Kenzie started kindergarten this year. So far she’s loving school! Her favorite things are reading and all the new friends she’s made. Her first day she was so excited she was ready to go an hour early and kept insisting we leave so she wouldn’t be late. Kenzie’s teacher is Ms. Kanz. She really nice and does a lot of art projects which is great for Kenzie. She’s also 8 months pregnant. She ended up having her baby the day after Labor Day a month early. So Kenzie has had a sub since, but it’s one of our neighbors so that’s been good. Ms. Kanz was able to return to work right before Thanksgiving, and Kenzie had loved having her back.
Ashley and I took her to school and walked her to her class so we could see it. I don’t think Ashley understood Kenzie was staying until we walked away. Ashley spent the rest of the day crying because she missed her sister. It took a few days, but Ashley finally figured out that she could play with the toys when Kenzie was gone by herself without having to share. Ashley also discovered that she loves cooking with me. She begs to make cookies or bread almost everyday.

The Zoo

We decided to get a pass to the Hogle zoo this year since we’re now so close. We’ve been a couple time since. Here’s some of my favorite pictures.

Kenzie's 5!

This year for Kenzie’s birthday we decided to just have family over to celebrate. I say just, but that still was a lot of people. Our niece Marion had just had her baby the week before so our niece Jennifer brought Marion’s girls Gracie and Carlie over with her 3 kids, Izaak, Bryson, and Morgan. My cousin Shelley also came with her 2 boys Kasen and Aiden. My mom’s cousin Heidi came with her son Noah. Blake's sister Marta also came with her husband Barry and son Bryan. It was a full house but a lot of fun. Being July we thought it would be fun for the kids to play in the pool in our yard, but being in Utah with the unpredictable weather the wind was blowing and the kids got cold as soon as they got wet. So we dried them all off and sent them to the playroom to play. Kenzie had requested homemade pizza and snicker salad (yes it’s a salad with candy in it, we justify it by adding fruit, thanks Marion and Jennifer for the recipe!) for her birthday so I had spent the day making up 4 pizza that I could just throw in the oven for dinner, but thanks to an accident somewhere, we ended up being without power when I needed to put the pizza in. Blake and our nephew Dave went into Tooele and got $5 pizza from Little Ceasars. Not quite home made but still good when you have a house full of starving kids. So over all, not quite the day I had planned, but it was still a great day. Kenzie loved playing with her cousins, and I had a great time visiting with my cousins and nieces.
That weekend we were also able to celebrate Kenzie and my mom’s birthdays. My parents came down and we tried to surprise my mom with a visit from my brother, but she figured it out before he arrived. Thomas brought his girlfriend Sam. It was the first time I was able to meet her. She’s so sweet, we all fell in love with her right away. She spent the better part of an hour Saturday helping the girls make a rock garden in the back yard. It meant so much to them! Hopefully someday we can call her part of our family. My dad took everyone out to Benni Hanna’s for dinner. It’s this really good grill where you get to watch them cook your food right in front of you. The girls loved it and were so good even though it wasn’t geared toward kids. We also found out that Ashley LOVES shrimp. She ate all her own and Blake’s and kept begging everyone else for theirs. It was so good to have the whole family together again! That doesn’t happen very often since we moved to Utah and Thomas moved to Boise.
It’s hard for me to believe Kenzie’s 5 already! It seems like such a short time ago we were struggling to bring her home from the hospital. Now she’s all grown up at 5 going on 16. She’s an amazing girl! She such a great big sister to Ashley and so smart. She loves learning and then trying to teach Ashley what she just learned. She has such a tender heart which serves her well, but also causes a broken heart often when someone says something mean. She understands some things at the age of 5 that I as an adult still don’t completely grasp. Her concept of death has over whelmed me from the time she was 2 and my grandpa died. She’s dealt with my grandpa’s death, Blake’s dad’s death, and the death of a friend of Ashley’s without ever shedding a tear over the loss. She has always been the one to comfort others through the loss and remind everyone that they are in a better place and it’s just their body we’re saying goodbye to. When she was 2 and my grandpa died we went to the hospital right before to say goodbye and be with my grandma. We all had tears in our eyes which Kenzie didn’t understand she walked up to the hospital bed, and held my grandpa’s hand and told him, “Great grandpa it’s Ok, just close your eyes and when you wake up you’ll be with Jesus.” She’s never faltered from this belief.

Happy Birthday Princess! I love yo so much! Thank you for letting me be your mom!

Moving

Well, I guess now that we've been in our house for 2 months, it's about time I started posting again. I kept telling myself after I unpack I'll get back into posting, but my garage is still half full of unpacked boxes (most of which need to be stored ie. Christmas stuff, baby stuff, etc.).

Our move was quite the adventure. Blake and I were alone loading the truck most of the day. We had quite a few neighbors around, but they just stood around and watched and talked to us. We finally took a break for lunch at about 1 because the girls were starving and getting cranky because of that. I took the girls to pick up Arby's while Blake kept loading. When we got back, Blake was eating a french dip sandwich when Ashley spilled his au juice and Blake tried to stop her, but unfortunately had a huge mouth full of sandwich at the time and inhaled it. Luckily he swallowed when he inhaled, but unluckily, the food hadn't been chewed too well and lodged in his esophagus just below his wind pipe. He spent the next hour trying to throw up or swallow the lump but wasn't able to, so finally I ended up taking him to Insta Care (because we couldn't find the ER) where they checked him out and then gave us directions to the ER (the ER entrance is 2 blocks away from the main hospital on a back street). We went to the ER and spent the next few hours there. They finally were going to give him an IV with medicine to relax his muscles, and went off to order it. Blake HATES needles, they make him pale and sick when he even see them. But before they got back with the IV Blake was finally able to throw up the mess that had been stuck. I think that them threatening him with a needle is what finally got him to give it up, but he disagrees. So after them making him drink some fluid, they sent him home. I just need to mention that the whole ER trip we had the girls with us. They were so good!!! Kenzie was given a picture to color and sat the whole time in the waiting room chair outside Blake's door coloring the picture for her daddy. Ashley who usually would have been all over the place, split her time between coloring with Kenzie and sitting on my lap in Blake's room asking when daddy would be OK again. (I had decided that if Blake had an IV I was going to call Blake's sister Marta and see if she could come get the girls, but I was literally looking for her number when Blake started screaming he had done it.

So by the time we got back to the town house, it was time for the girls and I to go to the new house so our fridge could be delivered that night (it never showed up, and when I called upset, they said it wasn't even on the schedule till Monday, I lost my temper a little at this point because I was so tired and upset by everything that had happened that day and we had been promised our fridge Friday night because we had food that needed to be kept cold. They finally promised to have it to us first thing Saturday morning. It showed up at 2pm Saturday, but at least it came.) Blake finished packing with the help of his boss Todd and a friend from church that came over after they got off work, and showed up at the house at about 7:30. Unpacking started out as the two of us again, but a neighbor from across the street came and helped, and then our nephew Dave came and then another neighbor came a little while later. Blake was still not feeling well and when it was just the 3 of us at first, we just threw everything into the garage, as our nephew and other neighbor came a few things made it into the house luckily it was the big heave things that needed to go up stairs like dressers, beds, etc. We finally at about 9:30 realized nobody had finished lunch or eaten since Blake's adventure that afternoon, so we finished the last few boxes and ran to Maverik for something quick to eat so the girls could go to bed.

So we've been moving into the house from the garage ever since. We can now fit one vehicle in, but have a ways to go before both will fit. It was such a long day but we made it through. Thank you so much to Todd for calming me on the phone when Blake was in the ER and offering to take the girls to your wife and then finish loading the moving truck for Blake. Thank you to Dave M. for your help and being such a great neighbor that first night and bringing your daughter to entertain the girls while we were unpacking the truck. Thank you to our nephew Dave for coming and bringing your positive attitude and help (and Jennifer for watching their kids so he could come help). And also thank you to Clark and Jenny for coming over to help us unload when you yourselves had just done that less than a week before. We appreciate all the help especially after the day we had had and Blake was really not feeling well from it all. Thank you!

Where do these ideas come from?

I got a bathroom kit a few years ago for Christmas and in it was a sleeping mask. I've never used it, but for some reason never threw it away. Shortly after moving into our new house Ashley came across this mask and her imagination made keeping it worth it.





She calls it her bra, and since finding it is rarely seen with out it. She even gets up in the morning, finds it , puts it on, and then will get dressed with her bra under her clothes. I think this is so funny! How does a 2 year old come up with something like this? Then when I tried to take pictures of her new invention, she got all cute and posing for me, she looks like a model trying to pose. Blake and I still laugh when we see these pictures.

Kenzie's Kidneys

So some of you know about the problems Kenzie's had with her kidneys over the last few years. The last episode was by far the worst. On January 4Th she woke up with a fever over 105. I of course freaked out and was really upset. We took her into the InstaCare, they did a urine analysis and discovered she had another kidney infection. She's had so many of these that we decided it was time to demand to see a urologist. But first because we had just moved here and didn't have a pediatrician for the girls yet to give us a referral to the urologist, we had to find one and get her into her to get the referral. Luckily we got a great recommendation from on old family friend who has 9 kids and takes her kids to the same doctor. We got her right in, and the doctor was shocked that no one had given Kenzie a referral before after she saw Kenzie's history of problems. She gave us the referral but told me call right away because it could take up to 8 weeks to get her into the specialist. Luck was on her side though and she got in January 20Th. They did a VCUG (I forgot what it stands for) and a ultra sound. The VCUG was a hard test for her and for me! They were suppose to sedate her, but the medication they gave her just made her loopy, you can tell in a few of the pictures. They told me even though she wasn't asleep, she still wouldn't remember anything because of the medicine. They were wrong! We got her into the X-ray room and onto the table and she was happy as a clam to look at the toys a nurse was holding up her her to look at. Then the radiologist started to place the catheter. We both started crying. She was so upset that I was letting him do that to her and she kept trying to pull the thing catheter out with her toes. Me and another nurse had to hold her top half down and they called another nurse to hold her feet so she couldn't use her toes. Eventually they got all the dye in her bladder got the pictures they needed and pulled the awful thing out and let her pee (she started screaming that she had to pee about half way through them getting the dye into her bladder, apparently her bladder is quite large for her age and they had to use 2 bags of dye on her instead of 1, lesson learned, don't let your child stretch the walls of their bladder by holding their pee too long). After all that the test results were negative, she doesn't have kidney reflux (that's when your urine goes from your bladder back into your kidneys, it's only suppose to go from your kidney to your bladder. They thought that might the cause of all the infections). The ultra sound wasn't bad, she thought it was funny that the lady kept tickling her with the magic wand and looking at her insides. They found there that her left kidney was about 1/2 inch bigger than her right, which I guess is significant for kidneys. They thought that it may be left over inflammation from the most recent infection so they scheduled a repeat 6 weeks later.

Six weeks later Kenzie and I headed back to Primary Children's Hospital, this time with Ashley in tow. We had the ultra sound repeated and found that it was inflammation before. Her kidneys were just about the same size again, though big for her age. I was told that her kidneys being big wasn't really a problem and that sometimes (just like other body parts like feet) the kidneys grew before the rest of the body but the body would eventually catch up and everything would be in proportion again.

So after all that we still don't know what's causing all the problems. We have her on a sulfur antibiotic for 6 months. The doctors are hoping that this will get her body out of the habit of infections and she will be infection free for the rest of her life. Hopefully it works. It's so hard to see your little girl be so sick and then go through so many tests and doctors. She's been a trouper though. She just is very careful to ask which doctor we're going to before we go and if she has to have another catheter (she doesn't want to be taken to "the wrong doctor" again). She's constantly telling anyone who will listen to her that catheters are "awful and mean to me" and hurt really bad (she remembers every minute of her ordeal, unfortunately). Poor baby, I hope she doesn't have to have one again any time soon, I don't think I could handle it.

We're Moving!!!

Well, I think it's safe to now announce that we're moving into our new house May 8th. It's been a long road to get here, but it's going to worth it. I'm so excited to have our own place! Our house is brand new and has 5 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bath. It's in Stansbury Park, UT. We have a great view of the mountains, and we can see the Stansbury Lake out our front window. Our house is on 1/4 acre. The front yard already has the sprinkler system and grass with landscaping. We will be planting the back yard and putting in the sprinkler system. I am in love with our new house! I love teh kitchen, I love the carpet, I love teh neighborhood (it's new adn still being developed, so not much traffic, we also have a cul-de-sac across from us so the girls can ride their bikes and play with teh neighbor kids.), I love my pantry, adn I love that the laundry room is upstairs with most of teh bedrooms. In Stansbury we can't have a basement because of teh high water table, but our house has a 8 foot tall crawl space, so we have 700 sq ft of storage that we can stand up in under teh house. We've talked about some day adding windows adn making our own basement, but just not telling the city, we'll see though, it's not exactly forbidden to have a basement, it's only discouraged.

It's amazing how we got the house also! We had looked at this house a while ago and loved it, but knew it was out of our price range, so we kept looking at others. We kept coming back to this house though. It had originally been built for a family who had it designed, but part way through they lost their loan program, so the builder then owned it. A little later another family tried to get it, but couldn't for some reason. We had decided to make an offer on it because it had been sitting for a while, adn we thought the buolder might be willing to deal. So we made our offer on Thursday. They came back to us adn said no (we think because they knew they had another family coming in Saturday that wanted to make an offer, full price). We decided to wait and see what happened with this other family, we decided that if they got it great for them, we would be a little sad, but keep looking elsewhere, it wasn't meant to be. So anyways they got their full price offer adn called to tell us. We were sad, but made an appointment with the same builder to talk about having them build us one. We met with them Tuesday adn they told us that teh family who had offered Saturday didn't qualify for the loan so were we still interested. We said yes, started making counter offers back and forth adn finally settled on a price and deal that Thursday. So I guess it was quite a process, but we had prayed about it and knew the max we could and would do, so we just told ourselves, if it worked out how we wanted we would do it, if not it wasn't meant to be. I guess it was meant to be!