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! :)