I want to start by wishing a very Happy 1st Birthday (on the 17th) to an adorable cousin, Rhys!
Happy birthday today (the 20th) to Aunt Shannon! Rhys won’t get to be the baby-est baby cousin for much longer. Yet another boy is on the way in December for Aunt Shannon, Uncle Jon, and Kieran. Six in a row for Gramma on grandsons. Our boys will have 2 girls and 10 boys for cousins!

On to Arizona life…
Just like winter in other parts of the country, when the weather is extreme, you stay indoors! I would call this extreme!

The toughest part about being indoors but not at home is that it usually is expensive or crowded or both. I ran out of ideas on Friday so we ended up going to IKEA to get some exercise and look around and see what was new. Firetruck at IKEA?

In the owl bin where he belongs. Hooo hooo!

Even though Trevor ate a good lunch at home, at 3pm, he was asking to go to the restaurant.

Gravy!

He wasn’t joking, he ate the entire kids meal. What is a growing boy to do?

This morning, we got a deal on some bowling! It was fun to take the family out for our first bowling adventure. I was worried that the noise might be too much, but they both loved it!

By the 7th frame, Trevor just couldn’t go on anymore. He was “so so so hungry!” We had to get some lunch and then play in the arcade for a while.

My water-boys love to be outside, so we stopped and bought this cheap kiddie pool that we hope will last the summer.

Awesome goggles!

Brendan is a daredevil in the water, it is tough to keep him safe. He is determined to paddle around like Trevor, run, jump, dive, splash, and otherwise do everything a kid with a trach shouldn’t do. He LOVES the pool. As soon as we get the OK from his ENT, they both will be getting swimming lessons!

Awesome goggles!

Father’s Day weekend brings a fun new project for Bill too. New Toolboxes!

The tall ones are going away. This is the beginning of a garage makeover that has been needed for years.

We are just going to keep on pushing through the summer heat. Monsoon season has officially started and big storms are predicted through the next few months.

HOT!!! Today was hot. My car said 116 as I drove down the freeway. At 8:45PM it is still 101. 🙂

How do you beat the heat? Misting system, hose, and big puddles of cool mud.

We also went to the aquarium today to say hi to Brendan’s favorite stingrays. He has been asking to go all week. It was an oxygen refill day too. I think we are finally settling back in to a “routine” after all the travels and company. We can’t wait for the next disruption.

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!