Twins?!

Jaxon and his buddy decided to be twin brothers from another mother. They were both dressed up since we went to another buddies baptism and Casey came home with us. We decided to keep him for the afternoon and go to the Aquarium. They both spiked their hair and had the same pants on so why not wear the same sweatshirts too? They had a great time pretending to be twins. They thought it was funny that people were looking at them.

We always have a great time at the Aquarium. This time they had new additions we hadn't seen before. The leopard frog that they got their pictures taken on was a hit. Grif pretended he was riding it like a horse saying "hee-yah, hee yah!" There were also enormous king crab and northern lobster that the boys loved seeing and trying to guess how much they would cost for dinner. And one of my favorite animals the Sea Horse. They had a new display that was pretty intriguing. It didn't beat seeing the baby sharks growing inside their eggs but it was close.

The boys also thought it was awesome to see the green boa out of it's usual corner hibernation. To me is was terrifying to see how enormous it really was but at least it is behind glass and it can't come out like in Harry Potter. I think I would have a heart attack if I ended up swimming with a snake that big.


The boys also studied a new fish we had never seen before. It looked like a hunk of coral at first until it's mouth stretched up and out about 3 inches to reach for food. It was amazing. A new kind of camouflage.

Not Again!!!!!!

This may disgust you but I don't write much anywhere else right now and I just want to update what is going on with Jaron. The poor kids has suffered from these awful mouth sores for about 8 months now. The doctors have tried different things from antibiotics to magic mouth washes but the sores come back with a vengeance too often. They keep coming for longer periods of time closer together. We finally had it after day 14 of the sores last month and they started some testing. Jaron had to get blood drawn two days in a row. That was complete torture for all of us but especially him. He is so brave though it is amazing. From those tests we found out that some of his markers are high, which means something is wrong but it doesn't tell you what. We also ruled out oral herpes. It sounds gross but that is generally what cold sores are. We were trying to get an appointment with the infectious disease department but to no avail. After three weeks we still did not have an appointment. Luckily we got one with the immunology and rheumatology department very quickly. We were able to see the head of that department last week.

I was kind of frustrated when only a week had gone by when Jaron started getting the sores again. It was then that I realized what a miracle it was that he was so healthy and happy on Christmas. That was our Christmas miracle. The only redeeming thing was that he actually had the sores beginning when we went to see the doctor. There we discussed all kinds of things it could possibly be but we needed to get rid of the sores before we could do more testing. We already had blood draws done with the sores now we needed them without. So, we started him on prednisolone to see if it would help get rid of the sores quickly. It worked within about 4 days. It was great at first, the side effects are increased hunger and energy. He doesn't usually eat when he has the sores so this was a relief until he just kept eating until his tummy was about to burst and he kept throwing up. He also had so much energy it was hard for him to sleep. So we will see if we decide to use that method again. Hopefully, we can figure out what it is so we don't have to treat it that way every time.

So with the mouth sores gone we had to go in for more blood tests. He was so nervous he was shivering, dry heaving and had to go to the bathroom multiple times since he knew what was coming. This time his little arms were so cold we had to warm them with heating pads so they could even draw the blood. Finally they got him warmed up enough to get 6 vials. That is a lot of blood for one little boy. Now it is the waiting game again to see if we have anymore answers. Hopefully he will stay healthy for a little while longer this time.

Movie Night

What do you do when it is Christmas break, Daddy has a day off, and Grandma and Grandpa's puppy is visiting? I don't know what you do but we move all of the furniture out of the room into the kitchen and clean the carpets. Then we have a movie night. The boys loved having the extra space. Too bad we had to put all of the furniture back.

Happy New Year!

Can you believe that it is already 2010. Not me, I am in a tad bit of denial. That means that we are all getting older and hopefully wiser. We celebrated the New Year with Lex's family with of course delicious Japanese food and a little bit of chips and salsa too. We were supposed to bring Mango Salsa but if you can believe it the store was sold out of mangos but they had a avocados. So we went to town and made guacamole and my favorite black bean and avocado salsa. I think we had too much food but what a happy celebration with no trips to the ER .

I forgot to tell you about our Christmas Night trip to the urgent care. Jax and Jar were playing with cousins in another room when I heard Jar's broken something cry. The kids were playing and dropped him, not on purpose, but he got hurt never the less. He cried and couldn't stand up for over an hour and we tried to get him to walk to the car but he just couldn't do it. So off we headed to Urgent Care. (I really didn't want to go the the ER on Christmas) But we got there 2 minutes too late and they would not see him. So we decided to wait out the night and take him in the morning. Luckily nothing was broken and he woke up with a smile saying "Mom, I can walk!" Those are precious words to hear when you have a boy with such fragile bones. We were happy we made the right choice. Sometimes a good nights sleep can take care of a little boy who had way too long of a day on Christmas.

We hope that you have a happy, healthy and adventurous New Year!!!

Merry Christmas!

What a magical Christmas we had. The boys were so excited. Jaron had a really, really hard time with Santa this year. I think almost the worst yet. He is not a big fan, a believer, but not a fan. He barely made it to Preschool the day Santa came to visit. Thank goodness it was our good friends turn to drive or he might not have made it with just mom. Sometimes peer pressure can be a good thing. That being said it made Christmas morning that much more special when Jaron woke up and saw his big red sled that he asked for. "Mom, Santa gave me my wish. He must have put me on the nice list!"

During presents Grifin took a turn at being the cutest. Every present that was opened he said, "Wow, wow, Oh wow!" It didn't matter if it was a box or something he really loved. They all got the Wow stamp of approval.

You can see from the smiles on their faces that they were happy, happy boys!