Tyson Hugh Hooper

Tyson Hugh Hooper
Our son, Tyson Hugh Hooper, was born with coarctation of the aorta, hypoplastic arch, and a transitional avsd. His first open heart surgery reconstructed his aorta and was on day 9 of life. His second open heart repair was not anticipated to be needed until two or three years of age. Ty had other plans. We spent the vast majority of his first 3 months of life at Vanderbilt as he went into heart failure and was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension. As a result, the medical team concluded that he needed the repair much sooner than usually recommended, and at just shy of 3 months old Ty underwent his second life saving open heart surgery. God has already worked so many miracles in Ty's life and the life of our family and we know he is using our story. Because of this, we are grateful for Ty's special heart and feel beyond blessed that God chose us to travel this road. We ask for prayers as Ty continues to heal. We are praying for a full recovery and life without restrictions for Ty. We are praying for God to use our family and Ty for His glory.

Thank you to each and every person who supports us through prayer, giving, or just by loving on our family! We are humbled and blessed by all of the ways the Lord is providing for us and know that he is using Ty and his story to do great things!

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Time for school...

Did you play school when you were little?

I would have to say that a huge majority of the time I was playing by myself as a child was either spent playing "house/mommy" and playing "school."  They were my two favorite things to do!  I always preferred baby dolls over stuffed animals because I enjoyed having my very own class of students and my own family full of kids!  Nowadays, I am getting to relive all of those fun times with Lily!  Guess what her favorite thing to play is???

School!

Here she is with her pointer posing as a mean teacher! lol!  Chris and I try to make it upstairs to play school with her at least once a week.  Sometimes both of us, sometimes one of us... depending on what is going on.  I just know how fun it is to have REAL students in your class that you can call on and that can do homework and that can do voices for all of the other "students" in the class!

When we play, I always play the model student, but make sure to miss a few answers so she can correct me.  Above you see the students that sit in the back row.  That's Stephen in the chair on the right... he rarely behaves!  Along with Stephen, you'll see George, Maddie, Baby Born, Susan, Felicity, and Amy.

Here is the front row with Bitty, Kit, Elizabeth, and Molly.

Chris, My, and Ava Grace always sit in the middle row.  Sometimes Chris plays the principle and students from the class have to go to him to be disciplined. He even comes in and does class talks and teacher evaluations! ;-)  When he plays a student, he always plays a pesky boy who causes trouble and blurts out and asks to go to the bathroom too much!  He even tries to sleep in class!

And speaking of sleeping in class...
Ava Grace spent too much time sleeping in class and she often gets hungry in the middle of a lesson and has to be fed, so we decided to make her the class pet!  lol.  One of the class jobs on Lily's bulletin board is "Feed the class pet" and my name is assigned to that task!  Haha!

I have so much fun playing with Lily and as a family!  Every time we play together I am reminded to savor the moment and make these memories!  I try very hard to remember this when I'm busy and saying, "not right now"  ... sometimes you just need to put everything down, walk away, and PLAY!



And just because playing can really wear you out... sometimes you need to drop everything and take a nap!  And they did...
...and kept sleeping right on half way through the night! 

3 comments:

Jennifer Burtram said...

I love it! My favorite parts were the "feed the class pet" and Chris doing the teacher evaluations! Can you tell she has teachers for parents?!?

Sarah said...

ditto to what Jennifer said. Sounds like Lily and Ava Grace will have TONS of sweet memories of family play time.

Allyson said...

Don't you love that the 2 favorite things you played as a child you got/get to do in real life now!? So fun!!
p.s. I read in Michelle Duggar's book that she tries to take a day every week to not cook or clean, but just PLAY with her kids. I really tried to implement this for a while but it is so so hard when the house is a mess and the to do list is a mile long. But they cherish every minute that you play with them!