He's Here!!!

Caleb Brian Downey

Born July 28th 2012

7lbs 13oz, 20 1/2 inches long

We are thrilled he is here!!!



Long time no post, BIG NEWS

It has been a long time since I posted a blog on my site "like 10 months yikes!!" and a lot has happened in that time.

First Kevin and I moved again. We are now in a cozy little 2 bedroom apartment that we love. It is a little bit of an adjustment bills wise but we are making it work. As long as we are together, we are happy and that is all that matters.


Not our actual apartment :)

We were in a car accident in April this year, totaled our Solara :(  We were hit by a drunk driver (reminder this New Years, no drunk driving please!!!)

We were ok, Buster is ok and we have replaced our car....it was an ordeal but we are past it now!

Kevin has had some developments with his Epilepsy treatment. We have switched doctors here in town to an amazing specialist in this area. He feels we have exhausted our medication options at this point and has referred us to OHSU in Portland for possible surgery. We have made one trip up there so far and will be making another trip in January. This is good news for us, surgical options have an 80% chance of helping Kevin maintain seizure freedom with little or no medication. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers, I will keep everyone posted in the coming months!

We lost a few special people this year. My Grandpa Wilson, Kevin's Uncle Raymond and his Uncle Bubba! We will keep them in our hearts forever.

We took a trip to Florida this year to visit Kevin's family. It was so nice to be able to spend time with everyone. We were also lucky enough to go to a Bucs game, my very first professional football game ever.

We also celebrated out 1st wedding anniversary on the coast, the weather was amazing!!!

And now for the most exciting news for this year.................................

WE ARE PREGNANT!!!!!!!

More to come!! Stay tuned!!

DOWNEY UPDATE!!

2010 was a horrible job year for Kevin and I.

3 days after my birthday last year I was let go from my job of 12 years.  I was devastated for a while but then I was offered a job working for my friend Tami's mom and it turned out to be the start of a exciting new career for me which included tax preparer classes and my new title......... LTP. The pay is not the same but it's a new beginning for us and I enjoy it!!  Anyway, Kevin and I crawled over that hurdle and made it to our wedding.
 

Our beautiful (if we do say so ourselves) wedding and fun times spent with family and friends came and went. It was followed up by a fun and exciting vacation to the coast with my new family. Then, an amazing few nights at an ocean side hotel called the Overleaf Lodge in Yachats just the two of us and we are back to reality......and reality came back with a vengeance.

A week after we came home from our honeymoon Kevin was told he would be laid off in November, right before the holiday...WHACK!  No problem, Kevin was amazing!  He went to work everyday knowing he was coming closer and closer to being unemployed.  Then one Sunday morning Kevin walked into the kitchen and something was off, a funny smell.........FIRE!!  After a heroic effort made by Kevin and Ray (and by heroic I mean shutting of gas lines and moving expensive equipment out of the way before it was damaged), the fire department came in and did want they do best, SAVE OUR BUTTS!!! The fire is out, the kitchen is closed and the insurance company reimburses all employees for lost wages (thank you God!).

2 1/2 months pass.....the remodel of the kitchen is complete and his work is ready to open its doors....without Kevin, he is officially laid off on 12/24/10.

Does that bring my husband down???  NO....he applies for jobs right away and after a long week of waiting the first interview call comes in....then the 2nd....then the 3rd.  He goes to the interviews thinking he will have to wait for call backs...the wait was short!! Two weeks after his first application VICTORY, my amazing husband has a new job WITH BENEFITS at a place so close to home he can walk or ride his bike to it in the summer.  MY HERO!!

So the update is Kevin is working, I am working, we are loving each other and living life....oh and I am not blogging enough......I am going to work on that.  My goal is once a week!  I am sure I can think of something to blog about!!!

Warning! This post contains information that may not be suitable for all readers

Sooooo I (Reanna) have a very serious yet strange confession to make. I make this confession in the hopes that I can help others.  I will inevitably make jokes about it throughout this blog but please know this really is an issue for some.........I do not go to the bathroom specifically #2 in public places or in peoples homes.  I am not afraid of germs, falling in the toilet or not having toilet paper....I am afraid other people will know what I am doing.  They might hear me, see me or THE WORST smell something. 

I vividly remember when it started.  It was 1986, I was sitting at my desk in Mrs. Sieg's 1st grade classroom at Thompson Elementary and I had to go #1. When I say I had to go I REALLY had to go! I mean squirming in my seat, bouncing up and down, braided pigtails smacking my in the face I am moving so much, had to go.  I had begged my teacher to let me go to the bathroom 3 times before she annoyingly let me go!  I was wearing a long sleeve multicolored striped shirt under a pair of purple overalls that day and when I finally made it to the bathroom I couldn't get the overalls unhooked so I pee'd my pants.  I remember standing in the stall PRAYING a teacher would come; it felt like hours before one found me.  They didn't call my mom...instead they cleaned me up and put me in spare clothes they had for situations like that....needless to say I came back to class in a multicolored striped shirt, someone else’s undies and a brown skirt.  EVERYONE knew what happened and my fear was born. 

Fast forward to today, I have no fear of #1 (forget the fact that in public I wait to pee until everyone leave the bathroom or at least until everyone that was in there when I got there is gone, then I hurry to be the first one done so no one sees me leave) but I will never NEVER go #2 unless I absolutely have no choice.  Not at work, not at most friends and families homes, not at Kevin's when we were dating and certainly not in a public place with multiple stalls. I will wait until I am in the safety of my own home,  I will go at my parents home,  a few friends homes and one time I locked myself in the bathroom at my old office for 30 minutes but that's it....until today. 

I was in a local bookstore (if you live in my town you are no doubt appreciating my James Bond attempt at hiding the location) with Kevin hoping to spend our fabulous Christmas gift cards. I had worked my way to the WWII section and the urge hit me, now normally I would collect Kevin and we would immediately leave for home (have I mentioned my husband is amazingly patient and understanding) but this time the urge HIT ME!  I was stuck, it was either crab walk to use the restroom there or go in my pants when I got to our car which was clearly not an option for a 30 year old woman (ok to I contemplated it for 2 seconds but you know I would never).  As I made the long, awkward, clench cheeked walk to the bathroom which is quite logically near the children's book section I realized I was really going to have to do this and I needed a plan.

Here's how it went down, I will warn you I am talking about bathrooms and #2 so please read at your own risk. I arrived in the stall or as I now call it the O. K. Corral and prepared myself. (Please insert spaghetti western intense moment music here) First I waited until the bathroom was empty then I flushed (noise to drowned out everything else in case someone came in), sprayed body spray (yea I know not going to help but I was desperate), #&^&^$^&#^&^ (I don't have to tell you), flushed immediately, finished up, flushed again, washed my hands and bolted.  Once I was out of the bathroom and in the store area I looked around immediately for any signs that someone knew what I did.  Feeling triumphant I began looking for Kevin so I could tell him I had over come my fear.....I looked in the computer section, magazines, cookbooks, he had disappeared.  I called him on his cell, no answer I redialed 3 times and FINALLY he answered me and said in his booming voice "I was in the bathroom going #2 and didn't want to answer, meet my by the self help books".

So that was my day, how was yours?

5..4..3..2..1..HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! 1/1/11

Happy New Year Everyone!

We can't believe its 2011 and at the same time we are THRILLED to be starting a new year as Team Downey!!

New Year celebrations have changed for us in the last few years.  Gone are the days of getting together with friends to ring in the New Year. The last few years we found ourselves saying things like "I don't want to be on the road with drunk drivers, let’s stay home" or "I don't know if I can stay up until midnight do you?”  I was told that it’s our age and that things like that happen as you get older and mature, I disagreeing.  I think for us New Years Eve has become a time to be together as a family so we can reflect on the year coming to an end and talk about our hopes for the coming year. I hope that as our family grows we are able to continue spending the New Year as a little unit!  It's not that we don't love being with our family and friends because we absolutely do and I am sure there will be many times we will spend New Year with them.  In fact this year we started our night out to dinner with some of our framily (framily - friend family) and it was so much fun, we would love to do it again but for the actual count down it was just the two of us and I loved it, we were home, together, in our pj's ringing in the New Year with a little bubbly.

Here are some photos from our party of 2 :)

December 25th 2010

Our first Christmas as a married couple was full of fun, family and friends, the way a Christmas should be.  For those of you who may not know we share a two story house with Reanna's sister Rachel, brother in law Ryan and two amazing nephews Nolan and Logan.  Living with children around Christmas is so much fun especially when the two children are as awesome as Nolan and Logan. The boys woke us up at 5:00am, it was so fun seeing how excited they were to have everyone to be a part of their Christmas morning, even Grandma and Grandpa drove over a 4:30am so they could see the boys open their presents.

Santa certainly didn't disappoint this year! Here are some photos of our Christmas Day



Let's get started!

The Food was AWESOME



Grandpa Zonked Out!

  

     



Our Goddaughter Makenzie

We enjoyed having family and friends join us for Christmas Day!  Reanna's aunt and cousin, who was given leave to spend Christmas with family was with us as was our good friend Jen. Even our best friends the Probst's brought our Goddaughter Makenzie to see us on Christmas!!  It was an awesome surprise.

Cousin Levi and Aunt Cheri

   



 As much fun as opening presents was I have to admit that this year our focus was less on gifts and more on the blessing we received this year. Just weeks before Christmas Rachel was given a diagnosis and treatment for an illness she was struggling with which we now know was Myasthenia Gravis. She is doing so amazing and we are all so happy for her!! The other blessing was that my cousin Richard was given leave to be with his beautiful wife and newborn baby Madalynn for Christmas before he is deployed to Afghanistan, which was an amazing surprise for them.

As for us we have been blessed with an amazing family, amazing friends and lots of  hope for a spectacular 2011. We have a feeling this next year is going to bring all of us many more blessings, surprises and adventures. We can't wait!!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a very promising New Year!!



Can't forget to be Thankful....

Ok so I realized today when posting a notice about our blog that we missed blogging about a very important holiday...THANKSGIVING.  Turkey Day, how can I forget Turkey Day?  This year we were invited to Corvallis to spend the holiday with Bryce, Rachel, Abe and Andrew. 

Rachel is an amazing cook and made some fabulous food for us all to enjoy.  Her crockpot stuffing is amazing as is her sweet potatoes, we were stuffed before we even looked at the desserts and let me tell you we had some amazing desserts.

The table Rachel set was gorgeous!  She had candles, fall colored leaves, napkins and more, it reallly set the mood for a fabulous time.  We laughed, ate, laughed some more then ate some more.  It was a great visit and the last we would have with Abe for at least 9 months while he on his 9 month vacation with Katy.

The next day the two of us went with Bryce to a great new store called Market of Choice then we all met Andrew for a movie.  If you haven't seen it I would recommend Megamind, very funny.  Then it was back home for more food and a fun game of Mexican Train.

We had a great time and most importantly we spent the holiday with family.  We hope your Thanksgiving was as memorable as ours!