Forever Young: Graduations, Noodle fights, Cousins, and adventures at the Hospital

Well...what a huge last month we have had. Here's where I left off.

Noel every once in a while receives little goodies on the door from a boy in our neighborhood. On this particular day she received a flower. I new it was him because I saw him walking up to the door and ring the doorbell and run! It was cute.

Noel brought this home from school from St. Patricks day. Here is the interpretation if it's hard to read: If I caught a leprechaun... I would catch him in a net, then I will tickle him, then take his gold.

Best buddies playing.

Morgan and the kids take part in what the kids call "Noodle fights". The kids will often ask their daddy if he will have a noodle fight with them and it is pretty fun to watch.

Well, it's finally that time of year. This was Morgan mowing the grass for the first time this year. He takes such good care of the grass.

Leslie and her family came to town and stayed with us. During that time we went over to Ems and Ben's house to visit and check out their chickens. All of the cousins had fun.

Charlie, Sam and Jason played a little Badminton. I just snapped this picture right after Sam hit his own ear with the racquet, poor guy.

I took the kids to the park one afternoon and they absolutely loved it. Mya and Maddy both played on this crazy climbing wall. They about gave me a heart attack as I watched them climb on that entire thing.

Sam and Adam had some fun on the teeter totter.

Rolling down the hill.

The kids played a little of the Wii.

We had such a good time with Leslie and fam. Just after they departed, Noel disappeared for a little while. This is what I found in Morgan's office on his whiteboard just a little while later. The kids sure had a good time with their cousins.

We traveled to and from the Salt Lake area a few times during the course of the same week because we purchased some bamboo flooring that we were going to install in our home because of the whole dishwasher leak issue a couple months ago (we still have our kitchen area torn up, it's pretty annoying). Long story short, we went down and purchased it, then ultimately changed our minds entirely and went back the next day to return them because we decided that we would just put tile in the kitchen area and save tons of money in doing so. Anyways, so the picture below is of a rainbow (a slight double rainbow in fact) that we saw on one of the nights traveling back from this place.

I wanted to share a story from the following night when we were traveling back from Salt Lake again. (WARNING: IT'S A LONG STORY, but something I wanted to record somewhere). It is something that we will never forget and definitely felt the Lord's hand in. It was after 9:00pm and we were on our way home from the flooring place in Draper, UT. We were on the freeway in the Lehi/American Fork area. It was pouring rain and there were tons of cars on the freeway. Our windshield wipers were going as fast as they could because of the rain. We were in the fast lane. All of a sudden both windshield wipers stopped working completely. Here we are going 65 mph and it's pouring rain and we couldn't see a thing. There was a median just to our left and cars to our right. Luckily Morgan was driving, otherwise we wouldn't be around to tell this story if I was driving that night. Morgan rolled down his window, and reached out to grab the windshield wiper closest to him and they started working again but the passenger side one kept getting tangled up with the other and they stopped working again. We were in complete panic. I have never been so scared in my life. I was so incredibly fearful that we were going to be involved in a huge multiple car crash on the freeway. I rolled my window down to see if we could get over into each of the lanes next to us. Because of the stress and the panic, Morgan and I were yelling back and forth to each other to figure out when it was safe to merge over to each lane. The kids, especially Noel, felt the seriousness of the situation. They were so frightened and scared. Noel was screaming and crying. Eventually, we were able to get over to the side of the freeway. Once we did, I just cried and tried to catch my breath. My heart was pounding so crazy hard. Noel was still crying and I tried to calm her down. I told her we were ok now and that Heavenly Father blessed us. Morgan got out to see what was going on with the windshield wipers and we thought at first that we needed new wiper blades. We realized that they worked only on the slowest setting so we said a prayer as a family, thanking Heavenly Father for protecting us, and then asked for help to get us safely to the nearest Walmart. We got back on the freeway, going really slow, to find the nearest Walmart to get new wipers. After we got to Walmart, Morgan double checked the situation and we realized that a screw was loose in the entire arm of the passenger windshield wiper. Easy fix for once we got home. We took the back way all the way from the Walmart in American Fork. While going home the passenger side wiper just stopped working altogether. Luckily the drivers side was working still. Once we got home, Morgan tightened the screw on the arm of the windshield wiper and everything worked fine after that. We definitely feel blessed to have gotten out of that situation safely and we know we were being watched over.

Noel helping Daddy mow the entire lawn in the back.

We've been getting some fun thunderstorms and quite a bit of hail. Our rain gutters were pouring out hail during this particular thunderstorm.

The kids running around in the hail to see what it feels like to run in.

Then came Mother's Day. It was an early morning for us. It began at 6am when Noel came into the room and told me that her tummy was hurting. I asked her if it felt like she needed to throw up and she said, "I think so." And ran to the bathroom. That was a start to an interesting, worrisome and scary few days.

Sam gave me a card that had this fun questionnaire that his preschool teacher helped him fill out about me. I couldn't stop laughing because of some of his answers.

For 3 days, this is where Noel lived, on the couch with the barf bowl in front of her. She was absolutely miserable. She couldn't keep anything down. At first water seemed to be the best thing for her because it took longer to come back up but after 3 days, even that came up just as fast as any food or 7UP or gatorade. So for three days she wasn't eating and hardly able to keep any liquids down.

After a few really rough days and nights, we took her to the doctor who tested her for Type 2 Diabetes and quickly ruled that out luckily and said she would do best at the hospital with IV fluids, some lab work and close observation because obviously she was very dehydrated. She was completely lethargic, slow to respond, would answer slowly in whispers, pale, very skinny, and couldn't walk because she was so weak. She was constantly in pain saying that her tummy hurt. It was really hard to watch her suffer through all of that.

We took her straight over to the hospital (around 2pm I believe it was), got her settled and the IV in place. Poor thing. The IV site was so painful and tender for her.

Lab results showed that yes, in fact she was extremely dehydrated and that it was a viral infection. The CO2 levels in her blood were at a 9. 20 is supposedly normal, 15 and under is a little dehydrated and 10 and under is extremely dehydrated. We are so glad we took her in and we are so grateful for modern medicine.

Within a few hours she was doing a little better but she was so tired. At dinner time she had a few nibbles of her food. Through the entire night I made sure she was getting a good amount of liquid into her system and luckily everything was staying down. By the following morning she was doing way better and was able to eat and drink a little more. Once she showed good urine output as well as improved lab work and showed she could keep everything down without throwing up, she would be able to go home.

So glad she was starting to feel better.

She took a ride in a wagon out of the hospital where Morgan was waiting in the van.

We got her home and showered and teeth brushed and she was out like a light for a few hours on the couch. Her tummy still hurt here and there and we gave her zofran to help with that which seemed to help.

The next morning she was all smiles especially when she saw that her Daddy bought her Fruit Loops for breakfast. Sam was happy to have his sister back and we are so glad to have our bubbly, happy, bouncy Noel back. She is so wonderful.

The following weekend (this last Friday night) Morgan and Sam went on a Father and Son's Camp out with the ward. They had a good time.

Noel and I had a girls night. I took her to her school Carnival that they were putting on.

Here she is going down the bouncy slide with one of her friends from school.

She went through a fun obstacle course.

Played some carnival games.

And we got free pizza! (We were there up until the end and they were trying to get rid of their left over pizza:)

Oh, and there was cotton candy. You can't forget that.

The next morning Noel and I got up early and went to get Daylight Donuts. We then watched "The Good Dinosaur" while eating our delicious and not so healthy breakfast. Then, to end with a bang, she wanted to have a dance party so she and I played her favorite songs and danced until Morgan and Sam came home from the camp out.

Sam brought a bar of soap home from the campout and couldn't wait to carve it.

Oh, by the way, we finally got a new dishwasher a couple weeks ago. After our old, cheap one sprung a leak and damaged our kitchen floor, we had to bite the bullet and get a new one.

We've been redecorating which has been kind of fun. I sold my old plates that I had on the wall and found these used for an awesome deal.

We also sold our old couch set and got a new one. We also got a rug finally for that space and a bookcase. I also found a used accent chair that really rounds out the room and ties into the space well. We've also ultimately decided we will not be painting the entire house like we were planning since the green on the walls in the family room and kitchen now match our furniture and such.We are grateful for that.

This is kind of what the living room used to look like before we sold the couch set.

This last week I had my 28 week check up. My uterus was measuring small so they ordered an ultrasound and a couple days later we went to the hospital to see if everything was ok with baby and we were blessed to find out that everything is continuing to go fine and that she is right on track as far as growth and everything looks normal and good. She's weighing about 3 lbs 1 oz right now and is in the 67th%ile as far as her size goes. Here's one of the pics we got of her face and the little curly que thing is her umbilical chord.

This last Thursday night, Sam had his preschool graduation. He was timid to participate in the program but he did and it was adorable. He sang and danced and was a brave little boy. I can't believe he is going to be 5 in a couple weeks.

Here's his Preschool Graduation Invitation. Such a handsome kid:)

Love his cheesy grin. Here is his entire preschool class.

Sam with his wonderful teacher, Miss Jana. She's amazing!

There was a wall of posters of the kids with what they want to be when they grow up. Sam wants to "Be Happy". I love it!

He won the "Problem Solver" Award.

Then it was Noel's turn the following morning. It was so fun to watch her in her program. She really got into it. I can't believe she is going to be in 1st grade this fall. I'm not ready for that.