Thanks for your concern

A big shout out to my peeps who have been praying and thinking of us these days...thank you so much. It always amazes me how in times of trouble, the people pool together to show their love and support. It has been a dark and scary week. I think I have really been hit hard core with the whole idea of...What do I actually believe?? Do I actually think that having hundreds of people praying will somehow heal Ella? Do I know how to pray at all? Am I telling God what I expect of Him rather than requesting? I guess many questions and floods of doubt and fear swept over me and some but not all of it has been solved. I think that's ok...it is causing me to think and grow.
The great part of it all is that right now, Ella is doing well. She is home with her loving family and so far not showing any signs of danger, though her mom has to keep a watchful eye at all times as to possible infection, bleeding, swelling etc. Please continue to pray that God will give them peace and hope. I find myself "dropping by" to see them just to make sure that things are going ok. Life is precious. We're reminded all the time, but especially this past week.



I got my stitches out today and am happy to be pretty much painless with both my foot and my back.
Here's a gross ugly picture of my foot that will maybe fall into the category of TMI.


Thank goodness! I love my doctors and chiropractors!! let me tell you!
It has been SO great and therapeutic to be outdoors with the boys, soaking up the sun and just getting out of the family room and into the fresh air.

I think I may just become one of those people who have to leave Canada during the winter when I'm retired and head south! The boys are busy with soccer, cross country running and blastball, so we have even more excuses to be out of the house.
Here's Riley with his latest hobby...

Can you believe it's almost May?
Anyway...thanks again for checking in on me and I hope you know how much we all appreciate your prayers and concern for us.

Vintage boy

Vintage boy on the basket
Originally uploaded by Sarah Dzines

SO hard to catch this boy before he flies toward the camera! He doesn't sit still for long.

Another update!

"Hi Dad,
Surgeons just saw Ella. Very encouraging and positive about her
condition. She is awake and alert, calm, and happy. They will remove the
EPV (drain) this morning. Tomorrow morning, Dr. Singhal will come and
check her around 8:30 and he said that we could expect to go home by 9:30!
So...

-Luke"

WOW!? hey?? Thank you all for thinking and praying for her.

Latest Ella update

"I just got off the phone with Luke. Ella is out of surgery and is doing her best at waking up. They have them in a post-op recovery room.

The surgery went fairly well. The procedure involves putting a hole from her third ventricle to another spot in the lower back part of her head (fourth ventricle??). While putting that through they ran into some form of irregular membrane that resulted in some bleeding. They had to flush this for about ten minutes to give it time to stop on its own. Once this was taken care off they continued with their procedure and were successful at putting the hole through. Due to the complication with the bleeding they decided to put a temporary drain through the hole they had done the surgery through that they will most likely remove in the morning.

Tomorrow morning the surgeons will come and check her out and work through what the next steps will be. Luke thought that he could call again mid-morning." (my Dad wrote)

One of those things that scares you to the core.

Our sweet baby Ella is undergoing brain surgery right now. I think you can imagine how that makes me feel.
I got home from getting stitches yesterday to have my dad call and relay the news that Ella was found with excess fluid around her brain. They air lifted her and Pam to the Vancouver Children's hospital last night. Today she had a MRI and is now in surgery, or hopefully by now is out.
I slept maybe 3 hours last night. I am sick with worry. I'm hoping to get an update soon.

Dealt with

I was getting continual shooting pain up my foot due to that tiny piece of glass. It was not helping my back to get any better as I'm constantly limping around and over-compensating on one side. So I went down to the walk-in clinic today and the doctor was great and more than willing to help me out right away. We went over to the treatment room and he froze me up (worse pain ever...needle in the ball of your foot). He reopened the foot and dug around for a good half an hour and got a big piece out. I even kept it so I could show my kids what has been bugging me all this time! I am hopeful that he got it all out as he kept looking for quite awhile to be sure he got it all. Then he gave me two stitches and home I went with Tylenol and Codine.
Here's hoping that 3 year episode is over with!!

Suggestions please!!

As some of you know, Greg and I are coming up on 10 years married! We want to go away somewhere for about 5 days. We've got some air miles saved up and have been looking online to figure out where to go. Or we could save our air miles and drive somewhere like Oregon or Seattle, or even Vancouver. What to do. Unlike me, Greg is not really a sit-at-the-beach with a pina colada kinda guy, and our last trip was to Hawaii. So something where we could catch a show, a concert, shop around without children for a change, somewhere with a view (mmm...take some pictures). Or maybe we could find the best of both worlds? We're thinking sometime in May or June.
Any suggestions?? Any trips you've made and loved lately?? San Diego? Mexico? New York? Los Angeles? Florida?
Maybe we won't go far away at all, but I'd love to know of all the options.
Thanks!

Liam and Shea

Time for some comedy!

My sister told us of this hilarious You Tube clip, from the show, Britain's Got Talent.
Please watch!

Life at a stand-still

I don't know if that is a proper thing to say, "Life at a stand-still", because as you can imagine, life is never at a stand-still when there are three children to entertain. Having the warmer weather brings along it's new challenges of keeping kids out of the pond, from falling off the deck, from running into the street, from tracking dirt everywhere etc.
I finally got over the cold (from he##) , with lingering sore tonsils. It wasn't just the normal cold for me, as it came with a fever that absolutely wore me out. Then while coughing, my back finally had enough and decided to go out...compounded by the fact that my foot is bugging me. Whine, whine...I know. Pathetic. But it has really put my life on hold. I can't go to swimming or floor hockey which have been the only two things I do on my own. Even taking pictures for my friends and their babies has been hard as I couldn't get around. After a few hundred dollars at my new chiropractor, I am moving much better now. I am able to keep up with the housework but find it still frustrating that I can't do the things I actually want to do! I am still (yes, still) trying to lose my baby weight and had my cousin tell me "It looks like you're having a baby!". Not something I was needing to hear right now.
I talked to another mom this week, who was asking me if I was returning to work in the fall once Liam is in kindergarden. Being that Shea is still at home and Liam is only out for 2 hours a day, doesn't really give me any time to get a job. I think it's smart for me to just stay here until Shea is in full-time school. I guess that sort of puts my life at a stand-still in it's own way. Unless I was a professional with a high-end job, it wouldn't pay for me to go to work anyway. I do need to find a few things that I can do in the meantime though, other than housework. I talked to an older mom this week (who I met when I was young) who has teens now, and she was letting me know how important it is to keep up on my own interests. "It is good for you, and the kids." I agree! but that is harder than it looks! Not only is your time limited, but resources and there's that whole MOMMY GUILT thing. I would love to take a photography course, but the college here does not offer one. I can't do much in the way of sports. I will be volunteering as the Cubbies (kids club) secretary next fall and do have fun playing around with editing and photo things. I could do more baking or sewing, but I'm trying to think of things outside the home. I will try to do a bit more gardening in the summer, and we just moved our piano back into the living room so I will try to play a bit more. I'd love to hear what other SAHM's do to keep their brains ALIVE.

Blog memory

Sometimes it's handy to have kept a blog, as it can remind of when things happened and a few of the details that I have forgotten...
This one in particular is relevant to today, oddly titled Fester. If you don't want to read it, it basically tells about how I stepped on a piece of glass almost 3 years ago and the doctor came to the conclusion that I would have to let it fester out.
Well, it is STILL there. It comes close to the surface at times, like now, and gives me a sharp pain when I step on just the right part of my foot. How stupid. Do you think the doctor was wrong that it would just fester itself out?! It's been 3 years for crying out loud. Now what...do I have to go get it surgically removed??

Photo summaries

I wrote a huge post, telling you all where I've been and what I've been doing, but it went poof when I pushed PUBLISH and I don't feel like repeating myself! So you'll have to enjoy some picture summaries.

Spent a day with a baby

Getting out of the haze

I am just about getting back to normal, would you believe that I am still sick? The cold was on it's way out the door and then bam, on Saturday it hit me full force again along with a fever, a very sore back and I was feeling rough. That kind of "rough", that when Liam was bending over bleeding on the carpet (bloody nose) and Shea was up in the kitchen dumping cheerios all over the floor for the 10th time...that it brought on the tears! As in, I can barely function, let alone watch after you guys and scrub the dang blood out of the carpet!
I haven't held the baby since the hospital last Friday either, so am quite looking forward to feeling better and getting my baby-fix.
Spring was almost here and then it turned cold and snowy again. A cruel April fools joke. I think we'll all find the summer will be much too short this year. What was that bit about global warming??