Happy 5th Birthday Dylan!!!!

In April my best little buddy turned 5! I can't believe he has been in our lives for 5 years already! Oh and how he makes us laugh! He is becoming quite the young man. This year he wanted to have a gymnastics party (of course after I talked him out of a Chuck E Cheese party). He invited his preschool friends and his other friends. This little guy is becoming almost as much of a social butterfly as his sister! We did a late Friday night party so we made it a PJ party. I had so much fun creating the invitations and decorations for it. Everything turned out great and all the kids LOVED wearing their PJ's to the Y.

We tired them out and then sugared them up and sent them home! Things I don't want to forget about him right now.....

How much he truly loves his family. Even though he shares loves on his terms he loves to crawl into bed every morning with me and snuggle. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning and he hasn't crawled into bed with me I will find him in Makayla's bed. Ususally she has covered him up with blankets. He loves that his Daddy can play the Wii with him and thinks it is so cool that Daddy is so good at the same games he likes! He adores his Grammy and Papa and loves to spend time with them. He is a great student and loves to learn! He is super good in class and his teachers love him. He is a daredevel with balance. He can use anything as a surfboard and stay blalanced on it. His laugh. Dylan has this all out laugh when something tickles his fancy. It is the most genuine laugh that makes you smile. I could never get tired of that sound. His ability to make a serious situation not seem so serious. It is hard to disipline this kid. He doesn't like things to be tense and so he will try his hardest to make it a lightweight one! I hope he never looses that ability!

I love you monkey buddy!!!!!!

Someday.......

Someday I'll get back into blogging on a regular basis. There are so many things that I don't want to forget about and yet I will if they are not written down. So let's do a little catching up!

Easter: For the past 4 years (I think) we have been dying eggs and having an egg bashing contest. This year was no exception. We had Grammy, Papa (as always) and Aunt Kerri and Jason joining us this year. After carefully dyeing our eggs the event started. We have gotten technical in this contest and so 1st thing we do is lay out blue tape across the table as a mark for where you have to let go of your egg at. We count 1, 2 , 3 and let go at the same time. I was the champion last year and so i was 1st up. I lost :-( In the end Grammy won but we decided Dylan's egg was truly the best as it beat every egg afterwards, including Grammy's. Dylan is very competitive and this was no egg-ception! I think next year we have to have some sort of bracket division to even out the playing field!!

Mexico in March

Day 1:

In March Tom and I went on a fabulous vacation to Xcaret (pronounce ish-ka-ret) Mexico. It is about an hour south of Cancun. It was a long journey but we finally made it and the hotel was beautiful. The 1st night we spent just enjoying the grounds and finding our way around. It was HUGE! The hotel (Grand Occidental Xcaret) is an all inclusive resort and so all of our meals and drinks were included in the price. It was so nice to not worry about how much we needed to save for food. It was easy to loose track of where we were and after 5 days I started to get the hang of where we were at. Tom was better at keeping track of it so I just stuck with him! Although he got backwards too.

The lobby Ahhh, clothes changed~

Shooting Stars

We have had some fun happenings this year. Makayla joined the Shooting Stars soccer team. They play indoors in the winter time and only meet on Saturdays for games. Makayla had a really great time playing with these girls and has gotten so much more aggressive with the ball. She wants to be on the same team again in the fall season when they play outdoors.

No really he is fine

30 days come and go. Every day we take his heart rate by pushing a little button. It records what his heart is doing and then we send it via the phone line. Well, I say that like it is easy. The little electrodes that stick to Dylan's chest he is allergic too. Poor buddy gets a huge blister on both spots that the electrodes are placed. So we call for pediatric electrodes. The place that they are shipping them from is on the east coast which happens to be completely snowed in at the time. When we get the new package it is the same electrodes! So we wait again and finally get the right ones. So all in all it was probably in place for about 3 weeks. After all the results were calculated, or whatever they do with them, he still seems fine. So what happened? Don't know. Will we ever know? Probably not. Hopefully not.

Mary Bridge

So here we are at Northwest Children's Heart care Center. It is a nice, clean office set up wonderfully for children. There is a TV on with Toy Story on and some toys in the corner. I fill out all of the paperwork and we wait. Dylan seems fine. He is bouncing around like a crazy boy. My stomach churns with worry. Grammy is here with me and we chit chat about nothing. "Dylan", the nurse calls him back. So we packed up our stuff and head back. We are put in the dog and cat room. There are tons of pictures of dogs and cats. Dylan starts counting them. It is a nice distraction to the reason that we are here. The nurse comes in and checks all his vitals and takes off his shirt to do another EKG. Dylan still thinks it's cool, I still do not. The nurse is great and let's Dylan take off the electrodes and asks if he wants to keep them. Of course, that is so cool. After the EKG we go into another room so they can do an echo cardiogram. It is dark in the room and the lady puts a big glob of ultrasound goo on his chest and goes to work. It is amazing to see his little heart up on the screen pumping away. Dylan is fascinated with it for about 5 minutes then watches the movie they have going on in the room. My eyes don't move off his little heart. I wish I knew what I was looking for. Looks beautiful to me, I'm sure it's fine. The tech doesn't say a word. She just keeps doing her job switching screens back and forth and moving her views around. Finally she cleans him up and we go back to wait for the doctor. He FINALLY comes in (doesn't he know he has a very nervous mommy in here) and tells me well, he seems fine. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with his heart. But just to be sure he has to wear a heart monitor for 30 days. Wait, come again, he is fine? Hurray!!! But wait again, he has to wear a heart monitor for 30 days. OK so only a little celebration for now.....

And it continues....

While I was still in my cast, Dylan was in the bathtub one night and said, "Mom, my heart hurts" It was very simple. He had his hand to his chest right where his heart is. He wasn't crying or freaking out. He seemed a little confused by the whole thing but defiantly sure that it was his heart. It was bedtime and I thought it must be because we had a long day. I also think that he has some heartburn so I thought maybe it was that. So I had him finish up his bath and go to bed. The next morning he woke up and was still complaining. I called into the Dr. and made an afternoon appointment. I still wasn't worried, cause it was heartburn ya know, but I thought I better get it checked out. We go in and Heather (the NP at Dr Taggart's office) listens to his heart. She listens for a while. Then she goes and gets a different stethoscope. A peds one so she can hear better. She listens some more and decides to get Dr Taggart. Still not worried, you can't hear heartburn....Dr Taggart listens and listens. He tells me that he has an irregular heartbeat and we need to do an EKG on him. Umm, that doesn't sound like heartburn but OK. So they hook him up with all these wires and a machine. Dylan thinks this is super cool and that he looks like a robot. OK, getting a little worried now. They send over the EKG to Mary Bridge and they want to see him tomorrow, what time works. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WAIT, WHAT HAPPENED TO HEARTBURN? MARY BRIDGE? THAT'S A CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL PLACE FOR SICK KIDS. THIS IS DYLAN, he has heartburn. Funny that they ask what time works. Does it matter if I had anything at all in the world tomorrow? My son has something maybe wrong with his heart. His heart hurts and that makes my heart hurt. Whatever time you need me to be there, I will be there. I call Tom and it all hits me in 1 swell punch. I have to take
Dylan to Mary Bridge tomorrow, no I'm sure he will be fine. No you don't have to take tomorrow off, my mom can come. He will be fine, he will be fine right? Quiet tears because I don't want to scare Dylan or Makayla. OK tomorrow we are going to a pediatric cardiologist. This can't be OK.

2010...You have been rough....

At the stroke of midnight we all have this feeling of refreshment, the start of a new year. It's a good way for us to reflect on the goods and bads of the last year and look forward to the goods of the new year. 2009 was good to us so we looked to 2010 with great expectations. On January 2, those hopes of goods broke! Literally I broke my hand. Funny story really, well not to me but to everyone else it seems. We were having one of our theme dinners (nachos this time). I really wanted to get a group picture and my friend Janai was bending over in a position where I was pulled to slap her on her butt. I couldn't help myself, it was there. So she, lovingly tried to kick me on my butt. I was so quick-like though that I blocked her kick with my hand and crack-no really we all heard it-there went my 4th metacarpal on my right hand. Did I mention it was my RIGHT hand, yes I am right handed. I didn't really think it was broken so we went about the evening. The next morning it was pretty sore and really bruised but it was a Sunday. I kind of wrapped it up and went about the day. Monday morning I went to the Dr, xrays and viola, a spiral fracture. What?! This is the 1st time I have broken a bone. I have had LOTS of injuries and several surgeries but had never broken a bone before. What a pain! In every way you could mean that. 5 Loooooong weeks later I got to take my splint off. BUT, I did get my group picture...