Fall Fun and the a Great Update.

This past weekend...we spent a little time outside. It was so much fun to play in the leaves in warm weather. No socks, no shoes, yet the beautiful colors of fall. I got some pictures that I just love. Not often that I find one of Jackson and I that I love, but this one has made the top 5. then we had Jackson playin in the leaves...Gotta say we can't wait til they dry out and we can go out since the leaves have fallen...the pictures will be so cool.

then this one makes me laugh. he got so excited he just started screaming...it was totally funny in person.
this face comes out a lot lately...total attitude at 14 months...what do I have to look forward to at 2 and 3...oh my. we will be sure to keep you updated.



Good news at the doc...we have clear ears. whooohooo...we have a bit of a cough and a wicked case of thrush...so we are treating, but neither looks like a hold off for surgery...so we are on for next thursday October 23rd. Life has been so good lately. I just continue to pray that God will protect Jackson and his surgery will go well. I am also praying for strength and patience for Adrian and I too. THings are prepared and we have many ideas on how to modify things like swings and wagons and toys so Jackson can continue to enjoy while in his cast. I feel as ready as we can be and I know God will take care of the rest.

14 months...it gets crazier to me everytime.

at 14 months we are:

* a ham...we laugh and make faces...we can light up a room..

* a flirt...there is no girl that gets past us with out a smirk, he melts there hearts already. we are in BIG BIG TROUBLE.

* he is walking along and around furniture all the time and is even starting to let go...so we will be standing and then taking steps..oh my heavens who would ever believe it.. WOW!

* he loves books...right now he is laying on his back on the floor, holding the book over his head and talking to himself. if I do say so my self, he is reading at 14 months.

* he is walking around and along furniture all the time.

* loves peek a boo, and plays it anywhere, anytime, with anyone

* he is into unloading or taking things out. he unloads the freezer, the dishwasher, the toy basket, and the diaper bag...and grins as he is doing it.

* he is a smart little sucker...he knows what he is doing.

* he is a speedy crawler and has learned how to go from crawling to sitting and is transitioning much better.

* he has an attention span for tv that is .5 seconds long and I am ok with that.

* we have started chewing on graham crackers and we still like cheetos. still no more than tastes of any baby food or people food. it still makes him gag and he throws up.

* speaking of throwing up, we have had none for two hole months... other than the occassional choking incident. WHOOOHOOO!!!

* he loves playing and has started to play with others too. it is so cute although his idea of playing is to take the books from others...gotta work on this.

* loves to be outside and to do anything with his daddy.

* he has also accomplished crawling through, under nad over things.

* he is still inquisitive and studies everything

* and he is determined...if there is something he wants to do...he will get it done. such as:

* he is now into buttons...he is turing the tv on and off, recording things, and opening the DVD player. ( i know i remember saying oh Jackson doesn't do those things like I was sad about it, I take it back...I should have just enjoyed to delay)

* he is starting to climb up stairs too...but only when we offer him as incentive at the top. so it isn't scary yet. but he is so strong.

* he tries to crawl and walk through things too and gets so frustrated when it doesn't work or he gets stuck. oh well he will learn eventually. I think that is all for now.

Happy 14 months dude...you impress me more everyday...and I am enjoying every minute of it...

the day to day of the schrock home....

So we have been grocery shopping and Jackson likes to help. if you get him to close to the aisle, you better check the shopping cart...you might have some random box in your cart that you have never seen...see he likes to reach and grab, all while trying not to fall out of the cart. it is quite the sight. when we got home the fun didn't end. I set him down in the living room and by the time I had the groceries on the counter and began to unload them into the frig and freezer, Jackson had begun unloading the freezer. He is totally into helping...or should I say emptying. hehe....it is funny. Jackson's benefit was this weekend. And as I promised pictures. here are a few. there were so many people...not sure what pictures we got. This shows the outside...check out that line of people...oh my...it never stopped until they ran out...at least of coffee. It was nuts... then the inside. it was a steady flow through all the auction items. it takes a while to look at 74 items and decide what is more important for you to bid on. Then we also got to meet Jon. Jon lives in Michigan and is an 11 year old little boy that has the same genetic association that Jackson does. It was so encouraging to meet him and his mom. Plus we found out they only live like 10 minutes from our house. We definitely will be getting together soon. it is so fasinating to me to hear about Jon's story. It is also like hearing a slightly different version of our own story. Can you believe it all because of a newspaper article. it is so crazy. once we slept in a little and took naps on Saturday we decided to head to the pumpkin patch. it was so funny to watch how excited jackson got. and of course everything went to his mouth...it was pretty funny...can you see the pumpkin to the right of him in the picture without a stem. there were signs everywhere that said do not pick up by stem. the first thing Jackson did was grab the stem and it just fell off. oooopppppss.......he's cute so he got away with it, no problem.

we got some beautiful mums too..quite cheap i may add. it was fun my mom bought mums too..hopefully they made it back to mn. it was great having my parents here for the week and that they got to see Jackson in prime form, not in a hip cast.

We are now preparing for surgery in two weeks and getting ready for Daddy's busy season. he was gone this week for three days. can't wait to see him tonight. jackson has been pounding on the window saying daddy for the last couple of nights...he is going to be so excited to see him.

we had blood work yesterday that we are still waiting on results of. I am calling now to see what the results were. We are hoping that the antibiotics we have been on for the past three weeks have not done a doosie on our metabolic panel making his kidney work extra hard. of course I am on hold.

we are good to go...everything has remained stable...praise the lord. whoohoo..

hope you all are enjoying your day in on this beautiful fall day of chilly weather and rain. we are...hope the week brightens up a bit...man I love fall. Have a good one.

God Showed up in a very very BIG way!!!

So as you can see to the left on my blog Jackson's benefit logo has changed. We had his benefit on Friday and talk about an amazing experience. God sure is on BIG and AMAZING God that can over come anything and everything. I know you are all wanting to know the total of what came in, but you gotta hold on I gotta tell you about the atmosphere that night.

it was so incredible to witness the ideas of 6 individuals come together in an event that reached so many. I would say at no single time were there less than 30 people at the event and that includes the beginning. See there were so many volunteers it was unreal and without them it never could have run as smoothly as it did. so to all of our friends new and old we THANK YOU from the bottom of our heart for baking, standing all night and shivering in the cold outside. You guys all ROCK.

For those of you that weren't there. The silent auction was amazing. I remembered a conversation that I had had with Alice the week before and she was excited that there had been 33 items donated to the auction. Which is an awesome amount. Well ladies and gentlemen when I arrived at the auction on Friday night I was informed that there were now 74 items that had been donated. People went out of there way to donate to this benefit, people we don't even know and for that we are beyond amazed and very grateful.


on that note: Thank you to our families and friends that put the time, effort and money into this. We have been humbled and blessed in many ways by this event and experience.

I want to take a minute to tell you about some special moments that happened through this event. There was a day a couple of months back that we got a knock on our door it was our neighbor girl telling us that we had a lady looking for our house. This little grey haired lady had a gift for us and expressed her concern as she had read Jackson's article in the paper. I said Thank You but chose not to open the card until I got in the house. It was a gas card for our trips to Indy. Can you believe it a random stranger. God can use everyone.

Then a couple weeks after the article ran I got an email from Alison and Mark from the Elkhart Truth. It was from a lady in Michigan who had read the article and wanted to encourage us. See her 11 year old son has the same genetic association as Jackson does and he is a thriving young boy. Talk about encouragement. That was the most amazing news a mom could here. A success story.

Now for what you have all been waiting for: the benefit raised over 10,000 dollars for our family. We can not Thank you all enough for the money, the prayers, the encouragment that you have all shared with us. So from the bottom of our humbled, grateful hearts we say THANK YOU!!

(have pictures but my computer will not upload them so we will post pictures next time. )

Fun at the GAME

we enjoyed tailgaiting, great food, drinks and fun with friends we havn't hung out with in ages. then we got to our seats to find out there were 6 ND fans sitting in our seats. well ours and the four next to ours. I am telling you these people cheat on and off the field. everyone in our section was sitting in the wrong seats. So we sat in some empty ones behind ours. However, you know that those people are going to arrive and then it will cause a scene. I was mad simply on principle...come on people follow the rules. Adrian of course kept telling me to shuesh...so I did. this was our view. I really don't think there is a bad place to sit in the stadium..we saw everything. however...you would think with the money that goes into that program that they could afford a jumbo tron. the replays happened like every other play, cuz Weis didn't think that purdue could do anything right. But we just had to sit there twiddling our thumbs because we could watch the replay.
tailgaiting. before the game with Jay and JWthe weekend went well we got home around 8 and of course the little one did not want to sleep at all, so mom was totally tired at church on Sunday. well yesterday we came to find out that although he was not running a fever on sunday, he definitely was yesterday. 101.3 degrees with a doosie of a left ear infection. So far all he has wanted to do is sleep and cuddle...I finally got him to go to sleep in his crib this morning instead of being held. We will see...we would like to be uncrabby today and the rest of the week. we will see.

then last night we found out our couch had broke, the leg was nearly completely off..so adrian started to fix it and all of a sudden the lights went out in the dining room, entry and the garage, but no ciruit blew. This is not good from what I have heard. so we are garage door less, dining room light less and no entry lights. So I guess we only take visitors in the day light hours. hopefully we figure it out and it is not a big problem, like a melted wire in our walls, ready to start a fire. We are praying that is not what it is.

well have a great week and we will see you all Friday at Jackson's benefit...with a healthy baby boy on hand to greet you all with a smile.

I am loosing my mind:

today I woke up and got ready then got Jackson up and ready and we headed off to the pediatrician. we arrived for our follow-up appointment and found out that we had no such thing. I have had it in my planner since last wednesday. any way we loaded the car back up and came back home. Good think our pediatrician is like 4 minutes away from our house.

then we had first steps therapy. we played in our swing downstairs and we did our regular play therapy in food and toys. then we tried a new task. Jackson needed a little help..come on it was his 4th time up the stairs.

I couldnt' believe my eyes he caught on to it so fast it was a little scary. (please disregard the dirty carpet we know we need new) We showed him how to shift his weight once and then after that he was like I got it. talk about a tire me out and make me sleepy activity. I like it for that...safety is another story. He has just taken off. I can't imagine what he would do if his little hips were in the sockets.

have a great weekend. We are having our first date day tomorrow since february. can't wait to watch those Boilers kick the irish men's butts. we will see...it is suppose to be a beautiful day to hang out outside. Can't wait.

New member of the fam:

I have never been miss suzie homemaker...partly because I just am not. I would much rather be working on some big thing at work that cleaning toilets, vaccuming, cleaning floors, or doing laundry...ok so I enjoy the cooking part and now have the time to do it. But the other things I would rather not do. But lately they have really bothered me, maybe because they are right in front of me due to my occupation now being out of my home. who knows....

my biggest annoyance lately has been cleaning and then it not looking as though I have cleaned...and my baby crawling on the floor and having him covered in dog hair when he gets up. So to make a long story short...like a year long story....i have been complaining for months *a year* about how our vaccum doesn't clean the way it should. it is three years old and I don't think we registered for a very expensive one, we have changed the filters and still no luck. So i did my research and found that the best vaccum for us was a "DYSON ANIMAL D17. it sounds like a new invention for the military, it might very well be. or at least the price would make you think so....$549.00. SO it was definitely out of the questions. I am already schemeing to find a way to get enough gift cards to target for christmas to be able to afford it. (i haven't had much luck)

the other day Adrian I were browsing through his mariott points/or airline points catologue we have been saving them for a vacation but obviously that is not going to happen this year with Jackson's health, so we started talking about how to spend them.. we came along the dyson allergy vaccum...and Adrian said maybe we should get a new vaccum. I sarcasticly said yeah right...with flat screen tv's, golf accesories, and various other manly items...you are going to get a vaccum. however, i did not give up on the idea...for the last week I have randomly asked if my vaccum was on its way...I was willing to make the sacrafice of the animal vaccum just to have a high quality vaccum that actually sucked the dirt out of the carpet, rather than just moving it around. I had borrowed Erin's Dyson a while back, to check it out and just the basic one did more than my bissel. SO I was willing to sacrifice.

We would like you to meet the new addition to our family....I think Jackson was just as excited to meet the new vaccum as mommy was.

I had no idea it was coming. The fed ex man arrived with it around 11:30 am and I was vaccuming by 1pm. I have two more rooms upstairs and then I will move down stairs. I am on a cleaning frenzy...it is so much fun to see what the vaccum pics up right after I vaccumed with my vaccum this morning. isn't this gross...look at all that dog hair that my vaccum didn't pick up...oh and that brings me to the next surprise
I didn't have to sacrifice a thing. Somehow my fabulous hubby got the D17 instead of the allergy one. I have the vaccum of my dreams...all it took was approximately 13 weeks away from my husband over the last two years. I am not sure it was worth that, but I will take it for a consolation gift...since I have already indured the two years. can't wait to invite you all to my dirt free home. OK maybe we can't go that far. But I could definitely do a fabulous Dyson commercial.