Baby Update #1

Thank you so much for all of the comments and support both posted here and sent directly to us. We feel so grateful to have so many friends and family in our lives.

As long as this month continues to be uneventful, we will not be going in again until right before Thanksgiving. They will do another ultrasound to compare with the previous one to look at the trends. Until then, we wait. The kids are handling things well. They pray for their little brother and it reminds us to remain positive and have faith in the Lord.

We will continue to post updates as we receive them. Thank you again for your love and concern!

Baby Maner

Meet Baby Maner

He looks like a perfect, active little guy. We love him already. He has a cute little nose, perfect little hands and feet, and is properly sized. He likes to kick and do somersaults.

However, there are some problems.

Our lives have become more complicated this week with the bad news of an ultrasound with a specialist. Originally the problems added up to 4. They switched our care to Swedish Medical Center in Seattle because of the complexity of the issues. Justin and I headed up for the day today (thank you to our ward family here who took care of the kids and dinner for us) to get an ECHO (for baby's heart) and then another ultrasound and consultation with our new perinatal doctor. Things have definitely moved toward the high-risk end of the spectrum. The day on the whole was more positive than we expected it to be, but we have a long road ahead of us.

Now the list of serious problems are down to 2.

Our little guy has Tetralogy of Fallot, TOF, or Tet. For more info on what this means, click here. The short answer is that there is a hole in his heart, along with 3 other problems inside his heart. This will require open heart surgery at probably 3-6 months of age, unless the problems get worse and they have to do it sooner. The success rate of the surgery is pretty high, which gives us quite a bit of hope.

The second issue is Hydrocephalus, or too much fluid in the baby's brain. This is more of an unknown at this point. It could decrease, or it could increase. The damage from it could range from little to none up to pretty severe brain damage. They will be monitoring both of these conditions very closely between now and February.

The biggest unknown at this point is if these are isolated defects or if the root cause is from a chromosome abnormality, in which case he may face many more issues that they can't see from the ultrasound.

At this point, we have to wait and see how our little guy handles these things. We feel more optimistic today than we did two days ago however, despite all of the unknowns. But one thing is certain. We know that God is real and that He has a plan for us and for this special boy. We pray for strength to endure what is to come and for the Spirit to guide our decision making on behalf of our baby.

This little baby has so many people that love him already. We are hoping for the best!

OoooooK-LAHOMA!

Back during my sophomore year in high school I got very brave and tried out for the school musical, "Oklahoma." To everyones' great surprise (especially to mine), I got casted as the lead part of Laurie. It was such a fun experience and gave me a lot of confidence in performing back then.

I have the CD of the soundtrack and this past week the kids found it and have been playing it almost every day. It has been very entertaining to watch. They figured out that in the Overture there are fast parts and slower parts. Brandon said that the fast parts were for the cowboys and the slower parts were the "girl parts." So if he wanted to dance during those parts he had to dance with one of the girls.

Can I just say how cute I think that is? And I am so thankful that Brandon, who is almost 7, still likes to play and dance with his sisters. Love it! (Oh, and yes, we still have lots of cardboard in the empty living room. The kids find so many creative ways to play with it!)

Oh and guess what Brandon wants to be for Halloween? Yep, a cowboy!

Potty Training

A couple of weeks ago we decided that Katelyn was ready to be potty trained. It has taken some time to get her through the moving transition and then the moving to a big bed transition. But we made it through both and found a week that was relatively calm. She has done great. A week later she was accident free and doing it herself. Way to go Katelyn!

During our first couple of days of training, we stayed home a lot. Katelyn spent a lot of her time on the toilet singing. Some songs we recognized, but most of them are the spontaneous kind. Below is a video of one of them.

Such a big girl!

Little Things

Does anyone out there get excited about little things? Things like, a bathroom coming together a little bit more....well I do.

It makes me happy! :)

Who wouldn't get excited about a little bit of decorative stuff at Ross that makes the bathroom smell lovely?

Sometimes it is the little things.

Busy week

It seems that we are always having a busy week, but this last one really was.

We've been looking at furniture for a while and finally decided to bite the bullet and buy some. I sent Justin to the Old Cannery Warehouse to pick up the bookshelves we decided on right before it closed. Thankfully they fit in the van (barely) and we got them in the house by about 10:30 pm. They are solid wood, which is just what we have been waiting to get, and they are super heavy. We just love them though! No more put-it-together yourself shelves from Wal-Mart!

Here are the huge boxes they came in. Thank goodness we had a dolly to roll them into the house (thanks Dad!). The kids are currently using them for a club house in our empty living/dining room.

Here they are, fresh out of the boxes. We had a mountain of boxes to unpack/organize and our desk is piled high with things to go through. Isn't black beautiful?

Here is what remains of our pile of boxes. The kids took them all and piled them inside each other and inside their club house. Apparently they need them because they are going to be moving somewhere soon....

And here is our finished product, well, finished until we buy a couple more pieces for our office. Much better, don't you think?

The cabinet part has my music and our photo albums. It's nice to be able to protect them a little better now.

Friday night we saw some of our friends from the Kansas days. We had dinner and enjoyed catching up. The kids just loved the "snuggles" and spending some time with Ralph and Linnea.

Then Saturday after a very productive morning working in the yard, we left the kids with a babysitter and joined 2 other couples from our ward and met up with Ralph and Linnea in Seattle to watch the first showing of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" in the 5th Ave. Theater. What a treat! We just loved it!

After saying goodbye to Ralph and Linnea, we went with our friends from the ward out to dinner and then went back to the church since 3 out of the 6 of us were performing in the stake cultural night. It was a great day with friends doing very fun things!

So all in all, we've kept very busy and are getting lots of things done. The office feels like a place we want to spend time, now that the boxes are gone and we have beautiful bookshelves to look at. Now all we need is the lateral file, the fish aquarium, the 2 sitting chairs with a small table, black framed pictures, a nice lamp or two, and the beautiful matching desk! I definitely have it all planned out in my head! All in good time......

It's a......

Hope you can read either one of these! The kids are so excited - well, we all are!! 20 more weeks to go.....

Conference Weekend

We thoroughly enjoyed General Conference this past weekend. It was very inspiring and as always gives me many things to work on. The weather was beautiful as well, so that was a bonus. During the priesthood session on Saturday night we had some friends over. The men went to their meeting, and the ladies and kids stayed home to play and make cinnamon/orange rolls. It was great fun! And the results were so yummy!

Sunday was neat because we had a newly baptized member of our ward over for conference to watch it with us. It was so fun to watch him listen to the prophet and apostles for the first time at a conference. It was a great experience for all of us.

After conference we took a beautiful drive up to Snoqualmie falls because the weather was perfect and the changing colors were amazing. It was a fun little outing with the kids.

They were happy to get out of the house a little bit after sitting through so much conference.

Brandon even picked up a new skill. Certain members of the family would be very proud!

A nice end to a wonderful weekend!

Autumn is in the air

It's feeling like autumn around here. The temperatures have dropped into the 50's and 60's during the day and I hear the rains will begin very soon. So to get into the mood, we've done a bit of decorating on the outside at least.

Thank you Costco for these beautiful flowers and wreath. I like them very much!

This pumpkin-pot project was fun to do with the kids. They loved helping with it!

The tree in the front is getting into the groove, with beautiful red leaves.

But the tree on the side doesn't agree. It's still wishing for a few more warm days in the sunshine. Me too little tree!

As much as I want the warm days to last a bit longer (because everyone keeps warning me about the rainy winter) I can't help but feel a bit autumn-ish with the crisp temps outside and changing colors.

Homemade chili.....check!

If you can't change Seattle weather, join in!!

Brandon's 1st Soccer Game

Saturday was Brandon's first soccer game. It was pretty entertaining to watch. Brandon ran hard and tried his best. After a long first half without any goals for the team, Justin was able to give him some timely advice. Advice like....kick and run, don't just kick and stand there! And don't just kick it out of bounds because then the other team gets it!

Then Brandon said "Ohhhh!" Brandon was able to score the first goal for his team, and his face was priceless. This next one is his face after another goal he scored.

Here is him enlarged to appreciate his expression:

He was very excited!

It was a fun time for him and we're very proud of our Brandon!

Soccer

We decided that Brandon was ready for a sport this year, so we got him signed up for soccer. He has been very excited about it and works hard when he practices. He has so much natural ability so it is fun to see him develop his talents and learn some new skills. It goes until Halloween, so hopefully we won't have to spend too many practices and games sitting in the rain. Yes, they do play in the rain here. So I'm trying to get everyone raincoats and galoshes right now.

They had the picture day recently, but we just missed it. So we decided that we needed to have a little photo shoot of Brandon in his new uniform in our back yard. Please forgive the quantity of pictures here, but I think these are just so funny and cute. It was a collaborative effort, but most of the posing ideas were Brandon's.

First game is this Saturday and the weather should be sunny and 71 degrees. Perfect! :)

Garage Progress

We have reached a big milestone this week. We have our garage to a point where the floor is cleared out enough to park both of our vehicles inside. Justin will especially appreciate this when we get into the cold rainy season and he won't have to scrape his windshield or walk in the rain.

Justin has been working on these huge shelves that go in the garage up above since our ceiling out there is so tall. Our black shelves are probably 7 feet tall, and then Justin installed his big shelves up above that. It will help us store lots of great stuff! They were very big and heavy (4 feet/8 feet). He managed to get the lower one up by himself, but definitely needed help to finish the project. Thanks to our friends the Ortegas who came to the rescue and helped finish the job! Reuben put a lot of trust in Justin's lower shelf when he jumped up there to bolt the higher shelf to the wall. Thanks for risking your life Reuben!

We spent some time last Saturday going through all the boxes in the garage and deciding what to keep and where to put it. While going through my boxes from my childhood I found a wand that has been Lindsey's constant companion ever since (souvenir from Mesa High School homecoming),

and two handkerchiefs that the kids thought were very cool. And we even found the sidewalk chalk. It was a good day!

Here we are, stuff on the shelves and cars parked in the garage.

We still need to organize the black shelves better, get the big bikes mounted and put more boxes up high, but we're well on our way to a very organized garage! Good job Justin!