Aaron and Heather's Family

Monday, April 25, 2011

Grandma & Grandpa Roberts' Easter Egg Hunt

The kids really look forward to Grandma & Grandpa's Easter Egg Hunt every year. It is nice that they have such a big backyard to make it fun.

Easter Outfits

I love to buy my kids a new Easter Dress/Outfit each year.

We went the opposite direction of everyone else for Spring Break. Where most people seek out warm places, we headed up to a ski resort. Aaron was working up at the Montage Resort for the entire week that the kids were off for spring break. They were having meetings and filming some training sessions. We worked it out so that the kids and I could join him for a couple of days while he was up there. It was a beautiful swanky place. It is definitely the nicest place I have ever stayed. We got to go bowling at a bowling alley in the resort. We had smores by the fire. We went swimming at the resort pool. We chose to stick to the inside pool, even though the heated outdoor pool was open, while it was snowing. Brrrr.

Utah Olympic Park

We went down into Park City one day and went shopping at the Outlet Mall. Clothes shopping with four kids - not my idea of fun. Won't do that again! Then we went over to the Olympic Park. They have a free museum that you can see different Olympic stuff at. Had we been then during the right season we could have seen them practicing ski jumps. It was really cool to see. It think we will have to go back again during the right season.

My kids wanted to take some pictures. Grant took the one of me. Find the missing kid in the next ones and you will figure out who took the picture. :)

FHE Egg Drop

Since we had nothing prepared for family night a few weeks ago, Aaron suggested we experiment with the kids doing an egg drop. Each of the kids had to create a contraption that would keep their eggs from breaking when dropped. We were originally going to do it out of the upstairs windows, but thought better of it. It would give Grant way to may ideas! The ironic thing about this idea was that unbeknown to Aaron, Whitney was doing this same thing in school the next day. (Her egg didn't survive the dive off the school roof.)

All of the eggs survived - well Whitney's did spring a leak. Apparently we needed to be higher up for this to really test their contraptions.

LIttle Bo Peep

Lindsey chose to be Little Bo Peep during the Kindergarten Nursery Rhyme Festival. She looked adorable. To quote Aunt Kiki - "She was born to play this role."

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Grant's Pneumonia

Grant has been sick for several days now. The first signs of illness was on Lindsey's birthday. He threw up when we were at Chuck-a-Rama. We didn't think much of it because, well, we were eating at Chuck-a-Rama. It makes anyone want to throw up. The next morning he had a low grade fever so I kept him home from school. By afternoon he was fine and playing as normal. Thursday in the middle of the night his fever went up to 104 degrees. He had a fever of 105 to 101 for the next several days. I've since learned that Tylenol or Ibuprofen will only take a fever down 2 or 3 degrees, which would explain why we never really got rid of the fever.

By Saturday morning after another very long night we decided to take him to Insta Care. He was tested for Strep and for a Urinary Tract Infection, both of which came back normal. The doctor said that if he wasn't improved in a few days to have him seen again. Laine came over between sessions of General Conference and helped Aaron give Grant a blessing.

Tuesday morning he was still having the high fevers and throwing up but now his breathing seemed really labored. I took him into his pediatrician that morning and she suspected pneumonia. She ordered a chest xray for him. His blood oxygen levels were in the normal range, otherwise she would have sent us straight to Primary Children's Hospital. They gave him a shot of a really strong antibiotic to kick start the healing processes. I went straight from the doc's office to Riverton Hospital to have the chest xray done. The results came back with a pretty serious case of pneumonia. Since his oxygen levels were good, the doctor told us to monitor him at home and if we saw any signs of trouble breathing to bring him back to the doctor or to the ER.

Since we were now at 5 nights of little sleep we decided to take shifts that night. I had the 9:30 pm - 2:00 am shift. Aaron went to bed early so that he could get some sleep. Around 1:45 am Grant woke up shaking and his heart was beating so fast and hard. You could feel it pounding in his chest. We decided to have Aaron take him to the ER. The doctors in the ER said he needed to be admitted and to plan on having him there for several days. (Of course I couldn't get to sleep after they left because I was so worried about him, so I had another night of 2 hours of sleep). We spent the next two days taking shifts at the hospital. We owe a great deal of thanks to Grandma Roberts, Heidi and Katie for watching the girls for us so we could focus on being there with Grant. We had a few of our neighbors bring dinner over to us one night which was very helpful.

Grant improved a lot after he was on oxygen. He wasn't working as hard to breathe and we saw big improvements. He was able to come off the IV on the first day, but he had to go back on the oxygen when he fell asleep because his numbers dropped too low. By Thursday he was off of oxygen even during his naps. This is a picture taken of him a few hours before we were released to go home. The Child Life Specialist brought in a mat for him to play on and lots of fun things to do. He is playing with play dough in this picture. He was very happy to be out of that bed!

We were able to bring him home late Thursday night (it was 10:30pm before we got home.) This was a much shorter stay than what the doctors had expected. We are so grateful that there is a Primary Children's Hospital extension so close to our home. The quality of care is the same as at the main hospital. All the doctors and nurses were so great with Grant. There were not a lot of children there so he received lots of love and attention.

Grant is getting back to normal. He is playing with his sisters and happy. He does have less energy and will have sudden coughing attacks that really hurt and he has to lie down for awhile afterwards. Each day is better than the previous. The doctors say that he will have a few more days of being sick and it will take around 3 weeks to be completely rid of the cough and back up to full energy.

Since Grant had his surgery back in December he has become a snorer. He snores so loud that you can hear him anywhere upstairs. One of the things I noticed before we knew that he had pneumonia was that he wasn't snoring. When I went and checked on Grant a few minutes ago he was snoring away. This is the first time since he developed pneumonia that he has been snoring again. I never thought I would be grateful to hear him snore. Yeah!

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Happy Birthday Lindsey #6

Lindsey chose to have a Fairy birthday party.

Dad made Lindsey this Fairy Princess Cake

Mom made each of the girls a fairy skirt. If I had to make them again - which I won't - I would use a more expensive tulle that was less thin/see through.