Thanksgiving on the Ranch

Thanksgiving 2011 was very exciting this year. David's brother and his family invited everyone out for our 1st thanksgiving on the ranch. The ranch is about 2 1/2 hours west from DFW right by Albany. A.K.A in the middle of no where! Wyatt was beyond excited! He loves to go to the ranch and when he found out we were going to spend the night he was beside himself. Overall, we had a fabulous time minus my children not sleeping. Wyatt took a 45 minute nap on the way to the ranch, however Whitney slept almost the entire time. Bedtime that night was a joke! Whitney wouldn't think about going to sleep. Finally went to sleep around 11 pm BUT had to sleep on me! Also, Wyatt kept having "night terrors". We didn't' realize this until 2 days later.

WARNING - your about to get a lesson on night terrors - Thanksgiving night Wyatt was up just about every 3 hours screaming with his eyes open but couldn't see you. It was very strange! I'm pretty sure we woke everyone up in the house at least 10 times. Ugh. Once morning came I was VERY relieved but exhausted! We went home sometime around lunch time and Wyatt had another nap and woke up with a night terror (still didn't know this at the time, so I pretty much scolded him for waking up screaming and waking up his sister) - gave me another gold star on my bad mom card : ( So we finally get home and get back into somewhat of a routine. David stayed at the ranch since it was still hunting season. So we all go to bed Friday night and then basically all hell broke loose around 9 pm. Wyatt woke up every 2 hours, eyes wide open and screaming. NOTHING and i mean NOTHING would work. At one point I even spanked him ( 2 gold stars on my bad mom card). Seriously. How horrible of me. So finally at 3 in the morning I started doing some online research. After a lot of searching and many tears I realized he was suffering from night terrors. What are night terrors you say....well basically they are the opposite of nightmares. They wake up screaming but are NOT coherent of their surroundings. So it doesn't matter if you praise them or discipline them. They won't know the difference. Some of the best info I found was, if the parent wakes up (granted you actually got some sleep) the next morning and feel worse than the child, then it was a night terror. Which you do, you feel like there is something extremely wrong with your child and your the worst parent ever for not knowing what to do about it. Another sign your child is having terrors is the next morning the child doesn't remember anything. Nightmare's they can remember and tell you about the next morning. Terrors - they look at you like your crazy when you ask them questions the next morning.Ok, so now I know there night terrors now what. Well, the BIGGEST reason a child has night terrors is sleep deprivation. That made total sense, being that in 2 days the combined time he had napped was only 1 hour and he was up every 2 hours one of those nights. So what did I do....I called David early the next morning and told him I desperately needed him to come home. After explaining how my last 24 hours went he so graciously came home. Thank goodness he did because Saturday was the WORST night ever. Wyatt was up every hour on the hour. Expecting the worst David took the night duty that night. Little did he know how bad it would be. So after we both did research we made darn sure that our family went nowhere and did very little over the next 24 hours. We literally stayed in our pjs all day Sunday, and made sure Wyatt rested and took a VERY long nap. Sunday night he only got up twice and by Monday night he was night terror free. THANK GOD! So lesson learned is no matter what we are doing that boy needs his rest. I am typing this 2 days after Christmas and Wyatt is still night terror free. Yay!

Sorry about the rambling but hope the info may help someone who reads this. Now onto pictures!

This is the beautiful view off the back porch. Just beautiful!

There was a lot of family there. Even some we hadn't seen in a long time like these 2 cuties Sache and Jett.

Look at this little Thanksgiving cutie!!!

Besides family, there were also beautiful doberman puppies there. Whitney enjoyed petting the puppies.

I thought this picture was so sweet. Whitney saw Jett collecting rocks and she just walked right over to him and started to help him.

He was so sweet to let her help him.

Wyatt accidentally found one of his christmas presents right before Thanksgiving. I told him he could have it but would have to wait to play with it at the ranch. Great idea, because it kept him and the other kids occupied for hours.

We also brought Wyatt's tractor and that was a HUGE hit. The kids had so much fun.

This picture cracks me up because Jett wanted to drive and I wasn't sure if he could drive or not. So I asked his sister and she said sure he can drive. So we let him. I think Wyatt's face says it all. What you don't see in this picture is the tractor is moving, Jett is looking down while it's moving and Wyatt sees them going straight into a bush! As soon as I took the picture I saved them!

With Wyatt safely back at the wheel the ride continued on. Look at these 2 cuties hamming it up for the camera.