Luke's Third Birthday

I've decided that we should have birthdays every two weeks year round. I LOVE cake. Seriously, July rocks...

Yesterday we celebrated Luke- our lovable, huggable, absolutely fantastic little man. We started out by feeding the ducks at Gibson Park, which is becoming something of an inadvertent birthday tradition. After a quick lunch and nap, we headed out to Burger King for dinner and the play place. Mostly the play place. We ate burgers and fries then finished off the meal with ice cream cones, Jack's first ever ice cream cone, to be exact. Lastly, we had his party with Darreck and my family. We ate cake, had a pinata, and opened presents. It was really fun!

Luke is definitely hitting the treacherous threes, as Darreck has dubbed it. He's gotten more vocal about his wants and more whiny, but under the toddler mayhem, he's still our sweet-hearted boy. He loves, loves, loves hugs, and he always asks to play with his brothers. He's an incredibly social guy, and every day he asks to have friends over to play. His favorite food right now is candy- kid has a definite sweet tooth. He likes watching Despicable Me, and he spends most of his days playing with toys, especially cars and blocks. His favorite outdoor activity right now is riding his strider bike. He's gotten amazingly good at balancing, and he's pretty naturally gifted at anything physical. In that regard and so many others, he's Darreck's mini-me.

It's been a difficult year with all of Luke's medical testing and interventions, but we're really looking forward to a better year coming up. We've finally gotten through all the testing, and now we're moving into a phase where life seems a little more normal. Up until this point, Luke's life has been a little rough, but he's handled everything like a champ. We're so thankful for our sweet little Lukey-Lou.

Dad's Retirement

This week the craziness continued as we celebrated Dad's retirement from the Great Falls Police Department. He served for 24 hours, beginning just before my 4th birthday. Throughout his career he worked in patrol, as a field training officer, as a DARE education officer, as a sex crimes detective, as the swing shift sergeant, as the training sergeant, and as the public information officer, He also served as the treasurer for the Great Falls Police Association. He was also awarded a Medal of Honor for pushing another officer out of the way when he was threatened by a suicidal man. We're incredibly proud of his service to his community, and excited for him as he transitions into a full time professorship at the University of Great Falls.

We started off the celebration with a formal ceremony at the police station. Jack Allen and Chief Dave Bowen spoke very kindly of dad and his service over these years. After that, we all ate cake. Pretty typical government ceremony.

Later that night, the police association hosted his party at Elks' Riverside Park, and the turnout was great. Traditionally, these parties are held at a sports bar, but dad wanted a family friendly atmosphere. I think everyone really appreciated the tone of the party, and it was just another way my dad shows his discipleship. More speeches were given, including one from my mom, who teased him a little about wrecking two police cars throughout his career- one by hitting a stop sign and one by hitting a deer. All in all, everyone had a great time.

The partying continued the next day when my parents hosted a party at their house for their friends. Unlike the night before, the food was awesome. All parties should be hosted by Mormon women. We should seriously make that a rule. Most of dad's friends from church came, and I hope he felt supported in his decisions. I know he's going to really enjoy teaching full time in these coming years. He's an awesome instructor, and UGF is lucky to have him.

Luke's Latest Procedure

Adding to Luke's already long list of doctors, we started seeing a pediatric gastroenterologist this spring to figure out his tummy troubles. Ever since Luke's birth, it seems, we've been rushing to put out medical fires. We started with his respiratory problems and reactive airway, moved onto his life-threatening food allergies, stopped the bleeding by getting his eczema under control, and now we're trying to figure out why he never has solid diapers. It's been a long journey, but this is the last piece of the very complex puzzle, and I'm grateful.

The doctors think he might have an eosenophilic disorder, which is bad, but the only way to get a conclusive diagnosis is to perform an  upper and lower GI study- endoscopy and colonoscopy with biopsy. Unfortunately, the only pediatric GI in the state is based out of Kalispell, so we had a 4 hour each way trip to get the procedure done. We were dreading it, but as with most things with Luke, the little man made it easier than expected. The day before he had to follow a clear liquid diet and down laxatives, and he handled it like a champ. Never once did he complain about being hungry. It was our own little miracle. The next day, Darreck, Luke, Jack, and I headed out while Max stayed behind with Grandma and Papa. We expected the little boys to sleep in the car up and back, but they barely slept at all. In spite of my worrying, both boys traveled great. We left at 5 in the morning and got home at 5 in the evening. It was a very exhausting day, but it certainly could have gone worse.

As for the procedure itself, his scans looked really good on the outset. We're still waiting for the biopsies to come back with conclusive data, but so far so good. Another bonus to this procedure- the anesthesia was perfect this time around. Another small miracle. I know I'm being redundant, but Luke really did great. He's such a trooper, but I still hope that he won't remember any of this when he gets older.

Now we're just waiting- both for the results and the bills. Story of poor little Luke's life.

Jack's First Birthday

We celebrated another major milestone today- Jack's first birthday! It's been such a great year with this sweet, loving, mischievous little man. Today was a great celebration, complete with crepe paper, balloons, and lots and lots of cake.

 We kept his party small this year. We only had our family, my parents, my sister, and grandma great. It was such a nice treat for me to keep things small and manageable, especially since Jack's two big brothers were over the moon excited. They were nuts today! After everyone assembled, we had Jack opened his presents, and he got clothes, a book, a giraffe from Aunty Kay-Kay, a pool from Grandma and Papa, and a toy plane from us. He tried his best to open the wrapping paper on his own, but his specialty was destroying the bows. After presents we ate pizza then moved onto the cake. The cake we bought came complete with a personal sized "smash cake" for Jack, and he went to town. He was covered from head to toe in green frosting. The kid likes cake, no doubt about that. After a quick bath (which turned the water green), we sat around and talked before going on a nice evening walk. It was a good night.

Jack doesn't see the doctor until next week, so I don't have any growth stats yet, but he's doing really well. He's still nursing 5-6 times a day and waking up 1-2 times each night. He eats pretty much everything, and his favorite foods are watermelon and crackers. And cake, apparently. He's still crawling like a champ, and he recently started standing on his own. He's only days away from taking his first real steps, and it would come even faster if we pushed him a little. He's saying "mama" and "dada", but they don't mean anything specific yet. Mostly he just makes a lot of noise.

He fits in perfectly with our family. Right now Jack is best buds with Max, mostly because Luke gets upset when he steals Luke's toys. He follows his big brothers around, furiously crawling all around the house to catch up. He's such a fun, squirmy little ball of love, and we can't wait to see him grow throughout the next year.

4th of July

Yesterday we celebrated the Fourth of July, my least favorite holiday. Don't get me wrong- I love the basic premise of our country. The execution of politics has me frustrated at the moment, but the concept behind our Constitution is fabulous. Definitely worth celebration. However, I hate all the noise and I hate fireworks and I hate parades. The only redeeming grace of the 4th is having a barbecue. After the food, I'm out.

That being said, yesterday was pretty tolerable. We started off the morning at our ward pancake breakfast, where the food was atrocious but the company was good. After that, we checked out the parade and got to see Kayla march in the band. It was hot and the guns from the Lewis and Clark reenactors were loud, but it was a pretty typical Great Falls parade- short on floats, long on military vehicles. We followed up the parade with lunch at my parent's house, which as I previously mentioned, was the highlight.

Following nap, Darreck and Max went with my family to a baseball game. Unfortunately, we don't feel comfortable taking Luke to the stadium because of the peanut shells everywhere, and our caution turned out to be very prudent. Luke had a pretty nasty hive outbreak today complete with swollen face because of Max's clothes from the baseball game. Apparently, the residue on Max's clothes was enough to cause trouble. I'm just thankful he wasn't at the game.

Everyone kept asking if I minded staying behind and minding the two little boys, but I was perfectly content to let everyone else burn through thousands of dollars of fireworks and end up in the emergency room. Independence Day is the ultimate redneck holiday, and I am about as far from redneck as you can possibly get. And proud of it. So, today I'm celebrating the 5th of July. The nice calm, quiet, relaxing 5th of July.

Summer Weeks Two and Three

More summer. More fun. The second week of summer was pretty much consumed by camps- both Darreck's deaf camp and Max's tennis camp. Deaf camp is really intense for our family because it backs up to one of the learning weekends. Basically, Darreck heads to work on Friday afternoon and we barely see him until the next Saturday eight days later. To keep the kids occupied, we signed Max up for tennis camp, and I took Luke and Jack to play at different parks each morning Max had camp. It was really fun! Max was the youngest and most inexperienced in his group, but his attitude was great and he learned a ton. We were so proud of his hard work and dedication.

This past week Darreck was home, but we got very little done. It's been in the high-90s all week, so our motivation has been extraordinarily low. It's simply too hot to do very much. However, we did manage to spend one morning at Giant Springs, which was fun. We also put Jack in 12-18 month clothes, so we boxed up all the baby clothes and sold off a huge chunk of baby paraphernalia. I thought I would be sad; after all, it's then end of an era. Mostly, though, I've been excited to do stuff with the boys as they get bigger. We're really looking forward to spending each summer camping, hiking, and swimming in a few years. It's seems like we're right on the cusp of the boys being a lot of fun instead of just a lot of work. Not that I don't love them now, but I do see the next phase being one that's more enjoyable for both Darreck and myself.