Given Grace: August 2015

It's finally June, which means it's summer, which means no school, which means FUN! Plus, Hannah's physical therapist was gone for the month of June (to be with her daughter in South Africa who was having a baby), so Hannah had the month of June off from therapy, which was actually a nice break for all of us.

I decided to take the kids hiking at a local nature preserve near our house, however, I forgot the bug spray, so we lasted about 15 minutes.

Hannah LOVED having Grant down on her level. He was laying on his stomach, and she worked so hard to get herself over to him. Then they had a blast making each other smile and laugh.

I love Hannah's face in this picture - absolute joy! She really enjoys the swing in our basement, as do the other two.

Drew and his two snugglers watching either a movie or an episode of Little House on the Prairie.

They love helping me make cookies...and I think I know why....

Melts my heart

Bailey - he's definitely my buddy, especially when Drew's traveling.

I was laying on the couch and Drew stood Hannah next to me and she laid her head down on my chest like she was giving me a hug. :)

Grant loves his new stuffed friend, Ethan the Elephant. A gift from his Aunt Cathy from his stay in the hospital.

We had a free Saturday and were trying to figure out what to do when Drew remembered something his Mom did when he was a kid. She would take them on "tastings" and have them try and rate different food items from restaurants - like who has the best french fries. So they'd stop and pick up fries from a few locations and vote on which was their favorite. So we did a variation of that and voted on 3 things - cheeseburger, fries, and milk shakes. Before we left we had the kids make a chart listing each restaurant we'd stop at and then they wrote out the 3 categories. We brought trays, so they'd have somewhere to set their food and then we stopped at McDonalds, Wendys, Burger King, and Culvers. We bought one cheeseburger meal, and split the burger into fourths for each of us to try, then split up the fries and shared the shake. They LOVED it and we learned their favorite burger and shake are from Wendys, but their favorite fries are from McDonalds.

Happy Father's Day!! Breakfast in bed.

Hannah in her manual wheelchair at church.

Happy Father's Day to my dad!

We decided to get a big inflatable pool this summer for the kids to enjoy. We discovered we could put Hannah's bath chair in the pool too for her to sit on. She loved it and didn't mind the cold water one bit!

Another selfie by Jenna. :)

I love Hannah's speech therapist's creativity. They played with play-doh and she would work on different words and sounds like, "push, poke, pull" while doing all those things with the play-doh.

We went to Sky Zone - a huge indoor trampoline park - for Drew's cousin's daughter's birthday party. They just recently moved to the area, and we've really enjoyed getting to know them better and spend some time with them. Plus our kids all get along really well too!

Poor girl - this happens usually once a week. She gets so exhausted from her morning therapies that she sometimes falls asleep at lunch before I can get her down for a nap.

Drew got out a basketball one evening while he had Hannah in her wheelchair. She was SO motivated to move her chair to go get the ball. It was amazing! She purposefully drove over to Drew and stopped before running into him to get the ball. That's HUGE! We're hoping to see more purposeful driving from her in the months ahead.

So just this summer Grant started swelling up with mosquito bites. I had never seen or heard of this before, but apparently it can happen. He got bit on his cheek in the picture above, but by the following day the whole side of his face was swollen that it started to swell into his eye. So crazy! His doctor said just to put hydro-cortisone cream on it to help with the swelling, but it tends to go down in 3-4 days. So bizarre!

It's hard to see in the picture, but he was so puffy on the one side of his face.

We signed Grant up for tee-ball this summer through the YMCA. It was painfully boring, but fun to see him out there. The way the games worked was everyone batted and the kids in the outfield would rotate around the baseline, which means they basically just stood there until their coaches told them to either move or come in to bat. They mostly just tried to get the kids to throw the ball to first base, which rarely happened. There were no outs - each inning lasted as long as it took for the kids to each bat. The funniest part to us was that after each game Grant would ask us who won. Our answer each week: it was a tie!

Look at that form! A definite future ball player! ;)

Grant's Hospital Stay
One Friday afternoon I noticed Grant started acting like he wasn't feeling well - tired and running a very low-grade fever. Then that evening his neck and head became so stiff that he could not move it at all. It was stuck with his chin down toward his neck and to move it up or to the sides caused him intense pain. We tried giving him Ibuprofen, but it wasn't helping, so by Saturday afternoon we decided to take him to the ER. The doctors were baffled at first and started running different tests, and after doing a CT Scan determined he had a retropharyngeal abscess. They immediately started him on some strong antibiotics and painkillers and had him stay overnight. By Sunday afternoon/evening, he started responding to the pain meds and would at least perk up for a few hours before the medicine wore off and he was back to intense pain and extreme stiffness. Finally by Monday morning we started noticing the stiffness going away and he could go longer between pain meds. They sent us home late Monday afternoon, and he was allowed to resume normal activity Tuesday. By Wednesday he was back to his normal self. We still don't know exactly what happened - some doctors believed it to be a retropharyngeal abscess, while another doctor thinks he just had an extreme swollen neck due to strep (which he did test positive for). Either way, we're glad he's better and back to his normal happy self!

You can't tell from this picture, but he was in extreme pain just by the slightest movement.

Smiling through the pain

Going for his CT Scan - such a brave boy!

Love that smile.

Drew brought Jenna and Hannah to visit on Sunday, so Jenna joined him in his bed and they watched a movie together.

Friends from church sent him a balloon, an activity book, and some snacks. So thoughtful!

We got pretty bored there, so we tried playing a game of Sorry, but had to stop halfway through because he was in so much pain.

Blast Summer Adventure
Our church's Vacation Bible School this summer was called Blast Summer Adventure. Drew helped lead the Kindergarten boys class, while I was in charge of crafts for grades PreK-5th grade. These are a few snapshots from the week.

Safe-T-Town
Jenna did Safe-T-Town the past two summers (for 4 and 5 year olds), and this summer was Grant's first time participating. Throughout the week they learn about different topics like pedestrian safety, railroad, fire, and gun safety, etc. Then on Friday they have a "graduation" ceremony where they ride around the "town" on their bikes while other kids are pedestrians and practice their safety skills - stopping at stop signs, looking both ways before crossing the street, etc.