Hospital Woes!

(This picture was actually when she was on the mend. Not at her worst.)

We have had one heck of a week!! Kailey has given me the scare of a lifetime! Once again she was getting sick. Just a little wheezy...enough for me to want to keep constant vigil on her. I was giving breathing treatments on top of her regular regimine of meds. On friday she was hit blind side by something that took her down with a vengince!! When it was clear that she was laboring way to hard to breathe, I took her to the Dr. office. Her oxygen levels where at 82 (which is not good!) and even after 3 breathing treatments in the office and still not getting anywhere with them, we had to admit her to the hospital. She DID NOT want to go! Sobbing in my arms, pleading with me to please not make her, I took her over to the American Fork Hospital. Well things went from bad to worse! She kept getting closer and closer to this "cliff" the Dr. liked to refer to. Meaning that all asthmatics have a cliff, usually they dont turn around when they are steadily climbing toward that cliff, and if they make it there, they WILL jump. Which means that then she would crash and they would have to intabate her. Kailey was very close to her "cliff". They where doing everything for her they possibly could. Yet she was still spiraling down quickly! They decided that they didn't have much choice but to transport her to Primary Childrens where they could give her continous albuterol. Which would hopefully help open her airways so they wouldn't have to intabate her. When they told me that the Life Flight helicopter was on their way, I about died!! She really was in a bad way, and I have no clue what triggered it. I will never forget the emotional breakdown I was ready to have when they put her up in the chopper and I had to stand back and watch it leave. My heart just sunk! There goes my baby, and there is NOTHING I can do about it!! The situation was completely out of my hands. So we have spent a week in ICU at Primary Childrens. Sometimes we think she's getting better and then just another set back. For whatever reason, she just wasn't responding to the medicines as quickly as we had all hoped. It took about 5 days for her to start responding and getting to the point to where she didn't need the continuous albuterol. Just like always, when she started to get better she improved with leaps and bounds! The Doctors where all amazed as to how quickly she recovered once she was able to get her airways opened just a little. On the 6th day, they realesed her from ICU. On the 7th day, with a lot of hesitance from the Dr, and A LOT of push from me, they let her go home. This happens to be Kaileys pattern. She gets sick, and when she is sick enough to go to the hospital, it takes her awhile to start coming back up. But, when she does, she flies!! The Drs where just concerned that after spending a whole week in ICU that it was too soon to let her go. They kept telling me that in cases like this, when they let the patient go too soon, they ALWAYS end up back in the hospital. Not my Kailey! When she starts the "getting better" process, she has never turned around immediately and got bad again. This of course was the case again this time! I really hope that we dont ever have to end up Life Flighting again!! That was soooo scary to me! But she is so stinkin brave....I am soooo proud of my baby girl. She told me that not once was she afraid. It makes me want to cry just thinking about the strength that little girl has. She is amazing!

This was the day she was released from the hospital.

(We're outta here!)

Heart troubles

Last month sometime we discovered that Austin has a heart murmur. Today we went to the cardioligist to follow up on it. Our peditrician didn't seem to be worried about it and thought it was an "innocent" heart murmur, but he wanted us to go have an ecocardiogram just to make sure. When the cardioligist came in and listened to him, she seemed to think the same. However wanted to continue with the sonagram on his heart to be 100% positive. Turns out that his heart is normal and he should out grow this murmur. I was so relieved!! I had a peacful feeling about it in the first place...like I just knew that everything was going to be fine. But now we have the Doctors stamp of approval on it. I just didn't think that with our families history with hearts I should take ANY risk! These are pictures that they gave me of his heart. I thought it was pretty cool to watch his heart beat. The top picture you can see the ventrical is closed and the bottom one, it's open. I was pretty fasinated!

Are you serious?

We woke up to sooo much snow today! It was wet, and super heavy! When I left for work there was a good 8 inches on my windsheild. There was huge branches broken off of trees all the way down our road, just from the weight of the snow. I cant believe it! Is it really the middle of April...or is someone just playing a cruel joke? Preston decided to take advantage of the oppertunity and have some fun. But still.....a snowman in April?

Happy Easter

SPRING HAS SPRUNG...or so I thought! :P

While the weather was nice and sun shiny, the kids and I took advantage of it and went to the Discovery Park. It's the kids favorite park to go to. We finally had a good chance for some long overdue play time in the nice warm sun!! Now look, we get winter weather again....YUCK! Welcome to spring in Utah!! I guess at least we got to enjoy it while we had it...just long enough to give me SPRING FEVER!! They loved spinning on these silly things til they where ready to puke!! I got sick just watching them. Sometimes they would get it going so fast that it would throw them off. I dont think I can say that I've ever had so much fun that I was ready to throw up...but they sure did!

For now, we had a great day at the park!! I cant wait until we can do it more often. It is really fun to watch kids be kids and just have fun, spinning, swinging, slideing, playing tag...just being happy. That's what it's all about for me. Knowing that my kids are happy with who they are and what they are doing.

Trying something new!

My sisters (Jen and Rina) have got me to open up my creativity and explore my camera...something I have not done simply because I'M CLUELESS!! So here are a couple pictures I took of Kailey and just now decided to go online to one of those free photo editing places. I know it's very basic but for me...a huge accomplishment! I really did have fun messing around with a few different tools just to see what they would do! Anyway, this is what I finished with.

Where did the month go?

WOW! It has been a long time since I last blogged! December came and went, and I'm still not sure what happened to it! What a busy, fun-filled month we had. Because we did so much I will just do a quick run down on our holiday events. On Thanksgiving morning, J always like to take the kids and go shot a few clay pigeons. This has become a tradition that Austin really looks forward to. Later that day J's kids stopped by for their 2nd Thanksgiving dinner. They are so thoughtful, and it really meant a lot to both J and I that they would come to our house AFTER already having a big dinner with their mom and Gary. It's always nice to have them come and visit. I love to have family around! Knowing that my kids where going to california for christmas I decided to let the kids help me decorate the tree. (I'm usually a big scrooge and wont let them help with the main tree in our front room.) They where so thrilled that they got to help this year, and it was fun to watch their excitement grow as they put up christmas. This year I decided to dip chocolates with Jennie and Lisa. Every time I would get fondant or chocolate out the kids would BEG to please be able to help. I just cant let them though cause it can be soooo messy! So I compromised with them and let them dip the white pretzels, and I quickly learned why I wont let them help with the other chocolates. They made the biggest mess, but they had fun doing it. So I guess that's all that matters!! Next we went to the Candellight Christmas at This is the place state park. It was bitterly cold, but the kids had so much fun that they didn't really even realize how cold they where until it was time to leave. They had a train that we could ride around the village and each house that participated had different crafts or something neat for the kids to learn about Pioneer Christmas'. We saw an old newspaper press and they showed us how the used to print the paper and gave each of the kids a copy of the first christmas card ever printed. We went into a one room cabin where a lady was cooking some beef stew over an open fire. It sure smelt yummy!! But the kids learned that most people where very fortunate to have a cabin even that big to give them shelter. They also learned that pioneer children, if they where lucky, would get ONE piece of candy for christmas. And that the children that did get one would savor it and take just a few licks a day to make it last as long as they could. Those are just a few of the experiences they had. It was very imformative and they had a great time!! We have decided to make it a new tradition every year. One I look forward to! Then we move on to one of my favorite yearly activities!! SNOWMOBILING!! J and I have decided to make it our own tradition to do it every year for our anniversary. I had never been until J took me for our honeymoon. I have really come to enjoy it. We have been able to go somewhere different every year so far. We had a great set up this year!! However, we did run into a few bumps in the road. At first we didn't think there would be enough snow to even be able to go, but while we where there our first night we where expecting a storm, and it delivered! The place we rented our snowmobiles from only had open face masks though. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal at first, but man did I immediately realize the benefit to having a helmet with a full face mask! I took my ear warmers and wrapped it around my helmet to protect my nose and then had my scarf to the wind from coming up through the neck. So, all in all, I was pretty well off. Poor J though! He kept getting brain freezes and by the time we where done, his mustach and beard was FULL of ice chunks!! He didn't complain though. He said he had a lot of fun too!! Once again, it was well worth the trip and I look forward to next year! Christmas morning was kinda hum-drum without the kids. But once again, J's kids to the rescue!! They came over in the afternoon and spent some time here. To have the buzz of kids in the house brought back the Christmas spirit for me. After stuffing ourselves full, J, Jake, and Shaun went out and started to build a fort. While Lisa, Amanda, Izzy and I stayed in where it was warm and watched chirstmas movies. It took a little longer to build the fort than they had intended so they left the rest of it for the kids to finish. What could have been a very sad, depressing christmas for me, turned out to be wonderful. Thanks to J's kids. They really are a joy in my life! I can't express it enough!

To finish the year off the kids have had a BLAST going to the park to sled. The boys got a snowboard with their christmas money and they have had sooo much fun with them. The weather lately has been perfect for a fun day at the park boarding down the hills. Even Kailey enjoyed it. I thought she would whine about having cold feet, but she didn't complain once. As a matter of fact, she didn't want to leave when it was time to go!! The kids brought along the neighbor kids and they all had fun together.

Last but not least, we went to Temple Square with Jennie and Chris. It was nice to be there after Christmas and not have to worry about the crowds! There was still plenty of people there, but we didn't have to swim through them just to get to where ever we needed to go. The kids had fun and where satisfied that we where able to make it this year. We had originally planned on going with other family while they where in California, but those plans fell through. I'm glad I was able to enjoy the trip with my kids though!!

I feel very blessed and am so fortunate to have a family that I love. I am so greatful to have a husband who is willing to build memories for us to have. Because after all is said and done, that's all you have is your memories.