Indoor Skydiving & New Years

While we were out in Colorado with Brad's family, the guys decided it would be an awesome adventure to go indoor skydiving. I had never heard of this before and thought the idea sounded totally crazy, but I have to admit that after watching the videos they had online I thought it was pretty cool. Despite the fact that it was pretty pricey, there was no talking Brad out of this and I have a feeling that this may not be our last experience with indoor skydiving. Heck, maybe next time I'll even give it a try. :)

Brad, Greg, and our nephews Keegan, Mason and Griffin were the brave ones who "jumped" at the chance to try this out. The rest of the family was all very entertained to watch this all go down from our nice stable bench on the other side of the glass!



Keegan


Mason


The guy definitely had to keep a grip on Griffin because that little guy really flew around in there!


Greg


Brad



And finally, we closed out our wonderful year with a nice low key New Year's celebration. To be honest, I actually find it quite amazing that Brad and I both manage to even stay up past midnight each year! I say that, but you must know that once that ball drops and the clock hits midnight, we give each other a little kiss and head straight for bed! :) Once we got married, and especially once we had a baby, bedtime is always a WAY better option than staying up late, but I guess once a year we can make an exception.

Fortunately for Brad's family, being with us on New Year's meant that they got roped in to our little tradition. :) For the past several years as our New Year's tradition, Brad and I create vision boards of our goals for the year by cutting out pictures and words from magazines. We then hang these in our office and look at them often throughout the year to keep us on track for our goals. Kind of cheesy I know, but it's so much fun and definitely helps keep us on track!

Here's the group making our vision boards:



Griffin was entertaining himself and created quite the mess!



We also enjoyed some delicious caramel fondue as a treat before playing some games and watching Dick Clark, Ryan Seacrest and the crazy Kesha lady who they should have never let on camera. :) All in all it was a great New Year's and an even better opportunity to spend time with Brad's family! Thanks everyone for a very enjoyable holiday season!

Dec. 29th - Surgery and a new baby!

On December 29th, Eden had her fundoplication surgery completed and everything went really good! We checked in to the Denver Children's Hospital around 8 that morning and before we knew it we were back in the recovery room with her. Originally we were told to expect to stay two nights in the hospital following the surgery, but the following day we were discharged. We were so grateful to have one less night in the hospital, but so sad that the early departure from the hospital meant we missed the delivery of two beautiful bouquets of flowers that my brother and his sweet wife sent for us. Thanks guys and hopefully they were given to someone else there in the hospital that weren't as fortunate as us to leave!

Eden loves the wagons they have there at the hospital. I would venture to say that this might actually make it all worth it for her. :)


Eden entertained herself with her nebulizer stuff while we were waiting for them to take her back.



Despite our prior warnings, they put an IV in her left hand which was really frustrating to her because even though she could still suck her thumb, all the stuff on her hand and arm really mad her mad. Poor girl.


And here's what it looked like after surgery. Under each of the five bandages is one little disolvable stitch. Amazingly, they were able to put their medical tools through these five holes to complete the surgery so that they didn't have to do one large incision. Pretty fascinating.


While Eden was back in the operating room, the ENT doctor was also there and performed a bronch to see how things were looking in her airway. We were able to sit down with him for quite some time and get some more information about the upcoming airway surgery and what to expect. Basically, it's going to be crazy, but he knows what he is doing and we are anxious to get it over with!

So as of right now, Eden is scheduled for another bronch on Jan. 21st. If everything looks ready at that point then the surgery will go forward on Jan 27th. She will stay a few days in the intensive care unit and then we will stay the remainder of the time in the general pediatric unit. Overall we are looking at a 7-10 day stay after this surgery. (yippee!) At this point her trach will not come out, but this is the major step that will prepare us for that to happen hopefully by the summer. Crazy times in our lives, but we are ready to move forward.


So on to some exciting and fun news:
December 29th was not just a surgery day, but also a wonderful and exciting day because we welcomed a sweet new baby girl into the family.

Welcome Madelyn Rae! We are so excited for Brad's brother Greg, his wife Stephanie, and their boys as they bring this sweet baby girl into the family.


These are Madelyn's sweet brothers making a banner to hang on the wall to welcome her home from the hospital. It turned out very cute.

Little Madelyn is one of the reasons I'm so excited to head back out to Colorado. I can't wait to snuggle this sweet baby girl! Congrats Greg and Steph!

Christmas 2010!

Ahhhh Christmas... what can I say - you didn't disappoint! I absolutely love Christmas and the opportunity it gives us to spend lots of quality time with family. This year we were in Denver so we were able to stay with Brad's brother Greg and his family, and Brad's parents and other brother Jeff were able to be there as well. It was quite the party!

Unfortunately though, as it sometimes happens when you have lots of people in one house, there was a sickness going around and within the couple weeks we were out there we all passed it around to one another. (sharing is caring! :) Fortunately it was just a minor cold, so though we were coughing and congested, it didn't stop us from having a very enjoyable time!

Surprisingly, the weather was actually really beautiful up until just a few days before we left. I thought for sure that going to Denver would mean we would get a white Christmas, but that was definitely not the case! I loved it though - I've never been too fond of the cold.



Eden's cousin Griffin was the absolute best thing that happened to her. She loves him so much and would follow him everywhere he went. He is such a sweetheart to her and is so good about sharing his toys, letting her knock down the tower he had so carefully been building with Jenga blocks, and he would always do silly things just to make her laugh. They were so cute to watch.



Eden loved that Stephanie taped all her Christmas cards to the door. She stood there and looked at these quite a bit, and even though it appears she is pulling them down, she actually did really good at just touching each one.


Jeff - always the life of the party.


Eden colored a picture for Santa -


Jeff absolutely insisted on watching the video baby monitor every time Eden was upstairs sleeping. If I ever tried to move it or take it with me to the other room he would get so mad! Even though it was pretty boring, he was insistent that he watch the monitor every time. It was pretty cute...


We played lots of games throughout our stay there. One I would definitely recommend to any game players out there is called Dominion by Rio Grande Games. It was tons of fun!




Christmas morning the boys were ready to see what Santa brought at around 7 so I had to pull these two out of bed... can you tell?

Eden doesn't look too happy, but trust me, once the action started she perked right up and was really enjoying herself! She didn't really care about the presents too much, but the paper and boxes were tons of fun!


We couldn't pass up the opportunity for the traditional picture on the stairs with her cousins!






Eden loved Griffin's new skateboard and insisted on sitting on it for a long time!


Here's the quilt I made for baby Madelyn who still had not graced us with her presence!


Eden was quite entertained most the morning just climbing around on the presents. She is really into sitting on top of things lately so this was the highlight of her Christmas.




On Brad's side, all the cousins draw names and then they make that specific cousin a Christmas card. I think it's such a cute tradition and loved seeing the creativity from the kids. Here are the cards that Eden's cousin Grant made for her - he was even kind enough to tape about 20 cents on there for her. Cha ching!


Then we finished off the day with a delicious Christmas dinner. It was all so delicious!


I'm so grateful for this time of year that we have to be extra mindful of our Savior's birth and his life and ministry on this earth. Top that with some amazing family and I guess a girl's got everything she could possibly need! :)

The Swallow Study

December 21st Eden completed her 3rd swallow study, and fortunately it was the most successful, and least stressful one yet!

Surprisingly, Eden cooperated nicely and actually ate some of the barium coated food that they gave her which allowed them to watch her swallow through the xray machine. They weren't able to see a ton of swallowing, because she spit several things out, but the results were good and it appears that she isn't aspirating or swallowing her food in a dangerous way.

She has continued to progress pretty nicely with her eating, although in comparison to what a typical 19 month would eat I know we still have a LONG way to go. Working on eating has definitley been one of the hardest struggles we have faced, and though the progress has been extremely slow, there has been progress so it keeps me motivated.

The reality is though that with the airway surgery coming up, it will create BIG changes in her airway and swallowing patterns so I know we are going to have some pretty major setbacks. The doctor also informed us that though she isn't aspirating now, the chances are really high after getting airway surgery so we definitely aren't out of the clear on this one. For now though I just continue to work on it several times a day and we will just face those potential battles as they come.

Emergency Room Visit

Before I even get into the details of this ER story, I must preface it by saying that Brad's parents had arrived at our house from California on the 18th and we were scheduled to caravan together out to Denver on Monday the 20th. Eden had a swallow study scheduled at Denver Children's Hospital on Tuesday the 21st so it was important that we made it out there on the 20th.

So as if all the upcoming Denver stuff wasn't stressful enough, two days before we were scheduled to leave, Eden once again pulled the rug out from under our feet by surprising us with an unexpected twist. Saturday night, Dec. 18th, I woke Brad up around 11:30pm and informed him we needed to take Eden to the emergency room for very similar reasons that took us to the ER earlier in the year. She was having difficulty breathing, and I had her oxygen concentrator machine to the max at 10 liters and she was still not maintaining a safe level of oxygen saturation.

We knew she was going to need some medication, and with our trip coming up on Monday we needed to get her in to be seen righ away so we could get her healthy enough to travel. As can be expected, we were in the ER many hours before they decided to go ahead and admit Eden and we moved to a room in the Ped's unit.

Here's our best guess at what happened. Earlier in the month Eden had been a little sick with a fever and some congestion. Fortunately we were able to keep it under control and it never got too bad. She even got better for a couple days, but then her oxygen requirement just started to get higher and higher again. We assume that with the first sickness, her lungs got some congestion and she wasn't ever able to fully clear it out. As it sat for a couple days, it just got worse and bacteria started to grow as well so by the 18th when we went in to the hospital it was pretty bad. Stinkin' preemie lungs....

They started her on some steroids and antibiotics and we were able to convince them to discharge us Sunday night, dispite the fact that her oxygen requirement was still higher than they were comfortable with. Fortunately for us though, they deemed us capable of caring for her so we were happy to break free of the hospital and return home.

And finally, as planned, we drove out to Denver Monday and continued to pray that her sickness would clear up enough for the swallow study and stomach surgery to go through.

Today she is still requiring more oxygen than normal so we still haven't fully regained health since this hospital visit, but we are definitely on our way that direction!

Lots to update

The last time I posted was Dec. 18th - here's what we've been up to in just a couple short weeks:

- ER trip which resulted in a hospital admission for Eden
- Roadtrip to Denver
- Swallow Study for Eden
- Christmas
- Indoor skydiving
- Birth of our adorable new niece Madelyn
- Fundoplication surgery for Eden
- New Year's
- Eye exam which has resulted in needing a CT scan
- and the date is set for the big reconstructive airway surgery, Jan 27th!

As you can see, I've got lots to blog about and very little time. Stay tuned and I'll keep chipping away at this list, one by one!

Brad turned 30!

Yesterday was Brad's 30th birthday so that obviously meant that Thursday was his last day in his 20s. Since that's a pretty big deal, I told him he needed to do something crazy to say goodbye to the "younger years". I suggested Karokee because if you know Brad, you would know that he surprisingly HATES Karokee so that would definitely be a crazy thing for him to do. Unfortunately he wouldn't even consider that for a moment. So we had to come up with something that he would do.

With the help from a couple friends of mine, we came up with a very mild "crazy" thing to do which involved the snow outside and very little clothing. :) By the end of the night we had convinced Brad to take the trash out to the curb, in 6 inches of snow wearing only underwear - no shirt, no socks or shoes... just some tighty-whities! :)

He's a good sport - and it was definitely crazy and funny! :)

Sorry folks... no pictures for you to feast your eyes on.

So goodbye 20s and hello 30s! Brad considers this a very good thing and is actually somewhat excited to be entering this new stage of life.

It was a big party day in our house yesterday as we celebrated his actual birthday. Brad took the day off work, and we had Eden's home health nurse here to watch Eden for us, so we spent the morning at a spa (one of our favorite things to do!). We hung out in the outdoor hot tub for a while in the morning, which was even more fun than normal because of the snow on the ground. Then we got a scalp treatment, massage, and full body salt scrub. It was all very relaxing and wonderful!

That afternoon Brad relaxed and I worked in the kitchen preparing food for the birthday party. We had family and close friends over for his party and it was all so much fun! We feel so blessed to be surrounded by so many amazing people who love and support us.

It wouldn't really be his birthday if Brad didn't get his favorite chocolate cake!


And every birthday needs at least a few presents....



I love you Brad and hope you had a fabulous birthday!! Here's to another good year with my crazy hubby!