What We've Been Up To

With the answer being - a ton!!

Haley had a week of vacation in February, and so in the "Koning Style" that you all know and love we decided it would be a perfect time to remodel our bathroom :) Honestly, the shower had started to make an odd creak and squeak so it had to be done. Haley and friend Britney put on their construction hats, and along with the counsel of Haley's brother Chas, undertook an amazing feat.

     

  Chas was SUCH a huge help in guiding us through it all, it couldn't have been done without him.

 

The Dynamic Duo!!

                                                                                                      

Sometimes the brain gets fried when you are laying so much tile... 

.... and of course we had an amazing helper! 

But finally, the finished product: 

It's so wonderful, and not only does it function and look great - we also saved a ton by doing it ourselves.

We also celebrated our nephews with Franco's baptism, and Malachi's First Birthday

While we have no new news about adoption, we can say that everyone is right when they say the waiting is the hardest part. Anxiously awaiting that phone call makes things tough and our up and downs in dealing with the wait is depressing. We're blessed to have friends who have gone through this process reach out to us, but the difficulties of waiting for your child (who may not be in a loving or healthy environment) can be unbearable. But it's all in God's timing so that He can bring glory to Himself, right? Keep us in your thoughts and prayers, and ALWAYS feel free to ask about it all.

Other than our normal day to day stuff, we've had two additional events that have rocked the Koning household a bit: Myla sleeping in a big girl bed, and the movie Frozen. Myla has become quite the little girl, and Haley and I had been talking about whether we should make the switch out of her crib into a bed or not. When we were given a headboard, and chair/desk set by a church member - the timing seemed right. Though it has been a blessing (she couldn't have been more excited when we picked up the headboard and mattress) and a curse (many nights of finding her asleep on the floor late at night, or waking up crying at 530am) she has transitioned into being a full on toddler and is loving it.

She was sooo excited when she saw it, and kept saying, "MY bed, sleep in it EVERY night!"

All snuggled and tucked!!

Frozen  has been a hit in the house, and so far it's been many an evening of singing along to the songs from the movie. It has become Avery's absolute favorite movie, trumping The Little Mermaid (gasp), and we love how "into it" she gets. Here's a peak at what that looks like:

Avery has also become quite fluent in Spanish:

Hope all of you are doing well, and sorry it's been so long!! Till next time...

Myla counting

We've been sitting myla on the potty before every bath for months now, unfortunately to no avail BUT we get some really cute counting out of it, enjoy, you can thank me later for the cuteness:)

Christmas

As you can imagine the christmas season was crazy!  I worked through the whole thing as did Andy, we're so grateful to have family around who can watch the girls on days like Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve:) Despite the fact that our house was crazy town before and after the holidays, Christmas day itself was fabulous.  We stayed in our pajamas all day and opened presents nice and slowly with no pressure to have to get ready for anything, it was perfect!  The weather was amazing so the only time we got out of the house was when we went for a nice long walk outside as a family.

The day was admittedly bitter sweet at certain times because we thought that our family would be a bit bigger by then but instead of being sad we embraced our time with our 2 sweet girls and we prayed for our brother or sister who are somewhere out there.  We love them so much already, not even knowing who they are and we cannot wait for him/her to be physically in our house.

There were 3 Christmas Eve services.  We went to the first one which is the kids one then the girls and I stayed to watch Daddy and the band rehearse, they of course had to be up on stage:)

The girls and I headed to my parents house to meet with the Larsen extended family where all the kids got to open a gift, they were so excited!

Avery needed help opening hers.

Myla was generally happy all night but she really didn't want her picture taken...

Happy as can be with cousins!

Cousin dance party.

Myla got her first guitar, she couldn't be more excited.

Just after midnight we were finally done and ready to go to bed:)

Once again, couldn't get them to cooperate for a picture.

It's the best we've got:)

One of the best parts of the day was at night as we were getting ready for dinner we sat and spent time with the girls doing arts and crafts, somehow Andy was in charge of making the rainbow loom bracelets...

 The other best part about holidays is we get to see our great friends the campbells!

Me and my boy jack

Jackson LOVED the girls.

and the girls loved jackson:)

There are no words for how cute this is:)

We're trying to get the girls to share a room since they most likely will be doing so in the near future, so far we're unsuccessful.  They start off strong but they never sleep, oh well, for now, they're really cute doing it!

Happy 2014, this is going to be our year!:)

Myla turns 2!

Let's get the hard stuff out of the way first, maybe you should sit down...a routine ultrasound of Myla's kidney after the UTI drama unfortunately found a mass about half the size of her left kidney.  Given our family history of cancer and the fact that I'm a pediatric heme/onc nurse the word "mass" was very scary for all of us to hear.  Through a series of multiple conversations with multiple people we decided to have Myla undergo an MRI (under anesthesia) to make sure the mass wasn't cancerous.  THANKFULLY, the MRI results showed that the mass is made up of multiple fluid filled cyst-like things.  Our plan is to continue the antibiotics she was already on (3 times a day:() for a month and do a repeat ultrasound to make sure that the mass has shrunk as well as a VCUG to look at the anatomy of her kidney area to see why this all happened in the first place.  Despite the fact that we are so grateful that it was not cancer, this journey has been a difficult one and has given me a glimpse (albeit very small) into what some of my patient's families go through regularly.  Watching your child be sick is hard, sometimes unbearably hard.  We're not 100% comfortable with where she currently is because there is still something wrong and we haven't gotten to the bottom of it yet but we are grateful that it doesn't look like the worst.  Myla is not 100% sure either...she is not quite back to her "normal" self.  She wants to be held a lot more and always wants to have her nuk and her favorite stuff animal Lilly.

Amidst all of the Doctor's appointments our sweet Myla Bea had her 2nd birthday.  Since we've started a tradition of Avery getting her nails done on her birthdays we thought we should offer it to Myla too.  She had been telling me for 3 days that she wanted pink nail polish so into the nail salon we went!  Much to my dismay Myla changed her mind the second we got there and panicked when the nail lady walked towards her.  She ended up walking to Starbucks with Daddy for some chocolate milk while I finished getting my nails done (I wasn't going to let a 2 year old ruin my relaxation;).  We visited Aves at school for her Thanksgiving feast and just hung out the rest of the day until Myla's party.

We did a "Brown bear brown bear" theme after Myla's favorite book that she makes us read to her CONSTANTLY! It was a lot of fun preparing for the party and both Andy and I were shocked at how much fun she had.  At the beginning she was literally running laps around the house, bouncing with excitement; a memory that both Andy and I said we hope we never forget.  You could tell that she knew this day was special and it was special because of her.  We had lots of yummy soup and tons of delicious bread as about 35 people joined us to celebrate Millie.  It was so much fun!!!

The room!  My friend Brittany came over the night before the party to help me decorate:)

All the food was themed with the book.

Super cute cupcake toppers.

Our sweet birthday girl!  The outfit was made by a co-worker and it was ADORABLE!  (if you're in need of one for yourself/your child let me know and I can get you her info:)

Trying to get pictures of multiple 2 year olds is nearly impossible...Here is Sophia and Millie!

Not so sure about everyone singing to her

Really not so sure...

Then happy to have family by her side:)

And she was definitely excited to jump into eating cupcakes.

We decided to let her open a couple of presents but once she opened one she wanted to keep going.  Her exclamations included shouting, "what?" and "Elmo!"

We are stocked up on tattooes for a while and super excited about it!

She got a life size Elmo from Grammy and Grandpa Rog which she was really excited about.  It took a while for her to let us take Elmo out of the box and now that he is we're trying to get her to warm up to him, she'll definitely come around soon:)

A big thank you to everyone who helped us celebrate our little Myla Bea, it was a very special day.  We also covet your prayers as we continue on this journey to full health.

On my last side note for this post, we got some very sad news last week...our cousin Caitlin went home to be with the Lord.  She had been sick on and off for a little while and her body could not fight anymore.  We wish that we could be with our family in Oregon to share stories and mourn her loss but we take hope in the fact that she is dancing in Heaven with Jesus.  We miss you Ms. Caitlin Marie and we love you Aunt Julie, Uncle Don, and Courtney.