life lessons

I feel horrible when my kids have to learn the hard way. Let me preface this with a story, last month Jaden convinced Dave and I that he wasn't feeling well, so we kept him home from school. All day he acted fine but would insist that his stomach wasn't feeling well. So towards the end of the day as we are getting ready for bed he informs Dave and I that he had been tricking us and that he just didn't want to go to school. So we sat down with him and talked about lying to us and how there were consequences for every action, and we told him that it would be hard for us to trust him now.
Fast forward to yesterday, he woke up saying that his throat was sore. I thought well it could be, Ty does have strep throat and Jaden might be coming down with it to. So I checked to see if he had a temp, he didn't so we said sorry I think it's probably just dry and scratchy, get a drink of water and get ready for school. You just want to stay home because Ty is. We reminded him that he'd tricked us once before and we weren't going to fall for it again. Off to school he goes, around 12:30 I get a call from the school saying that he has thrown up and has a fever. I of course now feel horrible for sending him to school, when I pick him up he doesn't look to good and says that his throat is really hurting. So back to the Doctors office we go, they swab his throat and sure enough he also has strep throat. I felt like a horrible parent for sending him to school, I kept apologizing for not believing him. But he just looked at me and said it's okay mom I shouldn't have lied to you before. He is such a sweet little boy. We both had learn from this experience.
I'm so glad he and Ty are both feeling better now.

Today I sat Cole down to play with a bucket full of plastic Easter eggs, I thought that all of the candy had been eaten so no big deal. I went to check on him since he'd been sitting there quietly for a little while . This is what I found! Apparently there was candy still in there and some how he was able to get the package open. So he has officially had his first taste of candy, I think he liked it. I just hope he doesn't have a belly ache later tonight.

My friend Clarissa made a dress for my new niece and wanted to see how it fit on a 6 month old, so we decided to try it on Cole. He'll love these pics when he's older I'm sure, I think he makes a cute little girl!

13 Years

Yes that is Dave and I on our wedding day, I guess you could say that we have changed a bit over the years. I can't believe that Dave and I have been married for 13 years now, time has flown by. During the past 13 years we've laughed, we've cried, we've had three beautiful children and made some amazing memories. I couldn't ask for a more amazing husband and father for our children. And after all these years I still get butterflies in my stomach when I think of him or when I catch him looking at me. I can't imagine my life without him, he's my best friend and still the man of my dreams. I can't wait to see what adventures await us! I love you Babe!

He finds this funny.....

Last night for some reason, who knows why Ty and Jaden decided to start slapping themselves. Cole found it to be very amusing!

This past week the weather was nice enough that we were able to break out the water slide. The kids also decided that the pool was warm enough to go swimming, the water was only 70 degrees so there was no way I was getting in but they sure had fun. Ty's lips started to turn blue after a little while so he didn't last very long, but he had fun throwing things into the water so that Jaden and his friend Isabelle could go diving for them.

We'd never been to the Children's museum here so we thought that since Dave had Thursday off we would take the kids and check it out. There were some fun things there but I think it was geared more to younger kids so after about 2 hours they were bored. I'm glad that we went and saw what they had I don't think it was worth the $9.00 per person we had to pay, but it was so nice to be able to spend the day together.

I love this photo!

These are some of the photos that my brother in-law took for us, these are just a few of my favorites!

4 Months

Cole is now 4 months old and he's doing great. The doctors had been a little worried that he could have suffered some brain damage when he was in the hospital. But as of right now he is right on track for his age, he's rolling over , grabbing for toys and interacting with all of us. He is such a happy little baby always smiling and laughing. He also knows what he likes and doesn't like and where he wants to go. I love the fact that he is becoming active, the older my kids get the more fun I have.Here's his stats at 4 months

Weight 15.13 lbs 75 percentile

Height 26in 75 percentile

The Doc says that i'm allowed to take him out shopping with me now. I just need to avoid places where he could come in close contact with people. So i'm excited to get out of the house and feel like a normal person again.

Fender Bender

Yes today I got in a little accident I was headed to my brothers house from the tournament and I looked down for a second. When I looked back up the truck in front of me had started to slow down to turn a corner, I slammed on my brakes and tried to swerve but it didn't help. Well I guess it somewhat helped because it could have been a lot worse, I would have been fine if this truck wouldn't of had a trailer on it, he could have gone around the corner faster. And I could have missed him, but as it was I slammed into his trailer. My fender was a lot more damaged than his trailer, which I think is a good thing. The guy I hit was very nice considering what I did, he says he's just going to fix the trailer himself and not even worry about making an insurance claim. I still have to make a claim because along with my fender getting screwed up I also did something to the radiator.There happened to be two police officers witness this accident so they came over to make sure we were all okay, and give me a ticket. So on Monday I have to get quotes to fix my car, and now I get to pay $180.00 to go to traffic school then a $500.00 deductable for our insurance. I'm grateful Cole and I weren't hurt and that we have insurance, hopefully the insurance company will be easy to work with.

Their 1ST tournament

So wrestling season has started again, and today was Jaden and Ty's first tournament. They were both excited and nervous each hoping that they would win a medal. I have to say I was a little nervous to, you always want your children to do well. And you never know who they'll be paired with or how many times they'll have to wrestle. I was also nervous to see how Ty would react, last year wasn't so great for him. Every time he would get on the mat he would cry and refuse to wrestle, so I wondered how he would do this year. He did great! He went out there and did his best and had fun, he ended up getting a third place medal and was super excited. Jaden is doing better this season to, he's trying harder and actually catching on to what needs to happen on the mat, he's super proud of his second place medal. Dave and I are excited to watch the boys have fun with this, Dave especially since he's their coach this year. I've told the boys it doesn't matter if you win as long as you have fun and try your best, I hope they can remember that throughout the season.

Gadgets

I'm excited my new gadgets are here, one is a battery operated booger sucker. I know some of you may think it's weird to get excited over this, but ever since Cole has been home from the hospital I have been missing the power of the nose sucker they have there. The bulb syringe just doesn't do the job as well as this thing and Cole tolerates it a lot better than the bulb syringe. It also plays music, which I could really care less about but hey that's what it does.



The other gadget I got is a breathing monitor, I call it his buzzy. You can see Cole wearing it below, I went with this one because it's portable I love the fact that he can wear it anywhere, the car, the swing, the bed any where I choose. All the other monitors I looked at were mats that the baby slept on so they could really only be used in one place. This monitors the movement of his stomach if there is no movement after 15 seconds it vibrates trying to wake the child, if that doesn't get them moving than within 5 seconds an alarm goes off. After seeing Cole stop breathing in the hospital this helps me sleep much better at night. Cole sleeps with us still and I have felt it buzz him once or twice but the only time the alarm has gone off is when it fell off the diaper. Which has only happened once, although it did scare me for a second or two. I am so excited to have these gadgets they help make my life easier!

6

Picture tag.
Here are the directions:
Open up the 6Th picture folder on your computer.Post the 6Th picture in the folder and tell the story of it.Then tag 6 of your friends.

Okay so I know it's not an exciting photo,but hey it is number 6. This photo was taken with our underwater camera 3 years ago while Dave and I were in Barbados celebrating our 10 year anniversary. I would love to go back there again.
The people I tag are: Mindi, Mendie, Aleah, Christina, Frances,and Michelle

February

The month of February is always a busy month for us, we have a lot of family birthdays plus Valentines Day. So it seems like each week we have something going. On the 6TH we Celebrated my 31ST birthday, I didn't do anything to exciting. I got to spend the day relaxing at home, then my parents came over and watched the boys for us, while Dave took me to dinner at Red Lobster. I had been craving crab legs all week, we then went home and had brownies and ice cream with the kids and my parents. It was nice and simple just like I like it. The boys got me some stuff from Bath and Body Works and Dave gave me cash to go spend on what ever I want. I actually love it when he does that rather than him giving me an actual gift. Yes Dave actually put 31 candles in the brownies that's why you see a ton of smoke, I'm surprised that the smoke alarm didn't go off.

On Sunday the 8Th we were able to bless Cole here at the house, there were a lot of people at the house but it was fun to all be together for this occasion. I am so grateful to have the gospel in my life, and to be able to live close to family so that we are able to get together for special events like this.

Jaden, Ty and I each got sick the next week, everyone had something different. I had a sinus infection, Ty had a slight cold and Jaden had some weird virus that lasted forever. I was scared to death that Cole was going to catch something, so he was never really allowed in the same room as the boys. Even I wore a mask when I was around him. I have since stocked up on a lot of multi vitamins for the kids and they are finally all healthy. I'm just praying that we all stay that way.

For Valentines we didn't do much just spent the day together as a family, I love having quiet quality time with our kids. Dave and the boys got me a gift certificate for a pedicure, and I'm looking forward to using it.

My brother and his wife both had birthdays the following week and my Brother-in-laws birthday is next week, so all of my family is getting together this weekend to celebrate all four birthdays. I'm looking forward to getting out of the house. This month has flown by I can't believe that it is already the end of the month. I remember as a kid time use to go buy so slowly and my mom would always say, just wait till your older and it will go by quickly. Well now it's going by way to fast it needs to slow down, I know it won't I guess I just need to make better use of my time.

Cabin fever!

Yes we are still alive! Cole is doing great all the kids are healthy and we're still stuck inside. We still can't take Cole anywhere, he seems fine but the Docs have told us he could easily catch RSV or any other bug really easily. Which I really don't want to watch him go through anything like that again so until May we're on lock down.
But it doesn't mean I can't get a little bit of cabin fever, for example Dave use to do the grocery shopping. But now he stays home with kids so I can do it, I never thought that I would want to go grocery shopping. It's annoying that there are things that I need to go do but can't unless Dave is home to take care of the kids. I feel like I have no connection to the outside world, also I feel sorry for Jaden and Ty. The weather has been beautiful but we can't even go outside to enjoy it, I would love to be able to take them to the park. Or being able to sit together as a family at church, it's just the little things that you take for granted all the time.
There is a bright side, I get to spend a lot of quality time with Cole, I love to watch him smile, his whole face just lights up. And he has started to laugh now, it is so cute although he doesn't know what to make of being tickled. And I am saving Dave a lot of money buy being stuck at home, he likes that part.
I am so grateful for the sisters in my ward who have been willing to pick up Jaden and Ty from school for me. And for those of you who call just to see how we're doing, you guys are wonderful.
I have learned not to take good health for granted, and that everyday is a great gift.

Pics from the Hospital!

Here he is getting ready for
his first ambulance ride.

This is while we were at Thunderbird hospital

thinking we'd only be there for a few days.

These are the machines and monitors that were

needed to keep him alive.

Even though he was so sick he

was still super cute!

Mom and dad finally getting to hold him after

a week of being intubated.

One of his little toes that was

poked about 12 times. His heals

and a couple of fingers were also poked

a lot to get his blood gas levels.

Here he is with just his feeding

tube, once they took that out

he started eating better.

He finally got his feeding tube

out you can tell he was quite happy!

He got a wagon ride out

of the hospital to our car!

Finally home and resting!

Our Holidays!

I don't know where to start, first I do want to say thank you to all of our friends and family. You have no idea how much we appreciate your love and support, and all of your prayers for Cole.
On Tuesday the 23rd I took Cole to the Dr.'s because he was getting a cough and had started having a lot of spit. So I just wanted to make sure he was okay and that it wasn't RSV. The Doc said oh it's just a cold and he has an ear infection, so we went home with a prescription and thought no big deal.
We were having all of my family over to our house for Christmas, so they began showing up on Christmas Eve. We had a a fun filled night , we all got to open up our Christmas PJ's, then sang Christmas carols. I did notice that Cole had been breathing really fast but didn't really think anything of it. We got all the kids off to bed and then all of us adults began to get Santa stuff ready.That night Cole was really having a hard time going to sleep and we were trying to get Christmas set up and to say the least I was loosing my patience. On Christmas morning he ate around 4:00 a.m and then I just couldn't get him to settle back down. Then all of a sudden he started gasping for air, it was so scary it was like he was hiper ventilating. My sister Kristi who is a neonatal nurse took a look at him and said you need to get to the hospital, he doesn't look good. So before we had a chance to do anything Dave and I rushed over to the ER.
Did you know that if you say that your baby is barely able to breathe they rush you straight on back. After a couple of breathing treatments and some oxygen he seemed to settle down. They took an x-ray and did an RSV test. They said that it looked like he has pneumonia and that he would have to be admitted for at least a day. So we were taken over to Thunderbird hospital, Coles first ambulance ride and not his last. He did fine on the ride over but once we got there he started gasping for air again, so all of a sudden there are a ton of nurses around him suctioning him and getting him oxygen. Dave and I just sat there watching him struggle to breathe, I couldn't believe what was happening. Once they have Cole suctioned out he calms down and I'm able to hold him, The Doc comes in and takes a look at him and tells us that we will be at the hospital for anywhere from 5 to 7 days. Which I'm thinking are you kidding me, can't you fix him quicker than that. So over the next three days Cole would be suctioned almost every two hours and when I say suctioned it means they take a little tube and thread it down his nose to his throat and suction out what ever they can find. I think that I got maybe six hours of sleep total during this time, because if Cole was laid down he couldn't breathe and it seemed like he was only comfortable if I was holding him. So Dave felt horrible because he really couldn't help much.
By Saturday night Cole was really struggling to breathe and they decided that he needed to be moved to St. Josephs PICU. So at 12:00 a.m Sunday morning we took another ambulance ride. And were admitted to St. Joes, at first Cole was acting fine and they thought hey nothings wrong with this kid, why was he sent here? Well they decided to run some more tests just to be sure of what he had, turns out he did have RSV, apparently they didn't do the tests correctly at the other hospital. By Sunday night Cole was fading you could just see how week he was, it was so sad to look into his eyes. It was like he was begging you to help him, he also hadn't gotten much sleep because he couldn't breathe. So after trying a few breathing treatments they decided that he needed to be intubated before it got so bad that it would be an emergency situation.
Once intubated he could be kept sedated so that his body would allow the machine to breathe for him, that way his body could rest and heal. Now let me just say that the doctors and my sister warned us that RSV can be very ugly, and that it goes in spurts of you think that they are getting better and then they get really bad. And back and forth like this several times. Basically you think it's bad and then you realize nope it can get worse. While he was intubated his right upper lung partially collapsed and he also got the H-flu or influenza on top of all this. Luckily they caught the flu before it got to bad.
During this time at the hospital we learned lots of terms and phrases that I wish we didn't know. Like Bradying, which means all of his stats drop it is very scary when all of a sudden your child's heart rate is in the 40's or 60's an hist o2 levels are about the same. And you also have to watch there co2 levels which need to be in the 30's to 40's but happen to be up in the 90's at times. I lost count of how many times he had to be bagged, to get all of his stats back to normal. I have learned to hate monitors, they now scare me it's like you want them but then you don't. We would find ourselves just watching them and every time numbers would start to drop you just beg for the numbers to go back to normal. Cole was intubated for about a week, his tubes came out the following Sunday morning. While intubated he had x-rays at least once a day, was poked at up to 4 times a day to get his blood gases. Went through 6 different IV's, became slightly addicted to fentanyl and verset. He had continual suctioning done, but with the breathing tube in you could at least suction the lungs really well, which is where everything was building up.
Once he was extubated he then had oral aversion, which is where he doesn't want anything near his mouth, which I don't blame him there. He had to relearn how to suck, so for the first 48 hours after being extubated he wouldn't eat, and they were not giving him any food through a feeding tube. The hope was that if he got hungry enough he would eat, well that didn't happen so they ended up putting in another feeding tube. I was constantly trying to get him to nurse, we even tried bottles but he wouldn't take them either. He still had a lot of mucus in his nose and throat so he was still being deep suctioned about once an hour. Finally we got that under control and since he could then breathe better he started nursing again.
The last two days in the hospital were spent on the Pediatric floor where they were weaning him off his drugs and seeing if was gaining weight back. During this ordeal he lost about a pound, which is not good if you are a baby. Finally on Friday the 9Th of January we were released to come home, those were the most wonderful words I had ever heard.
Over the last 2 weeks I have grown so close to my Heavenly Father and to Dave, I know that it seemed like each time we made progress we were thrown another set back. But I knew that Heavenly Father was there with me, I don't know how many prayers were offered in our behalf but we were truly blessed because of those prayers. I must say that I am so grateful that Dave holds the priesthood and for his strength during this time. And I am so grateful for our families and their love and support, Daves parents were able to come down and help out with Jaden and TY.
I know Jaden and Ty didn't get the Holiday celebration they were expecting but they have been so good. They haven't complained at all, they just wanted their brother to get better. They were able to come and see Cole at the hospital a couple of times. They loved being able to see him and they got to wear masks and gloves they thought that was so cool. Anyways we are all together again, and now we just have to keep Cole healthy because his immune system is shot. So I'm trying to keep my house as germ free as possible. Cole is basically on house arrest until May, that is when RSV season is over. But hey I'll take that over being in the hospital again. I never want to repeat these last two weeks again.

FIVE!

Happy Birthday Ty! He turned five this past week. He made sure that on his birthday we remembered that since it was his special day he could do what ever he wanted. We took in cookies to his pre school class and went to Burger King for lunch. He got to ride bikes and play with his friends in the afternoon and then had his favorite dinner, chicken tacos. On Saturday we had some of his friends over, they all were dressed up as Super Hero's. It was fun seeing all these five year olds running around chasing each other with thier super powers.

Ty is such a fun a little boy, he keeps us laughing with his little one liners at the end of his stories. He loves being a big brother and a little brother, and loves to give me hugs and kisses. He definitely keeps us on our toes, you never know what he is going to say or do. I can't believe how big he is now, I wish my kids would stop growing up so fast. We love you TY!