All is well

Waiting for surgery and riding around the hospital

Lovin the Happy Juice Meds!!

Seeing Mommy and Daddy for the first time after surgery

Very tired and out of sorts, saying good bye to Mommy

All is good and ready to go home this afternoon

I first want to say Thank you for all the prayers and thoughts!!  We are all back home today!

All is well! My hubby is staying at the hospital with her last night and  I stayed home with our other 4 kiddos. She got upset when I left but my  husband said she fell asleep fast after I left. They ballooned her artery but it did not do much good. They decided not to put a stent in yet  because they dont want her to out grow it. ( she is a big girl and he  thought she would out grow it too fast) The blood flow seems to be  good and the lung buds look good too. Everything looked better than  what they saw on the echo last month. She has a bend in her artery  that is limiting the blood flow so they will continue to watch that  but the doc said he did not want to put a stent in until she is about  6 years old. She also has no valve so 100 percent of her blood gets  pumped out and 50 percent goes back and leaks into the heart! So they  will have to keep a close eye on that and watch her heart size. She  will probably need a valve in a couple years maybe sooner. All and  all things turned out for the better and we are very happy! Thanks so  much for all the thoughts and prayers, it meant so much to our  family. 

She is back to being a little fireball and running around like crazy!!  It is amazing how fast these little ones bounce back!  God is good and we are so happy that everything turned out so well.

We have some hilarious video of her after they gave her the happy juice meds before surgery.  She was so funny just giggling and drooling, I think she was seeing things, we were just cracking up, it really helped to lighten the mood.

Here are some pictures from the hospital......

Ava's Surgery Today!

We are getting ready to go to the hospital in about an hour.  Ava will be having her heart surgery at 2:30pm Mountain time.  Please keep her in your prayers and thoughts.  Thanks so much!

17 Years!!! Part II

April  25th, 1992

Engagement picture for our announcement!

We had just got engaged!

First Christmas together with our first fluffy child! ha

Year 2, having fun in the photo booth

17 Years!!! Part I

Yes, this is me doing what I loved to do back then! ha

This is Sean!!

One of our first dances together

Prom 1990

I am so behind on blogging!  And I have not takin any pictures lately, I really hate our point and click!  I can never get a good picture because of the delay and by that time she or the boys have turned away!!  We are getting closer to having the money saved to replace the lens that was lost on our SLR.  My hubby has been selling things on craig*list and stocking the money away!!  Our goal is to have it by summer!

The kids are all home from school today so we have a three day weekend.   My hubby and I also celebrate 17 years of marriage!!!  Where does the time go??  We have known each other since we were 16 years old. Can you believe that?  I shudder at the thought that my 14 year old  could meet his future wife in two years, yikes!!

  

Our story is an interesting one.  When I was 16 we moved to Arizona.  That is a hard age to pick up and move to a new place.  I was already in my second year of High School and starting over.   One December afternoon I went to the bank with my Mom.  I sat in the car while she went and got in line at the outside ATM.  When we pulled into the parking lot I noticed this huge station wagon  with wood paneling, the thing that caught my eye was all the skateboard stickers plastering it!  I was not a girlie girl, Tom boy all the way!!  I loved to skateboard and I would always practice in my free time.  As I stared at my Mom in line I noticed a boy standing in front of her with his hat on backyards and skateboard pads around his ankles, I figured that was his car.  I noticed he was pretty cute and I wondered if he went to the same school I was getting ready to start at??...  Two weeks later I started a job across the street from that bank.  I was working at Peter Piper Pizza and running the front register.  I'm a smiley person so that is where they stuck me, now I'm paying for it and have the deep lines to prove it on  my face! ha  Anyway back to my first day of work, there was two new people starting that night and I was one of them.  Can you guess who the second one was??  The cute skater boy standing in front of my Mom at the bank!  He was hired to run the ovens.  All I can say it was fate.  We did not attend the same school.  He actually road his skateboard 3 miles to work everyday and I walk just a couple blocks.  We started out as good friends and did a lot of skateboarding together.  After about 6 months of being friends we starting dating.  Sean was a senior and I was a sophomore at rival schools.

We continued to date through the rest of my High School years.  During my junior year Sean starting going to college for Fine Art degree and after about a year into it, my senior year, we starting talking about marriage.  He figure that Fine Art was not going to pay the bills  so he transferred to a computer programing and CAD graphic school.  After I graduated and he finished up his first two years of school we decided to move to Washington where the rest of our family had moved too.  My parents moved up there a couple of months before I graduated from High School and I lived with my Aunt.  Sean's Mom and his brother and sister had moved up there a couple years previous.

I started college in Washington and we got officially engaged the summer of 1991.  We married April 25th 1992.   The rest is history, 17 years and five kids later, life is good!!  I cant believe I am posting these embarrassing pictures but here are a few of our dating years and first year or two of marriage.  ( Sean did not want these on here! hehe)

This is not a good idea after Easter Dinner!

So this is my hubby's idea on how to keep the kids entertained after Easter Dinner.  Thank goodness we did not have to clean up any barf.  These kids have stomachs of steal I guess!!

Wordless Wednesdays (Referral Day)

HAPPY EASTER, from our family to yours!!

Click on pictures for a bigger image!

Sun and Snow after SPRING BLIZZARD!! Part III

Having a blast!

Hands getting cold

Our hand prints and shoe prints

Ava and her little buddy!!

See my little buddy, cute!

Sun and Snow after SPRING BLIZZARD!! Part II

Smile for Mommy

Snow is yummy!

Just having a snack

Having fun in the sun

Scooping the snow

Sun and Snow after SPRING BLIZZARD!! Part I

Checking out the snow

Lots of snow!

Our front yard

The slider on our deck, and its open!

The view from our driveway

So we had a little Spring Blizzard Friday night through Saturday night!  It is hard to say how many inches we got because the wind was blowing so hard, up 60 mph!!  So we had no snow in some places and a lot in others.

Today is in the high 50's but it feels so much warmer when you are playing in the sun and still enjoying the snow.  Tomorrow we are suppose to be in the high 70's, crazy weather the Rocky Mountains has.

I put Ava's snow pants on just to keep her dry but she did not even need a jacket because of that radiant heat.  She had fun playing in the snow with her spoon and bowl just like being at the beach. ha  She also had fun making hand prints and foot prints in the snow.  We even made a baby snowman and she thought that was hilarious. 

The pictures might be in two or three parts.

More Faces, Thanks Brothers!

He love his little sister, most of the time

Funny, Funny

Good one!

Sweetness

Lovely!