Fruit Salad Friday (on a Wednesday)

We occasionally get together with my play group to have "fruit salad fridays" (apparently they still call it that even if it's on another day of the week). It's just hanging out, feeding the kids fresh fruit, and playing with tons of toys.

Here's Bear, Anthony, and Fint.

Here's Anthony, Bear, and Fint again (and Allison and Irie in the background).

Bear loved playing in Anthony's motorcycle walker thing.  Irie liked pushing him around in it too.

I'm so glad I found this group of stay at home moms that need to get out of the house and play as much as I do!

Skeletor

Barrett got a very exciting letter in the mail the other day.  Pops and Lala sent his this cute skeleton card.  He was so excited when I pulled it out of the envelope!

He's been having such a fun time playing with it.

And it's a great addition to the 1 other Halloween decoration we have here!

Until Bear pulls it off the fridge to play with it.  It is his though, so he can do what he wants with it.

Thanks for the great toy/card/decoration Pops and Lala!

Baby Signing with Miss Joy and Bebo

While we've still been going to our usual library story time on Mondays...

We've also added a baby signing class at another library on Fridays.

The first week we got there too late and the class was full, so we just played out with the books and some of our friends.  

This is Helen, her baby Ziva, Arabella and Barrett.

Arabella, Bear, and Ziva.

The next week we got there extra early to make sure we'd get a spot.  Bear was so interested in all the kids I couldn't get him to look at me for a picture.

He also loved Bebo the bear.  Miss Joy uses Bebo to help teach the signs to the babies.

We went again today and Barrett had tons of fun as usual.

And he got to play with Bebo again.

Bear doesn't really care about the sign language, he just likes to play with the toys and the other babies. This class has been really interesting and fun to go to.  I think the most interesting thing is that we are definitely the minority when we're there.  There's been 1 other white mom and baby in 1 of the classes, but each time we go, all the other families are Asian or Indian.

Oktoberfest

Last weekend we went to Southlake for their Oktoberfest celebration.  Every year we want to go to an Oktoberfest and it's just never happened.  This year, we finally went to one, in fact, we went to it twice!

The first day we went the weather was so perfect!  Here's the family.

We only saw one person dressed up, I don't know if people generally do this for Oktoberfest, but she was rockin' it!  I wish I could've been sneaky enough to take a picture of the front of her.  She said something to me about how I should"surprise my boyfriend" when she walked past me.  She's a spunky one!

The second time we went it was FREEZING cold weather- we had to get all bundled up!  Bear looks unhappy, but he actually had a good time.  There were millions of dogs that he really liked watching.

Neil got a disgusting Bratwurst with sauerkraut- I didn't try it obviously, but looking at it made me want to puke!  I made a better choice and bought deep fried oreos.  Nothing German about them, but holy crap, they were GOOD!

Thunder Onesie

Neil graduated from Thunderbird when I was about 6 months pregnant with Barrett.  He was super excited for the baby to wear this Thunderbird onesie one day.

Here's me and the onesie when we were in Arizona for his graduation.

Here's Barrett at 10 months finally big enough to wear this odd fitting onesie.

Neil was pretty excited!

Leapin' Lizards!

Remember how I said we get lizards in the house sometimes?  Well, I saw one last night and took a picture.  I know it's not a great picture but I didn't want to get too close in case he started running at me!

Can you see him?

They're really small but it still freaks me out having them in the house!  Neil was going to squish it (YUCK!) but I had him catch it in a cup and take him outside instead.

We're getting excited for Halloween around here!

Fidelity Fair

Yesterday, Barrett and I went to West Lake to visit Neil at work.  Fidelity was throwing a little fair type thing and wanted families to come too.  They had balloon animals and face painting for kids and a guy dressed as spiderman.  It wasn't particularly fun and the food was really disgusting (except for the popcorn).  Oh well, now we know and we can skip it next time!

It's a Christmas Miracle!

After 25 days of being in the hospital, Shelley was released from St. Mark's yesterday and was at home when her kids returned from kindergarten. 
She's been able to eat a little, but her stomach is sooo small and she's as weak as a kitten. 
She says thanks to everyone for their support and prayers and sacrifices in her behalf.  
It'll take months to regain her strength and this may prove to be a recurring problem for her, but for now there is much celebrating and tears of joy at the Young house.

Longest Week Ever

My poor little man has been SICK for a week!  He started throwing up Monday night and didn't quit all week.  I have never done so much laundry in my life!
Our insurance doesn't cover us anywhere besides Utah (thanks Fidelity), but we finally went to the doctor on Thursday and then to urgent care on Saturday (SO expensive!).  One of the doctors we saw was really great and I'd love to see her again if we're still here when our insurance changes over.  Anyways, she thinks it's just some virus he has.
We are all completely exhausted around here.  To make it 10x more fun, Neil has been sick since Friday!  Luckily, he's still been able to help clean up the mountains of puke.

Here's my boys at the urgent care facility.

We took Bear out for a walk to get him out of the house.  I know you can't tell by the picture, but he really enjoyed being outside and looked adorable in his jacket :)  The fact that he's not smiling even a little bit should alert you that something is seriously wrong!

He's been on nothing but Pedialyte for a few days now and he feels like he weighs nothing at all!  He didn't throw up at all today though so fingers are crossed that he's finally getting over it!!  If he doesn't continue to get better, we'll be on a plane to Utah to see our own doctors and let the insurance pay for anything he needs!


On the plus side, it sounds like Shelley is really doing better.  She's unhooked from all her IVs and last I heard was keeping down water and chicken broth and feeling really good!

Shelley Part 3

Here's the latest with my sister.  At least, this is the latest of what I know.

Like I mentioned before (scroll down a bit if you don't know what I'm talking about), Shelley was transferred to St. Mark's last week.  When she got there, they did the endoscopy and were able to get the scope through the obstruction in her small intestine.  Since they could get the scope through, I guess they felt they didn't need to remove anything or insert anything. They also removed the NG tube that was going through her nose and down her throat because it was causing ulcers in her throat.  They'll do a biopsy of the tissue and test for different things like Chron's disease or IBS, etc.  
Sunday she was throwing up bile again.  Since then, she's been throwing up bile occasionally and dry heaving pretty often too.  She's very nauseous and super super weak.  She's lost a lot of muscle too so she just has no strength to do anything. 
Monday they did a cat scan and found that the small intestine (I think the same spot that was causing trouble last week) was swollen and I guess not letting anything through.
I don't know what the docs are waiting for, but at some point, they're going to decide if they need to do surgery again and remove that part of the bowel.  My opinion is that they just need to hurry and do it so she can start getting better, but I'm kind of out of the loop here in Texas, so I'm sure there's plenty that I don't know!
My mom says she thinks Shelley is improving. Today (day 20 of her hospital stay) she's getting 2 ounces of water every hour and keeping that down. Hopefully the bowel swelling and stricture are beginning to resolve. We will know more this weekend as they try to ramp up her intake.

I'll keep ya'll (I do live in Texas, after all) updated when I know more info.
Thanks for being so concerned!  She's been very lucky to have so many friends, neighbors, ward members, and family members to help with everything!

1st Haircut

On Sunday, Neil and I decided it was time for Bear to get his first haircut.  Don't get too excited or sad or whatever your feelings about his current hair may be, we only trimmed around his ears so the rest of his hair is still as fluffy and crazy as ever :)  If I weren't documenting that he got a haircut, you'd never know he did!

We thought Baby Mozart would hold his attention since we don't let him watch TV.  It helped, but he was definitely more curious about what we were doing.

Both Neil and I took turns cutting his hair.

He still looks like my baby- I couldn't handle him having a big boy haircut yet!

Texas Fam

We headed to Plano, Texas on Saturday to go spend some time with my cousin Greg and his family who have lived there for about 2 1/2 years.  The idea was to go to the Plano Balloon Festival that day but we got there too late to see the hot air balloons launch in the morning and left to early to see them launch at night.  Oh well, we still had a great time with our family!  We went out to lunch at a place called Chuy's and had some Tex Mex food.  

There's me, Suzy, Louisa, Henry, Henry's friend Jack, Greg, Neil, and Barrett.  They also have a daughter named Elsa, but she was playing at a friends.

On the way from Chuy's to Greg and Suzy's house, we kept seeing these signs for McCall Elementary so I made Neil follow them.  I was disappointed when we got there that the school was called David McCall, Jr. Elementary instead of just McCall Elementary like the signs suggested.  Nonetheless, I like things with my name on them so I took a picture :)

It's nice to have family so close- we'll definitely be hanging out again!

Barrett loves when he has the chance to play with Dad!

Update on Shelley

Things aren't getting much better for Shelley, in fact, they've actually gotten worse.  When she finally was allowed to start eating (chicken broth, applesauce, stuff like that) she started throwing up a lot.  She's been throwing up since Saturday night so they took more x rays and found that there is another bowel obstruction right where her stomach empties into her intestines.  It's been almost 2 weeks since she's been able to eat or drink anything!

On Tuesday, they put in a tube that will keep her stomach completely empty so she would hopefully stop throwing up; it's emptying liters and liters of bile every day.  The doctor thought the obstruction might clear itself up if it didn't have anything weighing down on it.   Shelley is really hating that tube because it's killing her throat, but she still needs it at this point.

Davis Hospital has been great, but they've done all they can do for Shelley and she needs more help.  She was taken by ambulance today to St. Mark's hospital to see a g.i. specialist and a bariatric surgeon. They are going to do an endoscopy tomorrow and hopefully get far enough to be able to see what the blockage is all about.  While they're in there, they have a few possible procedures they'll do.  They could remove the obstruction, place a stint in the small intestine, or remove part of the small intestine.  They don't know what they'll find in there, so they don't have a firm plan yet.

She's in good hands at St. Marks, but if you pray, hope, wish, or anything else, we'd appreciate any of those things directed Shelley's way so she can finally get better and get home to her little family :)