Here are some pics of keaton going to surgery, and also a couple of parker.  Parker’s were actually taken at home.  Before Parker went in for his steroid injections, the nurses gave him the little gas mask to show him what the doctors would do when he got in the room.  That way he doesn’t freak out quite as much, because he knows what to expect.  Anyway, he was excited he got to keep the gas mask, and brought it home to show Jaxon.

I have come to the conclusion that one of the saddest places anyone could visit is a children’s hospital.  It’s always so humbling going there.  We went to check-in for Keaton’s surgery, and I was fine for all that part, but then they wanted Keaton to get in the little tiny hospital gown they have for the kids, and I didn’t even want to do that part.  He got in his gown, and after a few minutes of blowing bubbles he asked me if I would put his shoes on so we could go home.  They have you check-in in one room, then take you to another place to change, and then they take you to another waiting room.  The last waiting room is where the actual surgery process begins. They give Keaton a medicine that starts to make him tired, and it’s supposed to make it so he won’t remember much about the surgery.  Keaton still wanted to play with the toys, so I had to make him sit on my lap, because of how sleepy it makes the kids.  So, after that they bring in a little red wagon with a pillow and blanket, and once they are tired enough or it’s time to go they lay down in the wagon.  Then, the anesthesiologist comes and gets us, and we get to pull the wagon to the doors of the operating room, and there you say good-bye.  I don’t know what it is, but every time I have had to do that, I always stand there at the doors trying not to cry.  I am getting better at holding back the tears.  Then, the parents are herded to an adult waiting room, and there you sit with a bunch of other parents with the same worried look on their faces.  Doctors come in and out of this room and update the parents on the status of their kid, and then when they are finally done one of the nurses comes and says one of the parents can go back to be with the kid.  They only let one parent go back while your kid is waking up.  After your kid wakes up (or wakes up screaming is more like it), then they take you to yet another room.  In the recovery room they let two adults in with the kid.  So, that’s the point when Scott gets to join me.  Then, while your kid is crying and screaming you have to try and get them to drink some juice or eat a popsicle to see if they are well enough to go home.  For Keaton, he decided to go back to sleep when we got to that room, and so we were there for quite a while.  He finally woke up, and he did not want to eat or drink anything at all.  We finally had to force him to eat some popsicle so they would let us go home.  Keaton didn’t open his eyes for the rest of the night.  That’s got to be so confusing for little kids.  The last thing they remember is playing with toys in a waiting room, and then they wake up in a weird room, with lots of weird people, and they are in pain.  We finally made it home, and it was a pretty long night.  Keaton woke up all through the night, but it was pretty easy getting him back to sleep, so that was good.  He is doing good now.  His eyes are still swollen, but he did open them this morning, and he’s been playing today.  We went to see the doctor for his post operation visit, and the doctor said it looked good, and hopefully it keeps going like it is.  So, this whole surgery just brought back lots of other memories.  Our family life has been filled with doctor’s visits. The horror of seeing your kid with tubes all over them is not easy to explain.  I remember Jaxon’s whole thing.  Most of you already know, but when Jaxon was 10 months old (he was walking already) he woke up one morning, and couldn’t use his legs at all.  He couldn’t stand next to furniture, and couldn’t even crawl.  We ended up taking him to the ER at primary children’s, and they admitted him to the PICU.  What an awful week that was.  They did 2 spinal taps on him, a bunch of blood tests, MRI’s and lots of other tests to try to figure out what the problem was.  They thought he had the guillan barre virus.  They had to put an IV in his head.  Now that was one experience I hope I never have to relive.  They never did figure out Jaxon’s problem for sure, but miraculously he started gaining the strength and use of his legs again.  Then, there was Parker who woke up one morning limping.  His turned out to be juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.  He’s had to go in and have steroid injections, and even though it’s a fairly simple process, I still hate it.  I go in with him while they give him gas that makes him go to sleep.  It’s another one of those times you are just hoping you don’t let all the tears loose that are forming in your eyes.  Now we give him his chemo shots once a week.  The chemo makes him sick to his stomach, and I hate seeing him like that, but we really don’t have too many other options.  Then, of course we have Keaton.  He had a stroke…they think it happened before he was born.  So, he goes to physical and occupational therapy to try and get the left side of his body to work.  And, here I am just trying to make it some days.  I can’t believe the crazy, wild life we’ve had.  Much crazier than I really like, but I must admit, through it all, it’s also been incredibly amazing.  It’s impossible to explain in words all the emotions and rollercoaster ride we have been on.  We have seen miracles and just had so many blessings. Going to all the appointments and struggling through all the craziness has been extremely humbling.  And, seeing all the other kids with their problems has actually made it easier to accept my kids’ problems.  When Keaton goes to physical therapy, I almost always see other kids coming in with little walkers or other problems like that.  Thankfully, Keaton can walk and use his leg.  The left side of his body does not work as well as the other side, but it does get him where he wants to go.  I talk about this so much, that I’m sure some of you are sick of hearing about it, but it’s my life, and I am constantly forced to think about it.  It’s not possible to escape the harsh reality of it all.  But, one day I would like to sit and list all the miracles that have happened, too.  There are too many to count, but I have tried to keep a journal of the ones I remember.  On the surface it might seem like what we’ve been through has been unfair, but I know everyone has their own trials, and we are not alone in this “journey we call life.”   I’m just grateful for everyday we have together as a family.

I always feel like I have to have a picture with every blog entry, so here’s one of Jaxon.  He always gets into Scott’s flashlights, and uses them.  This time he found his head lamp.  Both Scott and I hate it when he gets into the flashlights.  He always takes them apart and loses all the pieces…..but I guess that is really a story for another day.  The real reason for the blog is the story below. 

So, we were having family prayer this morning, and the kids are still young enough that they fight over who gets to say the prayer.  I’m sure in a few years they will be fighting over whose turn it is.  We actually end up having 3 different prayers, since they all want to say one.  So, in Jaxon’s prayer this morning it went something like this:

Dear Heavenly Father, Bless us we can go to church.  Bless Keaton that he will wear his brace and his cast.  Bless Keaton’s eyes to not be crooked……and then he ended it.

It was so funny and cute, I had to put it on here.  It seems like lately Jaxon has been trying to think of new things to say in his prayers instead of saying the same things.  I mentioned to Scott that Keaton has not been wanting to wear his brace and his cast lately, so that’s why he said that part. And, I guess he figured out that we have been worried about Keaton’s eyes.  Keaton gets surgery tomorrow on his eyes.  They will be trying to fix his lazy eye.  Hopefully it all goes well.  With a prayer like that, I don’t think we have anything to worry about.  I love hearing little kid’s prayers.  Their prayers are so honest and innocent.  

Well, this was the best picture I could find of us.  When you look at it, just remember I had just had a baby. Berkley was 3 weeks old.  

So, life is going pretty good for us right now.  Scott and I celebrated our 7th anniversary.  What?!  We’ve been married 7 years….it seems like it’s been so much longer.  Ha ha.  Just kidding.  I have so many stories I could tell.  :)  We’ve had a really good marriage so far.  Scott treats me good, and he was lucky enough to marry one amazing wife (just kidding)  :).  Here’s a fun story that you might enjoy.  When I was 7 months pregnant with Jaxon, Scott and I decided to celebrate our one year anniversary by going back to Price…the place where we fell in love.  Well, Scott wanted to go on a hike one of the days, and I was okay with that.  He told me it would be about a mile and a half.  It was some hike he had supposedly gone on before and there was supposed to be a waterfall…at least that’s how he remembered it.  Well, we started out, and the hike just kept going and going, and we couldn’t find the waterfall.  Scott kept saying, “let’s just see what’s around this bend.”  He said that like 100 times.  I, of course, started getting slightly irritated (just a little irritated:).  After a few hours of “just seeing what was around the bend,”  we came to the end of the trail. The only options were either turn around and go back the way we came, or go straight up.  Since we had come so far, f we turned around and went back it would have been longer than taking the straight up option.  Well, it wasn’t really an easy hike out.  We pretty much had to rock climb out of this canyon.  So we made our way up, and made it to the road without dying.  I was so tired and hungry, and by this time I wanted to kill Scott.  We started walking back on the road to get back to our car (which was probably another 5 miles away), and luckily a guy and a lady came driving down the road.  Scott stuck out his thumb and we hitch hiked our way back to our car.  Well, the “easy one mile and half hike” turned into a ten mile hike (and I’m not even exaggerating.  It really turned into a 10 mile hike).  Boy, was I ready to strangle Scott. Now that would be a good horror movie:  A 7 month pregnant woman who just rock climbed her way out of a canyon and is tired and starving.  But somehow Scott survived my wrath.  And, here we are now.   And now I can actually look back on it and laugh.  So, we’ve had our little “bumps” in our marriage, but I have to say, it’s been so much fun.  Scott keeps me laughing.  I think one of his most favorite things to do is get me to laugh.  And whenever Scott is around everyone is always laughing.  But, we have had a good 7 years together.  I’ve learned a lot from him and from the kids.  Today I asked Scott if this was how he imagined married life would be, and he said he imagined it this way…except we would be riding around in a van solving mysteries.  

Oh and by the way…I have never done any crazy things like the story I told about Scott.  Just whatever you do don’t ask Scott if that’s true or not.  He’ll probably lie and make up a bunch of stories about me that just aren’t true…at least that’s what I’m going to say.

Well, I posted a whole bunch of pictures, and spent way to much time on the computer.  Berkley went down for a nap, and I took advantage of the opportunity and turned the TV on for the kids.  I hate letting the kids watch too much TV, but it was sure fun updating the blog!  So, until next time…..

Scott’s seat on his recumbent bike broke, so he had to go get it fixed.  Afterwards we went up the canyon and went on a little hike.  The kids were so excited to see this rock fixture.  They kept calling it “saurus rock.”  If any of you have ever watched all 7 videos of Land Before Time you’ll know what they were talking about.  In one of the videos there is a story about “saurus rock,”  and it looks kind of like this rock.  And for those of you who didn’t know there were 7 Land Before Time videos, there are!!!!  One of our neighbors gave them to us, and I absolutely hate those videos.  I seriously can’t stand them.  The kids love them and every once in a while I will let them watch one.  

We hiked up the canyon a ways, and it got pretty steep.  I think Scott thought I was going to start complaining, because it was a hard hike for the kids, but I didn’t.  :)  It was actually pretty fun going on this hike.  On the way down the kids slid the whole way.  For them it was one big slide.  They loved it.  

Of course we couldn’t escape our little outing without making our way to the river and throwing a few rocks in.  Parker even found a snake.  Scott caught it and let them look at it and touch it and then he released it back into the wild.  They were all excited. Berkley just tried to keep his distance from the rock throwers/snake catchers.  He had fun eating weeds and rocks.

And, now it’s time to go home……

Scott and I decided to go “hike” down to the river with the kids.  So we set off to find the river, and well at first we couldn’t find it, but after walking for quite awhile, we finally found the river. But, we had gone the wrong way, so in order to get there we would have had to walk through some really thick trees and brush, so we ended up turning around and going back to camp.  It was still fun, though.  When we got back to camp we found out we could drive down to the river, so we stopped there on the way home.  

Jaxon had fun building this “fort.”  Him and another little boy from our ward thought it would be a really good idea to build a fort.  There was a tree stump sticking out of the ground, and Jaxon and the other little boy went to work gathering big sticks.  They placed them all on the stump and made this amazing fort.  :)  They were really proud of themselves, and made sure no one tried to knock the fort over.

A good part of the camping trip was spent just running.  I’m always the party pooper, and try to stop the kids from running too much.  It seems like someone always ends up falling flat on their face.  But, luckily on this trip the only accident was when Keaton fell off the bench by the picnic table.  He got a pretty bad bump on his head, but at least no one had to get stitches.  :)

Here we are at the river.  At first the kids were just throwing rocks in the water, but it ended up turning into a swimming party.  I’m not sure what is so fascinating about throwing rocks in the water, but that is one of the kids most favorite things to do.  They could spend hours just throwing rocks in the water. Berkley isn’t quite old enough to enjoy throwing rocks, so he stayed ashore and played in the dirt. 

Keaton loves this toy helmet, but when he wears it, it doesn’t stay on very good.  I’m not sure he can even see where he’s going sometimes, but he doesn’t let that stop him.  :)

Scott cut his finger really bad awhile ago.  He insisted on posting a picture of it on our blog.  He took a huge chunk out of his pinky finger.  He was trying to cut a piece of watermelon for a photo shoot he was doing at work.  I guess the knife slipped or something, and this is what he ended up with.  It looks a lot better now, but it did look pretty disgusting.