Mike & Stacy: April 2010

Easter!!

We went to an Easter egg hunt at our park and the Easter Bunny came to visit.

Then the kids played at the park

Sunday morning we had our Easter Egg hunt.

The kids ran around searching the house for eggs.

Of course Easter wouldn't be complete without decorating eggs.

Gardening for Dummies (yes that is me when it comes to gardening)

Lori Prince, my sister Lori and my Parents (who always had a garden growing up) inspired us to do a garden. Where to begin? For someone who has never done a garden, and kills any living plant in my house, this was a good question. Lori Prince did a gardening class and even spent 15 min with me after the class to write down what I needed to do. We are taking the "square foot gardening" approach. So Mike built a 4x4 box. The soil here is more like clay and the soil needs to be above ground so the water can run off.

Then add 15-16 layers of wet black and white newspaper.

Then add potting mix (soil) and compost. 3 bags of mix to 1 bag of compost. For our 4x4 box we used 9 bags of mix and 1 bag of compost.

Then sprinkle some cottonseed meal, particularly for tomatoes

Make sure the compost and soil are mixed well.

Then plant your seeds or transplants. We did some of both to try it out. We also wound a seeping water hose throughout the dirt for watering. We will see how that works. Lori recommended a timer on the hose to turn on the water every morning for about 15 min. We are so excited and will let you know if any edible is actually produced. :)

Update on Christsia's heart

Christsia had another SVT attack Wed Mar 24th, five weeks after the surgery. The surgery had a 92% success rate, that she would never have an attack again. Mike was home with her and did everything they told us to do to get her heart rate down to no avail. He took her to the ER. By the time he got there her heart rate was within normal levels again on its own.

Monday we met with the Cardio Electro Physiologist who did the surgery. He said we can schedule another surgery in June. For these surgerys, they prefer to burn the problem node, but in Christsia's case the problem node was too close to the critical AV node. So instead of burning it, they froze it. Freezing it is less effective. For the surgery in june he can freeze it multiple times in hopes of being more successful. Alternately we can wait for approximately two years when her heart is bigger and then determine if it is safe enough to burn it. Either way she is starting on beta blocker mediccation to prevent further attacks. We will see how she takes to the medication and determine when/if there is a good time to do another surgery.

We don't need anything at this point, just more time to decide.

See the prior post in March for details about the history on this.

Jack can move his wrist

After 2.5 months and LOTS of physical therapy Jack could finally move his wrist since his surgery. He had nerve damage that prevented him from using it at all. Same story for his thumb. We would try to get him to use them and he would just look at us like we were idots, "didn't I tell you I can't move them, not sure what it is you are wanting me to do". I'm sure that is what he was thinking. You can imagine my relief when he moved it just a tiny bit one day. You can see in the video that he doesn't seem to have the full range of motion back but things are improving.

Christsia

Anyone that knows me knows that I love pickles. My kids have all apparently followed in my footsteps. Christsia was ready for church and just wanted a snack. I thought it was funny.

This is my first large vinyl project. We cut out the pony and put it on Christsia wall. So much fun!!!

While Mike was in Utah and Idaho I made robes for the kids.

Christsia reading to Liberty

LDS General Conference Weekend

We love watching General Conference where we can listen to the Prophet and his 12 Apostles, just like in the days when Jesus was on the earth. The kids like to play bingo games etc while they watch. You can listen or read here:

http://lds.org/conference/languages/0.6353,310-1,00.html

Mike heads West with Stephen & Liberty (brave soul)

Liberty is watching out the window of the airplane

Stephen doing a puzzle

Moutains! with Snow! Something we don't see often

Mike was able to visit the Donaldsons who moved to Utah from our ward here.

Liberty playing outside at cousin Abel's.

Cousin Benson, Stephen, Aunt Lori

Stephen and Uncle Steve.

Stephen and Uncle Shawn

Liberty, Stephen, Aunt Julie, Benson and Aunt Lori

Liberty waiting at the airport. Mike got the option to take a later flight for a free flight later. He did that but then couldn't get on another flight for two more days. Then they missed that flight because the gate number had changed and the lady at the desk told him to sit and wait to board the flight. Anyway, it was the wrong flight. He finally made it home via a later flight that day.