Leprechaun Visit

St. Patrick's was celebrated for two days at our home. We had our corned beef and cabbage meal on Monday and delivered cookies to a neighbor and then LEM the Leprechaun came to visit on the morning of St. Patties (Tuesday). Kayden setup 3 traps for him and nearly caught him with plastic wrap, but he managed to get away and left his footprints through the flour that he split. Could've used that pot-o-gold, but we'll try again next year!

Here's our cookies that Chad made the yummy dough for and then I made the spiral designs. We have to admit that the end result was pretty fantastic and gone quickly.

Lem's footprints through the flour.

Kayden doesn't look like he's in too much of a hurry to clean up after the Leprechaun, but just enjoying the chocolate 'gold' that was left behind.

Family Room... check!! (whew!)

Our family room has been completed for some time now, but I've finally got all the pictures together to show off our work. This was a many, many, many step process, but we are very happy with the results and very happy that it is all done!

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Here's what the family room looked like when we were touring the house before buying it. The wood panelling had pictures of pheasants and deer etched into it. Some may like this, but this was not for us.

We took off the wood (messy, but the boys had fun) and discovered this beautiful green-striped wallpaper underneath.

After many a hour steaming off the 70's wallpaper, our walls were finally white, but the wall was damaged from it being on there for 30 years. The drywall paper had ripped of in strips.

The first attempt of trimming the ripped up drywall paper, plastering and then priming and painting ended with a bubbling wall. Not so beautiful. We sanded and started again by purchasing a special sealer and putting that on all of the rips. That sealed the paper so it wouldn't be effected by the water-based paint.

Because the wall was so badly damaged, we decided to add texture to it, so all of the imperfections wouldn't stand out nearly as bad. We sponged on the texture little by little.

Our plan was to put on wainscotting around the bottom of the wall, so we taped off where it would go and painted above it.
Here's what our furniture looked like for a few weeks. The plastic saw so much dust from sanding and also plaster and paint that we were grateful for the cover!

Kayden and Boston always insisted helping when painting time came around.

I didn't get any pictures of the MULTIPLE pieces of wainscotting that are put together to make the beautiful end result (it is NOT all one piece) or how it looked before we puttied the nails and painted the wainscotting, but here is the FINISHED RESULT.

It is a movie-themed room, thanks to Chad's work at a major movie studio for four years, my grandparents old camcorders and equipment and Chad's love of film.

Birthday, Visits, Love and More Snow

FIRST BIRTHDAY

McCoy's big 1st birthday was a lot of fun. He hadn't completely emerged from the constant rounds of sickness, but was still a good sport. He has since been healthy for the past week and is happy and emptying all drawers, cupboards and shelves. Come to think of it, we've all had a healthy week! Needed the break! Here's our cute pics of McCoy's birthday.

VISITS

This past week we said our goodbyes and good lucks to Chad's brother, Brendon as he goes on a mission for 2 years to Missouri.


Chad's parents came to drop Brendon off at the Missionary Training Center and we had many a party and get-together. All of Chad's brothers were here for the first weekend and I have to admit there was way more wrestling and boy-bander than normally goes on in my boy home, but was fun! The girls went to our soon-to-be sis-in-law's bridal shower. We played games and watched a movie and McCoy managed to pass along his throw-up illness to half of them - had to share. No sleep, but a lot of fun!

These pics are from the Nickelcade after said our farewells to Brendon.

McCoy with his cousin Mikkelle.

Kayden with his Grandpa Hutchings.

VALENTINES

We got lucky this year and had free babysitters (gma and gpa even!!) and Chad and I went to lunch on Valentine's Day and then spent the evening with family and truly had a fun time at dinner, opening the notes in our jars that we filled throughout the week, making chocolate dipped pretzels and marshmallows and drinking sparkling cider.

Here's the jars we decorated for others to put nice things in during the week.

(Beth, Boston, McCoy, Kayden-spider web that caught bugs, Chad)

MORE SNOW
So at least for today, I decided to embrace the additional 6 inches that we got and spent a few hours with the boys in the morning and then in the afternoon out in it. I loved it and it was so much fun. It was super wet snow so we built a slide, a snowman, and here's our snow fort. It looks like there's not much snow around us, but we basically collected it all making this thing.

Dinosaurs Live

Our present to Kayden this year on his birthday was tickets to Walking with Dinosaurs Live. He went with his daddy and said it was the best present ever. Here are a couple pictures and video from the event he wanted to share with everyone.

More Medical Adventures

McCoy and Kayden have the same hereditary disorder - spherocytosis. Their red blood cells are shaped differently than normal so the spleen kills them and they last only 15 days, compared to the normal person's cells lasting 100 days. Normally, they are able to make more cells than the spleen kills off and have no health issues, but when they get sick, they make a bit less cells and can get kind of weak.

Well, New Year's Eve we spent in the hosiptal getting Kayden a transfusion, because his level had dropped far too low and he couldn't even walk or sit up. Earlier this week, McCoy started doing the same thing. No real symptoms of illness, but super week and would lay on the floor and zone out or fall asleep. So, I took him to the dr and they did all the normal checks and didn't see anything so ran a blood test and his level was lower than Kayden's was.

(Wow, he was really pale!!)

Luckily, between the two incidents, we had been to a hemotoligist (blood specialist) and met him for a regular appointment. So instead of going to ER, I still went to Primary Children's, but just went straight to his office after the pediatrician called in the info. McCoy ended up getting a transfusion as well, hates nurses and doctors with a passion and we were home by 8:45pm. By morning, his color was back, his smile was back and he most of his energy was back.

Come to find out, they both caught the Pavlo virus. The symptoms are usually so mild that you may not notice them. If the virus gets into your bones, you can stop making red blood cells, but only for about 2-4 days. In a normal person where their spleen isn't killing them and the cells have a longer lifespan, this would not be a problem and probably not noticable. For these little boys, it puts them out!

Tomorrow is McCoy's 1st birthday and he is healthy, moving and eating again and I'm sure ready to dig into some cake!

Kayden's Birthday Bash

Kayden is 6. We had a fun birthday where he got his favorite breakfast (Krispie Kreme), took lollipops to all the kids in class, got lots of mommy attention and had a fun family party in the evening.

He also had a friend party on the weekend following that was a blast. He invited over 11 kids total for lunch and games. Of course it was a prehistoric party, even though he did think a few other ideas sounded fun, he wanted to do dinosaurs again. We decorated our basement with all of his dino toys and his 10,000 BC movie posters and had some fun.

A dinosaur theme, but he specifically requested a Crystal Skull cake - the one from Indiana Jones.

New Years Eve with a View

Every New Years Eve we have our own little family party and eat lots of yummy food and stay up late watching movies and doing a puzzle. This year was a bit different.

On Saturday night, Kayden started having a fever and just getting a little lazy. Sunday morning he was fine and we went to church, but he was just moving a bit slow. When we got home, he layed on the couch most of the day, but did get up to wander around. Monday, we kept giving him Motrin to bring down the fever and he was just complaining the whole day and didn't want to go anywhere or do anything. That evening Boston had 3 Jazz tickets and really wanted Kayden to go. He finally did go and had a good time, but when it was over asked his daddy to carry him to the car, because he was still feeling kind of sick. Tuesday, he was in bed or on the couch the ENTIRE day. He would crawl to get things or go to the bathroom and if he did stand up, he would soon collapse on the floor saying his legs were really wabbly. Wednesday (New Years Eve) he woke up with the fever still. I found him laying on the bathroom floor because he was trying to go to the bathroom and had to lay down really quick and then didn't move. He was so white, with black circles around his eyes and didn't want to eat anything or talk much.

I called the doctor and they said to bring him in before noon, because they were closing with the holiday. We made it there and they took temp and vitals and couldn't find anything. When I explained that he had Spherocytosis (his red blood cells are shaped different and his spleen kills them off - he can usually make more than it kills unless his body is trying to fight something else) they decided to do a finger prick and take his blood levels. When the results came back, the doctor came rushing in and saying they were going to call an ambulance to take him to Primary Children's in case he passed out on the way. I know that people with this disease (me and my mom and sis) do have lower than normal blood levels and he was still able to respond to my questions, so I convinced them to let me drive him. We made it with me pushing Kayden and McCoy into the hospital in the double stroller and Boston walking. The doctor had called ahead and they already had an ER room for us.

Then they came to poke Kayden's finger again for their own test and the nervous breakdown began. He was so scared. They took that, then got an IV in him and kept taking his vitals constantly. Meanwhile, a helper had been sent in to talk him through the whole process and he wouldn't listen to her, so she entertained the little ones and I tried to calm him down. We managed to find a movie he liked and he finally calmed down. After they got the results, they told us that they'd be moving him to the Hemotology/Oncology (cancer and blood disorders) floor to give him a blood transfusion. For medical people, his hematacrit (sp) was at 14 and hemoglobin at 5. While all the papers were processed and room prepared, Chad showed up and was able to calm us all down and promised if Kayden was good he would get a Bionicle toy.

At about 5pm, we were in our room on the 4th floor. Kayden was so weak still, but was excited to have his own room and it was so nice. We had a view of downtown and Kayden was finally ok that he was going to celebrate New Years in the hospital. The doctor came to talk to us and Kayden loved him! He knew the disorder and said that this illness just attacked him like others hadn't and he needed 2 new bags of blood. Shortly thereafter, the blood was started and it was dripped into him over an 8 hour period.

We did get to watch the fireworks in downtown Salt Lake from our window and we tried to sleep, but they had to monitor him every 15 minutes while he was getting a transfusion, so that was a little difficult. By morning, we had managed to get a little rest and he was still weak, but able to walk again and they sent us home. We walked out of the hospital with Kayden finally talking and walking again and telling everyone he passed that he had new blood. We made it to the car and on the way home he was finally talking normal again. He asked me, "How old do you think the earth is?" and I knew that my Kayden was back!

He is a trooper and is back to normal now and ready to go back to school on Monday. We are now setup with a specialist here in Utah for he and McCoy and just the instructions to look for the same signs during another illness. If it continues to get more frequent, then we'll start talking of removing his spleen, but until then, we're instructed to life back as normal with specialist visits every 6 months.