These are some photos and videos from last month that we never got around to posting.

Beautiful Blue Eyes

As a brown eyed girl I have always thought of eye color being able to be put on some sort of scale between poop and the purest, cleanest ocean water. Unfortunately mine are a nice shade of, well.....poop (as are two of my children - sorry Derek and Blake!). Oddly enough my green-eyed husband and I managed to produce not one, but two children with blue eyes. Brandon's are just slightly lighter (and therefore more pure on my "ocean/ poop scale").

I have always thought it was odd and yet somehow noteworthy that Brandon has had so much trouble with his eyes. They are so beautiful. They are the eyes I always longed to have as a young girl. I love his eyes and yet they don't work as they should because of his prematurity. He has already had one surgery on them and he started wearing glasses at six months! So with all of this in the back of my mind I took Brandon to see our pediatric opthomologist a few weeks ago after a month of patching his right eye for hours a day and he excitedly proclaimed that the patching had worked and that he was effectively using both eyes equally and that because of this he would be a great candidate for eye muscle surgery. What? Wait! I thought patching success=no eye muscle surgery. I thought wrong.

So Brandon is scheduled for what will be his 5th surgery on April 9. It is same day surgery and as long as he doesn't have any respiratory problems from the anesthesia we will be on our way relatively quickly. There are not words to describe how much more peaceful I feel approaching this surgery as compared to his last surgery when he was almost a year. It will be fine and we have a great doctor (the same one who did his last surgery). I trust him and think he is amazing at what he does.

While I know there really isn't a link between eye color and what happens in your life, I guess I kind of think of it is as a mark of his special spirit. Maybe just a little something special from Heavenly Father to me to help me to always remember how special this little boy is.

Derek and Blake's new Blog

Derek and Bake were really excited to start their own blog. It's going to be a good way to have them keep a journal and the typing and writing practice will be great. They couldn't wait to create their first posts.

http://derekandblake.blogspot.com/

Also I feel I must explain Derek's post. The boy's school had a Story Telling Festival. Both Blake and Derek were the best in each of their first grade classes. They were sent on to judges that then picked the top kid from each grade. There were five kids who got the chance to tell their story to the entire school. Derek was one of these finalists and he did a GREAT job. He was pretty excited about the whole experience and Blake was very supportive of his brother.

Our camera and video didn't work out. All I got was this shot from my phone.

While She Was Away

Here are some shots of what went on when Amy was away quilting. It's easy to take care of such cute kids (when they are behaving).