Coming together...

When my cousin Shane passed away two years ago, his family decided to start a tradition of running a 5K race every Thanksgiving in his honor. It has become a fun family tradition that seems to bring us all together each Thanksgiving, even when we do not actually get to be together. 

Everyone get's to choose how and where they participate in the race (I'll admit I didn't actually run this year :) but we did gather up our girls and go for a wonderful walk. While we walked we talked about everything we are thankful for. It was really fun to see what is really important to our children. Some of my favorite things mentioned were clothes (mentioned by Maddie, because she was sure glad we didn't all have to walk around naked because that would be immodest) and cups (mentioned by Brookie, because she loves water and cups make it easier to drink). 

After we all got done with our walk/run everyone took a picture of their group that participated in the walk and shared them with each other. These are the pictures we have of everyone that participated.

Isn't it just incredible seeing everyone wearing the same shirts, scattered all across the country- running for a common purpose!
Such a neat opportunity to be a part of something so amazing.

There's no doubt in my mind that Shane was there with each of us that day.

We love and miss you Shane!

Thanks for always being such a wonderful example to all of us.

Sunday Naps

Don't you just LoVe Sunday naps?

And yes, my children really do sleep with their eyes half open.

Crazy side note: Did I mention that Brooklyn fell asleep at 5 one night this week and didn't wake up until 6:30 the next morning? Considering she doesn't normally fall asleep until almost 9 I was totally expecting to wake up at 3:30 in the morning and be up for the day... 

After a busy week like we've had...

I LIVE for those Sunday naps.

We had a doctors appointment for at least one person in our family every day this last week, except for Monday.

Tuesday: Aubrey's therapist came to our house

Wednesday: Madison and Brooklyn got some warts frozen off at the dermatologist

Thursday: Aubrey had another visit with her regular doctor

Friday: Karl got a big mole on the back of his  head cut off.

We were counting the other day and realized that by the 16th of the month our family has already had 10 doctors appointments with 2 of those visits being all day stays at the hospital. And the month is only half over! 

I am seriously looking forward to this next week of no scheduled appointments. Yay for holiday's and doctors being out of the office. 

Here's hoping for no surprise visits this week! 

Our 3 day, 2 night stay...

The Story Continues...

After arriving at the hospital on Monday night, we quickly realized we would not be going home anytime too soon. 

After a few more breathing treatments, an x-ray and a dose of steroids, Aubrey's stats were barely improving. We talked about Aubrey's history and discussed if we'd ever had anything like this happen before. I told them how back in August we had a similar issue where her chest was retracting every time she would breath. At the time we thought it had to be either RSV or pneumonia. Since it was a little early for RSV to be showing up, we concluded that it had to be pneumonia. She was put on an antibiotic and breathing treatments and was completely better in a few short days. The weird part about both of these experiences was that they both came on rather quickly. She never had more than a little bit of a runny nose and then suddenly she could barely breath. It was at this point that the doctors came to the conclusion that Aubrey has Reactive Airway disease. Basically what this means is, she has all the regular traits and symptoms of Asthma but they will not actually diagnose a child with Asthma until they are old enough (I think they said usually around age 5) to participate in a diagnostic test to prove this may be the case.

So what does this mean for us? Basically we are treating Aubrey like she has asthma. Right now she has 2 different inhalers and an oral steroid medicine that she is taking on a regular basis. One inhaler is the preventative inhaler that she will use twice a day for at least the next couple of years and the other inhaler is for quick relief. Currently she is using the quick relief inhaler every 4 hours (every 6 hours starting tomorrow) until we can get her over this sickness. We will finish the oral steroid medicine tonight. This one is her least favorite so we are all excited to be done with that one.

We learned a few things from our stay at the hospital.

First, even when our sweet little girl is super sick and literally can barely breath, she always manages to pull off the best cheeser smiles.

Second, a side affect of her medicines is that they make her extremely hyper... which is not always a good thing when you have about a 2 foot leash attached to your foot! Keeping her on this hospital bed proved to be almost impossible.

 It actually took us a lot longer to get out of the hospital than I would have expected (really, we weren't even there that long) because Aubrey had to be able to keep her oxygen levels above 90% on room air alone. She did great when she was awake, staying in the upper 90's but as soon as she would fall asleep her stats would drop down to the low to mid 80's. They say that most people's oxygen levels do go down when they sleep but the low 80's is just not good enough. As we would watch her sleep, we noticed that every time her numbers would drop down lower than they should be, she would get really wiggly and then her numbers would start going back up again. We are actually starting to think this may be part of the reason she is such a restless sleeper. Our doctor is planning on having us do an at home overnight oxygen test on Aubrey once all the medicine has had time to get in her system to see if a sleep study would be useful or not.

So for now we will continue to follow the doctors orders and take life one day at a time. Hopefully now that we have an action plan ready to use when the first sign of breathing issues arise, we will be able to avoid any more trips to the hospital in an ambulance.

Although we would never ask to go through this experience again, I am so grateful we were able to figure out what has been causing Aubrey so much discomfort lately. I am also super grateful to have such wonderful friends and family who all sacrificed so much this week to help us out by taking care of our children, feeding our family and giving us the comfort we needed. We are seriously so blessed!!! Thank you all again!

A trip in an ambulance...

These past few days have been quite the adventure. You know like a trip in an ambulance and a stay in the hospital for an unknown amount of time kind of adventure.

On Monday I decided to take the girls to Logan for a quick day trip to their cousins. As soon as we entered the valley, Aubrey started coughing a lot and her nose wouldn't stop running. It was odd really how quickly it came on. Aunt Lacey was afraid Aubrey was allergic to something in her house (I'm glad to know this wasn't really the case :). By the time we got home that night, Aubrey was hysterical. She screamed for 40 of the 70 minute drive home, which for her, is completely unusual.

When we got home she was doing a little better but was still a little off. She was just about as white as a ghost and seemed very uncomfortable. I had a feeling I needed to take her to the kidscare before it closed. Karl decided he needed to come with me so we called my sister, Katie, to come stay with the girls while we were gone. (I'm so glad we were both listening to the spirit that night!) when we got to the doctors office her oxygen level was at 82%. Normally they don't like to see that number under 90%. After multiple breathing treatments and a deep nose suction Aubrey's numbers were still not going up. Even while on oxygen we were having a hard time keeping her levels above 90. So the decision was made that she needed to go to the hospital. So off to the ambulance we went.

Well we are on day 3 at the hospital but we are actually getting to go home today (yay!!!) so I will have to finish the rest of the story later. Plus, blogging from my phone is kind of hard...

Since I had my camera but no memory card I only got a few pictures on the phone. It was dark and the road was bumpy so they aren't the best but I still had to include them anyway.

October came and went...

Seriously, is anyone else still in shock that it's already November?

I'm pretty sure we didn't have more than a few days in October that were not completely booked. We did lots of playing, traveling and catching up with friends which are all wonderful things to do, but man, I'm exhausted. Sometimes I remembered to pull out the camera and take some picture- other times I completely forgot or was just too busy having fun. There were even a few times that I pulled out my camera, and still managed to forget to take very many pictures. These are the pictures I did take- that haven't already been blogged.

Brooklyn had a birthday! Yay! She is now officially 3!

Mommy and Daddy got to go spend the night away in Park City for a work conference. The night was thoroughly enjoyed by both Mom and Dad- if you don't count the massive sinus headache I got when we drove up the canyon... I also got to meet a lot of Karl's coworkers and enjoyed some fun girl time with some of their wives.

We woke up the next morning to about 8 inches of snow... the first real snow of the year. It was cold.

The best part of the whole event... we got a night away and didn't have to pay for it.

Random Ninja's...

My cousin's Cara and Mindi hosted a fun little Halloween party for their kids and some friends. They had everything decorated so fun and Halloweenie. Unfortunately both Maddie and Brooklyn were a little bit timid about the decor and didn't participate in most of the activities... so the only pictures I really got were of the fun decorations. Cara if you got any pictures with my girls in them will you please send them my way???

Scientist Mindi, searching for eyeballs in the monster brains.

Brooklyn and Curtis, not participating in the other activities...

Aubrey didn't seem to have a hard time finding something she loved to play with...

Halloween was a very busy day for our family.

I got to help out with Maddie's school Halloween party in the morning.

Then we got to go to Grandma Jo's school for their school costume parade with our cousin's Joshua and Olivia.

Then we got to go to Daddy's work to show off our costumes to everyone at his office.

And last but not least... Trick or Treating!

We actually made it through the majority of our neighborhood and came home with quite the stash. We pretty much filled my Mary Poppins bag and we all know how much stuff can fit in one of those bags. In the end we came home with 392 pieces of candy- and that's not including the loads of candy we had gotten earlier in the day.

Man, just reading about everything we did yesterday makes me tired. I think I'll go hide under my covers now and let Karl put the girls to bed tonight...

A Halloween Adventure...

Last Saturday was our annual family Halloween party.

I sure love these parties and not just because we always have super delicious food! From the moment our first guests start to arrive, the laughter begins... and usually doesn't end until the party is over. (Although I still find myself chuckling about some of those costumes- namely Uncle David's this year- those pants were just too funny)

The Rock Star Sister's

The Tropic Adventurer's

Black Widow and Hawkeye

(No- They are not from The Hunger Games)

The Incredible Hulk

Mary Poppins and Bert- the chimney sweep

There are no words for this one...

Steven Tyler turned Kiss

Clark Kent/Superman and the cow

Batman

(anyone else notice a theme this year?)

Biker Boy

The biker boy and his parents

Marg Simpson

The Pirate- Arrr

 Scream and the pretty witch

The Batman family- and cousin

 Hermione, flapper girl, zebra girl and another pretty witch

B-I-N-G-O

 Hulk and his mom

Thanks everyone for all the laughs.

Let's do it again next year. :)