Photo Updates!

I found my camera cord!!! It's so exciting to finally be able to post pictures again and get back to regular blogging. Of course it was hiding in a drawer that I've looked in a thousand times, but I have it now so that's all that matters. Here are some picture collages from the past couple months that I couldn't post until now. Christmas posts will be next! Enjoy!!!

Read a book, give a book!

One of the blogs I read highlighted this great website today. It is called We Give Books and they donate a book to the charity you choose for every book you read online. They have a great selection and Izabel and Tanner have liked looking at the books so far. I definitely recommend you check it out and start reading!

Click here to go to the website

They have tons of great books for you to read

You can zoom in and out on each page and
save the books you like in your library

Since I'm sure we all read a ton of books to our kids I thought this was a great thing to pass on! HAPPY READING!!!

Updates (finally)!

I know it's been a long time since I have posted anything...but I have some good excuses!

1) My mom has been in the hospital for 7 weeks (see next post for explanation if you don't already know) but she is home now and doing VERY well!

2) My job has kept me late at work and out of town a lot so there has been no time to blog!

3) Final exams - enough said!

4) I can't find the cord to download the pictures from my camera and I hate posts with no pictures. I've had three posts waiting to be published, but I didn't have any pictures to put in them :(

Anyway...excuses or not I figured it was time for some updates now that life seems to be getting better and I am sitting at home on a "snow" day (we're still waiting for it to start snowing). Hopefully I will find the camera cord soon and there will probably be a post of nothing but pictures to catch up, but for now I went ahead and published the posts that I've been saving. Make sure you scroll down through the next three or four posts and get caught up! More to come soon - I promise!

A Long 4 (Now 7) Weeks! - UPDATED

Mom was discharged from the hospital on December 10th! She is home with very little assistance needed. She has a nurse stop by to do physical therapy with her and she sleeps downstairs. She cannot really leave the house for anything but doctors appointments, but she is moving around and she got to see the kids! She's getting back to normal very quickly and we couldn't be happier. I've never been so thankful to have a phone conversation or just be able to stop by and visit. I can't explain how thrilled we all are that we can have Christmas with our whole family...because without our mom it just wouldn't be Christmas!

I know I haven't been blogging lately. It's been a rough 4 weeks and I haven't felt like I had anything nice to say...and my mom always said not to say anything at all in those situations! I do have two posts waiting for pictures so hopefully those will show up in the next couple of days (probably under this one)! Those of you that know me already know this story but since it is a part our lives now I figured it should be on the blog!

On October 23rd we went to the ODU football game with my mom and dad. My mom wasn't feeling well but we didn't think anything of it as we all called it a night and headed for bed. Sunday morning my dad called after Noah had left for his golf tournament and I was home alone with the kids. He said he couldn't get my mom to wake up that morning and he was following the ambulance to the hospital. I couldn't breathe. I didn't know what to do and what does any younger sibling do when they don't know what to do - I called my big sister. Of course she panicked too but she didn't let on. She told me to get in the shower and be ready by the time she got here. She brought her husband to stay with the kids and was here to pick me up in no time. We headed up to the hospital and what I saw was not my mother. It was some kind of possessed person going crazy and having to be held down in a hospital bed so doctors could draw blood and start all kinds of IVs and try to figure out what was wrong with her. It took over four hours to get her sedated. Initially they told us she had overdosed on her medications. We didn't buy it.

After many hours of waiting the doctor finally came with some test results. She was extremely dehydrated, in kidney, liver and renal failure and in a lot of pain. She wasn't breathing well on her own so they had to put her on a ventilator and move her to the ICU. Once they got her settled me and Amy went home. Monday morning I headed back up to the hospital to find her completely sedated and getting 100% of her oxygen from a machine. They still had no answers as to why she was there and all we could do was sit around and wait. Any time they would bring down the sedation she would get extremely agitated and have to go back to sleep.

It wasn't until Wednesday that they found the pneumonia. Once this was discovered it all started to make more sense. She didn't overdose, the combination of pain meds, sleep meds and pneumonia all caused a lack of oxygen to her brain and she wasn't getting enough oxygen to wake up. That meant she went for a period of time with a lack of oxygen to her brain and there could be brain damage. They started asking us about the quality of life mom would want and how long she would want to be on the machines. It actually surprised me that I didn't cry more. I mean there were days when I cried so hard I couldn't breathe or see or think, but most days I was going through the motions telling everyone there was no change and secretly knowing this wasn't going to end well.

But I am so very thankful to say that this is going to end well (at least for now because I am still cautious and know there is a lot of recovery to be done). On Wednesday of this week they did the surgery to put in a trache and a feeding tube. This got all of the tubes out of her mouth and face and we were hoping it would help. On Thursday, day 25 at the hospital, I arrived to find mom sitting up and trying to communicate with dad. She actually smiled when I walked in the room and me and dad cried for a whole new reason and I loved crying those tears. She can't talk but she can mouth the words so we are trying very hard to read her lips. She seems to remember everything and answers questions correctly. We are still worried about some brain damage but at least we know my mom is in there. She has a long road to be home and fully recovered. She's going to need rehab and physical therapy but she's strong and she can do it.

We're going to get our mom back and where last week I wanted to skip Thanksgiving all together, now I have so very much to be thankful for! I've spent the last few weeks just wanting to talk to my mom so call your mom today and have a nice chat...you never know when it could be your last chance!

Report Card

I took off work on Thursday so that I could go to Izabel's parent-teacher conference and try to get some errands run and the house back in order since I have been spending every afternoon in the hospital. It ended up being a very productive day and even the kids closets got cleaned out!

The conference was really cute. I was worried that Izabel's behavior had gone downhill because of all the stresses at home, but it is just the opposite. She is doing great and even though she still has some timeouts the number has drastically decreased. Her teacher, Ms. Michelle, made a little report card for each student along with pictures of Izzy in class. The report card had Izzy's hand prints on the front. They asked her for her address which she could tell them and her phone number which she could not.

Izzy was Princess for a day on her birthday!

For gross motor skills she has mastered running, hopping and the balance beam. She hasn't really gotten skipping yet but that is a tough one! For fine motor skills she is right handed :( and has mastered cutting, pasting, and writing straight and diagonal lines. Her speech was measured a few weeks ago and that is all age-appropriate.

For social development she got some of the time for cooperates with teachers and shares equipment with peers which of course we expected. She got most of the time for responds positively to correction (an improvement), follows simple directions and participates in group activities.

For academic development she is doing really well. She recognizes every color, shape and upper case letter on the list. She also identified quite a few lower case letters, numbers, and consonant sounds. She can identify and continue patterns with shapes, colors, and sizes and can understand every preposition except for below and beside. She can complete 2 scene sequences and some rhyming words and has good listening skills.

When asked who her favorite friends were she named off everyone in the class. On a fun note, every other kid in the class named Izabel when they were asked that question! Her favorite activites were playdough and playing with dolls. It makes her happy when she is the time keeper and line leader. When she grows up she wants to be a cow and we are going to make so much fun of her for this when she gets older! She likes to go on the farm and on hayrides with her family.

Her teachers said "Izabel is a very happy and friendly child. She is always happy to be at school and has many friends. Izabel enjoys doing individual work and being a helper in class. She has made significant progress with sharing and listening. Izabel is a joy to have in class!" Of course this is all great to hear and the school has been amazingly helpful and understanding with our present circumstances. We are very happy that Izabel is able to go to school here and we are so proud of her!!

Halloween Festivities!

Halloween this year was a crazy time since my mom was not around for the festivities. We tried our best to celebrate anyway because we didn't want the kids to miss out. We started on Friday of Halloween weekend with Izabel's pumpkin patch parade and party at school. My Dad and Aunts went to watch but Noah and I had to work. my Dad video taped it with the camcorder instead of the camera so if I can figure out how to get that up here I will. That night we took a trip to the aquarium for their Halloween event. Candace, Matt and Drew came with us and even though Noah and I were way to exhausted we ended up having a great time! They had lots of activities along with mascots, radio disney, and a puppet show. The kids had a blast and everyone commented on Captain Hook's cute costume!

On Saturday I took the kids to Trevor's house for a Halloween party. She did a great job planning the party and we had a blast hanging out with some of Izzy and Tanner's little friends. They had snacks, a craft, spooky bowling and lots of fun! That evening me and the kids hung out at home while Noah took my Dad to a hockey game. it was a great distraction for both of them.

Halloween was the first time either of my kids had every really trick-or-treated. We have always done the event at the church, but they didn't have it this year so we just went around the neighborhood. Izabel had been practicing saying "trick-or-treat" all week and she knew exactly what to do. Tanner really didn't know what was going on but it only took him a couple houses to figure it out! Once they knew we could go to any houses with a light on they wouldn't let us skip a single one. We were ready to call it a night long before they were. I'm a bad mommy for not getting a picture of all the candy but we had a blast and got way more candy than we needed (don't worry Mom we are saving some of your favorites for you!)

I'm glad the kids were able to have a good time even though life has been hard. We're trying to keep their lives as normal as possible but of course that isn't easy. I hope everyone else had an awesome Halloween in whatever way you decided to celebrate!

P.S. Sorry for all the crappy pictures...I can't find my camera cord so I only have the ones from my phone :(

No Timeouts Today (Yesterday)!

Izabel has been struggling with learning how to share and remember the rules at school. This is a new environment for her and she has never been in a structured setting with other kids. Her teacher has been very patient and has tried a lot of different techniques to help Izabel improve and she has improved a lot in the past couple weeks. Yesterday she came home with a big note on her book bag saying that she had no timeouts! This is a difficult time for all of us right now so we're celebrating whatever we can! Yay Izabel, we're so proud of you!!!