The Harrison Family: January 2017 - new house, new school, and new ear tubes

I know I am behind but things around here have been beyond busy. A lot happened in January so let me catch up. First while we were off for Christmas break Justin and I signed a contract to build a new home. We did this for a couple of reasons but mostly to simplify our lives. Justin works pretty far from home now and I am on my own for drop off and pickup for the kids and my commute on a good day is an hour and a half. We started looking and found a new neighborhood in Kingwood that is 7 miles from Riley's school and in a great school district. We made an offer on a lot to build a new home and it was accepted! While we are very excited about our new adventure building a new home and getting this house ready to sell has been consuming all of our time.

As if we did not have enough going on with the house... we changed Carters school in January to St Martha's. Carter was really struggling at the Montissory school and it was no longer the right environment for him. The change was hard for us all and comes with additional challenges but it was the best thing for Carter and needed to happen. Carter took the change like a champ and was very excited to attend "big" school with his sister.

Silly faces before school!

Ready to tackle Pre-K 3!

So handsome in his uniform!

First day over, and he is all smiles!

They say God does not give you more than you can handle but he has really been testing us! As if the house and school change did not break us, add ear problems to our list for Riley. My poor baby has 2 sets of tubes, had a ruptured eardrum, and now is showing signs of hearing loss and fluid buildup. The ENT said her right eardrum is sucked into her ear canal and she has too much pressure built up so we needed to have surgery to put in what they call T tubes (more permanent ear tubes). The hope is that the tubes will allow the fluid to drain, and release the pressure hopefully allowing her ear drum to move into the correct position. So tube surgery was scheduled happened in January and all went well. Riley coming out of anesthesia was pretty rough this time but I am grateful everything turned out ok.

Riley's got her doll Samantha with her and is ready to go

My sweet baby

As if that was not enough I started a new job at work and am trying to figure out whats going on! We will make it through, hopefully with minimal battle wounds!

Miss Susan's birthday was in January and we wanted to do something special to remember her so the kids made her cards, we threw a party for her and released pink balloons in her honor. The kids have struggled to understand death so we thought throwing a party would open up some good discussion and celebrate Miss Susan the way she would have wanted us to!

Riley's birthday Card

What better than a king cake to celebrate?

Riley lost her first front tooth! She was on the playground at school and bumped into her brother and it came out. She was so excited and proud to show her new toothless smile.

In good news Riley learned how to ride her bike without training wheels. We have been trying to get her to ride without her training wheels for awhile but she was scared. All it took was the promise that we would let her try and chew gum and she was off to the races! She picked it up very quickly and rides really well now!