Health Insurance

We recently found out that Edward's work(or the state of Louisiana) will be changing their insurance carrier. Apparantly every 3 yrs that take new bids to get a cheaper plan to stay in budget. So we will no longer have the wonderful Humana that we have now.

Am I worried? Yes. Mainly b/c I am so used to what we have and insurance can be particularly confusing in figuring out just which plan fits our needs best.

From the information available, it looks like we will be able to choose from Blue Cross Blue Shield which is an HMO plan like we have with our current Humana, a Medical Home HMO plan from vantage, or a PPE plan with Office of Group Benefits. I know we will not go with the PPO plan as we can't afford to pay that much out of pocket until meeting a deductible. I love our HMO b/c it allows us to pay a copay everytime we go and the copay is only 15-25$, depending on if it is a specialist or not.

I have looked into the Vantage Medical home HMO and although I don't fully understand it, it sounds similar to what we have now. Waiting on information from the state that will outline all 3 plans and then we can decide which one to get. I'm truly hoping they are all affordable and we can continue with private insurance.

Oh and from what I have read, sounds like none of them will cover anything to do with hearing aids/implants, which sucks.

Bubble Fun

The kids got a new bubble machine for Easter and it has been a big hit. Although Aidan likes to dump the bubbles out and Andrew likes to try to carry the machine around, thus dumping the bubble solution out.

Our Garden this week

Everything is growing so well!  I think the squash plants look the best--they are the ones that are the big leafy ones.  The bell peppers look really good too of course.  And then the tomatoes also look great--I have one that is potted, and then one in a topsy turvy, and the 3rd one is also upside down, but in a different type of hanging basket I got from walmart.  Thought I would try out different things to see what does the best.  I think I am not liking the walmart hanging basket near as much as the topsy turvy b/c it isn't near as deep as the topsy turvy, which equals less room for roots to grow.  Thinking about buying another Topsy Turvy to replace that one with, but not so sure how I would switch that plant out.  One tomato plants has a very small green tomato on it--but to be fair, I bought it that way :)  I am hoping everything will produce this year.  It is a lot funner than I anticipated, especially after all the hard work of setting it up is done.  I have NO clue when to expect the plants to start producing fruit and have tried to find some answers on the net, but have not come across anything too helpful.  We have red, green, and yellow bell peppers, cucumbers, squash, and 3 tomato plants.  I planted plenty of everything in hopes that something would produce, haha.  My end goal is to have enough for our family as well as to share with the rest of the family.  I'd especially love it if I could chop and freeze some bell peppers for fajitas later on and I'd also like to try to make and can our own spagetti sauce and salsa if we can get any/enough tomatoes.

A few pictures:




Tomato plant in a regular pot, this is the one that has the tiny green tomato on it

Topsy Turvy tomato:

Hanging basket, upside down tomato, that I want to put into another Topsy Turvy:


I'm going to take new pictures of the squash and bell peppers today and they have gotten even bigger than last weeks picture, but here is last weeks so you can compare to today's when I go out and get it.

Recent pictures of the kids

The days go by super fast and it surprises me at times that I have 2 toddlers.  It seems just like yesterday when Andrew was crawling around and Aidan was in the beginning stages of his speaking journey.  But nope, we have a 5 yr old, a nearly 3 yr old, and a nearly 2 yr old!  And here is a few recent pictures to show just how cute(and grown up) they are getting!

Andrew likes to eat things, as well as sticking them up his nose and in his ears.  Here he is eating a penny:


Alex in the tree in our front yard:




Aidan playing:




Andrew:




And a picture that I couldn't decide whether I should share or not. Obviously I chose to, but I may remove it later on, we will see:

Aidan and potty training

Today finished up week 2 of potty training for Aidan. He has done awesome with it and I think has hada total of 1-2 accidents, all of the other pees have been in the toilet. He is not yet pooping in the toilet so he is in pullups b/c I don't want to have to clean nasty underwear. In the last several weeks he has been going and then wanting me to change him immediately but I don't think he knows beforehand that he needs to poop, otherwise maybe he is too afraid to sit on the potty and go, who knows. I'm hoping by the end of the summer, when he goes to preschool, that he will be both pee and poop trained.
I have to say, it was so much easier than I expected! I thought it would be a lot tougher since his language is delayed and didn't know if he would understand what I wanted him to do. What do you know that all it took was seeing Alex go pee before bath and Aidan started doing it. So thanks Alex for showing your little brother what to do!

Our Garden

Not really sure what got into me but I decided we would do a garden this year. I sure hope it is successful! We have planted bell peppers, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, and a blackberry and raspberry bush. We also planted some flowers---Alex picked out a petunia, then we got a couple of calla lily's(my favorite!) another type of lily that I can't remember the name of, and then some other flowers that I can't remember.

Pictures:

Easter

Kids had a wonderful Easter. We went to my dad's house for Easter dinner and an egg hunt, which was a lot of fun. Especially since we got to check out my dad's new house, which is awesome!

Pictures:




My twin sister, Katie, and my newest neice Mallory.


Group photo of the neices and nephews

Alex's 5th birthday

Finally having a chance to sit down and share some pictures of Alex's birthday. He had a very good one--we got them a trampoline to share between the 3 of them and they are loving it. Us too since if we take them outside to jump in the afternoon, they are worn out and go to bed easily! He got a Superman cake for his party and had our neices and nephews(and their moms!) come over and had a good time!

I haven't scheduled his 5 yr checkup yet, but I did measure/weigh him and he is 42.2" tall and 42.2 lbs--61% for weight, 39% for height.

Pictures from the party: