End of Summer

Why is it that even though school starts, it doesn't seem like summer is really over until Labor Day? The weather is already starting to change, and we can see the leaves in the mountains changing. We even have a few leaves in our yard starting to change colors. :( I'm not ready to let go of summer, but it is quickly leaving. So we knew we needed to fit in as much fun as we could during the last week of summer.

There is a park in Spanish Fork that we have been watching being built all summer long. We have driven past it at least once a week all summer to see if it was open yet. And finally it opened the weekend before Labor Day. (Why is it that they wait until summer is basically over to open up such an awesome park???) We took a day after school and went over with Holly and Dillon. They have a splash pad and a huge playground! The kids started in the fountains and then moved over to the playground. It was amazing to me the difference in Hallie from the first time we went to a splash pad to this time. She was much more adventurous this time and loved exploring the fountains.




One of the biggest reasons we were so excited for this park to open was because of the bucket swings! They are the same ones that they had at Morgan's Wonderland in TX which are great for kiddos like our Granty. One disappointment we found was there are no seat belts to these swings like at MW, so we had to really watch that Grant wouldn't slip out. Hopefully they'll add these at some point. Since it's a new park, there were lines for these new cool swings. So every time we would get the kids off to let another kid have a turn, Grant would keep saying "more, more, more"! He loved it and didn't ever want to leave!

The swings are even good for adults that act like children :)

We will be spending a lot of time here next summer!

Over Labor Day weekend we went up Hobble Creek Canyon with some friends and family. Saturday night we met Dee and Dave up there for dinner. They took up their trailer and set up a tent for us to use. We had a yummy dinner and Mikkele and Dee made us some yummy apple and cherry turnovers in the dutch oven for dessert. We came back home that night because my family was in town visiting and would be leaving the next morning.
We went back up Sunday morning and visited with Dee and Dave again before they had to head home to get ready for work the next day. They were kind enough to leave their trailer and tent up there for us to use. That night we had the rest of the Gallier family come up for dinner as well as our friends, the Walker's. We enjoyed some sloppy joes, hot dogs, and of course some smores!





That night, Jeremy, Grant, Hallie, and I slept in the trailer and Ryan, Mikkele, Kamrin, Dillon, and Connor slept in the tent. Or I guess I should say attempted to sleep in the tent. It was so cold that night! (We found out later that the state had record lows set that night.) By 4:30 a.m. Ryan and all the kids were out by the campfire trying to stay warm. It was a long night, but we had a lot of fun. Mikkele keeps asking when we are going again!


Hallie had a great time playing in anything that she could get dirty with...which was just about everything! She was covered from head to toe in dirt when we got home. But she was a happy content baby!

Here's some other random pictures from throughout the summer that I haven't included in any other blog posts:

The annual Utah County Fair demolition derby.

Jessie and Adam "Joe Dirt" came with us this year.

Mikkele and I went on a mommy/daughter date to dinner and some putt putt.

Jeremy and I went on a last minute date to the Dave Matthews concert.

Good bye summer! We will miss you!!!

Back to School

School started for Mikkele on Monday, August 23rd. She is in the 5th grade this year. I can't believe I have a child old enough for 5th grade!!! She had mixed feelings about starting school, but has now claimed that it is the best school year ever!

Mikkele and her teacher Miss Sonne.

Grant started Kindergarten the next day, August 24th. This year is a lot of new beginnings for him. He is at a new school. He has a new teacher, Ms. Ellinger, and aids. He has a new bus driver and tech. But the newest adventure of all is that it is ALL day long!!! He gets on the bus at 7:20 and doesn't get home until almost 4:00! That's 8 1/2 hours people!!! He has done pretty good adjusting to the new schedule and has only shed a few tears. He's a little fussy when he comes home in the afternoon, but it's a huge adjustment from what he was doing before. I think it will get easier and easier as the weeks and months continue as well. He was still kind of half asleep when the bus pulled up the first day and not too sure what to think.

Chris his new bus tech strapping him in for the ride.

I didn't follow him to the school like a good mom probably should. I knew if he knew that I was there that he would have a rough separation. I snuck into the classroom a couple days later and got a couple shots of singing time. And he never knew I was even there :)

And what am I doing to occupy my time with only Hallie at home you ask???

Lots of playing.
Lots of lunch dates.
A little cleaning.
Lots of playing.
A little organizing.
And more playing! :)
I really should get more serious on the cleaning/organizing stuff!

Pinewood Derby

Our ward had the 2nd annual Pinewood Derby. (last year's derby) Mikkele decided to make a surf board shaped car this year and painted it with peace signs and paint splatters. It turned out really cute and very her. She ended up taking 5th place this year out of 14 kids. Not too shabby. She also went home with the award for most artistic car and received a pink trophy! What a fun tradition this has become with the primary kids in the ward.

Her car took 2nd most heats. In this picture Alanna's skateboard car beat her.

Baclofen Pump (better late than never)

On Wednesday June 23, 2010 Grant had a baclofen pump placed. Baclofen is a muscle relaxant that he has been taking for quite a while now to help with his spasticity. A couple years ago, it was proposed by his rehab doctors to have a baclofen pump placed to help by delivering a continuous dosage throughout the day. He had a trial test done in May of 2008, but it took me 2 years to get up the courage to put him through this surgery. His muscles and tendons have been getting tighter and tighter, and because of that his orthopedic surgeon wanted to do a bunch of tendon releases. That made me even more nervous. I didn't want my perfect little boy sliced and diced all over his little body. So I made the decision to suck it up and get the baclofen pump placed in hopes that with some good PT we can loosen his muscles and tendons to prevent/postpone any tendon releases.
The surgery went really good. He has a large incision from his belly button and out to his right side about 4 inches, and another incision on his back that is about 1-1 1/2 inches long. Since he is so skinny, you can see the pump very clearly. It looks like a hockey puck was implanted in his stomach. We were in the hospital for 2 days and then got to come home. On the way home is when the problems started. He threw up 3 times on the way home and continued throwing up multiple times each day until we took him back to the ER on Sunday afternoon. By that time he had become pretty dehydrated. Once we were finally seen (2 1/2 hours to even have a dr. look at him) they ran a bunch of tests and started him on some fluids. It was determined that he just picked up a stomach bug when we were in the hospital and was nothing related to the pump itself. We spent another night in the hospital getting more fluids and then came home the next day. I can only imagine the pain he was experiencing with throwing up while fresh out of surgery with two sets of sutures. He was a trooper though and was fairly content as long as he had some ibuprofen in him.

He's so scrawny that you can see the catheter that runs from the pump to his spinal column.

He was supposed to wear the abdominal binder for 6-8 weeks after surgery to help keep the pump in place. I have continued to keep it on him. He tends to get a CSF bulge on his spine if he's upright too much. The binder helps to keep that down, and helps to reduce the pump bulging out too much.

The rest of the summer we made regular trips up to Primary's to have his pump adjusted. They started him at a low dose and then slowly increased the dose every week. Luckily for us, they can set the pump to automatically adjust after a week, so we didn't have to drive up each week, just every other week. It has been a slow process and it hasn't been until his last appointment at the end of August that I finally started to see some differences. We are getting close to an ideal dose. Now we start with the intense PT. :)
Since we would be spending so much time at the hospital, and I would be dragging the girls with me, I decided to try to make it a fun experience at the same time. Each time we went up, we planned some sort of activity to look forward to after the doctor appointment. This made the wait time seem much more bearable. While we were there waiting, we did try to have as much fun as possible. Since it is a children's hospital, they do have a good assortment of toys to keep the kids busy.

Mikkele drew on the chalk boards a lot. Everyone got to have their picture taken by their name art.

We met up with my friend Michelle at the Gateway splash pad.

We went to lunch....

We visited an old favorite park....

We went to the aquarium....

We also stopped and visited with other friends and family. It wasn't the most ideal way to spend our days in the summer, but we made the best of it and still had a great time!