At Home in the Mountains

Yesterday was Aaron and I's 6th anniversary. Wow! A lot has happened in 6 years. This year we took an anniversary trip/family vacation to San Antonio. We left Friday afternoon after Maddy's PT appt. It took forever to get out of Dallas because of traffic. After about an hour and a half in the car we stopped at West. Maddy needed t eat and a nurse at Scottish Rite had told us awhile back that there was a place famous for kolaches in West. It is called the Czech Stop and it is very good. We split a fruit kolache, each had a meat kolache, and each had a maple twist. (As you can tell, Aaron was doing the ordering.) We got back on the road, ate supper at Wendy's in Austin and then had to sit on the road between Austin and San Antonio for probably 30 minutes because they landed the life flight helicopter on the road ahead of us. We have no idea what was going on because when we got up there, there was no sign of a wreck or anything. We finally got to our hotel at 9. We were so ti...

Today was our long awaited appointment with the Ear Nose and Throat doctor also known by a really long unpronounceable name I can't remember. Our appointment was at 2:30. So we got there on time, filled out some paperwork and sat down and waited....and waited...and waited. About 40 minutes into the wait, Maddy had a blowout and pooped on my shorts, but once again managed to keep her own clothes squeaky clean. I thought surly they'd call us while I was in the bathroom changing her. Nope. More waiting..and waiting.. and waiting. Finally over an hour after we arrived for our appointment they took us back to a room. We're so sorry for the wait, they said. We have a new computer system and we have to learn how to use it and it's making us get behind. After waiting SOME MORE 1st nurse who doesn't know how to use the new software comes in. She asks probably 30 or 40 stupid questions that have nothing to do with what we've come about. She leaves. A second nurse comes in...

So I have had a cold for the past few days. YUCK! There is just about nothing worse than a cold in summer. I have been practically bathing in hand sanitizer trying to keep from passing it on to Maddy but it will be a miracle if she doesn't get it. We went to Scottish Rite Tuesday and they made a new split for her right leg. The therapist definitely agreed that she had outgrown it. The other splint will still last a while since it is just for the knee and we can adjust it accordingly. Today she has PT/OT. We were supposed to go at 12:15 but since I am sick Aaron has to take her so he worked it out to take her in at 2:30. I am kind of excited that he is going to take her, even if it is because I'm sick, because I have wanted him to get to see what they do first hand and get to talk to them but the appointments have just never been at good times for him to come. I have been trying to get a good video of Maddy smiling but so far no luck. She can be smiling away and as soon as the c...

Cute naked baby! Something to embarrass her with later. We haven't been able to get many of these cause of the casts. Look how far I can stretch my knee out! So the big news of the week is that on Wednesday night we had a very powerful storm roll through the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Carrollton was lucky enough to be right in the middle of the worst part. The tornado sirens went off around 7 in the evening. I could see the wall cloud of the storm out my kitchen window passing to the north of us. Our electricity flickered on and off several times and a flower pot on our porch got blown off and shattered by the wind. Our tomato plant doesn't look like it enjoyed the wind much either. Other than that we were blessed to have little damage. Our neighbors across the street lost their tree. You can see how the wind twisted and snapped the trunk. The city was out yesterday afternoon and cut it all up and cleared it off the street. A tornado did touch down a few miles north of us. Maddy ha...

I don't have any pictures right now :( but I will have some great ones soon because we got family pictures taken on Saturday!! They are amazing. A girl from Aaron's biochem class and her fiancee do family photography as a hobby. She is trying to get into med school and he is trying to get into a school to get his Ph.D in math. Anyway, if that doesn't work out for them, they could totally do photography for a living. Aaron never gets excited about pictures but he loves i mean LOVES these pictures. We haven't seen them all yet, just the ones they have on their website. If you haven't been to our house in the last 24 hours and gotten the internet tour of our family pics from Aaron :) you can go to www.mattandivy.com and see them. They are mixed in with other families pictures so you kind of have to look around a little bit. Maddy is the little cover girl for their website right now. We had an extremely busy weekend. On Friday we went to PT/OT. It was a really encouragi...

We spent 3 hours at Scottish Rite this morning to learn that they really can't do anything with her hands for about 6 months. They said the stretching we've been doing is great and to keep on with that. They don't splint this young because the babies can actually end up swallowing the splints because they are so small. They gave us some different stuff to try to keep her hand rolls in better. They were encouraged that her fingers were flexed because they said most kids with this condition do not have any flexion in the finger joint--they just stick straight out all the time. They were also encouraged that she had back and forth range in her elbows because, again, most kids with this have no flexion in the elbows and the arms are stuck straight out. We asked the PT that talked to us what areas she felt were most important for us to focus with the stretching and she said the wrists and the elbows would be what she focuses on. So we will do that. After we got done with the han...

We had a good weekend. Jessica came up to see Tricia and they came over on Saturday for a cookout at our house. We cooked some home-grown beef steaks and they were delicious. We also went to a great bbq place with them for lunch on Sunday. Our church watched Fireproof for services on Sunday to kick of their marriage series based on the movie. Jessica hadn't seen it so they came to church with us. We also had dinner with Dr. Griffith on Friday night before she left for the summer to go to Vancouver to visit her daughter for the summer. Yesterday Maddy had an MRI. We have been trying to decided what to do about getting a neurosurgeon and decided to have the MRI to see if it was necessary to get one. I called the pediatrician today and they had gotten the results back. The results showed that the cord looks tethered so we will be going to see a neurosurgeon on July 9th. It is a pain because there are only two neurosurgeons in our network and they are both in Ft. Worth. I am also still...