Ta Da!

I finally finished my "wall of Love". Just kidding, but I am lovin' it! It looks much better in person, so anyone who is dying to check it out is welcome to come visit me. Please do, I'm terribly lonely and would love some visitors.

There seems to be...

a re-occurring "catch-up" theme with most of my posts the last few months. I wish I could say I was busy doing important things, but...not so much.

I downloaded some pictures today and realized I had not posted about a few events.

First, Thanksgiving...

We had a delightful Thanksgiving with Jared's parents and my sister Ann & Travis. The food and company were superb. We had a great time playing games and chatting. It was fun for all. The best part for me though was that the Monday prior we made the decision to take Luke off the Ketogenic Diet he's been on (more on that later) and so here is my favorite picture of the evening...Luke having a roll. It was the first bread he's had in 5 months!!! Jared and I weren't paying attention and he helped himself to 3 more rolls after that one. It didn't seem to make him feel sick though, so I'm glad he enjoyed himself. He deserves it!
This is a picture from Shoeshone Falls on our way back from our weekend Utah trip in November. It was beautiful.

My dad and the boys had a good time in the hot tub at my parents. When grandpa goes hot-tubbing there are usually snow angels involved. If you haven't tried it, the snow angels don't sting as much as the feeling of needles in your back when you get back into the hot tub.

On Monday we surprised the kids for Family Home Evening with a trip to a local Pottery shop (like Color Me Mine). We had a great time. Everyone painted but me...I was going to make myself a butter dish because I don't have one, but then decided I wanted Seth to paint it instead. So he did and it is beautiful. I'll post pictures as soon as I pick up our stuff next week.

So for those who are interested...back to Luke.

As we weighed the small improvement we saw with the diet against the toil it was taking on us all we decided it wasn't a good fit for us. In doing the diet we were all eating a lot more meat and as a consequence Rachel's blood sugars started going up, not to mention me getting close to a small breakdown every time Luke asked for something to eat. It was a hard decision to make. I did not want to be giving up. If we felt like it was the answer for Luke we would have kept going, but we felt like it was time to call it quite. When he started they asked us to give it 3 months we went for 5, so we felt good about our efforts. Luke was so happy when the dietitian told him he could have potatoes and some pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.

So where are we at?? We have put him back on the 3rd medication he had taken...back in Houston. It seemed to be the one that worked the best as far as seizure control, but at the time his quality of life was terrible. He has to be on something and since the other drugs didn't work, and or, made his hair fall out and he ended up a patient in the Hematology Unit at the hospital...we decided that we'd try this one again and hope that now that he's a little bigger he might tolerate it better. So far so good. We are still seeing LOTS of seizures, but other than being more tired than usual and having a sore throat he seems to be doing well. We will continue to increase his dose and hope to see a change.

The doctors here want us to go see a Pediatric Epileptologist in Portland to see if they have any other ideas on what to do. We will do that after the holidays.

Other than that all is well...well, except that Rachel fractured both her Radius an Ulna in her left arm a week ago. She was kicking a soccer ball at recess and a boy decided to try to steal it from her and knocked her over and that was that. It is another re-occurring theme around here. We're just glad it's her left arm and she will still be able to play in her first orchestra concert tomorrow night.

It's another boy and...

ANOTHER boy! Yep, Annie and Travis are having 2 little wrestlers...apparently they already have each other in holds in the womb. Boy next July when we are in Sun Valley it will sure be fun with all these babies!!

It's a boy!!

My sister Karen had her first baby last night at 10:45, I believe. She was scheduled for this morning, but he just couldn't wait!! We are so excited to have little Samuel in our family and excited that tomorrow we find out what my sister Ann's twins will be!! What a great week!