, they counted the Hsa money has extra income AND taxed us on it, instead of deducting it from our taxable income and not taxing us on it (even though it says on the paper exactly how to file it!!), half of our medical bills, and a few other odd and in things they had the wrong amounts on. So now we have to wait for our tax return to come in and then we have to file an amend, ugh!! Never will we ever use H&R block again!

A house full of sick people

Thats what we've got. Last week it started with the boys having runny noses and I thought it was just allergies, then Caleb got a mild fever then Ty got it, then ty started throwing up. Then yesterday I woke up with a sore throat and today feel like death warmed over. Paul seems to be the only one who has dodged the bullet so far, and hopefully he continues to do so! I see lots of laundry, Lysol, and bleach in my future as soon as everyone starts on the mend.

I feel like Im going to go crazy

We got the call from the neurosurgeon that Caleb's appt will be Monday April 23. I'm not sure if it's just an evaluation by the neurosurgeon or if they will be doing the ct scan while we are there also. But we should have at least the surgeons opinion on that day if not the final diagnosis.

I found, well actually a friend found it for me, a craniosynostosis support board full of parents who's children have had this and have had the surgery. So I posted a thread with a few pictures in it of Caleb with a few different angles of his head (straight on, side view, and up top view) and the first(and only so far since I just recently posted the thread) person who commented on it said that it does look like cranio to them. Now I know that you can't diagnose someone by just looking at a picture. And I guess that I was just hoping someone would say, naw that doesn't look like cranio to me, and it help ease my mind. But seeing someone who's been there and seen it first hand in their kid, say yes it does look like cranio to them, felt like a sucker punch in the gut. And now Paul's at work, both boys are already in bed for the night, and I feel like I'm either going to go crazy or have a mental break down. I just don't know what to do at this point, I feel so helpless. I'm usually really good at keeping my cool and keeping things together, but I just don't think I can for much longer. We've been through hell and back this last year with multiple things, and now having two sick kids on top of everything else that we've been through just makes me want to crawl into a hole and not come out until everything is okay again.