More Christmas Pictures

The kids wanted to say thank you again Uncle Augie and Aunt Buffy for the Mario Cart game. They love it, and we have played it alot over the last few days. The wheel is perfect for Emily who has a hard time staying on the track, but is doing better with the wheel.

We aslo ended up going to the mall to see Santa, she was so worried about him not getting her letter. So we waited the hour and half in line to see him, and when she asked him if he received her letter his reply was Yes thank you very much. Michael who is now to old and too cool to be seen with Santa had made plans with some friends that afternoon and did not go with us. I wish he had gone just for the picture. But I am grateful that Nick went with his little sister. Nick told us later, that it was fun to see how excited Emily was, he enjoyed her excitment as much as Don and I did. He is a great big brother.

Our family wishes all of our family and friends a Happy & Safe New Year. See you all in 2009!!!

Merry Christmas

I hope all of our family and friends had a great holiday. We sure did. It was very quiet and relaxing for us. Don was home all week with the kids, and we enjoyed his time away from the computer and phone calls from work. Christmas morning was relaxing. Emily received her Ipod and pink DS from santa. Michael got an xbox and halo game. ( boy was he surprised and excited) and Nick got the guitar hero 4 for the wii. We have spent the last 4 days playing video games non stop. I am almost looking forward to school starting back in a week, just to get to hear the peace and quiet.

Let it Snow!!!

Yesterday we drove to Flagstaff, AZ to play in the snow. We stopped at Northern Arizona University parking lot to play. It was a 3 hour drive for lunch and about 45 minutes of playing. It was 27 degrees outside and the wind was unforgiving, but the kids had a great time. Emily took a carrot to make a snowman and made snow angels. The boys spent most of the time throwing snowballs at each other.

From Emily

Deer Santa,

I wod lik a IPOD a pink DS, benroos and gliter lava. I hope you got my letr. I hav ben a good girl. My bothrs hav not ben good. They are mean to me. Bing them books, no toys. Love Emily

Emily saw me reading other family blogs and asked who reads ours?? I told her family and friends. She asked if Santa read our blog. Before I could answer, she had decided to write her letter here just to make sure he knew what she wanted for Christmas. She is worried that by not sitting on his lap at the mall, he may not read all of the letters he receives. I have a hard time thinking back to the boys when they were that little. Trying to remember if they were as excited as Emily is. When Nick was Emily's age at Christmas I was pregnant with her and all the boys were asking for that year was a boy baby. LOL

I do know that the boys were excited about yesterday. Yesterday was the last day of school before winter break. The last day of finals, which they have been studying all week. They were looking forward to sleeping in today. They are looking forward to not standing at the bus stop in the cold and rain. It has rained here the last 3 days off and on, but up north in the mountains it has snowed. Tuesday we will take a drive to see the snow. Something Emily is also excited about.

This weekend will be busy for us, today the kids and I baked cookies to give to friends and family. Tonight we have a family Christmas party at Don's work, Saturday the kids will be staying the night with their grandparents in Scottsdale and Don and I have a party to go to that night. Sunday we will have lunch with Don's parents and see his grandmother on his mothers side. Some time on Saturday we will have to go find "gliter lava" for Emily's stocking. I have no idea what this is or where to find it. Guess it will make for an interesting day at the toy stores on Saturday.

One week down and two weeks to go till Christmas. This kids are really getting excited to be out of school. Four days left is what Emily was singing this morning getting dressed. I think they are more excited about getting 2 weeks off from school than Christmas.

Michael arrived back home yesterday after his weekend at camp. He said they had a great time. They got snowed on. He said it was so cold. The thoughts that ring in my head are Told you so, but of course I bit my lip and just smiled. Its a good thing that his mean old mom made him take gloves and his dad's winter jacket. Just think how cold he would of been if I let him just take his sweatshirt and jeans. HA. He said they ate good and the camp was neat, but he only received about 7 hours of sleep the whole weekend, so by the time we got home he was tired and grouchy. We feed him and sent him to bed. Hopefully this morning he will feel better.

Nick who is such a great sport, played with Emily all weekend, and I think is very grateful he gets to go to school to day. Friday night he went to bed really early with a headache. Saturday we drove to Scottsdale to see Don's parents and celebrate his dad's Bday. We had a good time visiting with everyone. While there Emily and Nick wrote letters to Santa to take to the mall and drop off. My kids have always been afraid of Santa and never want to sit on his lap, so we write letters to him instead and take them to him. Which was a good thing this year, the wait to see Santa was 3 1/2 hours. Yikes.

After dropping our letters off, we stopped by the pet store to see the puppies before coming home, they had the cutest golden lab/poodles. They looked like golden lab that were all fluffy. I tried to talk Don into buying one, but after we saw the price tag; $2000, we passed. Seems like a lot of money for a pet. After the mall we came home and rented movies and slept in late on Sunday. Sunday afternoon we drove to school to get Michael. The kids only have 4 days of school left this week till winter break. Its final week so the boys will be studying alot, so hopefully it will be quiet but somehow I doubt it.

Well lets try this again. I posted this morning and then again around lunch time and it deleted my post instead of saving it. :(

This weekend was so laid back and relaxing. Friday night after Emily's doctor appt. the boys rented a wii game, Madden 08. Its a football game (go figure). the boys played it pretty late on Friday night. Saturday we all slept in then had to take Emily to a birthday party at Peter Piper Pizza. Don and I have never been there. We really had a good time, much more laid back than Chucky Cheese. After the bday party we came home to watch the Florida vs. Alabama game. Congrats Gators on their big win. Next game will be Jan 8th. in the BCS Bowl. YEA!!!!!!! We had some friends over for dinner and then watched the ASU vs U of A game. Congrats U of A on their win. Sunday we laid around and pretty much either watched or played the football wii game.

This week will hopefully be pretty quiet. Don's dads bday is the week, so we will be heading to Scottsdale to see him on Saturday. Michael leaves for camp on Friday, so we will be packing him up to leave. We are waiting to hear back from Emily's doctor to see if they want to see her again. While at the bday party on Sat. she had a nosebleed and the rash on her bottom is starting to come back just a lil bit. We are worried that maybe her staff infection has come back. If her doctor wants to see her, hopefully they can wait till Friday when I have to drive into town to take Michael to school for his field trip. I try and do all my errands, Dr. appts, school errands on the same day, to save driving into town as much as possible.

Small shout out to my sister Aimee who had a birthday this weekend. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! We miss you!!

A small update on last night and this morning. Emily was asleep by the time Don got home from work and after he looked at her foot the swelling was almost gone. We decided that if she woke up this morning and didn't say anything about it, she was going to school and that was that. If she did wake up and was still unable to walk on it, then I would take her for an X-ray and go from there.
Well this morning.... she got out of bed just fine. She told me when she was putting her socks and shoes on, her foot was still sore, but just a lil bit. I asked her if she wanted to go to school and she said yes. So no x-ray. Yea!!

Will post later about her follow up appt. with Dr. Woodward this afternoon. Happy Friday to all!!!

Well Emily's appt. was wonderful. The sleep study came back normal. Her other test came back good. We will keep her on the symbicort for now, which is working well for her. Dr. Woodward thinks she is still getting over the staff infection and that is the reason she is tired all the time. Hopefully she will get more energy soon, but for now I will let her sleep as much as needed. We will go back in March after Augie's wedding to see him, unless she gets sick before then. I am happy that we are back to 3 month appointments instead of monthly or weekly. He will also see her before we leave for Oregon in May to make sure she is well and that her meds are working. That is my biggest fear about going back to Oregon, is we will have a relapse of last time.

Zoo Field Trip

This week has been so long and crazy. Don left Monday morning for Oregon again. He came home last night (Wed.) about 930pm. I have been thinking about his trip this spring when he has to go to Oregon for 6 months. Its going to be a really long trip. When he is gone, I have a hard time sleeping. So Monday night I think I went to bed around 1am and got up at 5 to get Emily to the bus. Tuesday night I was in bed at 7pm, completely exhausted but could not fall asleep. I tossed and turned, watched some tv and I think I fell asleep around midnight. Wed. morning I was so tired. I took all the kids to the bus and came home and took a nap. I slept till 11:30. The kids get really grouchy when Don's gone too. I don't think they sleep really well either. I am so glad he is back and as of right now will not have to go back until Jan. but, as we all know that could change any minute.

Well today was Emily's first field trip with school. Her class went to the Phx zoo. I went as a chaperone, we left the school at 9am and returned to school at 1:30pm. Let me tell you how long today was.We had a great time till lunch time. The class was broken up into groups of 2 kids per adult. Not a bad ratio, My group the pink group ( how fitting for us) joined up with two other groups of Emily's classmates. There was Dillon, Leland, Alex and Jack. Ava was in our group. The six kids did everything together. Lunch time they were playing on the playground around a creek and guess who slips??? Of course my child, well she managed to stay dry but ended up twisting her ankle. So that put a big damper in our day. I spent the rest of the day giving her a piggy back ride around the zoo. Once we got back to school I went ahead and took Emily out of school and brought her home to rest. Right now she is laying in bed with an ice pack and we will wait to see what Don thinks tonight when he gets home, if we need to go to Urgent Care and have it looked at. Its pretty swollen and starting to turn purple, so we will see how the night goes.

Once we got home, we had a package at the front door. Don and I have been waiting all week for our new camera. We are so excited. I have wanted a new camera for a year now, but Don is so picky. Anyway I get Emily on the couch with an icepack and open the box hoping its is our new camera. I open the box and inside it is another box crushed and ripped and wet. My heart just sinks. I grab Emily off the couch and throw her in the car grab the box and run over to Radio Shack, where we bought the camera online from. I walk into the store and ask to speak to the manager, who is not availalbe. I had the man take the box and ask him to open it for me. Telling him I just received this and could not open the box any further and wanted him to open it. He opens the big box and is shocked. He gives me a camera off the shelf and tells me he will take it up with Fed Ex. They should of never of shipped this to me. It should of gone back to the store.
Well not my problem any more. I have my new camera and will wait for Don to get home from work to play with it first. He will be so excited.

Tomorrow we are finally getting back our sleep study results from Emily's test. I hope that they find something that they can fix. She is still sleeping 14 hours aday. We are trying very hard to keep her awake when she gets home from school, but that just makes her cranky and me stressed out with her crying. Maybe I should just let her sleep. I am afraid that if she sleeps at 3pm she will wake up at 10 and not want to go back to bed. So far this has not happened, and when she goes to sleep what ever time that is, she will sleep till morning.
I have included a few pictures of the zoo today, but did not take any after lunch due to the 32lb monkey that I carried around all day. These are also the first pictures of Emily's new haircut. Its been two weeks since we cut her hair off. She had 8 inches cut and she is loving it. She thinks she looks like tinkerbell now. Michael is going to the Tempe Art Festival tomorrow on a school field trip with his art class, and another one next week for a 4 day weekend trip to Prescott for a leadership camp. It sounds like they will have fun if they don't freeze.

Well I hope everyone is well and full of Thanksgiving Dinner. Our weekend was wonderful. We had a very quiet dinner on Thursday and lots of football. Friday we braved out to the stores to do some Christmas shopping and took the kids to the movies. Its amazing that when you think you are all done with your christmas shopping, you see something in a black friday add you just have to have. LOL .

Don and I bought a new camera (Finally) on Thursday afternoon. We have been looking for about a year now. Don is very picky when it comes to electronics. He has to do all the research first. So buying the camera online, we drove to Radio Shack and looked at the camera in person. Which was a good idea because we didn't have the correct memory card for it. So we had to fix that. Saturday we were to go to Don's aunt's and uncle's new home to play games, however Emily has a bad cough and not feeling well enough to go, so we stayed home and watched even more football ( GO GATORS) and put our Christmas tree up.
Sunday was saved for laundry and homework. Why my children wait till the night before a book report is due to start it. That drives me crazy. Poor lil Nick was up till 930 last night finishing his report. Maybe next time he will learn, but somehow I doubt it.

Hopefully this week will go by fast. Don is back in Oregon this morning, should be back sometime on Wed. Michael and Emily both has field trips this week and Friday we are taking Emily back to her pulmonary dr. to get the results of the sleep study.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!!!
I hope that all of you will enjoy our day as much I am. This week has been really quiet for us (Finally). We will be having thanksgiving this year at our house, by ourselves. I plan on cooking my dinner tonight and packing it up in Tupperware. That way tomorrow I can sit around in my pj's and watch football and not spend the day cooking. When it is lunchtime. We can just heat everything up and have a nice dinner with out all the prep and cleanup. That is pretty much our entire weekend, except for Saturday evening, we are planning on spending time with Don's aunt and uncle. The boys are excited to play rock band against someone who is on expert also. I play, but not that well. I have completed most of the songs on easy and medium but that's as far as I can get. LOL.
We do not plan on going shopping on Friday for Christmas gifts, as we are completely done with our holiday shopping. It really pays to shop early. Most of our gifts are even wrapped. Its so nice to plan ahead, makes the holidays more relaxing.

Happy Thanksgiving to all and Happy Football.

Well our night last night was ok. We discovered that Emily has burnt the top of her mouth on something. We don't remember eating anything hot the last few days. But anyway, we are not going to take her to the doctors today. I don't think there is anything they can do for her at this time. Her fever is gone, not really sure why she has a fever, but it is gone for now and she is at school. Today is the turkey trot, so she was excited to get to school this morning. I just hope that the wind dies down today, It is really windy. On windy days, Emily has to wear a dust mask, so her asthma does not flare up. She hate this of course, but knows it makes her feel better.

Our weekend plans hopefully will be very quiet. We have to go to Don's parents house on Sunday for his mothers birthday for lunch. We are looking forward to a quiet Thanksgiving next week and a 4 day weekend . YEA!!


Today's turkey trot was very interesting. All the kids in the school go out to the PE field and they have a course to run. It was about a 1/4mile all the way around. The Kindergarten ran first and only for 5 minutes. They ran around the course 2 1/2 times. I think they did a great job. Emily on the other hand did not run. She did not want to wear the mask outside, and threw one of her famous 2year old temper tantrums. So she and I were cheerleaders for her class (mostly me). After the run all the kids got to meet the mascot for the Arizona Cardinals football team and have a ice cream cup. I joined Emily's class for lunch and had lots of fun with the class. Next year I hope Emily will run next year. Maybe next year I will run with her class.

The band concert last night was wonderful. Nick's performance was at 6pm. He is playing the drums and doing very well. Michael's concert started at 8pm he is playing the trumpet. His band was amazing. Boys boys did a great job. Michael has decided to join marching band next year and is excited to go to band camp this summer. Can you believe that this next year I will have a son in high school??? Doesn't seem like that long ago he was just a baby.

Emily had a rough day today. She came home from school with a fever 102 and a sore throat. I called Dr. Camacho, who wants to see her tomorrow afternoon to see if her staff infection has come back. Hopefully tomorrow she will not have a fever and she will be able to go to school in the morning. Tomorrow is the turkey trot at school. I do not know what this is, but the kids are excited about it. After the turkey trot the school will have a big bbq for lunch. So I will join them for the trot and for lunch then take her to the doctor in the afternoon. But that all depends on how she does tonight. Right now her fever is gone, but she is in bed asleep.

I have added a few pictures of different events we have done this year, for all those family members who have not seen the boys in quite a while. I hope you enjoy them.

No News is Good News !?!?!?

Well after talking to Dr. Woodward's office on Friday, who told me that they had not received the sleep study yet, they would get back to me early this week. I guess no news is good news I guess. We have another appt. with him on the 5th of December. So we will have to wait till then to read the results if they do not call before that.

We had a good weekend. Just laid around on Saturday watching football. Sunday we had a birthday party at Desert Breeze park and more football. We all had lots of fun having a relaxing weekend. Monday I started watching a new 4 week old baby, Lucia. She is so sweet. They boys really like her and play with her before school. I forgot how much work new babies can be. We are looking forward to Wed. night for the boys first band concert. Nick is really excited to show us how much he had learned this year in band.

ENT Appt

Well this afternoon we went back to see Dr. Chaung. He had taken a swab of her nose last week and it had come back yesterday. Her staff infection she had on her bottom was also in her nose. With the meds she was on last week, hopefully this cleared it all up. She will not need surgery to remove her adenoids YEAH!!!!!!!!! He will call Dr. Woodward to follow up on the sleep study and will not need to see her again, if she has no more nosebleeds. So far it has been 8 days with no nosebleeds. Hopefully we have seen our last nosebleed for a long time. Now we just have to get Emily to have more energy and not sleep so much. We came home from the doctors and she is already in bed for the night. I put in a call to Woodward's office myself a little bit ago and hopefully they will call tomorrow with the results of the sleep study.

First Day of the rest of our lives

Just a quick update to let everyone know how Emily is doing lately.

For those of you who have not heard we can start at the beginning back in July when Emily got sick. In July Emily started running fevers off and on and the last week of July had a nosebleed. Don and I blew off the nosebleed, we thought all children have nosebleeds now and then. In August she had two nosebleeds, a fever almost every night, and was very tired. Don and I thought that it had to do with a full day of school. Emily's bus comes at 6:15am, so she is pretty tired when she gets home from school. In Sept. she started having about 1-2 nosebleeds a week. She was exhausted all the time. We found out from her school, that she was falling asleep in school and on the bus and anytime she was left alone. She was going to bed around 4pm for the night and not waking up until 545 the next am.
We called her doctor and they wanted to see us right away. So Oct 3rd we went to PCH (Phoenix Children's Hospital) and saw Dr. Woodward, pulmonologist. He changed around some of her meds and told us to go see our ped dr to run some blood tests. So the next day we went her ped. dr. Dr Camacho. They ran every test they could think of. The big test was to test her for Leukemia. We had to wait a week for the tests to come back. Thank goodness that we were going to California for fall break. When we got back from Disney and got the blood tests back, they all came back normal. So we ran more tests to test her for blood disorders. Again we had to wait again. Dr Woodward had scheduled a sleep study test and Don took her on a Saturday night. She did ok at the sleep study and we are waiting for the results of that. Her ped dr. suggested that we see an ENT specialist. So we saw Dr. Chaung in Phoenix, who is great BTY. He suggested that we have xrays done to see if her adenoids are enlarged and also cauterize the inside of her nose to stop the nosebleeds.
Well by this time its the first week on November and Emily is having 5-6 nosebleeds a day. We can not keep her awake and she is starting to catch a cold. The school calls me one day and tells me she is running fever and not feeling so good. So I drive the 34miles to school to pick her up. The next day she is worse, so I take her to her ped dr. and they do a strep test. It comes back positive. They also look at the rash she has on her bottom. Dr. Camacho says it looks infected and looks like a staff infection. She takes a swab to the infection and sends it to the lab. We should know something early next week. They give Emily antibotics for strep and send us home.
We started the antibotics on Wed night and Thurday morning no nosebleeds, then friday nothing, Saturday and Sunday are free also. Emily also now is sleeping less and playing more. So monday morning the dr call us. She does have a staff infection. We tell her that the nosebleeds and fever have stopped and she is doing much better. They tell us that if the fevers or nosebleeds come back then to call them asap. That was last week. Its has now been a week with no fevers and no nosebleeds. YEAH!!!!!

Today we have to return to the ENT to read her xrays and discuss what is the next step. We are not going to have her nose cautierzed but will talk about her adenoids removed if they are enlarged. Hopefully they can do that the week of Thanksgiving while she is out of school. I will pick her up at school at 2pm today. I will update later.


Meanwhile....they boys are doing great. Both boys received all A's on their report cards. We made such a good decision to move the boys into town for school. They love their school and friends and have received wonderful oportunities in their first 9 weeks of school. They have very carefully made their lists for Xmas and are looking forward to winter break from school.