August 2019

Gideon really wanted to drive the boat!

We take Joseph all the way out to the sand bar in a pontoon boat, and he sleeps almost the whole time.  

The girls enjoyed having their friend Ella come out on the Pontoon Boat with us

Malachi liked climbing around the outside of the boat

Malachi's birthday cake was a hit!

Can you find Malachi?

Austin makes Gideon laugh

Austin made Gideon a bear out of parrafin wax

Gideon at the top of the North shore pillbox hike

Betsy got a yummy cake for her birthday!

We took Betsy to an escape room for her birthday, she really enjoyed it!

a yummy tea I hosted for the spouse group for Travis' unit.  

Travis got a Pontoon boat license and we rented a boat and took the kids out to the sand bar.  It was so beautiful.  It was a lot of fun, and we saw a ton of turtles.  Malachi turned 6 this year, and had a party at the park.  He had a good time playing with a few friends.  We brought a bunch of water balloons to play with, and that was a lot of fun.  The kids all went back to school except Joseph.  It was so weird to not have him in school anymore.  He has just been working a little bit, and got another job at Starbucks at the Tripler hospital.  I thought it was a weird job for him to get, since we don't drink coffee, but the pay is good, and it's just temporary until he is ready to go on a mission.  Malachi started Kindergarten, and loves going to school.  He has a little bit of trouble following the rules, but he is learning.  He loves riding the bus each morning, and is excited to go with Caleb to school, instead of being left behind.  I have a few more piano students this year, now have 18 piano students.  I love teaching, but I'm hoping I haven't taken on too much.  Betsy has started going to school too, but is still very tired and weak.  She makes it to school, but comes home and lays down in her bed the rest of the day.  She had a follow up appointment on her birthday, and they discovered that her blood count was getting to low again, so they suggested admitting her to the hospital since obviously there cause (heavy periods) wasn't holding up, since she hadn't been bleeding at all.  She didn't want to go into the hospital since it was her birthday, so we waiting until the next day and took her into the hospital.  They admitted her and gave her two units of blood, and started running more tests to figure out where she could be bleeding from.   They found blood in her stool so they wanted to do an upper GI scope and lower GI scope (colonoscopy). She had to do a clean out, which involved drinking a ton of Gatorade with lots of laxative.  It made her pretty sick, but she managed to do it.  She had the procedure the next day.  She was put under general anesthesia, and soon after they started the procedure, the Dr. came out and told me they already found a bunch of polyps and would need to put down a breathing tube to get the equipment in and cut the polyps out.  They said between the polyps and her freckles on her lips and inside her mouth they were pretty sure she has a genetic syndrome called Puetz Jegher.  It means she will deal with having these polyps in her GI tract throughout her whole life, and will need to check for them every 1-2 years and have the ones too big or bleeding removed.  She is also high risk for a lot of different cancers, and will need to have a rigorous schedule of cancer screenings.  The procedure last almost 3 hours, instead of the 1 hour it was supposed to take.  She did okay coming out of the procedure, just with a really sore throat.  They checked her labs again, and sent her home that night, with Tylenol, as she was in a little pain.  The next night she was in so much pain, her stomach and shoulder (the one she was lying down on during the procedure) that I took her to the emergency room.  They took her back quickly again, and checked her labs again.  Her blood count and iron count hadn't dropped significantly, so the only thing they could figure, is that her shoulder was injured from lying down on it for so long during the procedure, and her stomach pain was from the removal of the polyps, but she was in so much pain she was struggling to breathe, her heart was racing like crazy, and she was crying, and begging me to make it stop hurting.  I felt so helpless to relieve her pain, and heartbroken that she was going through this.  I was praying as hard as I could, I begging the doctor to help.  They gave her some pain medicine to swallow and coat her throat and stomach, and the doctor helped her control her breathing enough to help her relax a little bit and not make the pain worse.  Then they prescribed her some Tylenol mixed with Codeine, then sent her home.  The pain medicine helped, but she could still barely move for the next 3-4 days.  She wasn't sleeping much at all, as it was too hard to find a comfortable position, I was doing everything I could to try and make her comfortable.  My parents flew in and stayed to help out for a week.  The day they arrived she seemed to finally start feeling a little better.  She was obviously unable to go to school, so I was able to meet with her counselor and get all the paperwork for her to do Home/Hospital Instruction.  They are giving her a tutor for the next ten weeks, that will come to the house 5 hours a week and bring her school work to do, and then take it back and coordinate with her teachers.  But it doesn't start until September 13th.  It took a while to get all the paperwork figured out, and signed and approved by the right people.  I hosted a tea party that was delicious at the vintage cave café at the mall, it turned out really well, and as really fun, and a nice break from caring for Betsy.

July 2019

This is what happens when we go hiking and Gideon gets all muddy, which is often!

Travis climbing down from the top of the waterfall

Pretty muddy!

I went to the PCC with Maia, it was fun to go without any kids

Gideon at the top of Chinaman's hat

We all climbed to the top of Chinaman's hat, (except Maia)

This is us starting to kayak towards Chinaman's hat.  how did we all fit?  Malachi is hanging onto a boogie board tied to the kayak, Caleb is hanging onto a boogie board tied to the other kayak, and Gideon is sitting on Travis or my lap.  

After this trek up Koko head, Travis said he would never take Gideon again.  Gideon is always asking to go on this hike, but before we even got to the trailhead he wanted to be carried.  So Travis carried him up in the hiking backpack the whole time.  He wanted to get out a couple times, but we didn't want to deal with getting him in and out constantly so we left him in.  He had tons of energy when we got to the top, and was zipping around and climbing all over the place, making us nervous.  We decided to try letting him climb down, since he had so much energy.  Unfortunately there were tons of small centipedes everywhere on the steps, and Gideon wanted to stop and look at every single one.  He was taking absolutely forever to come down.  So finally we ended up having to put him back in the hiking backpack which he did not want to do, and kicked and cried and screamed the rest of the down on Travis' back.   

Austin made this yummy strawberry cake.  It was delicious 

yummy cheesecake!

I think we wore him out!

turtle!

Joseph enjoyed feeding the birds, ducks, and fish

I love it when these boys all get along!

Bonus of me being in YW, is I get to go to their dances, and watch them!

 So the beginning of end of June and the beginning of July, Travis' sister Maia was able to come and visit us for a while.  It was nice to spend time with her, and do some "easy" hiking (Maia claims that none of the hikes were easy), and exploring.  On our hike to likelike falls, we took a wrong turn and it started getting pretty difficult so Maia and the kids and I turned around and found the right way, then made it to the falls, Travis climbed way up high above the falls, then climbed down from the top.  He ended up in a swarm of mosquitos, and got quite a few bites.  The hike was a bit muddy, so we all got pretty dirty, and their were a lot of mosquitos in the area, so we all got bitten a few times.  The end of June I got called to be the 1st counselor in the YW presidency, so I was released from cub scouts, and primary pianist callings, and I'm working in YW now.  I love working with the YW, and Betsy doesn't seem to mind me being her teacher.  For the 4th of July we rented some kayaks and kayaked out to Chinaman's hat, and climbed to the top.  It was a tricky climb with ropes and rock climbing, but we made it pretty safe for the little boys, by having Me at the bottom, Joseph in the middle, and Travis on the top, then we helped lift and guide the little boys through the climbing, with someone always within reach to help them if they fell.  It was pretty good teamwork, and the little boys loved making it to the top!  So July 13th I was taking the kids to their back to school physicals, and Betsy's heart rate was pretty high.  She had not been feeling well for the past 5 months or so.  I had been having to drive her to school from seminary, because she didn't feel well enough to walk.  After school, she would just lay down in her room for the rest of the day.   She had been really tired, having headaches, and feeling dizzy and short of breath.  On our cruise she had to walk to church from the cruise ship, and had a really hard time and threw up just before she got there.  I'd taken her to the doctor a few times, and they had given her a DEPO shot to help her periods to stop to see if that would help (she was having a lot of periods that were painful).  I had attributed a lot of her symptoms of side effects to the DEPO shot.  The doctor ordered some labs for Monday morning (the lab was closed since it was a Saturday).  So Monday morning I took Betsy in to get her blood drawn.  They called us within 20 minutes and told us to bring Betsy to the Emergency Room immediately that she had a critically low blood count, and absolutely zero iron in her blood.  So I took her in to the hospital, where they quickly brought her back to the room (I've never been seen in an emergency room so quickly).  They took some of her blood to match it to get ready for a blood transfusion.  The doctors were quite impressed with how low her blood count and iron was, and that she was still alive and walking around.  Her blood count was at a 3.7 which was the lowest the doctors there had seen in a live human.  They admitted her into the hospital and gave her three units of blood over the next 24 hours.  They attributed her low blood count to her heavy periods she had previously, (even though she hadn't had a period since she was given the DEPO shot in April). She tolerated the blood transfusions well and they gave her another DEPO shot since they only last for three months, and discharged her the next day.  It was a scary situation that could have easily resulted in her having a heart attack if we had pushed her into exerting herself too much, her heart was very stressed.  So Betsy stayed in bed for the rest of the month, as her body was trying to recover, and the doctor said to let her rest for a while, as her body had been through a lot.  We had some back to school activities at the end of the month, and Travis and I conducted a marriage class with a few games.