Geoffrey

Geoffrey has started reading and spelling a little. He loves to take my phone and write messages in the notes section. We have made it a family game to take his notes and decipher them. I thought I would share a recent one. This is exactly how it looks on my phone.

Win a jetfliso

vr

mei

runawa

It took me a little bit to figure it out. See below Geoff's picture for the answer.

When a jet flies over me I run away.

Surgery update

We are now one week past surgery and Ella is doing amazingly well. Since the surgery was done through her nostrils there is no wound care. By looking at her you wouldn't know she just had surgery. She is now almost back to normal. Now the plan is to just wait for a few months for the new airway to heal. Then we will spend a night in the hospital with a cap on her trach to see how she handles breathing without the trach. If all goes well, we will take the trach out. One of the best things will be to hear Ella's voice. Now we can see her laughing, but we can't hear it. Of course there are sometimes benefits to your child not making any noise and I will miss a few of those conveniences, but I can't wait for her to hear her own voice. No trach will also mean about half the equipment we have now. The doctors won't take a trach out in the winter months so we hope for sometime in April! Yeah!

Surgery

I would really like to start posting again, so today I thought about what I could even say. Then it donned on me that some people might want to know that our sweet little Ella will be having surgery on Monday. The doctors will be repairing the airway in her nose. The hope is in a few months she won't need the trach anymore and life will be a little better for her.

Laughing

I know that is has been forever since we posted last. I have no excuse. We are in the planning stages of getting the blog updated on a regular basis, thanks to a great idea from family.

The reason this is getting posted on the blog is because I could not get it to attach in email.

Since coming to Minnesota, Ella has been getting AMAZING care. This state really knows how to treat its special kids. We recently received a prescription for a Passy Muir valve (Passy). For those that are unfamiliar with trach's, it is a one-way valve that allows the individual to breathe in through the valve, but to exhale, it has to go through the mouth or nose. In doing this, the air passes the voice box and the person can make noise. In case you haven't guessed where I am going with this, Ella can be quit noise with the valve on.

And now the rest of the story,

In school, the kids have been learning the elements and yesterday was Helium. Sandy bought some balloons at the store and brought them home. They only served the purpose of inhaling and talking funny. When Sandy got home with them, the balloons were brought into the family room where Ella was playing on the floor. After getting ahold of one the the balloon's ribbons, Ella started to laugh. She didn't have her valve on so it wasn't really audible, but you could tell it was a laugh.

So being the good parents we are, we took the balloons away. Put on the Passy. Turned on the camera and started to record.

By the way, I am no photographer, but here is a clip of it. Enjoy.

There are a couple of spots that the balloon hits the camera and it is quite loud. I apologize for the blown speakers.

Trafalga Homeschool Day

We had a blast at Trafalga last Wednesday. There were probably 100 homeschoolers there. We had lunch and then got a 2 hour pass to do whatever we wanted. The go carts were fun, the kids are begging to go miniature golfing again, and I am queen of the jumping video game. Lots of fun. It was also cool to hang out with so many homeschoolers. We met some fun people and I'm excited to see them more. There are so many home school activities around here we have to pick and choose which ones we will go to. Friday we will go to a park day for the Orem and Provo homeschoolers. This is mostly for Geoff's benefit. He has been asking for a month when summer was, because somehow he got it in his head that whenever this magical thing called summer comes around you go to the park. Jason will be in school, so I get to bring Ella. That ought to prove to be venturesome.

Ella

Ella is doing so good. Her surgery for a g-tube and nissin (to prevent reflux) went well. We spent 2 weeks at the hospital. It wasn't too bad. We moved into the Ronald McDonald house and that was wonderful. The drive back and forth was hard. So we just moved the whole family up to Salt Lake. Jason commuted back for school. The kids were able to be in Ella's room, so we did our lessons in her room and then played in the playroom the a lot. I love Primary Children's Hospital because they are so kid friendly. The kids made play dough and slime, played games (Jason is awesome at fooseball), built hotwheel tracks, did medical play (I think Kieva could give me an iv if she wanted), painted more crafts then I care to name, and made friends. While there we went to the Children's Musem and a special Shrek the Final Chapter showing and party. It is so nice now that Ella doesn't have tubes taped to her face anymore. She is much happier and so cute. Yesterday I brought her back my bedroom and laid her on the bed when I walked back in I found her content and cuddled up with her dad. Kieva loves to take care of her. She even took her back to her room the other day and laid Ella on a blanket and just let her chill while Kieva cleaned her room and read. Zak is a sweetie and takes good care of Ella too. He was the first of the kids to suction her and help me change her trach. Geoffrey loves to help and take care of her as well. He will often tell me "I'm your helper remember." Jason has set an air raid alarm to remind me to give Ella her meds. Whenever it goes off Geoff comes running telling me to give Ella her medicine. Jason is so good with her. Her has rocked her for many hours and is always the one to get up with her at 5am when the nurses leave. We are starting to really figure Ella out. She is doing great.

(By the way, this was not a posed picture. I was, emphasize was, sleeping right up to the point when the flash went off two feet from my head. Not sleeping so much after the shot.-- JF)

Another Geoffrey story

Hi this is Kieva. Today we were taking a walk and Geoffrey wanted to cross the road. My mom told Geoffrey to look out for cars ,so Geoffrey looks around and sees a parked car and says ''I found one.'' and then he ran across the road. I thought that was funny.