Friend types

May- "Mom, can we be friends?"

Me- totally!!

May- Can we be holding hands friends?

Me-(grabs her hand) Absolutely!!!

Then just because I love that we are holding hands friends we skip around while holding hands.. She erupts into giggles.

May- can we be snuggle friends too? 

Me-this just keep getting better!!!

Oh and by the way, I am not friends with teething.. I will take the baby.. But teething is definitely not my friend. Almost three on the top and four on the bottom and only seven months.. He is going to have a wicked gap.. 

Just because you can't see his Voodoo Baltic Amber beads doesn't mean they aren't there. He likes to keep them all safe in his neck meat.  

T t today...

It's been sort of an emotional day.. Remember how I reported a couple of posts back that Alex was in rejection. 

He had a biopsy today to follow up. He also had a loose screw.. Oh no wait.. A stitch that was coming out and was annoying him like crazy. It was like having a sliver that kept rubbing on his clothes and irritating him. 

It was actually looking really great today, but was still painful to the touch. 

And the results are in and Alex's biopsy was squeaky clean. I am floored and humbled..  He had some tummy issues on the way home, but plans to sleep off the rest of the anesthesia, which will hopefully take care of the nausea. 

I thought that this recovery room was particularly perfect for Gator.. Check out the ceiling tile.

Just one more week until his heartiversary... What an amazing journey and blessing to be here today. 

And so starts 2016

And just like that we are into January.. May turned 3.. She is getting so big so fast.. 

Practicing

First time blowing out lit candles.. She couldn't before because of her oxygen and open flame rules. Something about blowing up your kid just never sounded super fun. 

As you can see in the picture, Eden was back up in case May's blowing was not effective.

We call this look Asher's unijammies.. Or merman jammies. 

Sitting up all by his self. 

May chose Classic Skating for her birthday activity..we had so much fun. We snowballed, whipped a Nae Nae, skate or scootered, and played blackout.. Ashy also slept. 

Ry mustache you a question.. 

Little miss May had her 3 year well check and is doing so great. She is above average on her height and weight and has been doing so well on night time only oxygen. Her little rib cage is looking sort of poke-e-out-e so we did an X-ray, still waiting on the results of that. But with her appointment and dance and the. The X-ray, it just wears a girl out. 

A serious catch up #3

The girls did such a great job in their dance recital. Eden performed in Suzie snowflake..

MayLee was so cute in Ellie the Elf.

Eden also amazed me by memorizing her line for her preschool program. 

I wrote a fantastic Christmas letter accompanied by a picture, sure didn't get them mailed out. There were not enough hours in my days during the holidays.. *sigh* there was effort. Just not enough I suppose. 

The girls in their Christmas dresses.

The boys in their Christmas church clothes. Asher sort of looks like Alex's vantriliquist dummy in this picture.. 

We braved the cold and the crowds to be with some of our favorite cousins to see the lights downtown.. 

Ashy helped wrap presents

Christmas Eve with the Clawson clan. One of my all time favorite traditions and one my children always write down as their favorite is getting pajamas delivered from the elves and eating downstairs by the fire on Christmas Eve. 

Ashy was plum tuckered out. 

I took no photo evidence that Christmas was phenomenal except this one of May who couldn't keep her eyes open any longer at 5 pm.. 

A serious catch up #2

Things kept going at what seemed like lightening speed. The girls had dance observation and I was able to see them prepare for the winter recital. 

On December 3rd Alex had his annual biopsy. The BIG one ...Da da daaaaaaa... And it turns out we didn't have all super news. His heart function and coronary arteries looked fantastic.. But he had C4 or moderate cellular rejection. This was something we knew might happen. You see.... We changed his rejection medications in order to allow his body to rev up enough to help us fight off the Aspergilliosis.. We knew that doing that his body might recognize his new heart and try to reject. Which is exactly what happened. There is no way to understand how that ugly fungus got in his body in the first place.... And so we had to be aggressive with it and attack it with all our might... After calling on my heart transplant mommy trust for wisdom, I felt better knowing that if we had to experience rejection, Cellular was the best to have. 

I enjoyed trying the RH selfie stick, maybe a little too much.

We took the kids back to visit the Festival of Trees and loved seeing so many awesome trees. This event is such a blessing to not only the kids in the hospital, it also helps us remember our little friends who are no longer on earth. It is a physical way to keep them part of our holiday activity and I love seeing these awesome trees. I also love the trees that are inspired by those who are fighting big battles. 

This is just my snuggle bug..

Dixie from donor services came to talk to Alex's class about organ donation. I hope the kids were inspired and put at ease about what happens. It has been such a blessing to our family.

Early morning blood draw. Everybody masks up so we don't catch the hospital sickies.

Seriously always catching up!!

I guess it comes with the territory. Six other persons occupy my time...

Our littlest man has me busy trying to feed, play, and protect him from the anslaught of smoochies he gets. 

For family night we wanted to ride the Farris wheel at Scheels. Ry doesn't do scary bear pictures anymore. These three were game..grrrrr

Thanksgiving was spent with family. We all even made it to Idaho which we haven't done since May was a baby.. 

She enjoyed hiding from me at The Army Navy surplus store. She has been off of oxygen during the day since November too!!!! We did an overnight pulse ox test, however her results showed she needs the support at night. 

We stayed in a hotel because we are such a big family now that we could certainly overwhelm anyone and because it's just so darn fun. This is a makeshift bed for Ashy. I scootched the chair all the way against the bed and it made a perfect little place for him. 

Many of you know that Alex was the "lights child" at The Festival of trees. He switched on all the lights and gave a speech. But not many of you know that he got to cross another item off of his 'live list'... I have amazing friends who happen to own a limousine. Tom and Kim Sanderson arranged for not only Alex to go in the limo, but they picked up the girls as well and went to get dinner.. They all felt like celebrities. Alex arrived to the south town expo in style and we were greeted by a parking attendant who was certain we were going to blind her by our fabulousness (if that's not a word, it is now). One of the reasons I adore Tom is his ability to defuse tough situations, he had us rolling with laughter in the back while he explained to the attendant that he had a very special person and the star of the show in his limo. The attendant was NOT buying it. She was not happy about sitting in the box outside.. 

What made everything even better was that Miss Jen and Mr. Jake were in attendance. And Miss Katie was also there. For being the boss of Primary Children's Hospital she isn't stuffy or bossy at all, she is fun and nice and easy to talk to.

Alex did an amazing job. I am so proud of him.