JUMP Dance

This weekend was the JUMP dance convention and competition in downtown Phoenix.  The girls danced a ton and had such a great time.  On Fri night, Gigi competed all her numbers and they scored really well in all their dances.

Saturday morning at 8am the girls got their audition numbers and were ready for a long day of dance conventions.  Kam had Ballet, Contemporary Ballet, Musical Theatre, Jazz Funk, and auditions for scholorships.  After six hours of dancing, we had to hurry and get ready for competition that evening. I love having a 14yr old that can do her own makeup!

Owen had a date day with Daddy, while I got to hang out with this little monster.  She was a hot mess after dancing all day, so we grabbed a snack and waited for Kam's evening of competitions to begin.

I love hanging out with my pretty girl and waiting for her call time.  She is seriously so funny!  Yes, she is eating sour patch kids for a snack before going on stage. :) She and all the other teens danced beautifully and got great scores from the judges.   We met C and Owen for dinner on our way home... then in bed by 9pm.  It was a long day!

The alarm clock went off early Sunday morning, but we were back downtown by 8am.  Owen really wanted to check out this convention stuff since he missed his "favorite mommy" the day before.  He ran all around the convention center.. see the glass bridge behind him in the picture, he ran back and forth on that forever.  I kept trying to convince him to go home, but he wanted to explore downtown.  We walked around, admired the nudist statues at the Herberger, and grabbed a "hot mocha loca" at Starbucks.  It was a fun morning with my favorite little guy.

We are now at home relaxing and getting packed up for our trip to Stanford tomorrow.  Owen has a biopsy on Tuesday at LPCH.  I am hoping for good news because he has been doing so great, but preparing for anything.  Look at how fabulous he looks.. grown up, strong, healthy.. I am so grateful. 

It's been such a great weekend. :)

Everyday Life

This post is about as normal as it gets.  Owen and I love picking up Kam from school everyday and sometimes we even splurge on a little treat when we aren't rushing home to get ready for dance or school for Owen.  We visited Bahama Bucks last week and used a buy 1 get 1 free coupon.. couldn't let that go to waste. 

After Kam gets home from school, Owen's school begins.  Mr C comes over everyday for an hour from 4 to 5.  Owen has been doing fabulous and I'll have a post on this later, but he is exceeding all his goals!!  While his art skills are interesting, he makes up for it in creativity!   This little watercolor piece is "a Chinese prophecy that states that I, Owen, am going to show the sensei of China my awesome ninja moves.  If I get golden weapons, I can defeat him!" 

This one was done as part of his daily journal.  He read a book about theme parks and wanted to write his daily journal about the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland.  "I am the guy running away from the giant brown boulder (large brown circle) and the scary spider is trying to attack me.  Those little blue things are booby traps and they are trapping me so I cannot escape...."  His story went on and on because if you ask Owen for a sentence, you are going to get a paragraph! 

The weather is warming up in the desert and we have been hitting the mid 80s most afternoons.  It's perfect!  Yesterday was 89 degrees!

Kam's violin had an accident at school on Fri so I had to drop it off for repair.  Gigi and Owen were chilling on the sofa while we waited for Andrew to tune her violin and fix it up for her.  Then we saw some really cool Cello cases for Gigi, until we saw the $600 price tag.. ouch.

We rushed to pick up Kam and stopped at Circle K to get an Icy to celebrate our first day of (almost) 90 degree temps.  I may be totally addicted to the $.79 polar pop... it's so bad for me.

Most nights, after school, Kam has dance.  We drop her off before Mr. C comes and pick her up after he leaves.  Then it's time for ME to hit the gym.  I am loving my weekly Hip Hop, Zumba, Tabata and Weight lifting classes.  One day I was a little late for class and didn't want to sneak in so I used the machines... it was torture.  I was so bored and watched the little clock on the treadmill creep for the entire hour.  I love my group classes and always get the best workout!  This is where I go for ME time. :)

On Saturday night, my dad took the girls on a date to see Divergent and we took Owie to the pool.  I could live in the water, but there is something about a night swim that is so relaxing!  Owen loved it too and it's official that this boy needs to get into swimming lessons, he is too stubborn to learn from me.

This morning after therapy, we hit up Dutch Bros in Tempe to try it out.   We are first timers and I picked the double chocolate mocha off the menu.. basically it's really chocolaty hot cocoa with a few shots of caffeine.  I could only drink a little bit of it and Owen guzzled down the rest... now he's wired!

These are my mid week random thoughts and I need to blog more often.  I am so good about blogging when it's serious and medical, but I want to remember all the good times too.  It's the everyday moments that I enjoy most! 

 

Coming up... dance convention/competition weekend and we leave for LPCH for Owen's next biopsy.. eek.

Family Pictures

C's family is not small and it's so hard to coordinate everyone's schedules, but last weekend, we finally got the majority of the family together for pictures.  Jennette took our pictures last year.. you can see those here and I like her natural lighting style.  My favorite pictures are the ones where everyone is natural and having fun.  It was a super windy day and Owen was complaining that his eyes were "burning off"... they still turned out great.

It's time for me to go order some prints for my walls.. I'm so bad about that!

Spring Break Fun!

All good things must come to an end and Spring Break is almost over.  C goes back to work, Kam goes back to school, Owen starts his week with labs, and life goes back into busy mode. Here are some photos of our week in no specific order. 

Fun at the Park

Lots of swimming and relaxing poolside

Tried a new local restaurant and ate on the patio..yum

Dinner with friends

Mr Peabody with the kids

Pedicures with Kam

Family pictures and parties

Caught up on some homeschooling hours

Slept in until 9:00 each morning (this one was my favorite!)

 

A great week together!



Spring Break

It's Spring Break and that means we have Kam and Daddy home with us all week!!  We have been swimming and this little guy is becoming a fish.  He'll be swimming all over by summer.  What a relief it must be to swim without an oxygen tube taped to his face. 

We have plans to get a lot of stuff done that we never have time to do, maybe take in a ball game, go to the train park, go see a movie and spend lots of time poolside.  Life is good.  :)

Keep my mama in your prayers.. she had her second knee replacement yesterday.  She has really bad arthritis and Fibromyalgia as well, so she is gonna be hurting.

Home.

We are home. We got the IVIG started around 9:30 last night and everything was fine until the 10pm pukefest. Poor guy was so sick to his stomach. We had to change everything, including his IV dressing and he was so tired he feel fast asleep.  I must have been pretty tired myself because I slept a full 7 hours in a recliner and didn't even wake up to the beeping or nurse coming in to take vitals. 

At 6am, Owen woke me up and said.. "Mom... I think the toothfairy was afraid the nurse would catch her so she didn't come... but she'll for sure come tonight at home."  Craptastic.  I was so tired, I forgot!  At least he was totally okay with it and we had a good start to our day. 

About an hour after waking up, Owen's tummy was still feeling ick and he got pretty bad headache.  We closed all the blinds and turned off the lights while the Tylenol kicked in.  These are usual side effects of the IVIG, but Owen has been lucky enough to avoid them until now.  Poor guy.  It was not fun at all. 

We skipped breakfast and made it out of there by 10am!!  Owen is home relaxing and we will have a quiet day... hopefully ending it with a visit from the toothfairy.

Passing the Time in the Hospital

Our Friday started with a very loose tooth that fell out with only a little pluck.  Owen is very excited that the tooth fairy will be coming to the hospital tonight! 

We were admitted to the CVICU at Phoenix Children's at around 3pm today to start his IVIG infusion.  We had a 60 day break and it was blissful, but we are back to it.  This would be his 20th infusion?  I lost count.  Owen is excited to be here and has been having a pretty great time.  We arrived at 3pm and then got settled into our room.  He ate some soup from the cafeteria and got his echo out of the way.

We finally got his IV placed around 6pm and he was not having it.  He has become "used" to labs and pokes, but for some reason this IV placement hurt and he was a hot mess.  Poor guy.  We got the necessary labs for bloodwork and we have a good working IV.  At least I hope.  We haven't actually started the infusion yet and it's 8pm.  We haven't even seen his night nurse yet.. I'm thinking she is probably avoiding me because the pharmacy still hasn't brought up his IVIG.

While we wait, we ordered dinner from the menu and have already watched Brave, Ironman 3, played a game, painted a craft and now we are snuggling to Spongebob. 

In just two hours I will be making my bed...er chair.. and will be reclining for a good night's sleep.  How are you spending your Friday night? :)

Park Day

The spring weather in the desert couldn't be better.  It was the perfect day to have a picnic at the park.  I had every intention of packing a healthy lunch, but these three were a handful.  So the kids picked McD's and then they hardly ate it.  They would have been just as happy with peanut butter and fruit.  Glad they aren't fans of fast food.. now we know.

Bridgi is not my biggest fan.  Every time she is left with me she knows that mom is leaving.  She is warming up to me and we had a decent day.  Only a few tears shed, but lots of little smiles.

Owen and Liv ran off to scare the birds and Owen gets very frustrated because Liv is much quicker than he is.  These two have always been like oil and water, but they are starting to have fun together.  They may actually be good friends one day.

Of course we had to stop to feed our duck friends.  Is it just my kids, or do all kids take the teensiest crumbs of bread to throw to the ducks?  We were there a good 30 min throwing in a few slices of bread.  Bridgi was just ready to jump in the murky water.. girlfriend is FAST!

Fun day.  Great weather.  Next week is Spring Break...pool time!

Hello March.

We've had a great week, followed up by a better weekend.  Kam had her fourth orchestra concert of the year at the local HS.  She did fabulous as always and the entire 8th grade learned a new piece that was composed just for them.  It was kind of a big deal and they did not disappoint.  Kam's high school registration is due tonight and so Kam and I spent plenty of time last week mapping out her High School years.  All I can say is that she is incredible!  She has four years full of dance, orchestra, Japanese, and everything else has an Honors or AP in front of it.  She even looked up several colleges and found out their admission requirements to ensure that she met those.  She is going to have the best time in High School and I am so thrilled for her.  Those four years were some of the best for me.  I was more into dance, yearbook, socializing and there was little room for academics in my schedule.  I got away with the bare minimum to graduate and was just as happy to go to community college.  I'm proud of my baby girl!

Before Kam's orthodontist appointment this week, we tried out the new Firehouse subs near our house and it was delish!  Kam had them make her a special "off the menu" french dip and she loved it.

Before we left, Owen jumped in the car with a Fire Chief hat on.  I posted this on FB, but not on here.  When I asked Owen where he got his hat...

"They had samples of them at the register."


I think you have to pay for them..


"Well I just snatched me one then." 

Kam got not so good news at the orthodontist.  She has had braces on for 2 1/2 years after she had 10 baby teeth pulled because those suckers were not budging.  She learned on Thursday that she still has quite a bit of time left.. at least a year!  Her 12 yr molars are coming in at a 90 degree angle and she was missing four permanent teeth... she got those genes from me. :(  I keep telling her that she will love those perfectly straight teeth in another year and to be patient. 

 On Friday night, we had tickets through HopeKids to go to the Professional Bull Riding show.  My family is not exactly the 'rodeo' going type, but we had a great time.  I think the best part was the giant buffalo.. they were pretty amazing.  We live in the city in the middle of the desert, we don't see bulls and buffalo very often around here. :)  Thanks for a fun night HopeKids!

On Saturday evening, we went on a date to meet up with my BFF from high school and her new man for Sushi.  The calamari, the rolls, to the apple tempura... it was all amazing.  Such a great night!!

Sunday we did nothing.  Absolutely nothing. I got a short gym session in and a nap.  Other than that..  I had plans to watch the Oscars, but I'm the only one that finds that entertaining around here.  So instead, we are watching Anime. (not my fave)

I hope you all had a great weekend and a fabulous start to March!