OOPS!!!!

It has been brought to my attention that I failed to mention that along with all of the others that came to see Kaylin at the talent show, Tali and her OTHER best friend Stephanie also came AND brought us all some yummy donuts! So very sorry about my memory lapse!!!!

P.S. Happy Birthday Tali! :)

School Talent Show

Kaylin played the piano for the school talent show this year. I don't think I was ever brave enough to do something like that, so I am very impressed! She played a song that she wrote all by herself that was untitled at the time (she has worked on the song since then with her piano teacher and added a little more, and has named it Tami's Song after my friend Tami who ALL of my girls adore!)

Hailey and Lindsey were very excited to see Kaylin up on stage!

Tami brought her family to watch the great performance as well. Somehow, only the girls were lucky enough to be photographed!
Scotts parents made the 2 hour drive so that they could also be there and watch Kayllin. What a great fan club she has!!!

Hailey Preschool Graduation

Still trying to catch up on the old blog! Here are a few pictures from Hailey's Preschool Graduation. She LOVES her teacher Mrs Goodrich! What a difference preschool made for Hailey! She is not quite so scared of everything anymore! She made a few good friends and was even bravde enough to stand up and do her part. Night and day from when she started! Thanks Mrs. Goodrich!

Check out my little brother

I have been enjoying going to the state track meet for the 1A division for the last few years to watch my brothers dominate everyone in the hurdles. Taylor was the state champion all 4 years of his HS career and had the state meet record. Dillon entered the picture at the end of this career and let Taylor finish HS with a great record, but has since taken over. This past year he has beaten Taylor's record and the family still holds the state title. Dillon won both hurle events, took 2nd in the triple jump and placed in the high jump....3rd or 4th place maybe...can't really remember anymore! My brothers are awesome! :)

Hailey's Birthday Party

I do realize that this happened over 2 months ago, but I never posted anything from Hailey's birthday parties, a make up/hair party with her friends and a good old-fashioned family bday party.

Spring Sports

Kaylin and her cousin Sophie were on the same soccer team this last spring and Hailey decided to try her hand at t-ball. There are definately more t-ball pictures because they got to play at the Peoria Sports Complex for their last game and Hailey thought she was big stuff. Lindsey also decided to pose for a few pictures after the game. I loved the one where she is "stealing" a base!

Zoo Trip

So I am going to be posting some random events from the past few months in order to catch up on some of the fun things we have been doing.

A few months ago we took a trip to the zoo with my friend Tami and her kids, my friend Tali, and a couple of Kaylin's friends. We had tons of fun. The tiger put on a nice show for us by climbing up and down the tree...I captured most of it on my camera.

Have you missed me?

Do to reasons unknown even to myself, it was necessary for me to take a short...ish vacation from the blogging world. It was pointed out to me however, that I left many of you wondering about the progress of my Step-Dad after the heart transplant. For this purpose have I returned to the blogging world with the added hope of catching all 3 readers up on not only my Step-Dad, but on all of the other wonderful events that have happened since I last posted. So please stay tuned for future posts as they will include pictures and short...ish captions about swimming, camping, family, friends and my lovely young women. Stay tuned, because you never know when you might appear in one of the posts!!!

I have tried to take pictures of Harry throughout this whole ordeal, much to his dismay. He told everyone at the hospital that I wouldn't put my camera away and "pretended" to not like it, but he did eventually start to actually smile for me and let me take pictures of him with other people, so it must not have been that bad!

So here is the long awaited update on Harry. His transplant surgery took a little longer than they had hoped due to some extra bleeding. He woke up quickly and things looked great. He has had a slow recovery, mostly becasue the right side of his new heart has not seemed to kick in and pump as hard as it should. They did routine biopsies of the heart to check for rejection (no signs of rejection!!!) and during one of these procedures, they nicked his heart and caused some internal bleeding. He was on blood thinners and so this was kind of a problem and they almost had to so emergency surgery to stop the bleeding. Luckily they were able to get it under control and they only had to do a minor procedure to clean out the old blood that had dried inside. This whole thing slowed down his recovery as well. A few days before they sent him home to my sister Stephanie's house (the first time), his truck was STOLEN out of the Mayo Clinic parking lot. Apparantly someone thought it would be the perfect smuggling truck to take to Mexico. It was found in the desert somewhere and the insurance company totaled it out. What fun, huh? So my poor Mom is trying to take caare of Harry, deal with the insurance company and the rental car company...and her rental car even breaks down on her a couple of times. Harry was out of the hospital for only a few days and whne he went in for one of his check ups, they decided that since he had gained 20 pounds, they were going to readmit him. The day after they readmitted him, he got very sick with an infection and it took him a while to get over that too. He is finally back at Stephanie's house and doing pretty well. They have found out that the right side of his heart has some damage to it now...I don't know if it is due to bad luck, which they have definately had, or if something happened during one of the "routine" procedures that caused the damage. So for now, Harry still has heart failure, but it is manageable. He may have to go back in and out of the hospital to help get rid of water weight every now and then for a while, but once he is stronger and has mostly recovered from the transplant, he will have to go in for one more procedure where they can correct the problem and THEN he can fully recover and get life back to normal! We have appreciated everyone's prayers and support throughout this whole thing. It is comforting to know there are so many people pulling for Harry, even if they don;t know him! Thanks!

Disclaimer: I may not be 100% accurate in all of my details...a lot has happened! If there are any of you out there who want to add to or correct anything I have written, please do! :)

LOVE STORY (Taylor Swift) meets VIVA LA VIDA (Coldplay) - Piano Cello - by Jon Schmidt

I just saw this on my sister-in-law's blog and loved it so now it's on my blog too!

Hailey

Hailey turned 5 a week ago, so I thought I'd better get up a slide show before I turn around and she's 10! Sometimes I can't believe how fast time passes, and although I really am happy to see her grow up, it is still a little sad to know she will never be like she is now again! I hope you had a happy birthday Hailey and I hope you know we love you!

A New Heart!

We got the call late yesterday that there was a possible heart for Harry, it was his if it was in good condition. They finally took him around midnight (I think) to go in for surgery and at 3:45 (I think) they came out and said they were attaching the new heart. At 7:40 this morning they came out and told my Mom that the new heart was in and beating on its own! They were still finishing up, but so far so good! He has done such a great job so far. He recovered from his BiVAD surgery and was back on the list in 19 days, most people take months. He was on the transplant list for a grand total of 10 days, 5 days before the BiVAD and 5 days after. I realize that we hve been very blessed in this and am so grateful for the donor to have made it possible for Harry to keep on going, and am amazed at the doctors and what they are able to do...especially in the middle of the nught! Harry would definately not be around anymore if transplants weren't possible and if the donor had not made the decision to be a donor. We have a lot to be grateful for. Thanks for all of the prayers and support! These pictures were all taken yesterday after we got the news about the possible heart.

Anyone who knows Harry very well knows he doesn't love cameras and doesn't especially like to smile for them. When we got there he looked happier than I have seen him in quite a while. He even suffered through my photo session while he made faces and crazy smiles!

My mom isn't going to love that she has her lovely cold sore in these pictures, but she looks great anyway!

I can't remember the reason Harry was "getting after" my Mom...obviously sopmething was funny and I thought the picture was pretty funny itself!

I think Harry was sticking his tongue out as a protest to all of the pictures and demand for "serious" smiles! You gotta love him!

The grand Houston Finally...I mean...Finale!

Finally we get to the part the girls...and the parents I guess...were looking mmost forward to. We had great seats for the rodeo and concert thanks to Aunt Gail. The arena was HUGE so even with great seats, we weren't that close to the stage. Since we watched the end of the rodeo, we got to watch them assemble the stage for the concert, and we got to watch the band warm up a bit. Scott left to go get food because the Kaylin was STARVING, but he got back just as the concert was about to start and nobody was hungry anymore! The girls all had a great time. There was dancing and cheering and some people who kept holding a big sign up in front of us every time the stage faced us (it was rotating through the entire show) so we could only see Taylor really well on the big screen. She did an awesome job and kept us entertained, even though Lindsey got a little feisty becasue it was WAY past her bedtime and Hailey BARELY made it through the last song before falling asleep! The last picture in the slide show is the girls with Aunt Gail and 2 of her kids Karen and Lee, and, of course, the dogs. The girls LOVED the concert, but I'm not sure that they didn't love the dogs and our family just as much! So, thanks Aunt Gail and everyone else for the great time!

Houston Part 4? I lost track!

On our last day in Houston we went to the aquarium and saw all kinds of fish, sharks, and white tigers. (Doesn't everyone expect to see white tigers at an aquarium?) We also rode some rides...Lindsey was so brave and rode the drop ride (yeah, I forgot what it's really called) and she loved it! We rode on the ferris wheel and took a ride on a little train. After that we hurried over to the Houston Rodeo. It was lots of fun. we started off with the appropriate carnival snacks of fried twinkies, fried oreos, fried cookie dough (my personal fav), ice cream and sodas. After not being able to actually eat all of that crap...thank goodness!!!...we did a little Taylor Swift Karaoke to prep us for the big concert that night, visited the kids section of the rodeo booths and saw a lot of animals. It was tons of fun.

A Bit of Good News!

Harry got moved out of ICU yesterday! He seems to be making good progress in his recovery and the docs are very impresses with his pain tolerance and say he is recovering much quicker than most patients. They think he might be able to go back on the transplant list in a couple of weeks! I found a few more old pics of Harry...of course with the kids all around him! These pics are from Christmas '03, so you can see what he used to look like a few years back!

This is Harry with one of Layla's girls...I'm going to guess Riley since her fingers are in her mouth.

This is Mattie and one of the twins...I'm not even going to attempt guessing this time! Lindsey says it is Grandpa with Olivia and Luke....I guess she sees the family resemblance between siblings!

This is a very typical scene with Grandpa Harry. The kids just gravitate towards him, which he loves! This is Caitlin or Riley on Grandpa, Olivia is the other baby, and sorry Sophie, you got cut in half on this picture!

Houston Part 3

So...the journey continues....On day 3 we went to the Houston Space Center. After the road construction and faulty road signs, we finally managed to make it to the space center. As soon as we parked the car though, Lindsey announces that she peed in her carseat. Great, I didn't bring any extra clothes. So we use our not so trusty GPS to take us to a Target....only when we had "arrived at our destination" there was NO Target or anything around to get replacement clothes. We finally found a dollar store...oh yeah, love those dollar store clothes! So I change Lindsey and sit her on a towell in her car seat and we head back to the space center. Haiely waits until we are on the road to announce that she now has to pee. So I tell her she better hold it until we can find a bathroom becasue I was not stoppoing to buy clothes again! We find a fast food place and I rush her in and we rush back out and manage to make it ALL the way back to the space center parking lot. As Hailey gets out, scott notices her pants are WET!!! Seriously?! Well, apparantly I rushed her in and out of the bathroom so fast that I didn't notice she had already had a little accident and since I had said I wouldn't stop again, she didn't tell us so she wouldn't get in trouble. Well, even thgough I said I wasn't going to stop again to buy clothes, in reality I wasn't about to drag her around all day with a wet bum. SO....we leave again, this time hoping our GPS would lead us to a WalMart. Due to the oad construction and detours, the GPS got thoroughly confused, at times not even thinking we were on ANY road at all. AFter much driving around, we Lindsey...I had learned you could never be too sure...and then realized that Old Nave does not sell Undiees in Hailey's size! I really was done driving around and we had spent half of our day trying to find clothes for the kids, so I tried to just make her wear a pull up. She was not happy. Then I remembered we had brought our swim suits becasue we were going to head to the beach after the space center, so she traded in the pull up for the swim suit bottoms. AT LAST we are on our way into the space center and had a really great time. The kids loved playing in their play center (I loved that we drove half way across the country to go to the Houston Space Center and watch my kids play on the play equipment). We did get to see some pretty cool stuff though and I learned about VADs in a video there (Harry now has a BiVAD in place, so I thought that was pretty cool). We had time to take one shuttle and see one extra place and Kaylin picked the underwater training facility. This is where the astronauts train for their missions. Under water is the closest thing they can get to weightlessness for long term training. After we left the space center we drove to Galveston where after on blurry picture, my camera battery died. So I missed out on some pretty cool photo opps with the houses on stilts and some hurricane damage and the girls playing on the beach (for 5 minutes because we took too much tim finding replacement clothes earlier in the day...luckily I picked up the extra outfit for Lindsey as she had no self control and was SOAKED from the ocean!). We ended our adventure by eating at a seafood restaurant where we had to wait much longer than Scott would have liked, but the food was AWESOME!!! Even Kaylin decided she liked the Tilapia! The adventure ended late that night with the 2 little girls hanging out on Aunt Gail's lap. They loved being with her and Lindsey called her Grandma the whole time! (Are you getting sick of our Texas trip yet 'cause it's not over yet! Stay tuned for the exciting finale coming soon!)

Update on Harry

First of all, everyone should know this is NOT a picture of Harry. It is some random guy I found on the internet, so thanks random guy for the pic!
Harry had surgery yesterday and now has a BiVAD in place and working to help him until he can get a transplant. The Dr. said he bled less than most patients and the surgery took less time than usual and he is doing great. He was able to get rid of the breathing tube earlier today and has even "woken up" a little. He is very groggy and I doubt he will remember waking up, but he is recovering exactly as the doctors want! Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers so far! Keep them coming, they seem to be working! :)
http://www.mayoclinic.org/heart-transplant/vad.html?wt.srch=1&wt.mc_id=google&keyword=arizona_BiVAD_BiVAD&campaign=mca_heart_transplant&state=arizona&kw=bivad&ad=3222183048&Network=Search&SiteTarget=&gclid=CL_ow9KY4pkCFRMUagodt3-wVQ
(Sorry I don't know how to link a word to a web page yet, but this will tell a little about the BiVAD)

More of Grandpa Harry

This is a video I found from about 3 years ago. It is Harry and Hailey at the piano. It is pretty typical of him: playing with the kids, but why in the world would he want to be on a video? Anyway, Harry goes in tomorrow morning to get an artificial heart (or something else that is not quite as good thanks tp the insurance comapny...aaaaggggghhhhh!!!!!!) while he is still waiting for a heart transplant. It is pretty scary, but we feel like everything is going to go well. Please keep him in your prayers!

Houston Part 2

So, I forgot to get my camera out for our first day in Houston and missed getting any pictures with Jonathon, who is Aunt Gail's only grandchild. He left after that to spend his spring break with his mom. He is a couple of years older than Kaylin, but was so nice to the girls and knew how to play with them! Thanks Jonathon for the fun day with you! Next time...I won't forget the camera! These pictures are from Day 2, the day of the museums. Houston has a whole section dedicated to Museums, which makes it really easy to visit more than one a day, since they are all so close to each other! We started out at the Children's Museum where the kids had fun doing all sorts of things, including painting their own faces! I love how Kaylin's letters were written backwards becasue she was looking in the mirror and they looked right to her! Kaylin built her own little contraption to roll balls down. It was a masterpiece! After that we went to the Museum of Natural History. We saw dinosaur bones, learned about drilling for oil, saw a lion about to bite into a Zebra...not unlike Alex and Marty from Madagascar...a family fav! We got to see a million rocks, minerals, gems, and jewelry, and finally made it to the butterfly garden where at the VERY LAST ssecond before heading up the stairs to leave, a butterfly FINALLY landed on Hailey, changing the the worst day of her life to the best! The day was finished up with a visit from cousin Karen and her dog Chester and Jonathon's dog Skipper (the dogs also happen to be brothers). What a great day!!!

Grandpa Harry

My Mom remarried when I was almost 16. My step-dad Harry is one of the best guys I know. He has always been the favorite Uncle to all of his nieces and nephews, and the tradition has carried on with the grandkids. It was his birthday yesterday so I thought I would post a little ditty about him!

This picture was taken a few years ago. He grew up on a horse and is always taking the kids out to help feed them or to give them rides.

This picture was taken last summer when we went up for a visit to Snowflake. Harry has had heart failure for 10+ years and this was taken soon after a lot of his complications began to fester.

This is a picture of Harry just a couple of days ago. He has been in and out of the hospital this past year, mostly in the hospital this last month. After trying to get help REPEATEDLY at the Heart Hospital with NO LUCK (that's a whole other story) and then trying a doctor at Gilbert Mercy, with high hopes, but again, NO LUCK (I don't know what it is about doctors who think it is okay to send a dying guy home saying he's gonna be okay). Well, my Mom knew things weren't right and took him to the Mayo Clinic ER 2 days after being discharged from Gilbert Mercy and they were able to take 50+ lbs of water weight off of Harry in 72 hours. Hooray for my Mom for sticking with her intuition and keep seeking for help, or he would not be with us still. Last Friday Harry was approved to be put on the heart transplant list, without which they gave him about 2 months to live. So today I am grateful for my Step-Dad Harry, my Mom, and the doctors at the Mayo Clinic!