Happy Birthday, Gramma!

We wish we could have been there for peach cobbler and celebrations. We all hope it was a great day.

I have a little video message from the boys that might need a bit of explaining.
Brendan made his while waiting at the doctor’s office. I guess I pushed too hard for a performance because at the end of his part, he takes his ID bracelet from the doctor and slides it over my phone to cover the camera!

We have hit the official hot part of the AZ summer. All next week, temperatures are going to be above 110. The part I don’t like thought is the overnight lows get down to mid 80’s. Yuck! Officially air conditioning 24 x 7 time. You will see lots of blog posts with boys wearing very little.

I couldn’t hire a Hawaiian fire dancer for a birthday performance, but Trevor has the next best thing with his “fire scarves” and his hot summer birthday dance.

Brendan had his big aero-digestive council meeting this morning and it was awesome! We met a new ENT that will do the procedures to prep Brendan’s airway. They may have to remove some granulation and scar tissue. Brendan often makes his owl sounds when he is nervous, and because of that we found out that the doctor is a huge owl fan too. They “talked” owls and birds of prey for a while. 🙂

We met an awesome new GI doctor that will take Brendan on to be her long term patient going forward. She is ordering a complete upper GI study plus an intestinal biopsy. Separately, next Thursday, he will also get a GI “emptying” study done in radiology.

His pulmonologist just ordered a bronchoscopy to check his airways.

The exciting part is that they are going to schedule all the procedures together (minus the radiology one that needs no anesthesia). He will go in and be admitted. Barring anything unusual, he will move to a room to recover. They will take the trach out and he will sleep there. If the night goes well, he could come home the next day with no trach!!
It could possibly be the end of July, we are waiting on schedulers to call and make it official. About six more weeks, no trach!?!? Hard to believe!

The best part about giant paper photo backdrops is the coloring!

And afterwards, having a sundae bar with chocolate lego guys!

There were two sizes of guys, and one mold for a giant one!

Brendan held it and tried to nibble out its M&M brain. It turned to a melted mess of goo!

I have one picture that I forgot to add from yesterday’s photo shoot.

As promised, here are the outtakes!

Sisters!!

The boys and I drove everyone to the airport and took the sky train. We hope they have a safe flight home!

We were on the way home when Trevor looked up and said, “Oh no!!!” Who is going to cuddle me tonight?!” He cried a lot about his cousins having to leave. He kept saying, “They are gone, gone forever!” It is so hard to have so much attention and then have to say goodbye.

Ashley made up a bedtime song that she sang to Trevor until he went to sleep last night. She made a recording to leave behind to play for him. So sweet!

I will miss all the girls! These last few weeks have been quite an adventure.

Starting yesterday – the girls went to a public pool and spent some time swimming until it just got too crowded.

They came home and worked on lots of tie-dye!

We just tried to recover from the whirlwind trip. Brendan was watching live cams of stingrays at Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Ashley created a fancy playroom bed so that Trevor could have some quiet time and watch cartoons on his iPad.

Brendan loves playing video games if someone will teach him. He is getting pretty good at the controllers.

Today, we spent hours rinsing and washing all the tie-dye. Then we
went crazy and set up “The Studio” for portrait time. I hadn’t done a 3.5yr picture session with the boys yet. They are all wearing new tie-dye straight from the dryer. Brendan is without his glasses in most shots because I simply could not get pictures of him without huge flat glare off of the lenses. His little face is so cute anyway!

Hopefully I can process all of the hilarious outtakes for tomorrow. I can’t believe the visit is over and we will be going to the airport tomorrow evening. I am in big trouble. I have two little boys that have loved having cousins and an aunt that dote on them.