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.