Tube talk for the evening

Last night I had the opportunity to share an evening with six other 'tube feeding' moms.  We talked about pumps, gravity feeds, stoma sites and granulation tissue.... and lots more!  All of our kids are three years old and younger.  I learned so much from each of them.   And those beautiful kids gave me severe baby pains!   Isn't it great when you find other moms who know exactly how happy you are when you finally 'graduate' to gravity feeds?  Or where the best swallow study happens.  Support.  It's a good thing.

Pray for a family grieving for their 8 year old girl Carly

http://abandcsmom.blogspot.com/2010/04/empty.html

This family needs thoughts, prayers, meditation ... their beautiful daughter Carly passed away suddenly at 8 years old. 

I am reminded how fragile life is.  How that extra chromosome tips the scale.  The need to build a fort in the living room complete with tunnels and flashlights,  eating ice cream for dinner, reading 20+ books to the kids at one sitting rather than housework, coloring (especially with lots of yellow),  taking picture on my camera until I have no memory left, singing and dancing, eating banannas, meeting friends for playdates.  "Today is the day the Lord has made; let us REJOICE and be glad in it." Psalms 118:24  We simply cannot count on tomorrow. 

Walking to the lake to see the beaver

Almost every evening after dinner we head out for a walk to the lake and to see what the beaver has been up to. Next to us is a 1,500 acre wildlife preserve with pheasants, geese, wide mouth bass, herons, etc.... and a beaver :)


Nate is usually on his longboard.



And Tommy is running! Watch out Mr Beaver.... here we come.

What's in my kitchen?

I won't show you the dirty dishes or the stack of insurance information or bills to be paid... but in my kitchen there is some fun stuff today..... freshly washed eggs, cookies, and goat's milk that is cooling to make fresh cheese. Some days it's just that simple and wonderful.

Opening day of fishing

All three of my boys.

Nate was fishing at Silver Lake with his dad and all that side of the family (they are all super nice and fun and we usually go and camp with them each year for opening day but we are still unusure of how to leave our farm after the goats were killed). So we decided late in the day to go up on Saturday and visit them and see how great of fishermen there were. They had limited on trout in 30 minutes!

You can see how low the snow fall line is on the hills, it was chilly!

Tommy and Liam loved stomping in the puddles of course.

And then Tommy decided he was done!

Cheerleading in Canada

Finally I get to upload some pictures. Hannah took my camera cord a month ago and I finally got it back. So here are some pictures! Her last competition was in Canada. Her friend Alyssa made me the shirt (and herself one too) and rode up there with me because Hannah was in a huge tour bus with her team. I was so glad to have the company and Alyssa is a really nice friend to Hannah. Hannah's team placed third!

Sleep study #2 results

We had a second sleep study done last week to evaluate how Tommy's tonsil and adenoid removal surgery effected his ability to keep breathing at night. Remember his score the first time was 42 pauses in breathing during an hour, high risk for a stroke. His new score was 11! Praise God. HUGE. Big, enormous improvement.

With a score of 11 pauses in breathing during an hour he is still at high risk and highly recomended for cpap. We have the cpap machine now and will be working with Behavioral health dept at Children's PLUS a beautiful family in Ferndale who has a similar situation and has conquered the cpap training and is willing to share tips for getting Tommy use to the cpap.

We are to the moon with these results. Great, fantastic stuff has happened to Tommy's health, much thanks to the diligence of his amazing team of physicians, therapists, teachers and family and friends. Thank you all for helping us this last few months, although rocky and ugly and emotionally absolutely DRAINING.... we are blessed and have ended up with Tommy being well rested and his more joyous and curious self.

Open for business

It's been almost a month since our baby goats were killed. Alot has happened in that month. Originally we had changed the permissions on the blog so that only friends and family could read our posts. Now that the investigation has progressed, we have found ourselves interested in reconnecting with our 'extended' network of blogging friends again, and find that we are less fearfull of the evil that happened to our goats. We simply have chosen not to let fear influence our decision to build relationships with other families. So the blog is now open for business again! We miss our baby goats alot, and look forward to spending much energy on solving who did this, but alongside those feelings is our family's need to reach out for support. That is exactly what we get thru this blog. What a heck of a month it has been!

Ramblings....

Hannah and Nate returned from a week in Hawaii with their dad. They look all sunny tanned and well rested. So glad to have them back safe and sound, they had a great time!

Spent a great afternoon/evening at my sister Debbie's house just letting all three boys roam and eat a great dinner. Colin and I really kicked back for awhile which was nice. Been way too stressful with the goat tragedy.

Hannah is cheerleading across the border this week, I'll be heading up with her friend Alyssa to cheer her on today. More pictures I'm sure!

Liam is vomitting last night and just laying around today looking tired. I'm sure that's a virus just waiting to be shared with all of us :)

Tommy has his second sleep study this week. It's the follow up one to see if having his T&A surgery has helped. Hopefully we will get good news. Otherwise, we will need to be more assertive with his cpap machine. Which, we already received a referral to "Behavioral medicine" dept at Children's for assistance to get him to wear the cpap. Not sure what the Behavioral med dept is like, does anyone out there have experience with them? A large, HUGE, part of me wants to not call them back and just get Tommy used to wearing his cpap ourselves. We know him the best and will be able to get him to wear it. Right?

I've got PTA on Monday night, only two more meetings until my term as Treasurer is up. I cannot wait. Finished their tax return for the year, financial statements, and even created a 5-minute audit they can do at meetings over the next few years to make sure all is good with the new treasurers. I feel really good about leaving them in a situation MUCH better than the one I inherited.

Colin set up a wireless network here at home so computer use for all six of us will be much easier. Who knows, I might even get a "What works for us" post out this week!

Much love to all of you! Hope you have some dirt under your fingernails from spring planting and have found small blessings this weekend. Take care. -sandi

Easter weekend

It seems that the days this weekend are full even though we didn't attend church service nor join family for easter dinner. Colin's brothers drove up from Tacoma to help install more security items, thank you Uncles! My mom and sister drove up to watch the boys and cook a fabulous dinner for all while I got a bunch of work caught up on also. We miss our baby goats so much and often times find ourselves so fearful of walking around our farm. This next week we will get a media release out with a tip line and hopefully people will call with information.

I did get the chicken coop cleaned up and thought this picture was funny, I needed to move all the eggs to one box and get shavings into the other, thought it looked like one productive hen :)

I had already arranged an educational gardening event for the 4-H'rs "Doughnuts and Dahlias" on Saturday and didn't want to cancel even with the tragedy from last weekend. I looked forward to a sense of normalcy for one moment. I taught them the different sizes of dahlia blossoms and the different types of petals and size of plants. And ate a yummy doughnut. Then we went to a GIANT dahlia tuber sale and each of the 4H'rs purchased some fantastic looking tubers to grow as projects for fair. I greatly enjoyed seeing a number of these 4H families and of course all the kids. Tommy was less than cooperative for the educational piece of the morning, but he really enjoyed it when one of our senior 4H'rs took him on the playground :)

This little one continues to bring a smile to my face. He loves watching his airplane while laying on his back. Oh Tommy, I love you!

Hope everyone enjoys Easter. This is one spectacular time to remember what Jesus did for all of us. Much love.