Please Pray For Hadley

I don't ask for much blog readers, but we need your prayers. I'm sitting here with my eyes blurry with tears, my head pounding and my stomach sick and I'm asking for your prayers. We had an appointment in St. Louis today. Each of the girls had an ultrasound to look at their kidneys. In December, Kami was diagnosed with VCUR (reflux of the bladder) and because they know it runs in the family, they wanted us to have Brooke and Hadley checked out as well. Kami's ultrasound looks pretty good, considering. Brooke's is also ok. With Hadley they found some small cysts in her right kidney. We knew they were there because they found them when they did the CT Scan in Florida. The doctors mentioned it to us and suggested we have them looked at when we got home. During the ultrasound today, they confirmed the cysts and after seeing the urologist, recommended we see a Nepheurologist (kidney specialist). Of course, this scared us. They were able to work us in with them and we've learned that Hadley has some sort of kidney disease. They took some blood for tests and also took a urine sample. We will know more next week. Please pray for her. Please pray for us. Please Pray!

"It's Like One Big Sand and Water Table"

After oohing and aahhing over Brody for a while, we headed down to the beach. Our condo was right on the beach. Stuart and Jackie bought the girls some fun sand toys that were waiting for them. Day #1:Saturday-- Brooke wanted NOTHING to do with the sand, let alone the water. She didn't like the way it felt on her feet (shoes on or off) and she kept trying to go back upstairs to the pool. We didn't push her too much, and she ended up playing just a little. This was Hadley's second time to the ocean and she was like a little fish. She loves playing in the sand and she really liked trying boogie boarding this year. Unfortunately, after her surgery she was unable to sit in the water. She was only able to get her feet wet and play in the sand :(

Notice the wall behind the girls... That is all the farther Brooke would go into the sand for the first day.
She slowly warmed up to the idea of being in the sand. She liked looking for shells and would get her feet wet, but only a little.

Papa Clark found a live crab!
These next two are from the last few days of our trip. Brooke actually did boogie board (standing up). She fell off so that discouraged her from doing it again. She looks like such a little surfer girl!

By the last day, we were having to drag Brooke out of the waves. She really didn't understand that she couldn't just walk out there by herself! The girl has no fear. She was kicking her feet, splashing her sister and having a great time.

Hadley and Daddy digging a hole in the sand.

Hadley was quite the builder.

Where did Hadley go?

Hadley giving boogie boarding a try.

Kami didn't mind the sand, but she did mind the water. She was fine until the waves came up to her. And when I say waves, I mean the inch or two of water that came up to her. I wouldn't let her sit in the big waves! Look at that face.

Getting better...

This isn't so bad!

The girls like playing in the gooey sand.

Our condo had a pool, too. We also bought a little plastic pool to keep by the big pool so Kami could splash around and play.

Nana and Brooke

Hello, crab

Those are just a few of the beach pictures from our trip. Brian and I really enjoyed the beach. There's just something about walking the shore that is so relaxing (except when you have two daring daughters that don't understand what waves can do). We came home with some pretty cool shells too. When Brooke would see a shell that Brian found when he was little she would say "Daddy Florida." Now, when she sees one of her shells, she says "Brooke Florida!"

950 Miles of FUN!!!

I have decided to break down our Florida trip into smaller, more detailed blogs. Let's start with our exciting drive down. I have made this trip since 1988 when my Aunt, Uncle and cousin Michele moved to Orlando. By now, I pretty much know exactly what roads we will take, how long it will take to get to a particular city or state border, and in general what the scenery looks like. This trip however, was TOTALLY different. Having three small children in any car, on any vacation completely changes the dynamic of the trip. It doesn't matter if you are going three hours or 18 hours, it's bound to be interesting. And, interesting it was.

I was very organized in our packing. I had actually been packing slowly for about a month. Each girl had their own suitcase. Brooke's medical supplies had their own tote and Brian and I had made several lists. That all sounds great, doesn't it? Well, when leaving day actually arrived I was a total mess. Did I remember this? Where did that go? Who has this? As long as I had everything Brooke would need, I really wasn't too worried, but I was still a mess. I figured we would be making more than one trip to Wal-Mart once we got to Florida.

We were set to leave at 6:30 on Friday morning. We put the girls to bed early on Thursday evening and Brian and I did a few last minute things and went to bed ourselves. We set the alarm for 4:30. I am a morning person so I woke up bright eyed and ready to go and Brian was in a pretty good mood too. Nana and Papa were running a little late. :) I don't know if you all know, but my Mom and Dad went with us to Florida. I guess we should say WE went with THEM. They drove their van and we stayed at the condo they had rented. When they arrive, we start packing the van. Like I mentioned earlier, we were pretty organized with our packing. Brian and I were given two big blue totes and my Mom and Dad had two big blue totes. Our plan was to fill the totes with what we could, put them on a rack on the back of the van and everything else would go inside the van. The pile sitting at our front door, looked A LOT smaller inside our house than it did inside the van. Where are we supposed to sit? The seating arrangement goes like this: Hadley and Brooke in the back seat in their car seats. Kami's car seat was in the middle of the middle seat with my Mom and I on either side. Brian and my Dad were in the front.

Here are Brian and my Dad securing the totes. Yes, this is what the van looked like. I'm pretty sure a few people laughed at us when they drove by, but hey, it got the job done!

Here is a partial view of the inside of the van.

At 6:37, we left our house and were on our way. We are all happy here :)

I had carefully planned out what the girls would do for 18 hours in the car. They each had a bag with things to keep them entertained. We even picked out little presents that they could open every couple hours. All of that stuff takes up space. Throw in a cooler for drinks, a snack tote, a DVD tote, and other JUNK -- you are looking at one crowded vehicle. I wish I had taken a picture of exactly what it looked like after just a few hours. Thankfully the girl's feet don't touch the ground, because every inch of that space was used. My Mom and I on the other hand, weren't so lucky. I'm pretty sure my feet were permanently asleep from Illinois to Florida.

Hadley playing with her Aqua Doodle

This is funny... We are still in Illinois and Hadley is already "keeping an eye out for the ocean."

Brooke playing a Travel Bingo game. This is the Melissa and Doug version and we loved it! I really think the adults had more fun playing than the girls did. If you are planning a trip anytime soon, I would definitely recommend it. There are different cards : City, Country, Vehicles, Signs and you look for things on the card. We had to find a helicopter, a school bus, a mail truck etc... It really was a lot of fun.

One of the presents the girls opened was a pair of binoculars. So, here they are really looking for the ocean. I think we were only in Georgia though.

Kami didn't know what to think of this whole "being in the car all day thing"
Around 2:00 in the afternoon we started hitting rain. It started as just a little rain, but it continued and it seemed like it was going to rain all day. Then, it started pouring. I'm talking pouring here people! Torrential downpours! Raining so hard you can barely see! Trees were laying sideways! Hail was hitting the van! It was bad! I wasn't driving, thank God. Brian was but I was a nervous wreck for him. My dad is 65 years old and said he has never driven in rain so bad. Brian was only able to go about 40, at the fastest. We were too scared to pull over because the trees on the side of the road looked like they could blow over at any minute. I was pretty scared. We were close enough to stopping for the night that we were just trying to outrun the storm so we could unload the van.

We stopped in Acworth, GA for the night and stayed at a Best Western. They had a McDonald's next door with a play area. Because it was raining, we couldn't go swimming so the girls were still able to get rid of some energy. Again, we set our alarm for pretty early in the morning, but for some reason it didn't work and we ended up sleeping in until 6:00. Oops. We didn't get as early a start the second morning.

This is out of order, but worth sharing. Somewhere around Chattanooga we saw lots of black smoke. We came upon a semi engulfed in flames. The fire department wasn't even there yet and people were just driving by it (it was on the other side of the interstate). I could feel the heat as we drove by.

Ahhh, quiet... My mom and I were actually able to watch a grown up movie.

Tasting some yummy Florida orange juice at the welcome center.

The girls all did very well, considering they were in a car for two days straight. The DVD player in the van was a true blessing. We watched many movies, but isn't it called an entertainment package for a reason?

Being silly...

Brooke seeing the ocean for the first time!

...And here is what made those 18 hours of driving, those 18 hours of being confined to a small space, those 18 hours of fun all worth it...

BABY BRODY!

Here are the big girls and Nana seeing Brody for the first time. (We were waiting for hand sanitizer -- just in case you were wondering why he is still in his carrier) Isn't he a doll? The girls loved him but "he sure does sleep a lot" Hadley proclaimed. Another important observation made by my girls... Boys are definitely different than girls. But, that will have to wait for another blog :) More of baby Brody in another blog too! Oh, and of course we were excited to see Stuart and Jackie, too. You know how it is when you have kids--nobody cares about the parents anymore.

I have much more to post, but that will have to wait. I'm still sorting through all the pictures. We are heading to St. Louis on Friday for appointments. It's actually with a urologist for all three girls and not just a pulmonologist for Brooke. With the reflux that Kami has, our doctor recommended we have the other girls screened to make sure they don't have it too. Have a super rest of the week.

Coming Home, One Appendix Less

I'm typing this from a hospital room at Arnold Palmer Children's Hospital in Orlando, Florida. Room 6007 and this is the last place I expected to be when I updated our blog! Hadley had her appendix removed last night around 7:00 p.m. She is doing really well right now, much better than the last few days.

Tuesday Morning: We woke up bright and early to get ready to go to Disney for the day. Because we are staying over on the coast, it takes about an hour and a half to get to Orlando. We left our condo around 6:30 that morning, went to my aunt and uncles house to pick up my cousin, Christina and went to Disney World. We had a blast! I really don't know who was more excited, me or the girls. Seeing Cinderella's castle and meeting Sleeping Beauty were just a couple of the day's highlights. We stayed until around 1:30 so the girls could get back to take naps at my aunt and uncle's house. When we got back to their house, Hadley complained that her belly was hurting. We just thought maybe she needed to go to the bathroom because she didn't complain anymore. We left to go back to Disney around 4:00. We were surprising Hadley with an appointment at the Bippidi Boppidi Boutique in Cinderella's castle. At the boutique, she got her hair done like a princess, make-up and pixie dust. It was so cute and she loved it! She was turned into a real princess. We even took her Sleeping Beauty dress with us so she could put that on too. I will give more Disney details when I get the pictures uploaded. Long story short, by dinner time, Hadley clearly did not feel good. She laid down on Brian's lap and continued to complain of her belly hurting. We asked her if she wanted to leave, but she said no. She was not missing the night time parade. We sat down and started waiting for the parade and the poor thing just looked miserable. Around 8:30, she threw up. Again, she wouldn't leave. She insisted she felt better but you could tell she was just saying that. The parade was supposed to start around 9:00 and by 8:50, she was done. She finally said we could go. We drove back to the condo that night and she would wake up in pain, saying "belly!" I honestly thought she was exhausted and dehydrated and by the next day she would be fine.
We all slept in on Wednesday morning. Hadley didn't do much of anything, didn't eat much of anything and pretty much felt cruddy all day. By 6:00 I was worried enough that we took her to a prompt care. They asked a few questions and recommended we go the hospital. That scared me! What did they know that I didn't? What was going on? I'm really tired of hospitals! We checked in at Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne, Florida. We waited in the waiting room for over an hour. When we finally got back, they did the routine blood work, urine tests, x-ray etc... All of those came back normal so the next step was a CT Scan. At this point, it's about 2:00 in the morning and she is exhausted and hurting but they can't give her anything because they don't know what's going on. After reading the scan, they said it was normal and suggested she had a stomach virus that was causing her pain. There is nothing they can do for a virus, so they sent us home. We got back to the condo around 3:30, relieved that they didn't find anything. Hadley had a pretty good night and didn't seem to be in as much pain. She even ate a banana and some toast, but preferred to be on the couch. Around 10:00, we got a phone call from the hospital we were at the night before. They had gotten a second opinion on the CT scan and found a "stone" on her appendix and told us we needed to get her to a hospital in Orlando. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!? How was this missed last night? They told us it looked fine! They sent us home! They reassured us that we would be able to drive her ourselves (Remember, it's about an hour and a half drive.) Sure, they reassured us, but these are the same idiots that said everything looked fine. Frantically, Brian and I start packing a bag. The Florida Power Company was changing the lines outside our condo, which meant they had to turn the power off in our condo. It was 95 degrees, the elevators weren't working, the AC wasn't working and we were scared out of our minds. We had to run up and down the stairs to the 5th floor too many times. Emotions were running sky high and I just wanted to get Hadley to the hospital as soon as possible.
We arrived in Orlando around noon and checked in to the ER. I must thank Brooke for preparing me for (hopefully we don't have anymore, of course) hospital stays. I am much more educated than I would have ever been. You absolutely must be an advocate for your child. The ER here wanted to stick her again -- doing the same labs they did just a few hours earlier at the other hospital. I convinced them to get the results sent over and go from there. That helped because it prevented more sticks from needles. They called in a surgeon to review the results of her CT scan. They weren't convinced she was having an appendicitis because they were still able to push on her belly without her cringing too much. However, when they walked out of the room, she was clearly in pain. It's all blurry from here, but we stayed in the ER all afternoon waiting for a decision. From the CT scan they could tell that Hadley had a slightly dilated appendix, a stone on her appendix (I can't remember the exact name of the stone -- appendacoleth maybe ?????). I expressed concern that because we would be travelling home to Illinois in a few days, I was afraid she would rupture and be in a very serious situation and nowhere near a hospital. From that, the dilation of her appendix and the presence of the stone, the surgeon said we would go ahead and remove the appendix. Surprisingly, Hadley was the fifth appendectomy of the day and they already had five on her recovery floor from the day before! What?
They transferred her to pre-op rather quickly. She already had an IV, so they explained that she would simply fall asleep. They failed to mention that she wouldn't be asleep until she was in the OR, without me. I have sent two of my babies to surgery and Hadley was BY FAR worse than Brooke. With Brooke, she was 3 months old. Yes, it broke my heart to see her go, but she wasn't screaming my name when she went. Hadley is able to ask questions -- why are they taking me away from you, mommy? What are they doing to me? When they wheeled her to the OR, she was screaming for me and it ripped my heart out. The surgery took less than an hour and it took about as long for her to wake up. The surgeons came out after the surgery was complete and said that they didn't see signs of an appendicitis. They did say, however, that it's possible that this was just the beginning of one and the symptoms from the stomach virus were what was causing the pain. When they finally came to get me, I could hear her crying for me just as she did when they took her. From that point on, she held tight to me and was pretty groggy for the rest of the night. She slept pretty well with the pain meds they gave her throughout the night. Today, she has eaten a little, gone to the bathroom, played BINGO in the playroom and taken a walk around the hospital. She is acting better than she has the last few days. We are hoping to go home tonight, but it might be tomorrow morning. I just wanted to give you a quick update. Please keep her in your prayers. We haven't talked about what this will do for our trip home. Unfortunately, her incision is right where the strap for her car seat will go and that won't be comfortable for a very long car ride. Other than this, our trip is going great. We were so worried about Brookie staying healthy and it's Hadley that gets sick. Go figure. I will post more probably after we get back. Have a good weekend.

Oh, by the way. We called Disney and they are giving us complimentary passes to get back into the park so Hadley and Brooke can see the night time parade! Yah!

Happy Birthday, America!

As I mentioned last year, the 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays. I love it -- I love the meaning of why we celebrate it, I love the small town feel of it, I love just about everything 4th of July. Getting ready for the 4th was pretty busy around our house. I have tons of pictures to share, so here we go :)

On Tuesday, we took the girls over to Bill and Patti's to take pictures. We wanted to use pictures on our wagons this year and oh boy did they turn out adorable!

Brooke, Kami, Ellie, and Hadley -- Homegrown beauties

I love this picture!

Kisses for Kami

On Wednesday morning, Devin and Ellie came over so we could decorate our wagons. This is the ONLY picture I took. I should re-phrase that. This is the only picture I was able to take because we were too busy cutting, gluing, corralling kids etc... Needless to say, the girls will not be invited to next year's wagon decorating day. We ended up getting nothing on the wagons. We had to finish them on Saturday morning.

On Friday night we went down to the Sparks in the Park carnival at the Rochester Park. We went last year, but it was just Brian and I because Kami wanted some mini donuts and a lemon shake-up. I was still pregnant with her but she really needed them :)

We had a lot of fun this year. We met Nana and Papa Blade, Grandma and Grandpa Tweryon, Brad, Devin and Ellie and Devin's parents. We ate yummy corn dogs, donuts, lemon shake-ups, snow cones and the girls were able to ride the rides.

The big slide was much better this time around. All week Hadley had been telling me that she wasn't going to ride, but she finally decided it would be ok, but she was sitting on Daddy's lap. Brooke, however opted out of the slide this time. Brooke was a trooper on the rest of the rides -- minus one (I will get to that in a minute). They had so much fun.

Papa Bill and Brooke on the Ferris wheel.

Daddy and Hadley on the Ferris wheel.

They had a miniature ferris wheel. At first I didn't let them ride, but I decided it would be ok. They of course loved it.

Here is Hadley with her friend Olivia on the spinny space ship ride. The ride started with Brooke between Hadley and Olivia but Brooke did not like it and started crying. The man stopped the ride so we could get her off. Poor thing!

The sun was super bright and Kami was not in the mood. Papa Clark holding her as she covers her face.

You can definitely tell Kami Lu is our third child! Before we left, the big girls each got a snow cone. We sat down in the grass so they could eat them. Here is Papa Clark feeding her snow cone...

... and here is Papa Bill feeding her the sugar from the mini donuts!!! No wonder she didn't sleep very well on Friday night!

Why are Brian and I the only ones that ever look at the camera?????

Hadley and Brooke each won a prize from the pick a duck game. You would have thought Hadley won a million dollars! "I just love my prizes!" over and over. She even woke up at 3:30 in the morning upset because she couldn't find her stinking prizes.

Saturday afternoon, Brad, Devin and Ellie met at our house so we could walk over to Bill and Patti's for the parade. We thought we would let the girls have their own mini parade, complete with candy. I don't think any of them actually threw their candy though.

Ellie, Hadley, Brooke and Kami in our decorated wagons.

Landon, Hadley and Brooke

I said that we should have put Landon in the middle because my girls fight over him. We used to take him to school on Thursdays and he was holding Brookie's hand one day and Hadley got pretty upset about it. We can't drive by the school without Brooke saying "Nandon."

Everybody getting ready for the parade at Bill and Patti's

After the parade we had the traditional cook-out. This year we got out the pool, water balloons and bounce house for the kids.

On Sunday night around 8:30 we loaded up the girls and headed to the middle school to watch the fireworks. It was raining, but we figured it would stop by 9:30 and we would get to see the show. Wrong. When we got there, my mom and dad and Brad, Devin and Ellie were already there, sitting in their cars. At this point, we didn't know if the fireworks had been cancelled or not, so we were just waiting. We put the big girls and Ellie in my mom and dad's van and let them watch Choo-Choo Soul (Music DVD) and eat their popcorn. Shortly after starting the DVD, we found out the fireworks had been cancelled. Hadley was so disappointed and didn't quite understand why they were cancelled.

I had recorded the Macy's 4th of July celebration that was on T.V. so when we got home, we turned off every light in the house and watched the fireworks show on T.V. It wasn't as good as seeing them live, but it was still fun.

They played music with the fireworks. Here are Hadley and Brooke dancing to "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." They loved this song!

We hope you all had a fantastic 4th of July! Now I'm off to finish packing for Florida. I have to make sure I have bed buddies, loveys, "bubs" and everything else our little darlings will need while we are gone. Packing for five is no fun! I do have one request. Please keep us in your prayers these next couple weeks. We leave on Friday and will be driving halfway before we stop for the night. We will finish the trip on Saturday afternoon. I am super excited, but also super nervous. I hope you all have a great few weeks. I can't wait to share pictures and stories when we get back!