I'm Back! & Addy Updates!

I am back from my awesome getaway with my mom. We had a really good time. LOVED lounging on the beach, definitely the best part. We did go on a historical tour and toured an old plantation called Magnolia. Interesting but would have preferred to stay on the beach! The little house was a house for the slaves, up to 50 people would stay in them at a time!

This is an albino peacock!

I had a doc appointment this morning to prepare for an upcoming surgery (more on that later!) It was supposed to be a 4 hour appointment but since I'm not crazy (I have proof too!) I was only there an hour! So I headed back home and decided to call my doc since Addy's nurse was scheduled till 1 and it was only 9! I have been coughing like crazy since Wednesday. I just finished an antibiotic on Saturday for a sinus and ear infection but this cough was making me nuts! Fortunately I got into my doc at 10 and low and behold I have acute bronchitis. Shocking. So I'm now on three new meds and hope to be much better off by tomorrow night!

I headed back into Springfield this afternoon with Addy. She had a follow-up cardiology appointment. We had to see a new cardio doc. Her doctor unexpectedly retired last month. I asked why today and he found out on a Monday that he was completely deaf in one ear and he retired on that Wednesday! This is a man that would call me from his office on a Sunday night because he was reviewing files! Major workaholic! Anyway, he felt it was a disservice to his patients because he can no longer hear heart murmurs so he retired! Well new cardio doc did an Echo, and an EKG and Addy's heart is PERFECTLY HEALTHY!! The hole that was still in her heart last November has completely closed up and her lung pressures are better than normal! Isn't that amazing!?!? This is a girl that was oxygen dependent, has severe pulmonary hypertension and was on several meds and breathing treatments a day! So one less doctor for Addy now! Yeah!! As we were leaving I thought I would drop by her eye doctor's office to see if her glasses were in. We picked out the frames forever ago but hadn't heard anything. They arrived this morning! So check her out!! She is doing fabulous with them! She has only tried to remove them a couple of times, I just put her hand down and say "no touch" and she is fine! It's obvious that she realizes she can see! These pix of her looking at Jarika, she can actually see her now!

Leaving!!

I can't believe I am actually leaving tomorrow! I am so excited for this little vacation! My mom and I are heading out tomorrow night to go to Charleston, SC. We are staying at the gorgeous Palms Hotel at Isle of Palms! We made this spur of the moment trip a few weeks ago. We are both seriously needing the time away! We are hoping that the rain that's predicted for tomorrow moves out of here before our flight leaves tomorrow night! We are flying from Springfield to Memphis, Memphis to Atlanta then Atlanta to Charleston. Hoping and praying that our luggage makes it!

I have left my kids for a couple of nights before but never this long. I have NEVER left Addy for more than two nights! I know they will be fine, Scott is very capable! I will hopefully be updating my blog with gorgeous pix of the beach, I cannot wait to go and just relax and enjoy! It will be so peaceful! I'm sure it will take me a bit to fully relax, but I will! The kids got out of school for the summer so now is the perfect time for me to rejuvenate before we are all home together all day! It will be nice to be home, I do love my summers off, but that Jake boy of mine is such a stinker, he always keeps me on my toes!

She did it!

We all went out to dinner to celebrate Jarika's graduation. She chose to go to Chili's so I used their call ahead service to get us a table. My mom was convinced that this wasn't going to work. While we were waiting for them to finish clearing our table a random number shows up on my cell. My mom was about 15 minutes late so I knew it was her using someone's phone since she NEVER has hers on her or has it charged! Yep, it was her. She was quite pissed (excuse my lang. but she was!) that she was at the restaurant and they don't use call ahead service and she was on the patio putting tables together for us. I told her "Mom, they are clearing our table right now and Chili's doesn't have a patio!" mom, "Well I'm here, I'll come inside." A little while later as we all decided that my mom was indeed at the wrong restaurant my phone rings again. "I'm at Cheddar's I'll be down in a minute." I think the funniest thing about the whole thing was the fact that when Jarika realized mom was late she said she was hoping that she was just stuck in traffic. Scott said "Stuck in the traffic at Cheddar's?" He totally nailed that one huh?? Those of you who read this blog and know my mom it says a lot huh?

Jarika was so excited about her gifts. My mom got her a new laptop for college. We got her a cute pink and black backpack/laptop case to go with it. She thought it was perfect!
I think you can tell how surprised she was about our biggest gift to her. She got a Garmin! Many of you know that Jarika has severe anxiety and getting lost terrifies her! She did get lost one time coming back from Joplin last summer (that's where she's going to college). So we thought one perfect way to ease her fears was to give her a GPS. Now my precious girl can always find her way home!


Graduation went very well. It was quite sad though, a classmate of Jarika's died tragically on Friday night. I'm not sure of details but drinking was involved. Please pray for the Stewart family, this has got to be immensely difficult for them.

We couldn't get very good pictures. We had my zoom lens and you have to be totally motionless for the pix to be clear and we forgot the tripod so most of our pix are worthless, but here ya go, congrats Jarika we are so proud of you!

Jarika, Chelsea and Katie

Walking in her with her friend, Phoebe.

Getting some help up the stairs. I was totally cracking up at the poor girls that thought it was wise to wear heels! That's totally out for Jarika due to her ankle surgeries!

Getting her diploma!

Getting a hug from Mrs. Hibbs, the principal. Mrs. Hibbs is retiring this year so all of the kids handed her golf tees as they shook her hand. She plans on playing a lot of golf now!

Blurry, but here is the graduate!

Cast is off!

I forgot to take pix of Jake getting his cast removed yesterday. Addy went with us so I was protecting her ears from the saw! He did great, the doc was very pleased, the break is all healed up and he is good to go! His tan line was cracking me up! He got to actually play at baseball practice tonight. He said it was the best practice ever! Probably because he actually got to play after six weeks!
I think the thing I am most thankful for is the fact that he can actually wash his hands again! It was such a pain for him to wash his hands, what a luxury that we take for granted! His right arm is just a bit smaller than his left but I'm sure he will have it bulked back up in no time!

After we got his cast off we took Addy over to the hospital to drop off another stool sample to re-test to check for Clostridia. Yep, she still has it! So the 10 days of Flagyl didn't touch it! Grr! So she will start on Vancomycin tomorrow. The pharmacy wasn't able to get it prepared today. She will take it for 14 days then we will retest in the week after that. I just LOVE our new pediatrician (well he was new in July!), he called Addy's GI doc up in Kansas City today before he called me. He's still concerned that Addy may have a chronic case of this infection. It would definitely explain all of the tummy problems she has. The GI was the one that wanted to put her on the Vancomycin. It's a pretty powerful antibiotic from what I understand. I am really hoping this kicks it! This poor girl has had enough! However, as you can see, she is back to her adorable little self today!

Senior Sunday

Pretty much all the posts today are about Mothers so I thought I'd title mine Senior Sunday. In fact it was Senior Sunday at church this morning. We definitely talked about mothers and thanked ours and everything but it was about the seniors today too. There was a really cute DVD of all of the seniors that was put together which made me teary of course! This is Jarika and her friend Chelsea. You may remember her from prom! These girls have been friends since kindergarten! I am so proud of these young ladies!
However, I do want to talk about mothers today. I am blessed with a mom whom I love very much. She and I have definitely had our ups and downs while she was raising me but since I've become a mother we definitely are good friends! I also think about my birth mother on this day. I always wonder if she thinks of me and how I've turned out, what I'm doing and whether or not I'm a mother. She will probably never know that not only am I a mother but I'm also blessed to be an adoptive mother as well. It is the greatest joy! I thank Addy's birth mom everyday for the gift that she and Addy's birth father gave us. God chose them to create our child, and chose us to parent her. We are all so blessed to have our little princess in our lives! Now if we could just get the little stink to start feeling better!

Bummed

This has not been a good morning. Addy woke up around 1:30am vomiting. Took awhile to get her a bath and bed all cleaned up so we were up for a couple of hours. We were supposed to go the our Down Syndrome Group of the Ozarks picnic today but obviously that's out. When she got up again this morning she had a horrendous diaper and a temp of 100.2 :( She finished her Flagyl yesterday and is still having bad diapers but this one was the worst one in several days!

I was catching up on facebook and once again find myself so heartbroken. Precious little Ella Grace appears to have Leukemia. I love this little girl, she is such a cutie pie! I pray for her family as they are going through lots of stuff right now!

Jake told me that he saw a doe get stuck in the fence this morning. Yep, he sure did! Took Scott, two neighbors, the animal control guy, a sheriff, and the guy from the Conservation Department to get her out! She was pretty scraped up on her sides and legs but they think she' ll be okay, I hope so poor thing!

Random thoughts and ?

(just cuz the pic cracks me up, I'm pretty sure I have never sat like that!)

Okay on Sunday I got to go to Target by myself, which is unheard of, but I digress! I had picked up some organic diapers for Addy (we are trying anything to help her poor bum!), a set of pajamas for Addy, milk and a graduation card for Jarika. On the front it says something about a graduating daughter. Anyway, the checker was looking at the front of the card and pointed to the diapers and said, "Wow one in diapers and a graduate, guess you guys weren't planning huh?" I had so much fun telling her that yes, in fact I do have a daughter who is graduating and a three year old in diapers. Both were very planned and one even happened to be adopted so I was pretty sure that we were well aware of the dynamics of our family! She didn't have a response for that! How do you handle it when people need to eat crow or put their feet in their mouths?

Okay, next dilemma/problem/ordeal, whatever you want to call it. Tonight my mom, my brother, sister-in-law and their four kids, and Scott and I and three of our four kids (Jarika had a choir concert) went out to eat to celebrate the boys' spring birthdays. Every time we ever eat at a restaurant it really bothers the servers that we don't get anything for Addy. They ask pretty much every time they come by. Does she want something? A water? Anything for her? No? Okay? Are you sure you don't want anything for her? Well I could just go into the spiel that she is solely tube fed, blah blah blah but I think I need a different way to deal with it. What do you that have tube fed kiddos say without being offensive or gross? Sometimes when people find out Addy is tube fed it freaks them out a little bit and there are just some things that people just don't need to know. I don't care at all that she is tube fed I just don't want to go into it for people that really don't need to know or want to know!