No one else get sick! Please!

It seems like the holidays have brought sickness over the past several years.

This year our dear friend Peggy Wilkinson passed away on Dec. 23. She was 80 years old and is now in a much better place, but it is a hard time of year to lose a loved one. We wish her family much peace and comfort.

Jacob got a cold and on Christmas Eve his breathing was so raspy and labored that we took him to the doctor. It sounded just like when he had pneumonia last year and was in the hospital. He then ended up on oxygen at home for two or three weeks. The doctor said that it was just croop, but he told us to watch carefully because it could easily end up as pneumonia again. Luckily he didn't get too bad. He now just has a runny nose still, but we are grateful that it didn't get any worse.

My brother Scott, has not been feeling well for the past several months. He has been to the doctor several times trying to figure out what was wrong, especially because he got a kidney transplant about eight years ago. We were concerned that there might be a problem with his kidney. He went to the hospital Christmas evening. It took two days to figure it out, but they diagnosed him with Colitis. This is an inflamation of the colon. He is being treated with medication and should be able to fully recover. His kidney is functioning well and is fine. Yea! He has been in the hospital for a few days, but should be coming home soon!

Our close friends, 7 years old daughter has been having stomach pains for a couple of months. She has been to the doctor several times. They never came up with any reason why she was in so much pain and kind of blew it off. Finally on Christmas day, as well, they took her to the emergency room. After a seven hour wait, they finally looked at her and her heart rate was so high they put a pick line into her heart to try to stabilize her heart rate. They also drained 2 quarts of puss from her stomach. They decided to fly her to Primary Children's Hospital, but the weather was too bad, so they took her by ambulance. Dr. Rebecca Meyer's (the doctor that performed Jacob's surgery) performed an exploratory surgery to try to determine what is wrong. They weren't able to detect the cause, but all of her digestive organs and stomach were filled with infections and inflammation. There was so much inflammation that they couldn't close her up the same day. She was in a sedated colma for two days so that they could let the inflammation and swelling go down enough to close her up. She is going to be up at PCMC for at least two weeks while they try to fight the infection. They still didn't detect what the cause of the infection was.


After talking to my Mom, we decided that we should just skip the holidays next year, because someone close to us always seems to have some pretty serious health problems. In the past we have also had similar experiences. So if you see us skipping Christmas next year you will know why. We don't want to try to jinx anyone else.

So, everyone stay healthy! Be grateful for your health. I will be glad that I only have a little cold. I can deal with that.

We are thinking and praying for you Scott and Brylee. Get well soon!

We had a "Wicked" Christmas!

We didn't put up many Christmas decorations this year because we have an active two year old boy. But he did surprisingly well leaving the tree and other decorations alone. I was afraid that he would destroy them, but he didn't!



We had a nice Christmas. Sammi and Joe were with us on Christmas Eve. We had dinner at Grandma Linda's and enjoyed a Christmas concert by all of the talented kids. We sang songs and played with the rhythm instruments as the big kids played the piano for us. The big kids went back to their Mom's for Christmas. On Christmas morning Jacob had fun opening his trucks, cars and trains. He is all boy! We then had the Baumgarten Brunch at our house. We had a ton of great food! We went over to my Mom's house and exchanged presents with my siblings and spend the evening playing with my little brother's new Guitar Hero World Tour. Mark had previously told me, "I will never sing on that thing." While I was upstairs I heard him singing. I was surprised, since he was never going to sing and all. But the next day he had nearly lost his voice from all of the singing he did. He found that he actually loved singing!

The next day we picked up the kids from their Mom's and they got to open their presents from us. Sammi loved her High School Musical MP3 player and Joe got the huge Vulcon Nerf Gun and some walkie talkies. But the big kids most exciting present was one that was wrapped about 8 times, thanks to Shelly. It was tickets to Wicked the Musical when it comes to Salt Lake in April. They are so excited! Sammi has been dying for us to take her to see Wicked for about three years or more. We are so excited to have gotten tickets, thanks once again to Shelly!



Sorry about the poor video taping. Jacob was trying to grab the camera, so he could see it. That is why he kept yelling, "me."

Merry Christmas to Mark & I.

We have wanted to replace the flooring in the kitchen for a long time now. We decided that for Christmas we would finally replace the floor. We were hoping that we could get it done in a day. We're crazy I know! We did run into a few problems that we had to deal with. We ended up needing to replace the sub floor. That was a bit frustrating because we scraped three layers of old linoleum off of the floor. If we had know we were going to tear up the sub floor we wouldn't have had to scrap off all the old stuff and we would have saved a lot of time. The end result though is beautiful and the floor was laid in two days. We layed a wood laminate on the entire kitchen floor. We use to have linoleum in the kitchen area and in the dining area we had carpet. Carpet under the table with a two year old is kind of a disaster, but it is there no more!

We couldn't have done this huge project alone. My family helped out! Shelly and Nathan were there the most, but David and Mark also helped out too. My Mom kept Jacob at her house the first day and then the second day she came and brought taco soup and played with Jacob here at our house. My Mom and Gerry helped fold laundry and feed us while we worked. We sure have a great family who always get roped into helping us with our crazy projects! We love you guys!



(I think this video is cute. Sorry, I haven't yet learned how to edit the video. I wanted to crop it at the beginning and end, and of course turn it the right way, but I don't know how to do that yet. So pretend that it is perfect.)

Jacob wanted to follow us around with "his" drill. He had a blast when we let him help put a screw in the sub floor.

Busy December!

We have had a busy month. A few of our highlights. Jacob got to meet Santa at our ward party. Mark, Sammi, Joe and I got to go to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Christmas concert and see the lights at Temple square. We went to the Baumgarten's kids Christmas party and had fun making gingerbread houses and of course eating yummy food and treats. Mark and I had a fun Christmas party with some of our neighbors. What a great time of year!

Thanksgiving weekend brought much to be thankful for!

What a great Thanksgiving weekend we had! It started off with fabulous food at Doug and Jeanne's house. The next day we went up to Salt Lake City for the night. We first went to Primary Children's Medical center to carry on the family tradition of donating blankets and to show our appreciation to the NICU staff who took such great care of Jacob and us for his first two weeks of life. We then dropped Jake, Dad and Grandma Gerry off at the hotel for naps while we went off on adventures. We went to the Galavan Center, the State Capital Building and then we ended up finding the trail head for the Ensign Peak overlook and decided that we should go for a hike. We left Grandma Linda in the car to read her book. We then ate delicious mole at The Red Iguana before we headed out to The Gateway for a little shopping and Christmas lights. The next morning Mark, Gerry and I went to TeriAnn's wedding. My Mom and Shelly had the kids at the hotel and enjoyed breakfast and the pool all morning. After the nice luncheon, we met back up with the kids and headed down to Cabela's. Then we went straight to the reception from there. It was a full weekend of fun! It reminded us of many things we are thankful for family, temples, marriages, nature and fun family times together.

LOVE

On our Christmas card we had the kids spell out the word LOVE with their bodies. We tried each letter and with much effort got a pretty good shot of each letter. My sister who was taking the photos, thought that we could do better and she tried to arrange the kids as I took the pictures the second time. She learned that it isn't easy to get the kids to cooperate for photos. By the time she had wrestled them and moved them for the shots she was exhausted. It took a long time and the second shots turned out very badly. Both Joe and Jake cried at some point and we were ready to kill them. We had to remind ourselves that this was about LOVE that we were taking the photos. Our Christmas card really did turn out cute. Thanks to our awesome photographer, and designer, Shelly. She even ordered them and picked them up for me. So, if you thought that I was on the ball in getting Christmas cards out early it was really because of Shelly. Thanks Shelly, we love you!