It's been awhile...

Here's the last picture of Scarlet with her Hickman line right after her very last bath with her line. Hooray!
Scarlet blowing me kisses before her surgery. It's always hard when babies have to have surgery because they are required to fast for such a long time. So what do you do for a kid who's hungry, tired, and stuck in a small room for hours? Give them sticky sticks.
She loves peeling them and sticking them on her tummy.
Scarlet with her home care nurse Michelle. She no longer gets to come every week and draw labs, etc. since the lines been removed. It's really sad. We've come to love Michelle and miss seeing her every Monday. Scarlet now has a portAcatheter which I'll show a picture of another time. I thought I got one in here. They put it in the same time they removed her lines. The surgeon who placed it however, put one in that was 2-3 inches too long that went all the way into her atrial valve. When the nurses tried to draw blood it would suction to the wall of the atrium and no blood return would come. We had it fixed last Thursday and it draws beautifully now. The unfortunate thing is that while there in the hospital, Scarlet picked up a stomach bug and has been in and out of the hospital this past week (that's what I think anyway). She is there right now with Grandma Debbie while I get some R&R from being up all night. I don't miss those long months with her at Children's hospital, I rarely got sleep for 6 months.
She should hopefully get to come home tonight or tomorrow. It was pretty worrisome for awhile but she is hopefully at the end of the virus and is doing a lot better.

Just for Mom

Davi and Carly's Wedding

The Wedding Party right to left: Anni (my sister), Stacey, Julie, Carly, Davi, Randy, Jon, and Micah (my brother)

Randy picking up his sweetheart

Our family together.

Grandpa taking Scarlet for a little stroll around the temple grounds.

I loved this tree, I thought there was something antiquish about the moss covered branches and the blossom buds.

Davi and Carly getting their wedding pictures taken. I got a lot of side shots because the angle I was at but sometimes that turns out to be a good thing. I think they look great together.

I realize now that I had some better shots of Charles and Scarlet but the icons were so small when I was choosing...oh well, I love the way Charlie smiles at Scarlet. He's such a great dad; couldn't ask for better.

Athena's mom hooked us up with a reduced price hotel for part of the time we were there staying with the family. They gave us a suite for 25 bucks a night! Scarlet found the alarm clock right away, she loves pushing buttons on anything electronic. We had a great time and it was so nice to have a place to crash without worrying about Scarlet getting too close to the other kids there. Thanks Athena and Athena's mom!!!!

Thanksgiving Dresses

I decided to make Scarlet a Thanksgiving dress since I successfully made the Halloween dress, then I decided I only needed a little more fabric and a zipper and I could make one for cousin Starla too. It was a ton of work, but they were so cute it was worth it.

They are both excellent baby models. Here is the view from the front and from behind.

Great job girls!

Thanksgiving is a time to remember all that you are thankful for and we as a family have so much to be grateful for this year. Scarlet is doing well, we are healthy, Charlie has a great job and we have a beautiful home, and great friends and family. Thank you all who have constantly been there for us; we are grateful for all the prayers and support you've given.

Nanny Anni

My sister Anni came to stay with us for a couple weeks recently and was an amazing help with Scarlet. She's the youngest sister and has kind of been forced to watch all of our kids at some time or another and I've appropriately named her "Nanny Anni". Scarlet really loved having her around and I have to agree. It was so nice to have someone to talk to during the days and she also watched Scarlet for me so I could work a few days which was really helpful.

Scarlet loves getting into the shoes. She found mine recently and tried them on for size...still a little big for ya!

Deciding which shoes she'll try on next.

Scarlet found Nanny Anni's IPod and was jamming to some music. She figured out how to use the head phones from watching Anni and tried putting them in her ears by herself.

I love the precious moments that come everyday in simple ways, they make all the work of motherhood a joy and just so much fun!

Fun Times

Just some pre-bathtime fun!

Trick or Treating!

For some reason whenever I upload my pics they end up being in reverse order...I don't know if it's something I've done to my page or Blogger has made some kind of weird update to their site.
Anyway, here's Charlie and Scarlet while we were out trick or treating last Friday. She was a leopard that night because my mom got it for her last year and it was too big then and bonus it was really warm for such a chilly night.

We walked around Amy's block with Scarlet's cousins and a couple of their friends. I haven't been trick or treating in a long time so it was really fun. I felt a little awkward because people would ask,"What can she eat?" and I really didn't know how to respond to that. So I just said chocolate, I ended up with a lot of M&M's and snickers bars. I don't want to give her M&M's because of the choking factor and Snickers has nuts that I'm not introducing to her for atleast another year. So...I guess we have to eat them for her. :)

Here Charlie and Scarlet are with the gang right before we headed out to trick or treat. Parker, Dorian, and Peyton love Pirates of the Carribean and decided to all dress up as pirates. They were really cute.

Scarlet had her regular monthly Seattle infusion appt. last Thursday and an eye appt. on Halloween. She was a witch for her appt. Most of the hospital staff wore costumes and a lot of the kids as well.

We found a cute witch hat that looked great with her dress, which I made, by the way. Grandma Debbie directed me throughout which helped, but it still took a long time!

Scarlet had a terrible time at her eye appt. They put stinky dilation drops in her eyes again and 3 doctors looked at them which meant she was held down and her eyes forced open 3 different times. It was awful for her and for me and grandma because we had to hold her. (It turns out that her eyes have not been damaged from the medicine she is on like they thought. Yea!!)

She also had an accident in between dr's. She fell from grandmas shoulders to the bench and cart-wheeled onto the floor and landed on her head. I panicked and screamed, the assisstant must have heard because she came in to help. Scarlet was fine, but I was traumatized. It was awful watching her fall and being too far away to help. Charlie always puts her on his shoulders and now when he does that my stomach gets knotted and I'm uncomfortable the whole time.

Anyway, Halloween was much better by the end of the day. Scarlet wouldn't wear the witches hat for more than a few seconds but after he eyes were dilated she didn't want it off. Poor baby!

She is such a trooper. A terrible day at the drs' and a long drive home in her carseat and she didn't fuss at all. Amazing!

I said I would post some ghost stories for Halloween and ended up being far too busy.

So here's a few.

When I was in the 3rd grade we lived in the house my parents have now. All of my sisters and I shared one of the rooms upstairs and one night I woke up and saw figures walking in a row out of the attic door across the room. They were dressed in western attire. There was a man, a woman , and a little girl. I pulled the blanket up to my nose and felt completely paralzyed. They got to the corner of my bed and dissipated. I thought I had made it up in my head but awhile later my sisters were talking about it and it turns out they had seen the same thing on different occasions.

Same house, more recently; my brother was asleep in his room (which happened to be the room across from where I used to sleep as a child) with the light on and he awoke to an old man dressed in a hooded black cape at the corner of his bed. He said he had blind man eyes, kind of cloudy; I asked him what he did and he said they just stared at each other for several minutes and then he pulled his blanket over his head and went to sleep.

Same house, a few years ago; My dad was asleep in his bed in the same room that my brother was in (rooms change a lot at my house) and he said he awoke to a man in a suit and the foot of his bed. He told me he jumped up and got his gun out of the closet and when he turned around the man was gone.

Are any of you convinced yet that my parent's house is a ghost portal???

My brother in law said that once while outside he saw a woman in an old style dress looking out the window. There have been many other experiences, mostly that creepy ghosty feeling.

Nearly all my years living there I could never stay home alone or sleep in a room by myself. There is this strong strange feeling that I just can't describe in any other way than spooky. You can feel there are spirits close to you.

I believe that some people are more sensitive to spirits than others and maybe that's why my family has been visited so many times and we can feel them so often. I think I'm starting to sound a little crazy, so I'll stop.

Hope you had a Happy Halloween!