A Month's Worth Of Pictures!

Never really got around to blogging during my last 7 on at work, so now you guys get a whole slew of pictures that I've taken since the last post! Nothing super huge to report going on since last month, so I'll just jump straight into the fun :]

Jayson being silly one morning on the way to daycare. I was at a stoplight and turned around to ask him a question, and this is what I saw lol. Pretty sure this was the last day my kids wore shorts :/ (can you tell I love summer?) 

I carpet cleaned our entire house all by myself on one of my days off (and no joke it pretty much took ALL day to do)....I was pretty dang proud of my accomplishment! I moved as much of the furniture out of our front room as I could to get the task done, and opened the window after. My dear cats acted like they had never seen fresh air or sunlight in their lives and immediately soaked up whatever available nice weather they could. 

To kick off the first day of October, we visited a pumpkin patch in Farmington called Pack Farms! I love this patch because it's free to get in, and the pumpkins are reasonably priced. This was our second year of going....family tradition anyone?? Hardly anyone was there because of the massive rainstorm an hour prior, but apparently we aren't afraid of a little mud (although it was a bit chilly). Jayson LOVED exploring all the pumpkins in the patch this year, while Max just wanted to ride in the cart lol.

Proof that I actually was part of the expedition! Even though we tried to get this picture at the end of the trip, when we thought the kids had gotten their fill of checking out the pumpkins, both of them were clearly much more interesting in taking off than sitting for a photo op lol.

Awesomely weird pumpkin #1 that I just had to take a picture of (Siamese twin pumpkins lol).

 Awesomely weird pumpkin #2--don't know that I've ever actually seen any of these growing on the vines in a patch before, although logically they had to have before hitting the grocery stores.....

Our final picks, taken home and washed off well! Jayson picked the three smallest pumpkins all by himself; I was very impressed with his eye for the nice round ones (although we did have to persuade him to leave the rotted mushy pumpkins alone a few times). I chose the big "papa" pumpkin as Jayson calls it, and even cut it off the vine too. 

My boys rocking their fall clothes (this was the day after I pulled all the warm clothes out of storage and bought them some new jeans). I just love them in cute hats!

Playing together nicely (it's rare enough to need a picture haha). I don't think it will be much longer before they both can't fit on there together anymore, which blows my mind. At three years old and 20 months, these kids never cease to amaze me with what they are up to, and how fast they grow!

Our little cabbage patch girl! Sam whipped up some hats for the twins to wear for Halloween (totally adorable right??) and we couldn't resist testing it out on Max. Clearly it was a little small for his head, and he wanted the darn thing off the second it touched him, but I just had to take a picture. We also let Jayson "try on" the hat but it just fell off because it was entirely too small.

And just one more of Max, being a little more masculine (and nakie) this time haha. We got to spend some quality time together one morning when Sam had already gone to work and Jayson was still sleeping. Max chose to watch the pirate episode of Backyardigans, so we donned our pirate hats and enjoyed :] When he's not getting into mischief and driving me crazy, this kid honestly cracks me up.

And there you have it! Like I said, nothing overly special, but definitely lots of cute pics. Next up on our list is GOING TO DISNEYLAND!!! Yes, I may be a lot excited here, but wouldn't you be? This Saturday night we (as in our family and my sister's family) are loading up a giant 12 seater van, and driving down to sunny California to spend four days at the happiest place on earth. I am SO excited to vacation with my sister's family for the first time ever; I think the best part will be watching the kids be together and have the time of their life. Hopefully my kids don't have too many meltdowns and stay healthy--I figure if we can vacation and accomplish that than it was a successful trip no matter what (anything else is just a big bonus haha). It will be interesting for me to see if Jayson is a daredevil or more laid back about rides, since I think he is finally tall enough to go on more things (fingers crossed anyway, if that's what he wants to do). Stay tuned for LOTS of vacation pictures soon!!! 

Mini-Vacation & Other Family Pictures

Sorry this post is a few days late, but work this weekend was definitely CRAZY, and that's usually when I find the quiet time to blog. Trust me, I was disappointed too! But, here we are, and better late than never right?

As I mentioned in the last post, Sam had an upcoming business trip to Kansas (which he enjoyed by the way), and I made a hot date with my family in Idaho to try and stay sane. Turns out it actually worked (minus one really bad day) and I rather enjoyed spending time with my boys all by myself! I know that sounds kind of ridiculous, but seeing as I don't usually do a lot of the child care tasking at home, I was nervous about how I would handle everything. I admittedly only had to survive 4 days and a 5 hour car ride home all by myself, but I was pretty proud of how well I handled it--hopefully the boys would agree! Wouldn't want to do it full time or anything (definitely enjoy co-parenting a lot more lol) and I did have some help from my sister and her husband, but nevertheless it was satisfying to realize what I can handle when push comes to shove. The coolest part was probably getting to have a special relationship with Max for a few days--because when daddy is home, everyone else is pretty much shoved aside. Without the big guy around, I actually got to be the first choice recipient of his hugs and attention (we won't dwell on the gross diaper changes and vomit after choking on dinner lol). It made me look forward to the day when he realizes he can love mom and dad equally when we are both around (I have to assume that day will come seeing as how Jayson went through the same phase). I was pretty busy chasing the boys around to get many pictures of our mini-vacation, but here are a couple I managed to snap, for your viewing pleasure :]

This was near the end of our bad day, in case the expression on my face didn't give that away. Max had been playing outside in the backyard unsupervised (for a whole three minutes lol), where Jayson and Mayce had ever so kindly made mud with the garden hose. I was trying to get dinner prepped for my kids, when next thing I know one of the older kids is hollering that Max was eating mud. Needless to say he got a bath RIGHT after the picture!

 On our last day in Idaho we went to the Boise Aquarium. Well, all of the not in school kids anyway. Not anything overly amazing to rave about in my opinion, except for the ray and shark tank (not only do you get to feed them, you can touch them)! However, the kids thought it was pretty swell. This was my best attempt at a group photo shot. Clearly I will not be hired for a photography business anytime soon lol,

Max was pretty sure he was guardian of the stroller/purses on our outing. That is, when he wasn't trying to drink the water out of the tanks that you could touch fish in. Seriously, I am learning more and more how gross little boys are! :p

We finally got our family pictures back on a CD in the mail, the day before we left for Idaho! Between being gone and then going back to work, I had hardly looked at them until tonight. Can I just tell you guys how much I love my 33 pictures? I seriously want to slap them all up on here, but that would take up way too much space, so I will try to choose a select few to share. Disappointed with Google Drive for making these pictures so grainy on the blog here, because they look a lot better in person. Oh well. And thanks again to Jenny Fowler for taking these awesome shots :]

Guess they do share some of my genetics after all lol

Couldn't share one of me and the boys without giving you a comparison of Sam and the little guys :]

Honestly isn't that too precious??

Love the skip in Max's step here!

Love this handsome guy to death, and then some :] Also can I just say that I was having the perfect hair day here, which NEVER happens (the hair gods were clearly smiling on me haha).

I waited until the very end of the photo shoot to try for this shot, and the boys were so clearly done taking pictures (my fault in planning). But, I really wanted to get a shot with the teddy bear, and at least it kind of worked out. It was a little bittersweet for me when I was planning out logistics for our family pictures this time, because we were supposed to be a family of five by now. Life definitely does go on, but I never forget my sweet baby girl Zoey, so it was nice to include her in the photo shoot in a small way. 

And just in case I haven't put up a big enough barrage of pictures, here are a few from us trying on Halloween costumes Sunday night (can't believe it's only a month away)!

Max had two costume choices this year: raccoon or giraffe. He absolutely fell in love with the giraffe costume, and I have to admit he is pretty darn adorable in it! Hard to believe that Jayson wore that costume just last year....

Jayson didn't really have much of a choice in the costume box this year (the disadvantage of being the older brother lol). We got this soldier costume as a hand me down from my sister's youngest son, and I have to say that Jayson took to it a lot better than I thought he would. We actually had a big fight about him taking it off before eating dinner (I'm taking no chances of him ruining it!), so I'm thinking it will work out just fine this year. 

For the first time in what feels like all summer, I don't think we have any big plans these next two weeks! Maybe because it's finally fall LOL. However, I have high hopes to attack the house during my week off and get some good deep cleaning done before the weather gets all cold and miserable. Also, I think it's in the books to try and have as much fun as possible with the kids outside before that's not as feasible. Have a great few weeks!

Holidays & Celebrations

Sometimes I feel like two weeks is almost too long to go without writing anything, because I practically forget what happened "so long ago" and have to stare at the calendar and rack my brain desperately! However, it's better than nothing, so here's what I remember for the past 14 or so days :]

Max had his follow up "surgery" on Monday the 25th, and was a real trooper for the whole event. I say "surgery" because they didn't exactly operate on anything; they just put their nice flexible endoscope down his throat to check and make sure that the laryngeal cleft repair done a few months back had healed appropriately. The procedure only took about an hour, and the doctor came out and told us that everything appeared to have healed up nicely from the previous surgery, and that he really had no explanation as to why Max would still be having trouble with swallowing thin liquids. He recommended a follow up swallow study in six months to see if he was making any additional progress at that point, and pretty much told us to just manage his symptoms. While it is a huge relief to be done with constant doctor appointments and surgeries, I just really wish that the outcome of all this craziness would have been him being able to drink/eat normally (well, as normal as a CSID kid can lol). It's very frustrating to constantly have to make him up batches of thickened liquids to have available wherever we go, as well as having his special straw sippy cup all the time. Even water by itself is off limits now! He can't eat any food that gets too thin when your saliva dissolves it, because his airway rather loudly lets us know that he can't cope with it. This can really put a damper on any attempt toward a well balanced diet, which actually frustrates Max as much as us I think. But I will say, overall it is a better situation than the feeding tube, so I can't complain too loudly. The good news too is that Max really doesn't mind the texture of thickened liquids, and is quite happy to sip down a drink from his cup. And we have noticed how much better he sounds when we carefully monitor the liquids in his diet, and that's a gratifying feeling (for all of us I imagine). So I guess we continue this course for at least another six months and hope for the best.

Max REALLY wanted to wear those gloves.....maybe he will follow in mommy's footsteps and work in a lab?? :]

The next day was my studly husband's birthday, and he turned 27 this year :] Not sure how happy that makes him, but I love birthdays, so we are going to pretend that it's a good thing. We didn't do much on his actual birthday because it was near the end of my week on, but he did get to buy himself a brand new KitchenAid mixer that was desperately needed in our house....I know THAT made him happy! The Saturday after his birthday I treated him to a fancy four-course murder mystery dinner and got the kids a babysitter. Well actually, my good buddy Cortney hooked us up with a baby sitter (NEVER try to find one on Labor day weekend last minute!!) and she along with her hubby doubled for the dinner. It was even more fun going with friends, definitely recommend both the dinner and good company! This was the first time we had ever left the kids with a non-family member babysitter, and I was kinda nervous, but everything went fantastic and it really hit home to me that Sam and I have GOT to get out and date more......even if we have to pay a good babysitter every now and then. I can't believe that I didn't get any pictures of the murder mystery (especially because we were all spiffied up!) but I did get one of the birthday boy on his actual special day, so that kind of makes up for it, right?

Why do little boys never want to wear clothes?? Also, I love how Gidgett photobombed this picture lol.

By some crazy miracle, all four of us had Labor Day off: The plant was closed at Sam's work, it was during my 7 off, and the daycare wasn't open for the boys..........so we planned a fun day together! Max tried to thwart it by waking up with goopy, sealed shut eyes, but a semi-quick trip to the pediatrician's office got him fixed up pretty good (they figured it was probably just viral but prescribed us eye drops in case anyway). We visited the Children's Museum to see the Bob the Builder exhibit one more time before it left, and I somehow managed to miss getting a picture of them playing in that exhibit. I did manage to get a picture of them fighting in the toy airplane outside though, winner moment there haha :p When my kids got too cranky to stand anymore, we packed them in the car and had dinner at Golden Corral with Nonnie and Granny M. It was so nice having more adults than kids at the buffet....I think we actually had half a chance to eat this time! Plus the boys were absolutely ravenous from playing so hard that they actually took some time to eat as well (usually they pick at their plates for a few minutes at a buffet, and then want to run around the restaurant like crazy children). Overall, we had a great vacation day together, and I wish we had more times together like that!

Why get along when you can fight over every toy, right?

On Wednesday, since it was my last day off (and I wanted the boys to have a chance to get in one more visit by themselves with the grandmas) we went to the zoo after naptime! Learned a valuable lesson about the zoo though: if you go at 3 o'clock, the only animals out and about are the elephants and seals. Thankfully, that seemed to be enough for my kids to enjoy, but if I didn't have a season pass I would have been super bummed out! It was also very hot, and after about an hour and a half, Jayson complained of a stomachache, so we headed home. Pretty sure he was just dehydrated a little, and wanted to ride in the stroller. Silly boy, but it worked. We still did have some fun though, and I'm glad we went :]

Jayson saw a little girl hugging the otter, and all of a sudden HAD to get his picture taken with the magic otter. Power of persuasion right?

In a desperate attempt to not leave the zoo, Max climbed onto the giant bear statue and parked it. Good thing they run cold water through the bear so you don't get fried from sitting on it!

On Saturday all of my boys got to go to a superhero party! One of my coworker's sons turned 4, so a celebration was quite in order. Apparently everyone had an awesome time; I was at home sleeping, enjoying the big downside to working graveyards. You know, missing out on life. Ah well. Sam said that Jayson loved the superhero obstacle course, but kept trying to clean it up and put it away. Max spent the majority of his time trying to swipe sweets that would make him sick as a dog. So all in all the usual haha. Here are some fun pictures from the party that Sam took:

Max enjoying a good swing :]

Jayson enjoying the swing too.

And of course, loving the trampoline!

The other fun thing was getting to see cousins both weekends! Audrey, Cadence, and Adelaide came to visit us two Saturdays ago and everyone had a great time, as far as I could tell. Max only sat on a twin once by accident, so overall a good playdate lol. He is definitely not used to younger kids than him in his house (or really even in his daycare class anymore), so being careful is not exactly in his nature! This past weekend the Marler cousins stayed at our house so they could go to one of their Utah cousins' baptisms. We didn't see a whole lot of them on Friday or Saturday, but the kids got to play together all morning on Sunday, and my little guys were in heaven (Jayson especially--he and Mayce just adore doing stuff together). Means I didn't get a whole lot of sleep, but hey, it's overrated right??

Not much to report on the job seeking hunt for Boise. I kind of blew it with the last job I applied for, so lesson learned: take the job they offer you and don't try to champion for the better position that may or may not be open. I've tried applying a few other places, but no bites yet. Sam will probably start trying to look for jobs now, but I'm not as optimistic about him easily finding a job....or moving anymore. Still want to; just have to see if it's going to be what works out. Sigh.

Busy next two weeks for us coming up (but when aren't we busy??) Sam is going on a business trip for a part of my next week off, so the little boys and I are going to have some fun in Idaho! Hope everyone has a good next couple of weeks like we are going to (that's the power of positive thinking there lol).

Big Things!

So first off I have to apologize for the lack of good pictures from these past couple of weeks! I've been sitting here trying to remember what we've done so I can blog about it, and I thought that maybe my phone camera could help jog my memory. No such luck. Apparently I was having SO much fun that I altogether forgot to take pics.....or maybe I was just too busy to be the one behind the camera lol.

First off was Max's post-surgery swallow study/follow up doctor appointment on August 12th. Unfortunately for me, his swallow study was scheduled for 12:15 in the afternoon, during my on week. Keep in mind I work graveyards, so this is right smack dab in the middle of my prime sleeping time. It's like this EVERY DARN TIME too. I've had a lot of people ask me why we don't just reschedule for my week off. Answer: We have learned the hard way, there is no rescheduling an appointment at Primary Children's unless you want to wait many more weeks for the next opening....and waiting those extra weeks really delays treatment (or getting an answer to your issue in our case). I suppose I could have stayed home and slept, but I was far too anxious and worried that I would miss something really important by not being there--getting the report of the appointment from Sam is just not the same as being able to ask the doctor himself questions, you know? So now you know why I drag my butt to every last appointment, even though it's in the middle of the night for me lol. Anyway, getting on the the appointment.....Max was kind of a stinker at first during the swallow study. He totally refused to drink from his sippy cup or regular cup and instead just had hysterics. I was getting concerned that we wouldn't get any results from the swallow study if he wouldn't swallow, so I suggested they do the one thing that Max always loves: liquid in a syringe. Thankfully that calmed him down enough and forced him to swallow, so they could do the study. The conclusion they came to is that he still is aspirating on thin liquids, but does pretty well on nectar-consistency thickened liquid. The speech therapist's advice for us was to go back to thickening his liquids and use a straw sippy cup, since that would force him to drink slower and give him more control over each swallow. She also told us we could give him regular water in the sippy cup for practice (but let me tell you, after trying that I have to disagree with the theory, because he just sounds awful as ever after drinking it). Her only theory for why Max sounded poorly when he eats kind of agreed with mine: a combination of excess saliva production and the fact that all foods contain some degree of thin liquids in them. Sam asked how long they thought it would be until Max was better, and the answer was kind of depressing. Based on the fact that he is 18 months old (most kids grow out of dysphasia by a year or so as they mature) and did not make great strides following surgery, they predicted he could be 3 or 4 before things really start to improve. I think part of that would be the fact that if he really needed speech therapy to improve weak muscles--and I actually suspect that he will based on his trouble saying certain letters already--he has to be old enough to have the logic to cooperate with us and say words on a consistent basis. Not much of our conversation really gave me much hope; I actually just wanted to go home and bury my head under my pillows at this point, and skip the whole doctor visit (figured it wouldn't be much happier ya know). Plus poor Max tripped and hit his head super hard on the wall while we were having our post swallow study consult. It was not exactly his most awesome moment ever lol. When we visited with the doctor next, he was kind of baffled by the fact that Max had made some improvement but not nearly the amount the we were expecting. He decided that he wanted to go back in and check out the surgical site, to make sure that everything had healed correctly and that nothing else was amiss. He also wanted to do another bronchial lavage to confirm that Max is not getting food in his lungs. I'm not exactly thrilled about my little baby undergoing his fifth or sixth round of anesthesia (I've seriously lost track by now) but I know it's necessary. And at least this time, it's all on the insurance company's tab :] So tomorrow morning I get to stay up way past my bedtime and go through yet another fun procedure with Max at Primary Children's. Those people must love us (or hate us haha) by now.

On the more uplifting side, I actually did the women's triathalon I signed up for! Back when I signed up in March, I had these super great intentions of training up for it....and then Max got really sick. You can guess what happened to training. I had pretty much dismissed the idea of completing the triathalon until about two days before. This little voice inside of me was like "JUST DO IT!!" so I told Sam I was going to give it a go. I think I wanted to prove to myself that I could do something hard, and wasn't a quitter. My goal was just to cross my butt across the finish line, and I would go however slow it took to do that. Of course I was very nervous on the morning of the race (not having trained one bit will do that to you!), but a bigger part of me was super excited to complete the task ahead: 300 meter swim, 11 mile bike ride, and 5K run. To make a long story short, I became a triathlete on Saturday August 16th at 10 am or so! While there were parts that were difficult, and I pretty much just fast walked the entire run, I overall enjoyed myself and would totally do it again. The only thing I might change (besides training a bit) is getting a softer bike seat....my tush muscles were pretty sore from sitting on the hard seat for 11 miles lol. I may have finished dead last in my age division, but I'm pretty proud of myself for not being a quitter! I am also immensely proud of the fact that after doing that big old race, I went over to my mom's house and we all had lunch and went to the planetarium downtown. The kids ran wild at the planetarium, and I was actually able to keep up with them. No sitting down and taking it easy for me!

Pre-race selfie in my new green top :] You can almost see the arm markings they gave us the day before, that ended up being the biggest pain in my butt to get off the next day!

My official race time (my number was 677 if that helps you find it faster)! I will admit I was a touch disappointed that I missed being under two hours by just a few minutes, but can't complain overall. Maybe next year I can get in under two hours!

The day after my big race we were schedule to take family pictures. Sam and I had to spend a lot of time scrubbing my race number off my arms so they wouldn't show up in our pictures, and we actually both ended up wearing pants instead of shorts because we couldn't get the number off of my leg well enough! Maybe not the best planning on my part, but luckily that was the only issue. Our photo shoot went fantastically well all things considered (nobody threw a giant fit and it was at 3 in the afternoon lol) and the location we shot at was absolutely beautiful (Mueller Park in Bountiful). Plus our photographer was amazing and gave us quite a steal of a deal on the session: 50 dollars for the session and 30 prints. I highly recommend going with Jenny Fowler if you are looking to get pictures done, she was great! We have to wait another week or so to see all of the pictures, but she sent me a sneak peek a few days ago, and seeing as how it has her watermark on it still I think it's probably kosher to post it on here: 

I was rather proud of the outfits I ended up throwing together the day before pictures, and am super glad that we don't just blend into the green background (yes I was worried about that). This would pretty much be perfect if Max didn't have that funny sneer on his face, but you can't expect too much out of an 18 month old on picture day right? He was upset that we wouldn't let him eat the dirt and leaves lol.

Unfortunately for the next two days after our family pictures I was really sick with an upset stomach and a cold. Didn't exactly make for the most fun second half of my week off. However, the day before I went back to work, some of the ladies I used to work with/still work with and I did a play date for our kiddos at the Children's Museum in SLC. All of our kids range from almost 1 to almost 4, and boys outnumber girls 5 to 1, so we're kind of in the same boat of life. Plus I love hanging out with all three of them, which helps too! I had never been to the Children's Museum (and neither had my boys) so I didn't really know what to expect. I figured that my kids would be entertained for an hour or so, and then I'd have to figure out what to do with them for the whole rest of the afternoon. I was really pleasantly surprised when my kids played there for a good three hours and I had to drag them away from the place! I think my boys' favorite part was the Bob the Builder exhibit, which unfortunately is leaving the museum in week or so :[ Consequently, I talked Sam into taking them back again on Saturday, and they still loved it just as much as the first time. I'm talking the kind of love where Jayson whacked his head on a toy and started bleeding, but still didn't want to leave to be cleaned up lol. Thank goodness for our free guest passes (I think we have enough to go two more times as well) so we don't have to pay 20 bucks each time we want to go! Although, if the kids continue to stay as occupied with the place, a membership might be well worth it. 

There is one other big thing going on in our lives. I applied for a MLS position down in Boise last week, and will hopefully hear back with a job offer on Monday! I don't know for sure if they are going to offer me a job or not, but they did seem to really like me, so I've got high hopes. There are a lot of complicated reasons for us making a big move, and I'm still trying to sort through them all, so I think I will save the long winded explanation for the next blog post I make. 

And that's our lives as of late! As always, more fun information to come next time :]

Life Can Be Really Good.....And Really Bad

Time for another bi-weekly update :]

I GOT A NEW CAR!!! Just a little bit excited about that, in case you couldn't tell haha. We decided that having a van just wasn't working out for us, in terms of commuting miles and gas prices.We were putting at least 1200 miles a month on the van, and were paying close to 300 in gas. It hurts my wallet just thinking about it again! Plus the van had just turned over 130,000 miles and we knew it was getting really close for our last chance to get a good trade on it. As good timing would have it, my friend and work cohort Cortney was in the market for a van before she moved away to Washington, so we sold it to her and her cute family last Wednesday. It was a little bittersweet though; we've had that car since Jayson was just one month old, and have made a lot of memories with it over the past three years! I still get confused when I go home and it's not parked in the garage lol. However, practicality won out, and now the van gets to make itself some new memories with Cortney's family!

Not a great picture of it, but here is my 2013 Nissan Altima, and yes, I LOVE it! I get about 500 miles to my tank of gas (admittedly it is an 18 gallon tank) which fills my heart and wallet with joy. It has lots of nice new car goodies that I'm still figuring out as I go lol. The only downside  I've discovered so far is that the car didn't come with an in-car DVD player like the van. To fix that, we purchased ourselves a twin-screen DVD player at Walmart, and now we're good to go.

Jayson enjoying the new car!

Maxwell enjoying the new car. I've really got to steal back my window shades that I left in the van, because my poor kiddos have to squint in the sun all the time now. Not to mention that those sunglasses only stayed on Max's face about five seconds longer than the picture--silly boy just won't keep them on yet!

We went up to Idaho last weekend (Friday through Monday) to visit with my sister's family, and as usual, we had a blast! We had a little birthday party for Jayson, which he thought was fantastic fun. Because it was a pirate theme party, all of the kids got to go on a treasure hunt throughout the whole house to find one of Jayson's gifts (which actually was in a treasure chest in case you were wondering): smarties, sugar free chocolate, and Capri Sun pouches. I wanted to get pictures of the kids treasure hunting, but they were too quick for me! We had a hot dog/BBQ style dinner, cake and ice cream for dessert, and balloons/decoration galore. After dinner Jayson got to open another present, which was a doctor's kit! In case you were wondering, the most argued over item was the band aid that could be worn as a bracelet.

Didn't realize that the picture was sideways, but can't really fix it now. Oh well. A shot of the cake that we all (minus Jayson and Max) enjoyed, courtesy of Walmart. My boys got to have a special chocolate cake that Sam made for them, out of cocoa powder and coconut flour (among other things). Max was crazy for it, whereas Jayson was kind of too excited with all the party going-ons to eat much.

Our three year old pirate! He got to take that hat home with him, and is still obsessed with wearing it around. It totally cracks me up :]

All seven kids enjoying their dinner. As I recall, Max ate like a beast at that meal, while Jayson ate a small amount. That's kind of the norm at our house lately--I just hope it doesn't mean that Max is going to grow out of his clothing/shoe size yet again!

Here are a few other random pictures from when we were in Idaho:

Funny story here. When we stay with my sister, Max still shares a room with us. This particular night I went to bed at about 6:30 because I had a bad headache. Max got put down for bed about 7:30 (according to Sam), but felt he wasn't tired yet and needed to wander around the room. When he finally did get tired enough to want to sleep, he was too worn out to climb back into his own bed. So where did he choose to sleep? Right on top of me! I was so sacked out that I didn't even notice either. When Sam went to bed around 11, Max finally got moved into his own bed!

Here's Maxwell-tina! He's not so sure how to feel about the headband, which I guess is a good thing. I just love his big dark-green/brown eyes and reddish hair, isn't he the most handsome thing ever?? Disclaimer: I could be just a little bit biased on that last sentence :]

As I'm sure you notice in the couple of pictures Max has in this post, he is tube free! Sadly, I'm not really sure that this means any progress for us at all. The big reason he is tube free, and has been this past week, is because we just cannot deal with it any more. Max's face was ripped up to the point of bleeding, so he kept pulling the tube out in an effort to get the painful tape off of his face. No matter how much protective stuff we put on his face, water would get in underneath the tape, and consequently cause the chaffing and bleeding. Also, the tube that we did have for him was getting old and difficult to put back in (they are only good for about a month and we had already surpassed that time period). When Sam went to get a new one from our tube supply bag, it turned out all the ones the insurance company had sent us were the wrong size. And this realization came to us the morning we were going to leave for Idaho. Awesome huh? In short, we decided that we had to call it quits with the tube. They are really only intended for short-term use, especially in kids so young like him, and we had already been doing the tube feedings for longer than the doctors had originally planned. Max has hated every day of his tube feedings as well, although I'm sure most of that is because of his no liquids by mouth restriction. It's so hard to explain to him why his big brother can drink from a cup, but he can't. So of course he screams like a wild banshee whenever we say no. That's super hard on us psychologically, always having to tell him no. It seriously wears you down to nothing after 10 weeks. It would be lying if I said that Sam and I have weathered this like pros. It has honestly been the hardest 10 weeks of our marriage, and quite possibly our lives.

After a short dilemma about what on earth we were going to do with the situation, Sam and I decided to let Max have liquids from a cup or his straw-styled sippy cup until his follow up appointment on August 12th. We knew that if we rushed him into the doctor and said we were done with the tube, and that he needed the surgery for a stomach tube ASAP, they would have just put us off until the swallow study anyway. Sad if you ask me, but entirely true. The improvement in Max's general attitude, especially at meal time, has been huge. Not perfect (he is a toddler after all!) but better. Tragically we as his parents do not really feel better. It racks me with guilt every time I hear him choke, cough, or worse yet NOT do those things, and just sound gunky and wheezy. One night while we were in Idaho (sharing a room) and he was sleeping, he actually sounded so bad that I about took him into the emergency room. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I knew we would have to drive the half hour into Boise to find anywhere equipped for pediatric patients with his strange needs (I assumed they would want to put a feeding tube back in him). Not to mention he seemed to be sleeping just fine, and wasn't any strange shade of color. So instead I had to leave the room and spend a semi-sleepless night on the couch, because I couldn't stand all of the terrible noises he was making. 

Let me tell you all: this is NOT the kind of life you want to be living with your young toddler, and it is especially not the kind of life you want to be living feeling pretty much alone. I am tired of the doctors doing practically nothing for Max, and putting us off "until next time". Their laid-back attitude about the whole situation may be them just trying to be cautious and careful, but it rubs off as cavalier and uncaring when you have to live with the problems day in and day out. I understand that they are probably doing their very best and can only come up with so many ideas, but the lack of communication that leads to delay in our treatment is hurting my son, and this momma bear is tired of watching her baby hurt over and over again. I am also tired of living 5 hours away from the only people that could offer us (or at least me) backup and mental relief. Without blabbering on and on about it, I am just really burnt out of my life situation right now. Don't ask me what needs to give or what on earth is going to happen, but something has got to change in the good news direction. Literally, only God knows what and when that is going to be, but I am so ready to reach that point and find out!!

Anyway, that's about all for this time. I'm sure that I will have some sort of update on Max after his Tuesday appointment. And hopefully my coming week off will have some more fun things for this family to do!