San Antonio Trip/Seaworld

This weekend we had a blast meeting my parents in San Antonio. Mallory was sooooo excited to see Grandma and Papa and so were we. We got to stay in a beautiful hotel right on the river walk and go to Sea World, the Alamo, and the San Antonio Temple. For being our first real vacation with 2 kids I would consider it a success. We were exhausted from time to time dragging all of our junk around for the kids and carrying tired kiddos around but it was so worth it. Thanks Mom and Dad for coming to Texas on your spring break! We had a blast!!!!

 Mallory ready to hit the road.

Splash pad at Sea World. The weather was perfect.

 4D Sesame street show at Sea World

 Swimming at the hotel. Kaisley's first swim.

The Azul show was our favorite.

 Kaisley being soooooo good!

 Cute girl.

Porter, Malli, Mom, and Lorri on the rides :)

She loved all of the Sesame street characters and snuggled right in for hugs.

RSV again! and St. Patricks Day!

Our big and not so fun update for the week is that my biggest worry became a reality. After calling my Dr. for 5 days concerned about my baby and them messing up her first RSV test and accidentally testing it for flu they finally re-tested her and she sure enough she has RSV again! That means Malli has had it too. These poor girls don't deserve to be sick so much. Not to mention how exhausted their parents are! Mallory is doing really well, just lots of boogies but Kaisley seems to be improving more slowly than last time. It has been nearly 2 weeks already and she still sounds pretty yucky. I think we have seen a slight improvement in her the past day or so though so I am hoping we are on the downhill. She is still sweet as ever though. The Dr. couldn't believe she got it twice in one season and thought I was crazy for telling them that I needed her to be seen because I thought that was the problem. Maybe they will listen to me from now on! Anyway, we are slowly starting to recover I think. Porter has been on Spring Break which has been a blessing to he could help out but a bit of a bummer too since we didn't get to go anywhere fun. We did enjoy each other this week though and got quite a few little projects done around here so that was nice.

Happy St. Patty's day! Mallory loved her rainbow pancakes (and no, she did not eat all of these!), green eggs and ham, and green juice. I think I will make her eggs green all the time. She loved them so much that she ate the leftovers for lunch too! They looked pretty unappetizing to us.

 These two are the best of friends. I promise they are, even though every time I get the camera to snap a picture of the two of them playing Kaisley starts to scream. She usually is a a pretty good sport and lets Mallory smother her most of the day. Notice they are not too different in size already!

 Mallory showing her rainbow she had made at home evening with our lesson and left up for the leprechaun and her trap and the pot of gold he left her at the end of the rainbow. He even left his hat behind and we found footprints! She was sooooo thrilled with it all! (Her mouth is full of chocolate in the picture as it was most of the day!) She told Porter the other day that her Mom is a little bit weird because she won't let her eat all the chocolate she wants. She says some pretty comical things.

The girls on St. Patty's Day.

My sick baby. RSV for the 2nd time in 6 weeks. Sorry baby girl! You don't deserve to go through this again!!! Get better soon!

Me sporting my sweet 3rd place medal. Ha. I ran in the Shamrock 5k here in San Angelo. I was not feeling the greatest during the run and didn't even get that great of a time but at least I placed. I can definitely tell that I am not back to my old self again yet in the running department. I blame it on having both kids sick with RSV twice since I was able to start exercising again. I guess you could say I have been a bit tired lately and not as good about getting myself out of bed to exercise in the mornings. Oh well, the babies are more important. It sure was fun to get back to a race though. I love doing them (for some weird reason).

3 months old!

Look who is 3 months old today! She is getting so big so quick and has been such a good baby. She really brightens my day with her happy personality. Sad to say she is a little under the weather right now. I am just sick thinking of the possibility of it being RSV again. We are praying it is not that again and are hoping for a speedy recovery for this sweet girl of ours. Poor thing does not deserve another sickness!!! Here are a few pictures of her. She is now 13.5 pounds! She loves to smile and coo and has started giggling.

Sorry this next pic is upsidedown and wont rotate ????

 Mallory making a "grinch" craft in February. Ha. She just loves him though.... kinda creepy

For our FHE we did the "tangled" FHE. We all dressed in our dress up clothes like rapunzel and flynn and had a royal crab dinner to start of the night, followed by a fun lesson and game and a royal ball with dancing at the end of the night. Mallory absolutely loved it!!!!

Malli with her clover snacks we made after watching "Horton Hears a Who" (cottage cheese dyed with food coloring and celery) So easy and healthy and she gobbled them right up.

Happenings

Kaisley was 2 months old last week and finally fits in the some-what matching outfits I bought the girls, so I decided to do a little photo shoot of them. As always, just when I got both girls dressed and ready, Kaisley was not a happy camper. She cried through the whole thing so here are a few of the lovely pictures I captured :)

p.s. Kaisley's 2 month apt states were :

11 lbs 11 oz and 23 inches long putter her at about 70th% for both weight and height. She was only at 12th% at birth so she is really working her way up the ladder. She loves to eat! :)

Oh.. and Mallory had her first 2 tests done on her heart and both were normal. We only have her ECHO left to do on March 26th... we are praying that that one comes back fine and we are good to go with 2 healthy girls!

3 days ago it SNOWED!!! Mallory had fun trying to make snow angels in the 1/2 inch deep snow. She was covered more in mud than snow when she got up but it was fun to see snow here in San Angelo.

 Last week we decided to take Mallory to Beauty and the Beast in 3-d. She loved it (I think her face explains that!) She kept saying "It just comes right out at you!"

She is really in to getting married (oh no!) So I had to rig up a beautiful wedding gown out of garbage bags. She was pleased with the final product so I guess that is all that counts. Here is her "prince" (Porter) giving her her ring.

And last by not least, my two Valentine girls! Gotta love them!

My girl. What a great sister she has been.

EKG and Echo result for Kaisley are in...

They show that her heart murmur was innocent. Probably due to her being sick and that she has a healthy heart! Thank goodness. Now we get to have Mallory's heart checked next week. They heard a heart murmur on her also a few weeks back and want to run some test to make sure she does not have something wrong. We need another good report on that one and we are good to go! Heart problems are all too familiar in our family. Porter's little brother, Gunner had heart surgery only a few years ago and there are a few others in the extended family with issues. We are praying for good results on her tests too.

Healthy heart...happy girl! Yay! 8 weeks old today.

The good the bad and the ugly.

This week has been full of ups and downs. These girls are typically so happy and full of energy but two Thursdays ago Mallory started the rough sounding croup cough. She also started running a fever to we took her to the Dr. the next morning and he gave her a steroid shot and said she would improve with that but still have a bit of a cough for a while and to just try to keep her and Kaisley separate if possible. So... we tried and this is how things went (see picture below). 

Anyway, Mallory's fever and cough persisted for 4 long days and on that Sunday night we heard Kaisley start the dreaded cough. So, Monday morning we were back in the Dr.'s office having Kaisley looked at. Once again, Dr. said she probably had croup or a cold and to not bring her back in unless she had a fever over 101 or had more than 60 respiration's a minute without stopping. So, we went home. The two girls did not feel good to say the least but Daddy's birthday was the next day so we were excited to try to have a fun day.

 Here is Porter with his two girls. He had a great B-day and despite the kids not feeling the greatest we were so ready to get out of the house so we went out to Texas Roadhouse for dinner and to an Angelo State Basketball game. It was the last bit of fun we were going to be having for a while... :)

Then on Thursday I became more concerned about Kaisley. She still had not started a fever and her reparations seemed faster (at times they were 60 per minute) but then she would settle down and they would become more regular. I was still worried though and she started gagging from her long coughing spells and throw up when I would feed her. She was struggling to breathe and I called the Dr. again to see if they would see her. They said that she just had a cold that need to run its course since she did not have the fever and continuous fast breathing. So, despite my concern we went to bed Thursday night. Kaisley was worse that night and at 12:30 AM began throwing up over and over again from the coughing and was breathing super fast and her little eyes looked fearful as she panted for air saying "help me mom!" That is when I knew, I am going to take her in right now! I don't care what they keep telling me.

So... low and behold, we ended up admitted that night at about 1:30 AM. Kaisley tested positive for RSV and her chest xray showed viral pneumonia. They said, "we are going to admit her overnight", so, I was thinking we would be going home the next day.

 Well, that was NOT the case. She only progressively got worse as the time when on which they explained to me was normal because RSV usually gets worse before it gets better. Despite her being so sick she did have a few moments where she would interact and even give her mom some sweet little smiles. She is just 7 weeks old and starting all the cute little smiles.

It broke my heart to watch her go through all the poking and prodding and struggling to breathe. She had cords an IV attached to her making it difficult for me to hold and love on her and nursing was not that easy either, especially since her tummy was so unsettled from all of the mucus she was swallowing. I guess they say RSV is so bad because the mucus is soooo thick that the little ones have a hard time breathing through there narrow air passages and they have a hard time clearing it. I think that yucky mucus that was filling her lungs and clogging up her nose and throat was making her gag and throw up.

She continued on monitors to watch her reparations and breathing treatments and other than that we just had to wait for the virus to run its course.

 Then on day 3 we get the news that they had been hearing a heart murmur which is not too common at 7 weeks old so they need to run some tests to be sure she was not having any other heart problems. They did and EKG and Echo which we are still waiting on the results for. They say it could only be due to her being sick so we are crossing our fingers for that!

I hated this darn IV and was so excited when it was finally time to take it out and come home! (day 4)

We just got home and Kaisley seems better already, just being out of that hospital makes us all feel better I think. We are continuing breathing treatments here at home and she should be fine before long! I have sure been thinking about how grateful I am for all the blessings we enjoy. It is hard to recognize all the good we have until we are faced with something that stretches us. I was so exhausted since I was the one staying at the hospital day and night because she nurses and Porter was taking care of Mallory. Little Kaisley was not sleeping well and wanted held whenever she did sleep, not to mention the hospital staff were checking on her so often and running tests and treatments so it was VERY hard to rest. I remember at points wondering if I was going to be able to keep doing it. May arms were so tired and fatigued from no rest and holding her constantly. Funny though now somehow we make it through with help from family, friends, ward members, priesthood blessings, prayer, and strength from our Savior! Thanks to everyone for the love and support! We are just so happy things seem to be okay now.

p.s. we sent Mallory to AZ for the week to spend time with her grandparents there. I have been sooooo sad without her around... The house is so quite.  I love being a mother and can't wait for her to get back and for us to get to be a "normal" family again. Fun thing is, she is just fine without us and having a great time :) haha

Kaisley's Newborn Pictures

My beautiful baby girl. She was about 3 weeks old in these pictures. (Thanks Britt for helping me take them and editing some. You are the best!)

She sure does love her sister :) ha

Kaisley has been such a good baby. We love having her in our home and are grateful she is a healthy, happy girl.