Mindy

Today was Mindy's 10th birthday. I can always remember how long we have lived in Brentwood because she was born just a little over a month after we moved here.

Mindy was a much easier baby than either of the boys. She loved to sit in her swing and listen to Enya or classical music. As long as the music was playing she would happily rest. She spent a lot of time hiding out in our room, away from the boys.

Mindy is a quiet girl. She does not like to be the center of attention, esp. in school or at church. The first time she had to give a talk in Primary we had to work very hard to bribe her. She is not easy to bribe. Once she makes up her mind she is very resolute and determined. If there is something she does not want to do, she is very good at sweet talking her way out of it. In kindergarten she refused to participate in sharing. Her teacher decided to have a mandatory sharing day, just so she could get Mindy to actually talk in front of the class.

In our family Mindy is like the little mommy. She is very helpful, especially with her younger sisters. She is almost always willing to play with them and help them. She will usually do anything she is asked to do.

Mindy also has a great passion for reading. There have been many times when the biggest mess in her room was from all the books. Mindy actually strives to keep her room clean. She is the only one of the kids who picked up on, and seemed to get, the idea of just 5 mins. a day will keep it clean, (of course, we do need to do a bit of work on the closet and animal pile).

Mindy is the one who started the decorating your own birthday cake a few years ago. After Sandra's crunchy cake, she decided to take it easy on the sprinkles.

There is a reason all the candles are so close. For a few years, she wouldn't let there be candles on her cakes. She didn't want everyone watching her while she tried to blow them out. This year she finally put candles on, all close together hoping that would make it easy. (Notice the huge flame, we didn't even have to light some of them, they just started on their own.) It took her a few tries to get that big fire out, it actually was funny, as she blew, a few would go out, then relight from the rest of the flame.

This is probably her most exciting present. She has been wanting one for a long time. Kyle and Travis got this for her.

Mindy is a great girl. We are so lucky to have her as a part of our family.

Sandra

Seven years ago I gave birth to our beautiful 4th child, Sandra.

She was a very happy and easy baby. She would go to anyone who wanted her and just loved to be with people.

She is one of those people that others are just naturally drawn to. It is fun to watch her grow and develop.

Her birth brought us into a new medical world. After over 5 years of being seen by specialists and learning how to navigate through doctors and the insurance world, she was finally diagnosed as having Isolated Hemihypertrophy caused by Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome. She has a rare case, over 90% of cases are in the lower extremities and of those most are on the right side of the body. Hers is in her upper left side. It is one of those things you wish you never had to learn about, but it is worth if for the blessing of having such a great child.

She is a true girl who believes dresses are the best type of clothes, spends hours in the bathroom fixing her hair, doing her nails, and sneaking make-up.

She has very little fear. As a toddler, she believed she could do anything her older sibings could do, and could often be found climbing on counters and jumping off surfaces higher than she was tall.

These days her biggest passion is reading. She has read every girls chapter book we have, and yearns for more. Her favs are Katie Kazoo and Juni B. I often find her sneaking reading late at night when I think she is asleep.

(Her first day of preschool)

This year for her birthday, she wanted to decorate her own cake. It ended up being a bit crunchy.


For dinner, she chose Chuck E Cheese.

And she got lots of neat presents from her family.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SANDRA

Blood-draw update

We received the results back from the TrialNet study that the kids and I all had our blood drawn for back in January. Kyle, Mindy, Sandra, and I all came back as being negative for the 3 kinds of autoantibodies they were testing for. Cammie on the other hand was positive for 1 of the 3. She will be re-tested the beginning of April, just as a pre-caution to make sure there was not a lab error. We will know the results, the end of May.

If she really is positive, then there will be more tests run on her, to come up a likelihood of her developing Type 1 Diabetes within a certain time frame. Depending on the results of this, we may have the opportunity to enroll her in some more studies that track the development of the disease. This does not mean that she for sure will ever develop it either, as lots of people can be positive for these autoantibodies, but never develop the disease.

Belated Photos from our Valentine's Day

First I had to search through the junk drawers to find the right cookie cutters.

Then use them to make some fun food. (I decided it was too hard to cut the buns into heart shapes, so the rest just got an imprint)

Set a festive table.

Receive flowers from my loving spouse.

Make him his favorite special desert.

(Individual sized for him, big for the rest of us to share.)

Short Updates

Yes, I know I haven't updated for a few weeks. I have planned many posts, just never quite got around to getting them done. There is actually a reason for this, but I'm not going to share. However, here a some of the pictures and brief notes to go along.


Continueing on the sickness theme: Travis and Mindy also got to have a day at the Dr's. They too, got to join in the antibiotic fun. So was it fun to have 5 kids with strep throat? Not exactly, but there are a few positives:


We were able to replenish our syringe supply.


With all these bottles staring at me everytime I got in the fridge, we actually got the 10 days worth of doses done in .................10 days for most of the kids. (usually by day 6 or 7 I start forgetting, and by day 14 I just give up and throw the rest in the trash). Notice there is not a bottle for Travis. He was the lucky one and got pills, although the pharmacy did give him a syringe with his huge horse tablets. I just couldn't figure out how to get the pill to go through the little hole. Maybe we were supposed to use it to squirt liquid down his throat forcing him to swallow?



The kids were getting along at dosing time as they were having sympathy for each other, having to take the gross medicine. We had much commiserating over how horrible the stuff tasted, how glad they would be when it was gone, and how they hoped to never get strep again. (I'll take niceness from the kids any way I can get it.)



On top of the strep, Travis and Kyle, ended up with a bad viral infection at the same time, consisting of horrible headaches and high fevers. They blame me for this, since I happened to actually say how nice it had been that we hadn't had any major illnesses yet this winter. I had kids home from school for two and a half weeks. Finally they all seem to be better.





Travis build a cool tower out of Jenga blocks. (It was very tempting to knock it down, but mommy niceness actually prevailed, and instead I took a picture.)


Cammie gave a talk in Primary a few weeks ago. This always amazes me because of how shy she is. She has no problem getting up in front of people and talking. She was counting down the days all week, and very eager to go do it.











Andrew had a birthday. It was on Superbowl Sunday. He didn't get much because he kept telling me not to buy him anything. This is because we started playing WOW again, and got the expansion packs, he didn't want to wait until his birthday for those. He got to spend time playing with the kids. That evening we went over to Olsen's to celebrate Brittons birthday that had been earlier in the week. I was a bit late, because Travis had a big project due the next day for school, and I was making him finish it up before he could go. When he and I got there, all the bigger peeps were watching the Superbowl, a few minutes later it all went dark. Apparently some drunk had hit a power pole, knocking out the electricity for a few hours. We heard it was an exciting ending to the game, but we didn't get to see. We spent the rest of the evening in the dark. The girls had lots of fun playing a game with Renee by candlelight.




Cammie and Sandra were supposed to be "Scooping the Poop" but instead were playing on the tramp, since it was finally a nice sunshiney day. They had fun with static.



















I took Mindy and Cammie shopping for new church shoes, as they had grossly outgrown the ones they had, and Cammie had stepped in the poop with hers so instead of wasting time cleaning shoes that took 5 minutes to get on her feet, we just tossed them in the trash. Sandra was the lucky one who got lots of shoes, she didn't even go. These were on clearance mostly for $4 and $7 so I just couldn't resist. I figured if they were too big, we could save them until she grew into them, and if they were too small, we could save them for Cammie. She was very happy when I came home with 4 pairs of shoes for her.














While we were shopping, we stopped for lunch and Mindy and Cammie shared an Oreo milkshake.

Finally, Cammie got her CTR ring in Primary. She is very excited to have this, and constantly changes her mind about wether or not she will take if off to go to bed, or shower.