Christmas in June (aka a White Christmas)

You know, we kind of feel sorry for the rest of you -- celebrating Christmas only once a year...

Ha, ha, ha.... silly people!

In our family, we celebrate Christmas multiple times a year (and have for as long as I can remember). It's not that 'keep Christmas in your heart all year' kind of mushy mush, but that good old-fashioned get the family together and celebrate some good commercial fun!!

We received a HUGE box of goodies from Grandpa Steve and Grandma Rosy about a week ago. Luckily, Shawn hadn't played with or eaten everything before we were able to pass around all of the good stuff. We excitedly opened our goodies after work that night - had a great time playing with everything -- thanks Dad and Rosy!!!

Then we took the balance of the treasures over to Aunt Jeni and Uncle Brenden's to pass out and participate in their Christmas festivities. Sure the tree and lights are all put away - but we make up for it with all the excitement.

As you can see, it was a great hit. It could only have been improved with Dad and Rosy present.

This is Matthew's gigantic diamond. He says 'he'll hold on to it until he needs to liquidate if the family needs money' ... I'm not making this up!

See how relieved Jeni and Brenden look ...

The kids opened up their photo albums first without knowing they ALL had cameras waiting for them in the box. Woo Hoo!

Sorry for the sideways angle... still learning camera

Summer is made for days in the pool

Like most folks this past holiday weekend, we spent it with friends and family. We headed over to Grandma Jacquie's and Grandpa Keith's for a little 'nosh', swim time, and belated birthday celebration for grandma.



Cole got a new swim suit / outfit (after having outgrown his from last season). This is actually his third swimming season. We got to enjoy a few weeks soon after he came home with us and then spent some time last year in Grandma & Grandpa's pool as well as the pools up at Sun Valley. We also picked up this slick life preserver for him. Actually we got two - one for out at Grandma's/Grandpa's pool and one for the sailboat. It's, as you can see, got this cool flap on the back, to keep his head out of the water. Although he is limited with having a short span between his head and shoulders (the kiddo has a short neck :0 ) so the preserver is really good at snugging up right under his chin. It's not unlike the look when he's wearing a shirt with a collar.



Cole and Shawn had a great time in the pool. He's lost a lot of his cute baby fat - he used to float on top of the water - but he's still managed to float pretty well with what's left. He tends to like to soak it all in, the experience that is. So he's not doing a lot of kicking and splashing on his own. And when we start doing it with him, he tends to stiffen up, but still smiling.



Although just like out of the water, he loves to spin in the water. That was the biggest hit and elicted the biggest smiles and giggles.






The tricky part was slowing down Shawn to snap the pictures with our regular point and shoot camera! He did great and when the bigs kids were ready to play a little harder, Cole headed out of the pool for some snuggle time with Grandma Jacquie.



The big kids (and by big, I'm including the uncles here) had a great time with this cool floating device Uncle Jim and Aunt Kris brought (they find the best toys). Nearly everyone got into the act, thanks to Uncle Chris would got the party going.



Again, I'm limited by the point and shoot camera we have, so the pictures are a little hard in some cases to tell who's in the air, on the toy, or in the pool - but trust me they all had a great time. And I'll bet wore themselves out good! I was tired just watching them.

Move your mouse over the pictures to pause the slide show

We missed you if you weren't here and hope we'll get to see you really soon! Hope you had as much fun as we all did.



If you looked like this on the ride home, you can trust you had a good time!

So What Do You Do For Mother's Day ?

We had quite a busy Mother's Day Weekend...

It started out very innocently. We spent part of the morning with Tami, Jay, and Shaylee at our usual breakfast spot.

We had a nice time, as usual, getting updated on Cole's latest activities along with the coming and goings in our lives. Do we have lives except Cole's? I think not -- he's much more fun.


We had made plans to have an early dinner with Shawn's family and celebrate Mother's day with Grandma Jacquie at the Mandarin in Bountiful (yummy).

It's an interesting place that's been around for some 30+ years with a wide variety of menu items, courtesy of this Greek-American family. It has 99% of the traditional dishes you'd expect, with a few special dishes and desserts which continue to draw in crowds for as long as we can remember. In fact, I think it's safe to say it's almost always packed -- I mean, really packed. They don't normally take reservations unless you have about 20-30 people (ok maybe slightly less, but only slightly). Other nights we've beaten the system with moderate large groups by showing up when the doors opened at 5:00. Normally it works great. Except, apparently on Saturdays they open at 4:30. DUH!!
Do you know how hard it is for 12 people to get a table 30 min after a place like that opens (after all of the other people made reservations) - it's actually not so hard, unless you consider sitting in their lobby for 1 hour and 40 min hard... We had LOTS of time to visit and take pictures.

Don't we look happy

Almost as happy as Jared (luckily Jordan was saved with his iPhone - whew)

And Aunt Angie, she's having a scream of a good time

At least Uncle Chris and Tanner seem to be entertaining themselves



Luckily Grandma Jacquie brought cameras so she could document the very long wait. We neglected to take a picture of the big stadium style wave we did when they FINALLY called our name... seriously, it was a big hit - by all who witnessed it.

Things were going swimingly, we sat down started ordering food. I barely remember. We got Cole hooked up with his food. Why should he wait? He was finishing up about the time they brought our entrees when he started to struggle clearing some saliva (from teething) in his throat. A little history here, Cole had some botox injections about a week earlier meant to relax some of the muscles in his neck (and ankles and wrists). Apparently, the relaxed muscles contributed to problems clearing his throat. He began to struggle so we were getting him unhooked from his food to see if we could help him. He proceeded to throw up some of his milk. Only, not being able to clear his throat, he began to aspirate on his food. Once we could see we couldn't get it clear quickly, we left the family with our food (and the check -- thanks Family for covering the check and boxing up the food!) and rushed him to instacare about a block away. He was struggling, turning dusky in color and even some blue around his mouth and across the bridge of his nose.

Luckily the nursed were ahead of the receptionists at instacare (they weren't rushing nearly fast enough for us) and once they saw Cole (his color, his developmental delays) they called a 911 and ordered an ambulance. Luckily they were able to get him suctioned (4 times) and cleared really well. But because of the unknown quantity of liquid in his lungs, we got to take an ambulance ride. Well I did with Shawn driving behind. I'd just as soon make that a very infrequent occasion. The medical team in the ambulance and at the instacare was terrific and quite calming amidst all of the chaos -- it's like they're trained for that.

We got right into the Emergency Department (it's the fastest we've ever made it back to the room with Doctors / Nurses). They immediately began treating Cole, opening up his airway, checking oxygen levels, xrays, etc.) -Good news, they discovered rather than collecting a large quantity of liquid in his lungs, he had visible splatters (most likely stomach acid). Not such good news, they wanted to keep him at least overnight and likely for a few days to monitor in the case of pneumonia. Oh, and at 12:06 am the resident came in to take another blood sample, oh and wish me a happy mother's day :-). Although as fast as it went, we ended up spending 6 hours (~8:00 to 2:30) in the Emergency room and then spent another two hours roughly getting admitted and set up with IV.





We were in for a few extra days. It appears the relaxation has also caused / resulted in some apnea, where, especially during the night, his breathing (blood oxygen levels) drops to pretty scary levels. Normally, he's about 99%, buzzers go off if he drops below 85%. At night his dropped to 60-65%. So we're back on oxygen at night -- we hope temporarily. But at least we know we have the right equipment at home, including a suction device (much bigger than the standard blue bulb sucker-thingy). We had a sleep study done the last night which will hopefully shed some more light on what's going on so we're better able to begin working with / treating it.

Trust me - he was not as happy and content as he might appear in these photos all hooked up. Clearly, this is his, 'you've got to be kidding' face. But as usual, he was a little trooper and kept it all on all night - thank goodness for the reduced muscle tone. We'll keep you posted on results and the next adventure. Here's hoping your Mother's day was a little less exciting.