A few random pictures from the last week of school

The kids all looked so cute for church one day so I snapped a quick pic of them. This might be the first time Brandon has ever worn a white shirt to church. AND…he wanted a tie, but I didn't have one for him because let's be honest he has NEVER wanted to wear a tie before, so I don't buy them for him. 

The girls make up silly games to play at the pool. This is Ashlyn pretending to be a pink pineapple flavored jelly bean about to bounce into the pool. Leah was suppose to guess what she was..yeah..she didn't guess! Shocking! Haha….

Carter tries his best to sneak up on those baby bunnies, but they are just too darn fast for him. 

This cute boy and his hair. Spent the first 6 years of his life with a buzzed head and now he won't let me cut it. I have to prep him for weeks and weeks just to get a trim to keep it out of his eyes.  He's so stinkin cute though. I wanna smoosh his face!

Pajama day at school. Can you guess what Leah's favorite colors are?

(throw in some hot pink too that is)

 I got to go on Brandon's last field trip of the year. A walking field trip down to McDonald's. It was fun to walk with him and his class and Carter was glad to get to tag along too.

My cousin came to visit me

Ok she mostly came for a girls weekend with 8 other friends from her ward, BUT she also came a few days early just to hang out with me. I was so excited and have been waiting for June to get here since I first found out she was coming 6 months ago. There's nothing like cousin time. It's the best. Especially when your cousin feels more like a sister than a cousin. 

She flew in Tuesday afternoon and we wasted no time chatting and laughing and eating and hanging out. We stayed up WAY too late, but just couldn't bring ourselves to get up and go to bed. We were having too much fun talking. We went to the mall, ate at Cafe Rio (twice), went to Kishos with Paul, did family history (she's a MAJOR family history lover and she helped me a lot with it), spent a day at Disneyland and then tried to recooperate Friday before I took her down to Fullerton to meet up with her girlfriends. I almost decided to just keep her hostage, but thought her friends might try and hunt her down. I wish so bad she lived closer. I know our kids would be best buds. 

Dinner at Kishos.

Our chef was cracking us up apparently. 

Wednesday morning I go out to take the trashes out and see a mangled mouse in my front yard. It was DISGUSTING. I yelled to Brittany. She came out and picked that thing up and threw it away. See…I told ya she was freaking awesome!!!! 

My Dad recently sent me some family history he has had since I was probably 15. Someone gave it to him at a Family Reunion. It was pretty much a gold mine of his Dad's dad's line and had cool things like this paper with names and birthdates. Brittany was dying she was so excited. She probably sat at my computer for hours inputting information into ancestry.com and transferring it to familysearch.com. I haven't even gone through half of it either. I think I have years of work to do.

 A quick stop at the mall after Cafe Rio so Carter could play at the playground and we could chat some more. You'd think we would run out of things to say, but it didn't happen. It's been too long since we've hung out.

She also bought my kids a new game, helped me with my garden and bounced on the trampoline with my kids. Seriously, one person can't get much cooler than that.

Then Thursday came. Our most exciting day of the week. DISNEYLAND!!!! I just never get tired of going. We were there bright and early so we could get "World of Color" tickets. We went on pretty much every ride we wanted to (using fast passes, single rider lines and sometimes just normal waiting lines). We ate some really good food, and some even better desserts. We took our time, but still got to do a ton and didn't get home until about midnight. We were literally delirious. I'm not sure I've ever been that exhausted (ok I'm sure I have been with newborns but this was a different exhausted). We were like slap stick exhausted. I'm pretty sure I was rolling on the flooring laughing uncontrollably as I was trying to tell Paul about our day. I needed sleep. 

Tower of Terror. First and best ride of the day. Although there are so many close seconds I'm not sure I could ever pick.

Throughout the morning I was getting texts about my kids 150% AR awards. I was sad to miss it, but I've been to so many and Paul hasn't gotten to go to any, so it was cool that he got the chance to go since he was home with them for the day.

Ashlyn totally rocked this last trimester and got over 100 points. I think it amounted to over 250% of her goal. So she definitely earned that trophy.

And Leah was super proud of hers even though she was very adament about stopping taking tests after she hit 150% even though she had to keep reading. It's definitely not her favorite, but the AR program is motivating enough and I think only three kids in her class got the trophy. She worked really hard for it, so I'm doubly proud of her. 

Brandon got a pin for his medal because he wasn't in AR until the second trimester, but this kid should have gotten a trophy for doing so well on all of his tests. Only one test he scored an 80% on. All the rest he got 100%. He's a reading fool!

 Brittany smoked me on Buzz Lightyear big time. I think my gun was broken. Yeah…it was definitely my gun. LOL!

And incase you were ever wondering what Space Mountain looked like with the lights on, here ya go. The ride broke half way through, so they turned them all on. After a few minutes, it was up and running again and we got to go again! Woohoo!

 One of the many delicious desserts we enjoyed that day. I won't mention how many but it was more than 3. In our defense we shared them, so that makes it not as bad right???

Sure!

And this was the coolest thing ever. I ran into one of my really good friends from back in my Ricks and BYU days. He lives in Newport but we never see each other. He happened to be just one group of people in front of us in line at "Alice and Wonderland" so we actually got to chat as we waited. It was so fun. I got to meet his wife and 4 of his 5 kids including his new baby girl who is only 8 months old and completely adorable. It was awesome!

 We got off of Thunder Mountain and saw this cute cow. So we took a picture with him and then went over to the petting zoo they had set up. I've never seen that before. So either it's new or it's seasonal or something.

One of our awesome meals. Disney definitely has some good food. Especially for a theme park. I love it!

We almost didn't get to go on Racer's because it was closed the beginning part of the day and then the line for fast passes was so ridiculous we couldn't find the end of it. Brittany has never been so she didn't care either way, but we had about 30 minutes to spare before World Of Color seating opened up, and the single rider line was about that long of a wait, so I thought why not. I am SO glad we did because 1, it's an awesome ride and 2, it was really fun to go with someone who's never been. Brittany was super glad we didn't pass on the chance. 

After this picture, my phone died, but "World of Color" was awesome. It's the new 60th Anniversary one so I'd never seen it before. So even though we were so tired, we were glad we stayed for it. Although there was no talking us into staying for the Fantastmic show at 10:45. We just couldn't do it. I might have fallen asleep driving home if we tried.

The next morning was Ashlyn's Talent show at school. She played "A Thousand Years" on the piano while her friend Lourdes played the flute. They did SO great and I was so happy that Brittany was still here and got to come watch her too. Brittany is an amazing pianist and I loved that she encouraged my girls to never quit. I hope they listen to her since one of them (eh hem…Leah) never listens to me.

We came back home, relaxed and watched a movie and took a little snooze cuz we were utterly exhausted. That afternoon I drove her down to her friends house and I wasn't even sad when we got stuck in 2 hours of traffic. It just meant we got to chat more. I can't wait to see her again. Next time I'll have to head to TX.

Love you Britt! You're the best!

Carter's Biopsy

This poor boy has been through the ringer and back with all of his allergies and eating issues. But back a few months ago I started him up at OT again. His new therapist wanted me to have him tested for some possible issues before moving forward with OT. Since it isn't too helpful to try and fix a problem that can't be fixed with just therapy, I agreed to go through the process of making sure everything was anatomically okay.

I can't remember what I've written about already and I'm too lazy to go back and look right now, but suffice it to say it's been a very long process with many doctor's visits, a lot of back and forth, and some very difficult test all culminating with this esophagus biopsy. We had to be at the surgery center bright and early (6 am to be exact). Carter was definitely a trooper and even though he was tired and he insisted it was too early for a doctor's appointment because it was still dark outside (love his little thought processes), he was compliant and got up and didn't even cry. 

I got one tiny smile out of him while waiting for the procedure, but mostly he just clung to me like a little leech until the poor doctor had to literally peel him off of me kicking and screaming. It pretty much broke my heart, but I tried my best to not burst into tears myself. Luckily, they got the mask on him fast and he was asleep within a few moments. The doctor was even nice enough to come out and tell me so I could at least relax. They didn't put his IV in until he was asleep so the whole thing was pretty painless for him and he doesn't remember much.

 They came and got me as soon as they were done. He was so sweet looking laying there. It probably took him close to 30 minutes to wake up and he was quite concerned about how he got that bandage on his arm, but he was good and didn't cry or anything afterwards.

He's one brave little guy.

We just had to wait a little while and then he was able to go home and resume his normal day. I was kind of hoping he would be groggy, but nope. I think they injected him with some extra energy cuz once we got home he was ready to go go go.

We went to the store and I got him a new lego set for being so brave and then we went to Menchies for some frozen yogurt. His throat was definitely sore all day.

Sorry for the graphic pictures, but this is what Carter's espophagus looks like. The first two top pictures and the bottom right were most concerning to his doctor. She came out right after the procedure with these and said, "moral of this story is momma knows best" (because I kind of had to fight to get this procedure done. She thought he was just being a picky eater.) So even though it was nice to know I was right, I would have MUCH rather been wrong in this case.

She told me that those top two pictures should not have all that muck on them and that the bottom right one was all yeasty looking. Not normal at all.

She said they'd have the biopsy results back in a couple of days but that she was quite sure he had what is called Eosinphilic Esophagitis. I think I spelled that right. EoE for short. But basically it's an allergic reaction in his esophagus causing an inflammation of it and making it hard for food to go down (think of it as asthma of the esophagus). Hence the very picky eating. I think it's actually a blessing that he has been picky because it has kept him from getting food lodged in his throat, which often happens with this disorder and requires surgery to remove (as well as it being possibly fatal if not acted on quickly enough). So bless that sweet boy for only ever eating "safe" foods. He definitely has good instincts in that regard. And even though I feel pretty terrible for not having this scope done last year, I am glad I at least have never taken the "tough love" approach some people told me I should. It definitely could have yielded bad results.

And since I didn't know the difference between a healthy esophagus and an unheathly one, I googled it. This is what it should look like. Pink and soft and fleshy. Not "mucky" as his doctor called it. But you can definitely see a difference between his and this one below.

Poor boy!

So I got the call early Wednesday morning after his procedure and he does indeed have EoE. His doctor put him on a twice a day inhaler to help calm the inflammation and then we have a doctor's appointment this Monday with his Pediatrician, an appointment on Thursday with his allergist and another the following week with his ENT. So it's gonna be a slew of doctor's visits for a while. Also hoping to get started back on OT as soon as some inflammation goes down and he can actually attempt to safely eat different foods. It's gonna be a long process but I've already noticed his amount of coughing while eating has gone down, so I'm gonna watch him closely to see if it stops. Here's hoping this medicine works.

OH and here's a picture of him all happy eating his menchies. This boy loves his fro yo.

And another sweet picture of him hugging his brother for helping him build his new lego set. They definitely have their share of fights, but I love when they show love to each other.