For My Own Record

These cute little flowers were displayed at the reception's desk at Kimball's speech. Aren't they cool?! I just took pictures for myself so I can make one for myself...one day. Love the branch!

Harvest Festivities at Green Bluff

A few weeks ago for FHE we drove out to Green Bluff and visited Walter's farm. The 20 minute drive was beautiful with all of the trees changing colors, once you get out to the bluff and see all of the farms it's just like a dream. A bit of nostalgia hits as you sit on the wooden rocking chairs on the porch and look out across the farming valley. It's beautiful! We also had dinner and ice cream and pie as well as picked out some pumpkins to carve and paint. The kids didn't like feeding the goats because the goats were starving and a bit aggressive. I would've been too.

The kids only look this grumpy because the sun was in Cora's eyes and Kimball didn't want to sit next to the skull. But I promise they had a great time!

 In the pea pit

Lately

I don't know where the time has gone, especially since it is almost NOVEMBER!! I have been frantically finishing up the majority of our Christmas shopping as I'd like to send the gifts with Donna when they come next week to visit. Oh yeah, Grandma and Grandpa Cox are coming to visit next week! Wahoo!! Anyway I figured Donna would save me at least $75+ (and hassle) in shipping by taking advantage of her drive to/from home. I have every body's gifts bought and wrapped except Lance and Cora so I think I'll make the deadline, cross that off my list.

Cora and Lance have been sick with a cold, I've been making regular appointments to the dentist which are never fun, and Kimball celebrated a birthday. Also out of the blue and very spontaneous, we bought a brand new couch today. As in a couch from a furniture store.....I didn't think that would happen for at least another 10 years but our purchase qualified us as winners of a Hawaii trip. We'll see if we ever actually make it across the ocean.

General conference was enlightening and I was able to listen to all five sessions, I'm always amazed at the size of our church and the spiritual capacity of these apostles.

I taught a jewelry class for part of our ward's Super Saturday event. That was fun and stressful at the same time but I'm also glad it's over. I've got two sewing projects to start and finish as part of Kimball and Cora's Christmas presents....also hoping Donna will help me with that because I don't think I'll get it done otherwise.

Oh! And I redeemed my birthday gift from Lance! I stayed at the Oxford Suites with my own view of the Spokane River downtown, had 24 hours to myself with no kids or husband, and had spending money. I bought a sweater. And the rest of my time was spent running errands-gathering supplies for Super Saturday, getting the oil changed in the car, got a hair cut, etc. I'm still amazed at how a simple 24 hours to myself can really refresh, reset, and refocus myself to our family! I'm hoping this will become an annual tradition. HINT, LANCE! And thank you, Pookie Smoooo for knowing exactly what I needed and giving it to me. I love you!!

Random Photos

This is my absolute favorite smile of hers!

 I found some washable paint on clearance and let the kids go to town painting in the bath tub. They loved it!

 I found Kimball's selfie on my phone.

Speech & Mommy School

Kimball has just started speech therapy this past week and he loves it! Mainly because he gets to build train tracks and play with the trains but his therapist, Shelby, has been great to work with. I do wish it was more than once a week or at least longer than 30 minutes but I'll take what I can get. So on Monday mornings when Cora has therapy, Kimball goes to Speech (at a different company) and then we go on a date together before heading back to pick up Cora. I wish I knew how to better help his stuttering but he participates really well with Shelby which I'm thankful for.

Thursday during Cora's therapy, Kimball and I come home and do Mommy School together. (Because I didn't know what else to call it that name just stuck). I got some workbooks from the dollar store and we work on numbers, letters, a craft that has to do with that particular letter of the day, and lots of reading. I absolutely love having this one on one time with him!!!!! This was our first day of Mommy School and we painted with apples.

Thank You, AFO's

This girl almost weighs 30 pounds. She's heavy. I'm really tired of packing her around everywhere and am so anxious for her to be walking! On the upside of that I have amazing biceps in my right arm. But, now that we are about two weeks into wearing the orthotics, she has been walking a lot more! I'm hoping in just a week or two it'll be official "walking" as her main mode of transportation. That'd be nice.....

Cora Update

Cora had an appointment with her dietitian on Monday. She's gained 1.5 pounds in a month since having the Gtube removed. Excellent! We are starting to reduce the caloric density of her milk, she's been on 40 calories since the whole food allergy ordeal in the spring. We'll see in the next six weeks if she continues to gain on her own.

She's had her orthotics for two weeks now and I've already seen a big difference. She still prefers to scoot or crawl but whenever I see her on the ground I always tell her, "Cora, stand up" and she immediately gets up and walks. This week she does that more on her own which is nice. I did have a few concerns about the orthotics wearing her ankles raw and the back of her leg so we went back and after remeasuring, they're going to make a new pair but slightly bigger. Oh, and out of curiosity even though insurance covered the orthotics, I asked the receptionist how much those little things cost. I was assuming $2-500. Those buggers cost $1500!!! I was quite surprised, I didn't think they'd be nearly that much.

The next few months we have ophthalmology and neurology follow up appointments. It has been so nice that the doctor appointments have finally slowed down a bit!!! I almost don't know what to do with all the extra time, but it has been so nice, especially for my nerves.

She started her new group therapy class at school and I'm so glad she gets the extra social interaction since she's such a social butterfly. There are about five other kids in her class and she absolutely loves it!

Overall she's been doing really well and it's been several months since we've had any complications arise. I'd like to keep it that way. She's developing quite the personality thanks to Kimball teaching her a lot of funny faces. She's such a darling little girl!!

Car Troubles and Missing Daddy

Last week Lance actually got a removal to Twin Falls so he was happy to do that one. He left Monday late afternoon. Tuesday afternoon he made the drive back home only to make it as far as Mountain Home finding he had engine problems. The alternator was to blame and no mechanic garages were open as it was after hours. He continued driving hoping to make it to Boise to stay with Allison for the night. Which sort of happened......

He made it about three miles short of Allison's house and the van broke down, literally, right in front of my Aunt Linda's house! Lucky for him! Jack and Linda were on their way out but Sarah was there to help him. He got the van towed to a dealership and Allison picked up Lance for the night.

The next day, no news from the dealership.

The next day after that, Thursday, no news from the dealership so Lance had it towed to a different mechanic.

The hiccup is that he's officiating a funeral service in Spokane Friday morning, he's got to get home. So he bought a plane ticket to Spokane and came home that evening. Friday morning the mechanic called and the van was fixed and ready to go $750 later. Lance worked the funeral service and then boarded another plane back to Boise to stay with Allison Friday night.

It happened to be Johnny's 70th birthday that weekend and the whole family was surprising him on Saturday. Needless to say, the kids and I missed the surprise party and Lance drove the van back home to Spokane on Sunday. Lance vowed to never work with dealerships again and he didn't make any money on that removal, BUT he made it home safely and that's all that matters. Happy birthday, Johnny!!!

***Today, Lance went to the temple with the youth in our ward to help do a baptism session. I bathed and tucked the kids into bed and Kimball was convinced that Daddy was never coming back. He kept saying, "I miss Daddy" over and over and over and no matter how much I reassured and promised that Daddy would be back in a few hours, he still didn't believe me. The kids really miss their Daddy! I guess the back and forth so much over the last week really confused them and Daddy is always much more fun than mom.***

AFO's

These are Cora's new orthotics or specifically AFO's. Aren't they so cute and little? She'll be wearing these every day, all day for the next year or until she grows out of them. When she does walk her feet are pointed outward with the bottom of her feet in. These orthotics will help give her that additional balance, confidence, and straighten her feet out so she's walking properly. I'm really hoping that within a week of wearing these that she'll just take off walking. She's so close and she knows how to do it and that she can do it. If these don't work then we'll have resort to a little baby walker/gaiter to help her. But everyone is confident that this will be the last step and she'll just take off. Fingers crossed!

Cora's Walking

This was Cora's very first independent steps. Of course, she went back to crawling and we are still working on it. Walking isn't her main mode of transportation yet but she'll get there!

Siblings

This is the only picture I have of them in their matching shirts together. We made these for the 4th of July this year. Never mind Cora's tired look as she was a bit under the weather.

Good Bye, Gastrostomy Tube

 Last month we had a long anticipated doctor visit with the GI specialist and co-treatment with our dietitian. I was looking forward to this appointment since March because I knew they would decide if now is a good time to remove Cora's gtube or not. The general rule is, you have to not use the gtube for at least 6 months. Here are Cora's stats:

• Has not used the gtube for nutrition since December
• Had a set back in the spring; she was really sick, starting to lose weight, and classified as failure to thrive. We learned she has four major food allergies and once we addressed those she started putting weight back on again.
• During the spring set back we used the gtube for water. We did 8 oz bolus' once a day for two weeks.
• She's still in 75-90% for height and weight. She put back on the weight she'd lost in the spring and is now caught up nicely!

We got the green light from both the dietitian and Dr. Z to remove the gtube!!! Here are the pictures, it wasn't a big deal at all and no procedure. They just pulled it out, put a dab of glue on the stoma and put two steri strips across it. Easy.

Here's the happy girl after the appointment!

Here's how the scar looks today, it kind of looks like a second belly button. The scars above and below it are from the stitches she had for 2 months that was holding the gtube in place while the stoma formed, and the inch long scar to the left of it was the incision scar from the surgery.

However, I was not prepared to deal with all of the emotions that came with removing the gtube. Anxious, happy, thrilled, nervous? Sure! Oddly enough, it felt like Cora was losing a limb. It felt like we were leaving a part of her behind when we left the hospital and she wouldn't be complete again. I felt sad because this gtube was literally her lifesaver! It saved her life and has been a part of her for 1 year and 3 months. And just like that, it's gone. I bawled. I almost felt the need to have a funeral, some sort of proper good bye and showing my respect. I couldn't believe how attached I had become to this little medical device and here I was sitting in the car in the hospital parking garage, just bawling my eyes out because I had to mourn this loss. I was so incredibly happy, it IS a good thing to have it removed because Cora doesn't need it because she's thriving so well on her own. But I was just so sad to say good bye, I needed more time to cope with this separation. And I shocked myself, I had no idea that I would feel this way until it hit me like a brick wall. The whole processing of it was just bizarre.

Needless to say, Cora is doing great without it. This is proof and this is how she eats every meal, like she's completely ravenous!

When we got home from the appointment I took Cora in to show Lance the good news. I said, "Cora, show Daddy your button." She lifted her shirt to show him and looked up with the most perplexed look on her face! She kept looking at her belly and up at us with inquisitive eyes as if asking us, "Where did it go?!" She realized it was gone and she still lifts up her shirt and looks at me wondering where it went.

Lance's New Project

I was surprised to find out that Lance sold his Smart car and within two days he bought this cute little thing. And I have to admit, it really is cute. It's a 1973 VW Karmann Ghia. This is an actual photo of Lance driving out of the guy's driveway. He drove it about 3-4 miles to fill up on gas before we headed back home (another 20 miles) and the car wouldn't start back up. So we had it towed to our house where it has sat and is now officially Lance's project. He sure is having a good time with it and I'm glad he has this little hobby to escape the world.

Entering a New Decade - I Turned 30!!!

These are my beautiful birthday flowers from Lance. It was a pretty low key day, Lance was busy at work but I had a few hours to myself in the evening. My present from Lance is pretty awesome and he couldn't choose the best one so he let me pick between these four options:

• $300 spending cash
• Lasik eye surgery
• A new iphone
• A 24 hour getaway - hotel, massage, spending money - no kids, no husband

Of course I picked the last one because I can't imagine anything better right now than not having to get up with the kids, getting to sleep in, or getting to eat my own food while sitting down without sharing it with anybody. I have yet to redeem this gift but I'm making a list of things I'm going to accomplish by myself and Lance is currently trying to work out the on-call schedule so he can be with the kids for 24 hours. YAY FOR ME, thanks Lance!!!!!

(When I asked Lance where he's getting the money to pay for any one of these, he apparently sold the smart car which I didn't know). 

Random Photos

These two have been getting along so well lately and I love it!

When school was out we'd walk down to the high school and the kids would ride their bike/car in the empty parking lot. Turns out all they really wanted to play with her these bike parking thingy's.

We went to Splash Down as a family, a little water park here, and although it was a bit chilly we had a blast! Kimball even went down the big slides with Daddy, he thought that was awesome.

 I found this slide on Craigslist, it's a huge hit!

Much to our shock, Pokey is not a male. We learned this when we found a little baby Guinea pig in her cage. Hmmm! Kimball named this little guy Baby Pokey or Little Pokey.

Washington Fires

The wildfires in Washington this year have been really bad, to the point that we couldn't go outside or have any air come into the house or car. You could see ash everywhere and it was like living in a permanent campground. The state authorities said the air quality hadn't been this bad since Mt. St. Helens erupted in the 80's. However, the fires make beautiful sunsets! My camera wouldn't focus because I was so zoomed in on the sun, but I kind of like this photo that way. There's no filter and the sun was just a wonderful magenta color.

The picture is from the news and is a shot of downtown Spokane. The top picture is a normal day and the bottom picture was one of the worst days during the wildfires. It was awful! The fires are still going but the Lord is mindful of His people and answered the prayers of the Spokane Stake who fasted for rain. The air is finally back to normal - almost.

“The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone, but the things you do for others remain as your legacy.” 
- Kalu Ndukwe

Lots of Little Changes

• Cora started walking independently!!! This is a whole blog post in itself but it needs to be noted. Walking still isn't her main form of transportation but it's a HUGE accomplishment!!
• Both of the kids have had diarrhea for 1.5 weeks. No throwing up, they don't act sick, they still eat well, they just have the runs and I'm really tired of cleaning up poop.
• Lance sold the Smart car
• There are still 2.25 hours in the day and so far the business has hit a new record for the most calls in one day - twelve!
• One of the big funeral homes has asked Lance to consider becoming their answering service. I told him no and he told them no but the longer he thinks about it, the more he's actually considering it. He's waiting for them to give him actual numbers so he can put to paper the outline of how it'd work. He's not offering this to any other funeral home and has no interest in doing it for anyone else. I guess we'll see how it pans out in a few weeks.
• I found a sign language show on Netflix that's actually for kids and I watch it for my homework. I need to learn a lot more signs so I can be teaching Cora and together the both of us need to figure out our own form of communication. She's a smart little whip, she just can't talk.
• I've finally bit the bullet and finished a few projects for the mud room. I'm tired of our little bar area collecting mail and junk so I've been working on a bulletin board, chalk board, and some baskets to hold "crap" in for the mud room. I'm tired of the bar area being so cluttered, hopefully this will help. I can't wait to get it all hung up!
• I can't remember if I posted this a while back or not but I got a new calling and it's one I've had before that I absolutely love. I teach the 15-18 year olds in sunday school. I love it!
• Cora's school has suggested she join a group therapy which I absolutely agreed to. Right now she has four, 45 minute, one-on-one therapy sessions with PT, ST, OT, and CI that are each once a week. They'll put her in a group of about 10 other kids that meets twice a week for two hours each. They do different activities from singing time, story time, playing, art, etc. just like nursery does in church. Within the class a therapist will pull her from group for a 15 minute session. Cora is a social butterfly and I think she'll greatly benefit from group and once she gets the walking down pat, her speech will pick up (hopefully). In order for me to keep her dream team of Ginette and Jan (who've been her therapists since birth) I've got to put her in the 8am class. That's so early! Unfortunately, parents and siblings are not allowed to stay for group but can observe from outside the classroom if we'd like. I did had Kimball signed up for preschool this year but I don't think I'll do that anymore. With Cora's group twice a week, plus Kimball's preschool three times a week, plus all the doctor appointments mixed in there?! That's way too much running around and too much going on in general. So Kimball and I will have our own time together while Cora's in group.

Motherhood Summed Up in a Picture

New Family Addition

Much to my surprise, when the kids and I drove home from vacation Daddy had this little surprise waiting for the kids. It's a guinea pig and Kimball named him Pokey. Kimball loves him and I've never heard Cora "talk"so much or so loudly than when she's around Pokey.

New Hair Color For The 30's Decade

Be In Your Chair

Last week we had a relief society lesson about Families Can Be Together Forever. Now, that's a very broad topic and definitely a very common one. This was the best lesson I've ever heard on the topic, because being honest, that topic is pretty sore and sensitive to a lot of people, especially women and especially within the church when there is so much emphasis placed on the family.

There was an old, antique child's chair made of metal on the table for display. The teacher started out by sharing this quote from President Ezra Taft Benson, "From the beginning of their marriage, Ezra and Flora Benson made their home and family their top priority. When their children were young, they began emphasizing that they wanted their family to have no “empty chairs” in the eternities."

The teacher stated how we all have a chair reserved for us in our eternal families. She asked us to think of the particular chairs in our families, all of the chairs, are there any empty chairs? She then went on to discuss divorce, death, falling away from the church, broken family relationships for various reasons, etc. and other examples of what can break families apart. She spoke of her own family and shared why and what each of her sibling's families look like and how she's the "black sheep" because she's the only that's been married for 30 some years. She has a lot of empty chairs in her family.

She explained what the best thing is that we can do for our families, to ensure that we have an eternal family - BE IN YOUR CHAIR! Whatever the reasons the other chairs are empty - bitterness, guilt, grudges, offense, divorce, death, falling away from the church - the best thing we can do to help fill those chairs is to be in our own chairs.

Cora's Seizures and EEG

While we were on vacation in Twin, Cora had two seizures (that I know of) that occurred on two nights back to back.

The second seizure: A few hours after I'd put her to bed she'd woken up and cried so I brought her into the living room and rocked her for a while. She had deep, slow, even breathing so I looked down to see if her eyes her closed. Her eyes were open and completely glazed over, she was totally gone from this world. I picked up her head and turned it toward me so I could get a better look and to see if she'd snap out of it but no response. This lasted about 5 minutes. The instant I saw her eyes like that I knew something wasn't right.

The first seizure: The previous night the same thing happened with her deep, slow, even breathing so I assumed she was asleep until mom said, "Cora, your eyes are wide open." I didn't think anything of this until the next night when the second absent seizure occurred. So I started grilling mom for some answers, she didn't respond, didn't wink, twitch, or move in anyway. It lasted probably about 4-7 minutes.

I've heard of absent seizures before with other children who have the same corpus callosum disorder as Cora. In fact, at her neurology appointment a few months ago in May I specifically asked the doctor  if she would have seizures. He said she has a 2-4% chance of them occurring and if she hasn't had any yet then she probably won't.

Technically, I don't know for sure if that's what Cora was experiencing because I was on vacation and no neurologist was there to witness and confirm it for me. Since being home, Cora had an EEG and I'm still waiting for results. The whole EEG procedure was awful, the worst preparation for a test I've ever done because Cora had to be sleep deprived for it. I had to keep her up until midnight, and then wake her up at 4am and keep her up until the appointment at 7:30. There are 29 electrodes and they use this gel and wax stuff to stick to her head and cover each one with tape. Then they wrap her entire head with gauze so the electrodes don't move and they hope she sleeps during the next 30-40 minutes while the computer tracks her brain activity. I'm not sure what they're specifically looking for or if she's supposed to have a seizure during that time to confirm that she did indeed have one. If they are, she didn't have a seizure that I know of but there are lots of different types of seizures.

Also a note for myself, about 2-3 hours after each seizure in Twin Falls she'd wake up again crying and screaming. I wasn't able to console her or calm her down at all so I just had to let her cry it out. I don't know if this was another type of seizure or not but it only happened after those two seizure incidents.

The EEG was awful and I will never put Cora or myself through that again unless her life depends on it. She had some crazy bed hair from all of the wax on the electrodes and you can still see all the little indents on her forehead. Poor girl!

July Festivities

July marked our summer vacation! Lance drove down with us and stayed for 4-5 days before he flew back home to work, it was nice that he could be with us and it had been two years since he'd been to Twin Falls.

• Boating with Mays - this was by far our favorite part of the Cox reunion, I wish more of them came with us because it was a blast! We ate lots of yummy food, celebrated the fourth of July and watched the parade, swam, played games, slept outside, enjoyed Grandma's games for the kids, etc.
• Kimball and Lance took their own four wheeling trip with dad and Grandpa. After the Cox reunion Christine came up to visit for about 10 days. Did I mention her newborn, Lucas??? Sweet little guy who won't let his poor mama sleep! I tried to help Christine out with Zander as much as I could so the adjustment to two kids would be easier. We had our own four wheeling trip with Dad and Grandpa and saw the gorgeous scenery. We also visited some parks, fed the ducks and fish at the cemetery, saw the sturgeon in Buhl and enjoyed ice cream at the Clover Leaf Creamery, etc. It was so fun to see her!
• Family festivities - we celebrated Dad's birthday, took Charity and Devin and Savannah school clothes shopping, had dinner with Christine and Adam, had an adult only dinner out at Tomatoe's, visited with each of the sisters, played in the mud, mowed the lawn etc.
• Cox festivities - lots of dinners together, ate out at Burnt Lemon Grill (my favorite) and Cora loved their lemonade even though I'm not supposed to give it to her, ate ice cream, played with lots of balloons and toys, shopping with Sage, etc.
• Cora got her first haircut! I was too chicken to do it so mom did it for me. It looks so much better without the little rat tail and I've since noticed how blond she's become.
• Had dessert with Stephanie Cook and met her new fiance, they're getting married in three weeks. I haven't seen her this happy in years!