A long overdue update

These are the kids' Easter baskets. Obviously, Bryce's was Cars and Audrey's was Princesses.

Bryce after eating the red Cars marshmallow pop.... and this is was just half way through it.

Audrey in her pretty Easter dress at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Bryce in his Easter outfit. He absolutely REFUSED to put a tie on...it's too bad because he looks really cute with it on! And yes, this is his devilish grin.

Bryce was way too enthralled with the toy camera he was playing with.

Another shot of him at Grandma and Grandpa's.

Our family picture, Easter 2009. Definitely not the greatest - neither child wanted to cooperate.

My mom and I took the kids to Cabela's one day to get them out of the house so Gene could sleep. Cabela's was actually really cool, and the kids loved seeing the animals.

Bryce decided one day that he wanted to wear Audrey's play shoes.... I think he's got the legs for it!

Audrey decided the other day that it would be fun to lay in the middle of the train going around the tracks....too bad it got caught in her hair! She didn't like that part quite as much!

I just really liked this shot of Bryce.

Okay, sorry, I forgot to rotate the picture before I uploaded it. Just tilt your head to the right and it will look fine. :-)

We decided to take the kids to Jungle Jim's one day. Their favorite ride was the merry-go-round.



One night Bryce refused to take his hat off to go to bed.... I just thought it was kind of funny.

Things have been okay for us. Once again, Gene's hours have been cut back at work. We're back down to part time. If we would have known it was going to be like this, we would have just stayed on unemployment. Heaven knows we would be making more than what we are now. And what's made it worse is that the extra hours he was picking up through staffing agencies have all dried up too. So it's been very difficult for us financially. We met with our Bishop, and after adding up most of our expenses (not all of them) and our income before taxes he figured out that we weren't making enough. And that wasn't including food, gas, clothing and other miscellaneous expenses. Trust me - we certainly are not living the high life. We're desperately hoping that things turn around SOON. It's getting harder and harder on me and the kids to not have him home on the weekends, and I'm tired to being a single parent all weekend.

Audrey seems to be doing okay. I think we are entering a quiet period. At least I hope we are. She had her last infusion on May 2, and then we don't have to go back until the end of June. We see her doctors on June 16, so I hope things will go well. She's getting excited to be going to first grade next year. I can hardly believe she's old enough to do that! When she does something really mature, I'll turn around and ask her, "Audrey, when did you grow up?" And she'll turn to me and say "May 21," and then grin.

Bryce is doing well. We had his IEP meeting last Friday, and the school district wants to mainstream him in kindergarten with support, which I am fighting. His OT at school said that he's at about a 3 year old level in his fine motor skills, which is no where near where he needs to be for school. I think that will be my best argument at keeping him on special ed and then also mainstreaming him. He needs the extra help in some areas, but in other areas he's doing really well. I'm still waiting to hear back from the placement coordinators at the school district on that. It's funny - everybody I've talked to outside of the school district feels that mainstreaming him even with support is setting him up to fail. But I did speak to the principal at Audrey's school, and she agrees with my plan for mainstream in the morning and special ed in the afternoon to try and work on some of the skills that he is lacking. So we'll see how that goes. We did find out we got approved for disability medicaid for him, so hopefully that will help to pick up some of the co-pays.

I've had it okay. I cracked a tooth and need a crown, so I have to be very careful until I can have that done in July when flex spending kicks in again. I can't afford $400 to have it done before then. I did finally receive my Lifetime award at Weight Watchers the end of March, and it was really neat. The kids and Gene came, and it was just a really neat experience. I'm so glad that I was finally able to make it to that award. Sometimes it felt so far away!

Who knew hives could be so LARGE????

Last night as we were getting the kids ready for bath, this is what we saw on Bryce:

Yes folks, those are HIVES. I have never seen them so large. He had the huge one on his side, some on his legs, some on his arms, down by his ankes....it was to bad. We had no idea what had happened. I called Gene in to look at them. Took pictures and sent them to my friend Marie, my friend Shelley and my mom. Called the babysitter to see if she had seen anything unusual...mom calls me back and says you need to get him to the doctor NOW. Of course, Audrey was already in the tub with wet hair, so we had to hurry and do a quicky bath. Didn't even bother to comb her hair before rushing out the door to Urgent Care. The one we usually go to was closed, so we went to one by my mom's house. Mom met us there and took Audrey to her house and got her hair detangled and kept her occupied for a few minutes. The doctor comes in, takes one look at my son's poor body and says "Well, that's a lovely case of hives. What has he eaten?" By this time they had spread to almost the whole backside of his legs, and were pretty much covering his entire body. He looked miserable. We're not entirely sure what it is that he's allergic too. He didn't eat anything strange at the sitter's house, and hadn't eaten dinner with us. We're thinking he ate something at school, but we're not sure. At the doctor's office, he got a shot of Benadryl, some prednisone, and a dose of Zyrtec. I'm glad Benadryl works fast because most of the hives went away pretty quickly. She said we really need to find out what it is that he's allergic too because next time it could be worse. Things looked better this morning, but we still had this on his arms:

There was still one more on his backside, and one down by his ankle. My poor bubbaboy!

Some Good News to Post!!

I finally have some good news to post. I don't think I've done that in a while. Audrey has been blinking a lot since her surgery, and since I'm terrified of her eyes flaring and us not catching it, she had an eye doc appointment yesterday. He said that the excessive blinking is because she still has sutures in her eyes from the surgery. He also said that her eyes look great - no sign on inflammation! And since they have been quiet for a little while now, he also said we can cut back on the Remicade infusions to once every 8 weeks! When we were there on Saturday, her rheumy happened to be on call, so he stopped by to see us. He said that she looks great. I'm so hoping to hear the words "medicated remission" on Tuesday when we see him for her official appointment.

We had Bryce's parent-teacher conference last night. He's doing so well! His teacher's assistant says he is just progressing really well. There are a lot of areas that we still need to work on, but he's doing really well. Some of his areas that they tested on jumped a whole bunch, others just a bit, but for most areas there was improvement. Some of his test scores were actually above what they were aiming for! We were so excited. His teachers just love him, and so I feel really good about that. At least until his next temper tantrum.... :-)

Gene's work has finally picked up. Last week he actually had overtime, and so we figured that his hours would be cut this week. Much to our surprise, he's staying at full-time! Wahoo! Maybe this is the sign of things to come. I certainly hope so. Rumor has it they might be getting a bunch of vent patients, so maybe they'll finally make good on their promise to move him into a RT position. We don't think so, though - they've hired several additional RT's and bypassed him completely every time, so we're not real hopeful about that.

So finally some good news!

Me!

I went shopping over the weekend. I haven't been shopping for me in a long time. Part of it was that funk I was in over my weight loss. (By the way I was down 2 pounds this week. I think my new total is 112.6 pounds thrown away.) So we went to Old Navy. I have always wanted to shop there, because the clothes just seem so cool. I found things that fit, but unfortunately the pants hit at my widest area - my hips. I'm not comfortable with pants that low. I prefer them up higher. I know, I know, it's just me and I'm not in fashion. I don't care - I'm also modest and don't feel comfortable showing my underwear every time I bend over. So my mom and I went to Wallyworld. Much to my surprise, I got in a pair of size 12 pants! I was so excited. I don't ever remember being in a size 12. I found a really cool top that was on clearance as well. I made the mistake of letting my son choose the color- of course, he chose red. But I guess a red shirt and black pants look good together. And he was very definite about the color red - it couldn't be this cool teal or purple - it had to be red. Oh well. That's what I get for letting him choose.

So here is me in my new outfit.....

Audrey is finally getting over croup. She's starting to sound better, but she still has snot attacks and the croupy productive cough. We have her Remicaid infusion on Saturday, so another fun day up at PCMC.

Another ER visit

Yesterday my sister called me and needed me to pick up her son from day care. Turns out her older son broke his wrist in 2 places and needed to go to Primary's to get it set. Sure, not a problem. So I go pick the kids up (and do manage to get all 3 of them in my little car all buckled in) and I immediately notice that I don't like the way Audrey's breathing sounds. So we went home, got Gene, and grabbed a bit to eat. We went to Urgent Care, and her oxygen sats were at 90%. So we go flying up to Primary's, traded Bryce and Jordan back to my mom and Jenny who were already up there with Tyler, and waited our turn. Turns out she has croup. They gave her some decadron and some Tylenol to bring the fever down, and she started feeling better after those hit.

Dang, I hate having an immune suppressed child! Gene's home with her today trying to sleep while she watches some TV until I get home. Gene's work hours have been cut again - we're only getting 24 hours a week. We're both so frustrated it's not even funny.

Pictures

Okay, here are the pictures I promised. Had a bit of trouble uploading them, so that's why they are out of order. Bryce is 4 1/2 and Audrey is 5 1/2, anxiously looking forward to being 6. As a matter of fact, she doesn't tell people she's "just" 5 - she's almost 6. It makes me laugh. The other day she was playing with her Little Einstein's piano - it's one of her favorite toys. It has a little quiz type thing on it that she loves to do. She answered the question correctly, and Leo answers "You're right!" I next heard this - "Of course I am." It just made me laugh.

Weigh in and life update

Today's weigh in was actually pretty good. I was down .8, so I'm pleased with that. I have to admit that taking the stress of reaching goal off has been wonderful. I'm still totally sticking with plan, but I'm not stressing if I don't lose 3 pounds in a week. As long as I go down something, I'm okay with it.

Today we went to the Draper Temple open house again. Gene went this time, because he was anxious to see it even though he worked last night. On a good note, he did have a job interview this week with a home health care agency that would bring his pay back up to what we were making last year. The lady he interviewed with was reading his letters of reference and she kept saying "very impressive" and then she'd read the next one, and said "very impressive". She said that with all the letters. Gene felt it went really well, and so we are VERY hopeful that he gets this one. The nursing home has cut hours again. I think what's making us the most angry is that we can never count on the number of hours he's getting. One week it's up, the next it's back down. How can you budget when you don't know how many hours you will be working? We're beyond frustrated with the whole situation.

The kids are doing fairly well. Last night we went to University of Utah gymnastics, and for once Bryce was VERY well behaved. But then again, we also kept him eating and occupied the entire time. So I'm not sure if that's the solution all the time or not. It worked last night, so who am I to question? Audrey lost another tooth - I'll post a picture later. She lost one of her top center teeth, so I have to admit that she looks kinda funny. But in a good way.