The Busy Month of August and a New Car

I haven't been able to update the Blog lately and a lot has happened this month. We have been busy with Ear Surgery, Finding a daycare for Lilly, Traveling, a car breaking down, buying a new car, planning and celebrating Lilly's First Birthday, and going back to/catching up on Work! Needless to say it is only going to get busier for us as the holidays start coming!

Yes you read correctly! Aaron and I have made another (Lilly being the first) large decision to purchase a car for our family. It was a long time coming and I personally didn't want to make that change in our lives, in fact I enjoyed not having a car payment to make. Aaron has been ready for quite sometime to get a new car and I have not. Then 2 weeks ago after visiting with my parents at their house, I was on my way home from Boise and the car died. It is hard to explain exactly what happened. All I know is that Lilly and I were sitting on the side of the road while the car rattled with every passing truck. That was obviously the straw that broke the camels back and I was now prepared to get a reliable car. Lucky for me the car started and only broke down twice more before I got to our friends house in Twin Falls. Aaron came and followed me home to make sure that I wouldn't get stranded. It was quite the eventful night for us especially since we had to be up and out of our house at 5:00 am the following morning for Aaron's Ear Surgery. We didn't get to bed until 2:00 am, and the next day I slept maybe 1.5 hours total. Needless to say I was tired and ready for a reliable Ride.

So this last Saturday Aaron and I went out looking for cars and we came across this White Toyota Camry (we already knew the kind of car we wanted). The price was right and so we made a deal. Obviously from the pictures there is really dark tinting on the windows. We are having the dealership take that down a few notches. By 5:00 pm we were the proud new owners of this car. Some of you may be asking why we didn't get a family car, well it is simple really. This car will be mine to drive (I don't know how I got so lucky!) for the next year and a half that Aaron is in school. We still have our Subaru and we know that within 4 years that car will die to. So by the time we even need a family car the Subaru will have died and we will then get our family car and this car will be Aaron's commuting car, which is great because the thing gets 32 miles to the gallon in town. That is definitely a money saver!

Funny Lilly!

Lilly has been changing a lot lately. She sometimes says a few words, all though most of the time she just squeals and yells. She has started shushing me when I shush her (Uh Oh!), She kind of says her name when she sees a picture of herself. She has taken up cheesy grinning at the camera! She really loves animals and every time she sees a dog or cat she gets really excited, unless of course they come by her and then she doesn't like them very much! She has 7 teeth fully in and I can see more getting ready (Fun for me!). She is also really good at pulling herself up on things now and she can even crawl up steps. The baby proofing has finally begun at the Haws Family Home!

She is really getting into Baby Einstein!

Lilly's First Birthday!

On August 23rd Lillian Renee Haws turned 1 year old! I can hardly believe how fast the past year has flown by. We didn't do much for Lilly's actual birthday but on Friday the 24th we threw her a birthday party. Our friends Dan, Candace, and Bella Lowe came from Twin Falls, and my sister and brother-in-law and their family came over. We had an outdoor BBQ and played outside. Lilly also had her very own birthday cake all to her self. She wasn't sure at first but after eating most of the frosting she dug into the cake. She even tried to share it with her mommy. She made out good with the presents. She got a musical activity table, a little people van, a popcorn popper, a musical book, and a game cube. She didn't get to play with any of her toys until the next day because her cousins were way more excited about them than she was. We had tons of balloons and Lilly thought that they were great. All in all for a first birthday it was a pretty good success!

Ear Surgery

Aaron was swimming in late July at a water place in Preston Idaho and they happen to have a pool there that is not chlorinated or anything (In fact you can see the moss and slime growing in it) It really isn't pleasant! Well a kid there filled his water gun up with water from that pool and squirted Aaron in his right ear. For a few weeks Aaron had a hard time hearing and thought that maybe he had a small infection. After much persuasion from me he finally went to the doctor to find out. What was discovered is that he had what is called a colesteotoma. This is where a part of your ear drum balloons inward and if it goes untreated can eventually grow into your brain and kill you! (Wow, the doctor didn't make it sound that bad!) It is similar to a tumor. Anyway, after seeing an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor it was determined that yes he has a colesteotoma(They aren't that common) and that surgery would be needed. We aren't really sure what causes them only that people that have a history of Ear and Nose problems are more prone (which Aaron has had both).

So we scheduled Surgery and arrived at the hospital at 5:30 am. The doctor assured us that the surgery would be easy and only take him about 2 hours to complete. After 4 1/2 hours the nurse came in and told me that Aaron was doing great and that the surgery took longer than expected (duh) and that they were just now closing him up so it would be another 15 mins. Well 45 mins. later the doctor finally came in and told me that he was doing very well and made it through surgery very good. He said the the colesteotoma was much worse than they had expected and that it had grown and intertwined itself for a considerable way up into his head. One side of Aaron's ear bone was eroded away and so the doctor was able to take it out and flip it around and put it back in (ouch!) The doctor seemed really pleased and that everything is good to go. Now the waiting game begins and it will be a couple of months before we know if Aaron has to have another surgery, or if everything went great. We also won't know for a month or so if he will regain full hearing in that ear. The doctor seemed sure that he would eventually have hearing and that he would be able to rebuild it.

We are grateful for that little boy who squirted Aaron because if it wasn't for him we wouldn't have found out about this for a long time and the whole situation could have been a lot worse. We are definitely blessed!

My Visit with the Farmer Family and Fires All Around

A week before Aaron had Ear Surgery I decided that Lilly and I should go and visit my parents for a week. We had a great time. On our way to the Ranch there was a huge fire just outside McCall Idaho. I took a picture of it because the plume of smoke looked like an atomic bomb! There are fires everywhere in fact we were lucky if the day cleared out enough to see down the canyon. I sure hope we get some rain soon.

When we were at my parents house we bought a box of nectarines from Costco. They were sitting on the counter next to where Lilly was sitting. I turned around for just a second and when I looked back Lilly had grabbed a nectarine and was eating away at it. She ate almost half of it before she dropped it in my sister Amber's shoe (Sorry Amber I forgot to tell you!) and that was when we decided she couldn't have it back. She sure did enjoy the nectarine though. She also enjoyed all the suckers that grandpa gave her!
Another project that I began while visiting was cleaning out and painting my sister Amber's room. The old room was a little young for her but now she has a pretty modern and sophisticated room. We painted one wall a chocolate brown with Teal and Pink accents and then we painted the other three walls Teal. We also had to paint the ceiling and base boards White. It was a long project but in the end it was totally worth it! She also doesn't have anything left in her room after I basically did a clean sweep of it (I guess now it will stay clean!). Do you like the circles on the wall? I designed them on my computer first and then we painted them on! Pretty cool.

Lilly's Hair

Lilly is getting so big and her hair is getting so long. This is the first time that I was able to do anything different with her hair.