The Summer of Cousins

We had lots of visitors this last summer, and I mean lots. There wasn't a weekend or month that went by that something wasn't planned or people weren't staying at our house. It was busy. One of our favorite visitors came all the way from Virginia and stayed for six weeks. My sister and my mom and her three kids braved the drive and drove all the out to Utah to spend their summer with us. We had so much fun with them here. We didn't really have anything huge planned, but I know the kids loved spending time with their cousins, well for the most part, there were a few fights and bites along the way. Most of the time though the kids were in their swimming suits in the backyard playing in the blow up pool or eating popsicle's on the patio. We sure loved having them here and were very sad to see them go!! Hopefully they can do that again in a few years.

Disney Land

So after Owens heart surgery in March, Damon and I started talking about how in the summer we really wanted to do a memorable trip for the kids. We started looking and saw with my parents timeshare that there was a three day opening at Disney Land, we booked it! So right in the beginning of June we made a quick surprise trip to Disney Land, my parents were also able to come so that was great to have extra hands to watch the kids. We didn't tell the girls where we were going until we got there, they thought we were just going to the beach. At first they didn't believe us, and I don't think they started to get really excited until we were taking the bus to the park. Since it was such a quick trip we only did the park for one day, but it was by far the best Disney experience we have ever had. The lines for the rides were short, it didn't seem to crowded and the weather was perfect. Actually the longest we had to wait was 45 minutes and that was to meet Rapunzel, which was Sophie's favorite thing of the whole trip. Doing Disney though is SO much more fun when you have kids! I loved seeing the girls faces, it really made the whole experience magical. I'm so glad we were finally able to go, especially when they still believe in the princesses and fairies.

I love Sophie's face in this, pure excitement riding up to the park!

We are finally here!

Meeting Goofy!

On the Pirates of the Caribean ride, which scared Sophie!

Meeting Tiana

I love this photo of Sophie, she was in awe that she was finally meeting Tangled, as she calls her.

Disney Land is exhausting, out cold waiting to ride Dumbo.

Owen tried really hard to pull that sword out!

Sitting with Grandad waiting for the parade to start.

Owen's Blessing

*Yes I know it has been forever since I blogged, hopefully I can get all caught up!

 On Damon and I's 8th wedding anniversary Owen was blessed. It was a great day! We had lots of family and friends come and celebrate our miracle boy. His blessing was wonderful, it was so perfect for him. I'm so grateful for a worthy husband who carries the Priesthood. My mom made, as usual, lots of yummy food!! We were so glad that the people who came could, we were also pleased that our Temple Sealer and good family friend was able to be here. He has been able to now participate in two out of three children's blessings. We love that!! It was overall a really special day and a great way to celebrate another year married!

One Month

Owen is technically almost two months but I need to show pictures of his first month. His first month of life was much harder than most newborns but he sailed through it like a champ. We are loving having him in our home, he is such a sweetheart and deals pretty well with the thousands of kisses he gets daily from his sisters, and that is no exaggeration!! He has had his post op appointment and they were so pleased with how well everything was looking, yay!! He is quite a good eater and is slowly putting on the pounds. He was also able to get off oxygen at his appointment, so that was a relief, don't want two kids on it.  We are just in awe of this little guy and the strong spirit he brings with him!!

Looking all so cute in his one month onesie.

Olivia LOVES to hold Owen and is a big help with him!

Snuggles with Grandad, I think they are going to be best buds!

Showing off his scar, which is looking SO good!!

Sophie in a rare moment of not smothering him, lol!

Two kids snoozing and one being quite, awe peace!!

Owen Robert Bell

*This is an email that my dad wrote and sent to their friends and family.  I thought that this was the best way for me to post about what our sweet angel has gone through so far in his life.
Owen Robert Bell—
My Life so far:
Born 8.08 pm on February 26 ,2013 weighing 8lbs 10oz and 20 inches long in Orem, Utah, much to the delight of parents Damon & Sian, his siblings, Olivia & Sophie, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and cousins, family friends and relatives.

Eyes open and surveying the world unaware of the drama to follow.

His pediatrician (Dr. Edwards from Alpine Pediatrics) noticed a heart murmur and ordered an EKG. The result was that Owen was rushed by ambulance 40 miles up the Interstate to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City where he was immediately placed on a regiment of drugs to stabilize his condition. On Tuesday, March 5th, 2013 Owen underwent a 5 hour open heart, by pass surgery performed by the chief pediatric, thoracic surgeon Dr. Gruber and his wonderful medical team. His surgery went very well. The team had to repair three issues. 1. Replace a portion of his Aortic arch because his aorta was too small to allow blood to flow to his body. 2. Repair a Coarctation of the Aorta which means his Aorta was too narrow and 3. a Ventricular Septal Defect which was a large hole (6mm) between his left & right ventricles which are the pumping chambers of the heart. He also has a few small holes in the upper chambers of his heart which (apparently) are no cause for concern. The VSD was repaired by placing an H type of mesh device into the opening. The surgery which took about five hours involved stopping is the young heart, completing the surgery, and then restarting his heart. They were able to fix all of Owen’s issues with no complications.

In the picture you can see the Owen is on a ventilator, and numerous other intravenous tubes. Owen was in the cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) for twelve days. He was extubated but could only maintain breathing on his own for about 15 min. as his lungs had collapsed, and he needed to be re-intubated again. Two days later he was extubated again and, this time he did well.

This was Owen on his 2 week birthday. He is still looking very sorry for himself but is still receiving expert attention from his personal nurses in the CICU. He had visits from Grandpa Allen, Uncle Jimmy and was as fed up as everyone else from the constant questions being asked by Granddad Bob. Of course Mommy and Daddy were there everyday and sometimes even having a sleepover. Nanny Barbara had a tough time with all of the nasty bits and was the substitute Mom for Olivia & Sophie. Owen now has a 3 inch incision scar on his chest which is healing nicely. Even though he seems at peace in this photo, he has endured many doses of morphine, is still on the ventilator and also a nasal feeding tube. He receives his medication intravenously and has a catheter to remove his waste fluids. He hasn’t been able to feed for 10 days and will have to undergo a swallow test before he is discharged.

Sian finally gets to hold her baby. After twelve days in the CICU, Owen was moved to the third floor Cardiac Recovery Unit where he was on 7 liters of oxygen. Overnight this was reduced to 5L and then 4L and then 2 liters. Finally he was weaned off oxygen onto room air and even though the picture below shows him in his car seat with oxygen, he is only on a very low amount.

He is now at home in Eagle Mountain, Utah being fussed over by his two older sisters. We are also grateful for the excellent medical attention that Owen received in his first three weeks of life. We are amazed that the surgeons were able to work on a heart which is roughly the size of a walnut. We are grateful for all of the prayers and good wishes that were sent to Owen and his family. We thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for your kind thoughts and prayers.

Christmas

Well I figured that since it was February that I should probably blog about Christmas, I know I am a slacker. We had a great Christmas this year, we decided that we weren't going to go overboard with gifts and I think we did pretty good. The girls got some pretty good gifts and they seemed happy with them. I can't believe that Christmas has already come and gone, were does the time go?

The girls with Santa, we go and visit this one every year!!

Opening there loot.

Olivia holding one of her newest cousins, Mary.

Merry Christmas!!!

We hope that all our family and friends have a wonderful Christmas!!

No more pink..

Well as most you all know we are going to be adding to our family at the end of February beginning of March.  Its going to be a big shock this time around, as it is a BOY!!  No bows or frills this time around.  We have known for a few weeks that it's a boy, we have a friend who does ultrasounds and did a quick sex check for us.  Today though we had our official ultrasound and it was confirmed again that it is indeed a boy.  I'm slowly getting used to the idea, good thing I have a few months to get prepared!

Tonsil Surgery

As most of you know because of Facebook, Sophie had her tonsils and adenoids removed a month ago. I figured I better write about how it went for her before I forget. The main reason she had them removed was to see if having them out will help her breathing at night. Back in March we met with her lung specialist to let him know that Sophie was still needing oxygen when she sleeps after almost three years being on it. We told him how she snores at night and he recommended that she have a sleep study done to see if they were obstructing her airway. Well in July we finally had time to have the study done. Then in August we heard from her Doctor, the study did show that her tonsils were blocking her airway but we couldn't be for sure if that was why she needed the oxygen. He then referred us to go and see an ENT doctor. We went to see the ENT who said that yup she needed her tonsils out and her adenoids that they were pretty big. SO the following week she had an appointment to get them out. I then became a nervous wreck, like I was in tears every time I thought of her having to have surgery. For the whole week I tried very hard to distract myself and not think about it. Finally the day before the surgery Damon asked if I wanted a blessing too, he had already given one to Sophie. I'm so grateful that he was prompted to give me one, my nerves right away were calmed down and I was able to relax.
Surgery day, because Sophie was considered a high risk patient she had surgery up at Primary Children's Hospital, man we love that place, it has such a sweet spirit and all the staff is great. When we got up to the hospital it was a lot of waiting and filling out paper work.  They asked us in the beginning if we wanted to give her a sedative to help calm her down and we quickly agreed.   She had that about 25 minutes before surgery and at first we didn't think it was working but then Sophie became hilarious.  She had the whole waiting room laughing.  Out of nowhere she would just shout out phrases like Buzz Light-year to the the Rescue!!  Oh how I wish we had been filming her.  Finally the time came to say goodbye, always a hard part but I knew she was in good hands.
After she left, Damon and I ran down to the cafeteria because we were STARVING, since Sophie couldn't eat all day we knew she would have freaked out if we had been eating.  By the time we were back in the waiting room and just finishing up our lunch the doctor showed up to tell us that surgery was all done.  They were so quick, total surgery time was about 40 minutes.  The doctor was very pleased with how well it went, and he said a few times that her tonsils were huge!!  Next was just a waiting game for us to get to see her after she woke up. 
After she was awake, we then got to hang out in the recovery room till about 7pm.  We were the last ones to leave for the night.  We weren't surprised that she was needing oxygen when she was awake we had been expecting that, but the doctor wanted to make sure that she didn't get any worse after surgery, so we got to hang out until we convinced them that we were comfortable with how she was doing.  I did not want to have to spend the night in the hospital if we didn't have to.
Next came time for recovery.  I was worried with how this was going to be, I had heard from friends that it was not easy.  Amazingly though Sophie did awesome.  We kept on top of pain meds and gave her lots of snuggles.  The hardest part was trying to get her to drink enough, but thankfully this girl loves milk in a bottle and that was her saving grace.  She would drink those and she did good.  I honestly think the worst part of all of this, was her breath, oh my goodness did it ever stink.  It smelt like something was rotting in her mouth.
By the two week mark after her surgery though she was back to her old self, I'm so glad that she did so good.  I told my mom though that maybe I've dealt with worse with her, that this just wasn't that bad.   

Sophie on her happy medicine!!

After surgery ready to go home.

So I'm sure you are all wondering if the surgery has helped.  We don't know for sure, we need to do another sleep study to see how she does at night.  During the day though her numbers seem to be higher.  We are so glad we did it though, and would do it all over again.

2012-2013 School Photo

Olivia brought home her school photo today and I am loving how they turned out.  Last years ones were a bit of a miss, so I had her practice this year on how to smile for the camera.  I know I'm a dork!  I'm so glad that she actually smiled this year though, she looks so cute and so grown up.  The best part about her school photos is instead of buying  a bunch, I bought a cd with the images on them and then got the copyright to use them however I want.  That way I won't have a bunch that just sit in a drawer. 

First Day of School

Well I can't believe that Olivia is a first grader, and has been for 3 weeks now. Summer just flew by and I was not ready for it to end. I was a little apprehensive of Olivia being at school all day, but once I realized how much I could get done with one kid at home I was okay with it. Olivia is loving school and loves riding the bus everyday. In fact one day I drove her to show her how she could sleep in later if I took her, and she was so mad at me because she didn't get to play outside then before school started. The hardest adjustment has been that she is on A track, meaning she starts school at 8am, so I have to wake her up at 6:45. It is rough on both of us, but the upside is she is home by 2:30. Its hard to believe though that she is first grade. Here is to a great year for her!!

Summer Fun

Well I figured since summer is over for us here in Utah and I better blog about what we did these last couple of months. I feel like summer has flown by and that we did nothing, but I guess we did actually have quite a few visitors.
Two of Damon's brothers and their families came and visited us and different times, so that was fun, the girls always like playing with their cousins.
 What took up most of our time this summer was driving back and forth to swim lessons. Olivia did a total of 6 weeks of lessons, and seemed to have improved quite a bit by the end and was even diving. She is a little fish and loves to be in the water.
 I also signed Sophie up for the last swim session, she loved it and it was cute to watch her float around. We will definitely be doing swim lessons again next year. Other having some family visiting, I feel like we really didn't do that much, but we did have a fun summer and are sad to say goodbye to it.

The girls with cousin's Megan and Alyssa

Olivia getting ready to dive

and she's in!!

Olivia coming up to breathe.

Sophie blowing some bubbles.

Dancing on the side of the pool

Time to jump in, I just love her cute little bum in a swim suit.

Sophie jumping away at jump on it.

Jumping with cousin Miles

The girls with another set of cousins: Julia, Miles, and Noah.

All the kids showing of their balloon animals/mermaids that they got at City Creek Mall for free too. That place is awesome!

Visiting Temple Square.