A Full Century!

Last Saturday, Jeff, Katie, and I drove to Blackfoot, ID to celebrate my great grandpa's 100th birthday! I completely forgot to bring a camera, so my family's posts will be so much more interesting than mine.
The drive was really easy and we made it there in just over 3 hours (even with a ton of rest stops for the pregnant woman). The weather was beautiful -if incredibly cold and windy- and you could see the great potato state landscape for miles and miles. We saw lots of cows and even a sign for a potato museum. We contained our excitement and didn't stop. We did have a birthday party to get to...
We were suppose to meet cousins at McDonald's for a quick get together before the celebration, but we stopped by Subway first and brought awesome sandwiches. I won't lie, people were jealous. Jeff likes to use his pregnant wife as an excuse for things like that, but it didn't matter. No one that worked at McDonald's cared or even noticed.
The party was crowded and we met a lot of people I'm distantly related to. Great grandpa looked fantastic but really tired. I don't think he wants to do this again next year. Our mingling consisted of sitting at a table and letting family come to us. It actually worked and we got some great card games going! Overall, it was a fantastic trip and practically felt like a family reunion except for the fact that the Veronins couldn't make it.

Ki was in the hospital last week for a small fever caused by an ear infection. He's better now, although his white blood count is low. He's getting shots of neupogen which should make his bone marrow work harder to make more white blood cells. That will probably become a normal part of his treatment now. He is still in high spirits and I could even hear him yelling for water while I talked to my mom on the phone today.
They have an appointment to see a transplant specialist on Monday, and he starts his next round of chemo on Tuesday.

Tess is doing well. She's still on oxygen at night, but overall she's much happier. Tess recently got a new lawyer (know as a GAL -guardian ad litem) to act as her representative in court. The new GAL is a woman my mom has worked with before and even lives on my mom's street. My mom posted "She told me that as a GAL, it is her duty to work towards reunification of the family, but in this case she hoped that would not happen. She also told me that Tess's father had significant issues to work out (she didn't give me any specifics)." We tried not to get our hopes up, but I know everyone was crossing their fingers that this woman would help our family get Tess.
Just this week, there was a court date that my mom attended. Small children are not supposed to be in foster care for more than a year. Since Tess is 9 months old, her year mark is coming up fast and she would be adoptable at that time. Her father's lawyer was asking for an extension so he could have more time to work through his program and get Tess back. The new GAL recommended against it and the judge agreed with her. There will be a contested hearing on March 19th, but if the judge doesn't allow the extension, there is little to no chance that Tess will go back to her biological father!

Finances update!

First, for those of you interested in how we're doing personally, we're both doing very well. Cyndi enjoyed her stay with her family, but she's very glad to be home. She's got a lingering cough from the flu that we both had the last couple of weeks, but even that's gotten a lot better in the last couple of days.

Mike's taken to kicking me whenever I contact Cyndi's stomach. It's adorable.

Ki seems to be doing better and is even sleeping in his own toddler bed instead of crawling into his Mom's and Dad's bed partway through the night. He's in better spirits as you can see from these fun videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl_eHwhMOYo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXbpYcmd_WY

I had my yearly performance review, and my manager loves me and couldn't be happier with my performance. The only complaint was that I joke a little too much, and she made sure to stress that it wasn't a major complaint. While I knew that I was doing well, I didn't realize exactly how well I was doing and it was really nice to hear it from my manager who also happens to be over the entire engineering department for Omniture (our team is the only one that reports directly to her).

For those of you who are interested in our financial situation (you know who you are), we've got a quick update. For those who want just a quick summary: the Lord is merciful, even when His children aren't worthy of it, and because of that we're doing extremely well.

With the car accident in January, Cyndi quitting her job, and the travel to help with Cyndi's family, we expected to have to dip into our savings quite a bit. Instead, it turns out that our net cash flow was positive and, when we get reimbursed for the rental car by Colorado, we'll have added to our savings quite a bit.

We've redone our finances, and we're planning on leveraging some Adobe programs while tighten our belts more. For this effort, by my calculations we'll have both of our cars paid off by the end of next year and have roughly doubled our savings.

As you can see, the Lord has given us more blessings than we would have even thought to ask for much less expected to receive. In just over a year we've gone from having terrible finances to being in a position where we aren't worried at all about the future. While I've done most of the spreadsheets and calculating, Cyndi's done the vast majority of saving the money for us and managing the day to day workings of our budget. Without her hard work and willingness, we wouldn't be anywhere near where we're at now. She's amazing and I don't know where I'd be without her.

A Spider Dies, Birthday Fun, and Chemo Again

Lots to update:
Last week, my little sister Amy starred in her high school's production of Charlotte's Web. She was an amazing Charlotte. At the end of the show when Charlotte died, Mary, my mom, and I cried. My dad admitted that even he teared up a little. Ki was also distraught when Amy left the stage. As she gave her final farewell to Wilbur and disappeared, he started yelling "Amy! Amy!", trying to get her to come back.

Children loved Amy. They swarmed up on stage after the performance to meet all the characters and made it really hard to get a good shot of Amy in her costume:


Some kids even asked for her autograph. It was really cute:


When we got home, Tess and Mom were back from the hospital. Tess still needed to be on oxygen, but my mom convinced the doctors that she could be hooked up at the house and be a lot happier (also, my mom was absolutely sick of Tess's birth mom and needed to get away or go crazy). Poor Tess looks pathetic in her tubes:


But she really is much happier at home. Now we have a huge (noisy) machine that pumps oxygen through her tubes. It stays on the main floor but Tess has a 50 ft tube range, so she can still sleep in her own bed and sit at the table at meals. It's kind of fun to ask "Where's Tess?" and then check to see where the tubes lead. She's now a very easy baby to find, which is good because she's getting better at her commando crawl and loves to go places she isn't allowed.

Mom's birthday was yesterday. Happy (late) Birthday, Mom! We really celebrated on Sunday while Mary was still visiting. It was a lot of fun. We had mini banana cream pies as cake:

Mom got a lot of fun things:

But her most anticipated gift was worms. Not just any worms. They're compost worms. Apparently they're coveted for their droppings. I don't really know how it works. They now live in the storage room in a tub and eat fruits and vegetable rinds. Mom loves them, but they creep her out and she won't touch them. Here's Mary digging in the bucket for her:


Also, Ki started chemo again on Tuesday. He had a CT scan last Thursday and it turns out his tumor has shrunk 20% and the metastasized cancer has shrunk 75%! We need the metastasized stuff to go away completely before anything can be done about the tumor, but it's obvious the treatments are having an affect! He is hooked up on an IV for fluids right now and had been in pretty good spirits until tonight when he started vomiting.

Pneumonia

Baby Tess has pneumonia. She has been sick since Sunday with a cough and runny nose, but it never seemed bad enough to take her to a doctor. We just tried to give her whatever you're allowed to give a baby of 9 months (just about nothing) and hoped it would pass. Thursday night, she got a low grade fever and my parents didn't like the way she was wheezing. She was still really bad the next morning and my worried mother took her to urgent care as soon as it opened. They took her to the hospital in an ambulance to be admitted.

It turns out that she not only has pneumonia, but two ear infections as well. We knew she was miserable, but Tess is such a good natured baby we had no idea it was so bad. She's been in the hospital since yesterday morning and there's a good chance she'll have to spend another night there. To make matters even more fun, she's sharing a room with a younger baby that has RSV, which is very dangerous to infants and very easy to spread. The other baby cries about every 15 minutes and its mother keeps their tv on all night. It's a good thing my parents like hospitals so much...

Oh, and the hospital they're at is within walking distance of Tess's birth mother, so my parents have had the pleasure of entertaining her hysterics while trying to care for baby Tess.

Here is a picture of Tess in the hospital that I'm just copying from my mom's blog post:

You can't really tell but she's strapped to a gurney waiting to be taken to the ambulance, the poor thing.

Birthday Celebration

Today, we celebrated Ki's birthday. He was very happy and eager to blow out the candles on his birthday brownies:
Then it was straight to the presents:

He had a lot of fun despite the concerned look on his face. Happy 2nd Birthday, Ki!

On Thursday, my dad had surgery to fix his nose. He broke it as a teenager and hasn't been able to breathe properly ever since. He gets to wear a fun nose pad for a bit, but I think it's worth it. He's already commented that he can breathe through both nostrils better.


In pregnancy news, my stomach is getting a lot bigger. I'm hitting chairs and counters while trying to make quick turns. My brain still thinks that I should be able to turn sharp and skinny corners. It has not registered the fact that my stomach is much larger than it use to be. It's a little annoying.

Same Day Update!

Ki is home! He came in happy and active and is currently sitting content on Amy's lap watching Planet Earth. He also is drinking pediasure, ate a piece of my twix, and is asking for water! :)

This was his "smile" when I pointed the camera at him.

Happy Late Birthday

Yesterday was Hezekiah's 2nd birthday. We are going to wait to celebrate, though, because he is in the hospital.
Ki got an infection Sunday morning and was taken to the hospital. It turns out he has E. coli. He was reacting well to the antibiotics and we thought he would get released yesterday, but his fever spiked again last night. Now we're hoping he can come home sometime today.
I've gotten to spend a lot of time with Tess since Mom and Dad have been at the hospital so much. She is still adorable. Here is a video her watching the clip of herself laughing:



In other news, Jeff and I finally got a new car! It's a 2007 Mazda 3 and we're very happy with our purchase.

After spending 3 exhausting hours at a Toyota dealership, we went to Carmax. I don't think we'll go anywhere else now. The dealership was absolutely miserable. We found a car that we kind of liked and they tried to hard sell it to us then and there, even after we told them multiple times that we wanted to try a few other places first. It was really dumb. We partially bought at Carmax just to spite them and their stupid selling techniques, but it really helps that Carmax doesn't try to pressure you into a purchase.