Clarissa's Blessing

We had Claire-bear's blessing last Sunday. My family was already planning to be here for a family reunion so we planned the blessing for last weekend too. Most of Kyle's family was also able to make it and we are so grateful that we were able to get together. It was a wonderful day! Our families are so important to us and we have been so grateful for their support as well as our friends' support especially this last month. Kyle gave a wonderful blessing and our bishop asked him to bear his testimony as well. (I guess he let me off the hook because I had spoken in Church on Mother's Day!) Here are some pics of Claire in her blessing dress. Behind her is the beautiful afgan that Grandma Deann made for her.

Some of my nieces and nephews at the luncheon.
Kaylee, Kirsten and Ashlyn.
Um, yeah, great timing on this one!
Baby Claire with Grandpa Steve.

Thank You

We just want to thank you all for keeping us in your prayers. We surely have felt their influence. This week has been pretty scary and emotional but we know that the Lord has helped us through it and has allowed us to keep our sweet baby. All day on Monday the baby was so tired and lethargic and it was so hard to see her that way. On Tuesday she was more awake and looked a lot better and by Wednesday, I remember looking in her eyes and feeling like she was really back. I love those big eyes and how you look in them and can see so much.

Here she is in Primary Children's hospital with a cute little blanket they gave her. The next one was taken on Tuesday and the top one was taken on Wednesday. You can kind of see how she has better color.
And, of course, we couldn't have made it through all of this without Aunt LeAnne. She was here when the event happened and she called 911 and kept her cool while I was freaking out. Then she was able to stay with our kids all week and did tons of fun things with them like go to the museum and the park. She is our lifesaver and we don't think we can ever thank her enough!

The baby is doing really well now. Our doctor has her on a sleep apnea monitor but we only have to have it on her at night and when she is napping. Thanks again!

Our sweet baby

Here's the latest update on our sweet little Clarissa. For those of you who don't know, on Monday morning I had fed her and began to burp her and she did a gagging cough and then didn't start to breathe again. My sister was at my house and I called for her and she called 911. My baby was purple and very limp by then. My sister did 2 rescue breaths and then the EMTs got there. Thank heaven we only live a block from the fire department. What a blessing. In all we think that she was between 2 and 3 minutes without air. (the EMTs did say that she was probably breathing the whole time but only 8 times a minute which is not enough to sustain life.) They got her breathing again but kind of shallow breaths and I rode with them to the hospital in the ambulance. I had called Kyle at work and he had come in at the same time as the EMTs. He followed us to the hospital and my sister was able to stay with our kids. They did every test you can think of to see what was wrong with her and what might have caused her to stop breathing. She was very tired and kind of unresponsive through the day (probably because of the trauma.) One of our bishopric members was able to come and help Kyle give her a blessing and we are very grateful for that. The doctors were very worried about her and decided to have her sent to Primary Children's hospital. She went up on a helicopter and Kyle and I drove up. They did some more tests and ruled out RSV, pneumonia, and whooping cough, along with other things. She had a lot better color yesterday and was awake more and seemed more like herself.
They were able to take her off oxygen this morning and she has been doing well. The doctor said that it is probably acid reflux and what happened was that she refluxed and the acid kind of stunned her and it may have gone into her airway. She has also had some phlegm in her throat and that may have added to the choking. They are going to give her some reflux medication to reduce the acid and have us take some precautions to help her with the reflux so this won't happen again. We hope this is the solution and everything can go well from here on out.

Thank you all so much for your thoughts and prayers. We know that Heavenly Father has been watching over us through all of this. She is such a precious baby and we are so glad that we have her.

Happy Birthday to Jannika

Jannika and I had fun making her cake and cupcakes. She wanted to have a hula party so we had an ocean cake and gave her friends leis. We were also going to have a kiddie pool and run through the sprinklers but the wind was blowing and it was too cold. So we made some pictures with foam flowers and did a pinata inside.

Jannika got lots of fun things for her birthday. We gave her a new bike and gave Kirsten one too that we had saved from Christmas. They are in LOVE with their bikes. The night of the party the kids were in their room watching a movie and I went in to check on them and this is what I saw!

It was a fun birthday but here's some party tips: only invite as many kids as your child's age, (we ended up with a few more and it was kind of chaotic.) And, make sure that you have some other adults there to help you. I don't know why I was crazy enough to think I could do everything myself but I was lucky Kyle had the afternoon off and Megan was here to help too!