Kiddos Birthday Party - 2013

I figure why the kids are still young and don't have much of an opinion yet I would take advantage and combine their birthday parties.  Since we are still in the tiny Plex we decided to have it at a nearby park with all the kid's friends and parents.  Thank goodness my parents decided to make the trip over for the party, I don't think I could have pulled it off without them especially since I was leaving on a week long work trip the next day.

Of course Drew had to get sick the night before the party.  We really didn't think he would feel up for the party, but he surprised us and was in good spirits for most of the party.  Isla was so excited to have all her friends come and play with her:

Drew was a bit shy:

Fun with friends:

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They both go to pick out their own birthday cakes.  Drew went with the Boise State cake:

And Isla wanted a chocolate cake with pink frosting and flowers:

Cake! It is so funny to watch how quickly kids come together when it is time to cut the cake:

Poor Drew trying to have a good time at his party (I think the cupcake helped):

A huge thank you to Grandma Connie who took all the pictures!

UW vs BSU #3

For Labor Day weekend we headed over to Seattle to attend what I like to call the rubber match of the UW and BSU series.  It was also Ryan's birthday so we celebrated that as well with my parents, cousin Drew and the Bjarnsons.  It is always rough when we have to stay with the Bjarnsons, I mean this view is okay I guess:

We ate and drank A LOT and it was all fantastic. How could it not be with a group like this:

Although the game didn't end up how Ryan wanted, I was happy that the Dawgs got a win in the their new stadium:

And I'm also happy that our marriage remained strong through all of these games:

Can't wait until 2015 when we host the Huskies in Boise:-)!

The PICC Line

I know I have eluded to Ryan's sickness in a couple of my posts and at last the story is ready to be told (or more like I actually have more than 20 minutes to sit and write about it).  It's a bit of a long one so bear with me.

Allow me to go back to where it all started.  Ryan went on a back country fishing trip with his friends in the middle of July.  The trip was documented in the following video clip thanks to Mr. Ryan Kearney http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qawp1zPqEo.  Before Ryan left on the trip I bought him some new Keens.  This turned out to be a bad idea as they hiked quite a bit and the new shoes gave him blisters all over his feet.

Fast forward to a week later when we are in San Francisco for the JT/Jay-Z concert.  The blisters on Ryan's feet still hadn't healed all the way and his feet were swollen the entire weekend.  We were able to alleviate some of the swelling with some Advil so we didn't think anything of it.

Fast forward to the next weekend when we were at the Natatorium with the kids.  Ryan was taking Isla down the water slide and he ended up jamming his foot at the bottom of the slide which hurt his back.  That night he became immobile due to his back injury and also came down with a fever.  We weren't really concerned as we thought Ryan had caught some virus from the kids.  When the fever didn't go away later that week and with his back still hurting he went to the doctor to see if they could help him out.  They gave him pain medication for his back and weren't really worried about the fever.

When the fever still hadn't gone away by the weekend Ryan went back into the doctor as it was starting to affect his sleeping (night sweats).  They drew some blood and definitely said something was wrong, but they weren't sure.  Again they told him to just take some Advil and hoped that the fever would go away.

Thankfully by the time we left for our trip to Montana the fever had gone away and Ryan's back was doing better.  Unfortunately that was short lived as Ryan sat in a chair wrong when we were on the pontoon boat and his back started hurting again.  That evening the fever also came back.  This is when we knew something had to be wrong and the back pain and fevers were related.

Ryan had an appointment with his doctor on the Tuesday after we got back from Montana (the previous doctor visits had been with other doctors within the same clinic) and he sensed Ryan's irritation with the fever and back pain so he started the ball rolling immediately.  That same afternoon he sent Ryan to get an MRI. The results of the MRI showed a large abscess in Ryan's lower back.  That evening they sent him to the hospital to see an infectious disease doctor that stuck an 8 gauge needle into his back so they could get a biopsy of the abscess (I should have put a disclaimer on this post that I am an accountant and have no idea if I am using the correct medical terms, but they sound right).

By this point the doctors had concluded that the abscess was either a staph infection or strep that Ryan had most likely contracted on the fishing trip through the blisters on his feet, hence the swelling.  The plan was to treat the infection aggressively with a lot of antibiotics.  In order to do this they needed to insert a PICC line into his arm so I could give him the antibiotics everyday.

I get queasy with this kind of stuff, but "in sickness and in health" right?  I sucked it up and every night I gave Ryan his antibiotics:

The doctor's later learned that Ryan had strep and not a staph infection.  He was actually lucky that he tore a muscle in his back as the bacteria attached on to it and created an abscess.  If that wouldn't have happened the strep would have lived in his body without us knowing and could have reached his heart which would have put him at a high risk of a heart attack.

I am happy to say that the antibiotics started to work immediately and the abscess shrunk to a smaller size that allowed Ryan to have the PICC line removed after two weeks.  He still has to take oral antibiotics for a month, but I think he would rather do that than have the PICC line.

It was a rough month there, but I'm happy that Ryan is healthy once again.  I don't think I will ever take my family's health for granted again.

The Rest of August

We had a busy second half of August.  It was filled with watching Bam Jam while eating fries:

Attending a classmate's birthday party:

And going to the street party at Roosevelt Market:

We ended the month with a FUN concert:

It was FUN.  Bet you didn't see that one coming.

Montana - 2013

Ryan and I attempted to make our second annual trip to Montana in the middle of August.  I say attempted because the second day we were there Ryan got sick again (this topic deserves a separate post) and we packed up and went to pick up the kids in Hailey. In hindsight it was probably good that we left early as the Wood River valley was on fire and the air quality was not good for the kids.

I was able to get a couple of pictures fishing on the pontoon:

It was right after this picture that Ryan's back started acting up again and we had to go home :-(:

The scene that awaited us in Hailey was a bit scary.  I'm glad we were able to get our kiddos and head home:

Thank goodness no one we knew lost their house in Sun Valley, but it was a bit closer that we would have liked.

Swimming Videos

Wow it's been a while since I've done a blog post.  We had lots going on this past month with job changes (me), sickness (Ryan) and travels (go Dawgs!) that I will get to, but for now I wanted to post a couple of videos of my babies swimming.

We got a lot of use out of the Natatorium pool this summer and you can see that in the leaps Isla has made with her swimming.  She is our cautious child so the fact that she even got into the water this summer was a win.  We did sign her up for swim lessons through her daycare so I can't take all the credit, but Isla went from holding onto the side of the pool in fear to this:

I know her form isn't perfect, but I will take it!  Of course her brother could not be outdone by his sister so he decided to show me his own "swimming".  At least he doesn't have an issue with putting his head under water (Isla just did that for the first time this year):

Hopefully next summer we will be in the big kid pool!