The summer is going by quickly. Brendan had a feeding evaluation done at the hospital with a large team of specialists. He did a great job with so many people in the room. (Dietician, OT, GI Doctor, Feeding Therapists, etc) They wanted to see if he might qualify for this intensive feeding program that they do on campus. When he starts, it would be a 5 day a week, 2hr each session to work on his aversions and eating difficulties.

They all agree that he could benefit from the program, but they think it would be overwhelming to jump right in. For the next three months, he is going to go once a week while they gather more data on him and see how he does.

Brendan’s heart buddy, Violet, was his neighbor in the hospital when they both had their Glenn operations. On Monday, Violet had her Fontan. We are watching with concern and interest as she goes through recovery. She is doing great so far, but it is such a painful process to heal. We wish Violet and her whole family the best! It could be us next year.

Escaping the heat means heading to elevation for some hiking and exploring. We managed to get from 110 degrees to only 85-90. It was still pretty hot! But it was beautiful.

They found pockets of shady sand to dig dig dig.

Cool little bridge

Picnic lunch

I have terrible Mommy-guilt because Trevor’s play shoes gave both his heals big ugly blisters. 🙁 He was complaining about being tired of walking, but I thought he was just hot.

I had a little mini-vacation trip to Dallas to see Shannon and Malcolm while they were in town for her work. I got to hang out at the hotel with the cutest little dude while Shannon went to meetings. Lucky me!

We explored the city a little (it was 100 degrees here too! No fair!)
This is the bridge over the Trinity “River”

Shannon and Malcolm on the pedestrian bridge. We were too hot to walk all the way to the splash pads on the bridge!

Malcolm says, “Seriously, I am in a broiler here.”

My hand-held, sideways-through-a-window-distorted night view of the city from our hotel room.

I took some pictures with my tablet too, but it has a dead battery, I will try to post them tomorrow.

Everyone is healthy right now. School is going to be starting soon!

Time for an update! Brendan had a really rough time with his cold. Whatever bug this was, it was a tough one. He stayed out of the hospital and now he seems to be fully recovered. We thought Trevor was coming down with it and he had one night of bad croupy cough attack and then he shook it off. Whew!

It seems like the road trip was forever ago. We finally set up our portrait studio to get the “missing person” photos. It is difficult to be the photographer and the photographee, but I am happy to have some pictures with my family and my handsome husband. 😀

We took the boys to visit some super sweet young boxer puppies. Who doesn’t love puppies?

Puppies are a great subject for practicing my photography skills. They are a challenge!

Happy Birthday U.S.A. !! We had our share of little fireworks to annoy the neighbors. Trevor didn’t want to hold a sparkler.

Bailey has always been an awesome neighbor and she lets us use her pool! (Thanks Bailey!)

Trevor in his life jacket is unstoppable. He sure loves the water. He has always been my water baby.

Incoming!

I love how he holds his nose right up until he actually jumps in! Silly boy!

This is a make-up post for all of the rest of the trip pictures.

Gramma’s table was full! We had a lot of reasons to celebrate during the trip. Caleb’s birthday, Rhys’s birthday, Gramma’s birthday, Shannon’s birthday, and now Grampa Dusty’s birthday and Aunt Lillian’s birthday! Wow! June is busy! Happy Birthday!! Also happy anniversary to Heather and Kevin!

Busy couch

Tuesday the 14th, we went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago with Heather and the girls. They boys love the kids zone.

Giant tractor that they can actually climb into! Score!

Baby chickens!

We went for the “Brick by Brick” lego exhibit

The ISS in Lego

Kayla was selected for a building challenge

There were lots of different building zones

Six Flags Great America – American Eagle roller coaster in Lego! The coolest thing about this is that as a teen I operated this very coaster for a summer job.

So many people walked up and said “ooh cool, the White House!” when it was actually the very building they were standing in. MSI, formerly the Palace of Fine Arts.

Totally bummed, the Toymaker 3000 was out of order 🙁 Bill and I made a top here 12 years ago and I wanted to do one with the boys.

Brendan did not want to go near the 3 story tornado but Trevor loved it!

Mirror Maze!

Our traffic nightmare drive-by of “the bean” AKA Cloud Gate Sculpture. One day I will take some silly photos here.

The video Gramma has been waiting for:

We did lunch at IKEA with Erin and the boys. The IL IKEA is rather different than ours. The boys enjoyed it. And free meatballs! We did a lot of hanging around playing Minecraft:

We went to visit Aunt Lillian and helped her catch up on the blog

Gramma taught the boys how to play pool

We broke Gizmo 🙁 🙁 A pile up with the dog underfoot led to him fracturing 3 little bones in his foot. He is going to have a splint and activity restrictions for a month or more. He was a wreck with all the kids playing when he could not.

We had a treat with Aunt Beth and Uncle Steve at “The Buffalo” restaurant near where I used to live. Brendan and Uncle Steve are buddies.

Trevor licked every last drop of chocolate from his banana split!

The boys helped me to set up the photo studio stuff in Great-Grandma’s old living room.

Hot tubbing!

How many boys can we pile in a tub?

There were thunderstorms!!

With hail stones! Trevor was almost as excited to see real hail as he was to find real roly-poly bugs.

He proceeded to gather up any hail he found and he ate it!

Party on the deck to watch the rain

Hanging bed fun

We were sad to have to leave. It was nice being able to spend time with so much family. We miss them all everyday.

Our journey home was supposed to be a 5-6 day trip with more sightseeing and fun. We arrived in Missouri the first night and Brendan had a 102.7 fever. He was so distraught that he was not going to get to go fishing. We had bought life jackets and the boys picked out their own fishing poles just for this part of the trip.

In the morning, a breathing treatment and some tylenol pepped him up enough to come outside for a bit.

Trevor was SO excited to fish with Allen

It was a magic day on the pond, he pulled up his first catch in no time at all!

He wanted to hold it so we would have to put giant leather gloves on his hand so he could throw the catch back in.

Family fishing

Brendan has got something!!

Brendan had to go inside to rest and cool down, but Trevor got to go out on the boat

Trevor caught his own fish by just holding his line in the water a bit and letting the boat drag it around. No bait! Just a wiggly rubber worm thing that came with the pole!

Brendan got worse enough that we had to take off right away for home and did it in a 2-day marathon drive. He went to the doctor and got some antibiotics. Breathing treatments, vest treatments, O2 and meds are keeping him stable, but he is still pretty sick. He is just well enough to be crabby about being restrained from doing fun things.

WHEW! Caught up!