Batty

Well, For Halloween we headed down to Primary Children's for an appointment and since Josh had school, and a band gig, we talked my mom into coming with us and staying for a couple of days! It was a pretty good weekend.

I learned that Nick is using his pacemaker about 15% of the time; that his battery still has a good charge to it; that he is having VT (ventricular tachycardia) several times a day~ but that it's lasting only about 2 seconds or so at a time; and that we'll need to schedule a time to go back for another heart catheterization so that they can administer some adrenaline to his heart while he is sedated and put his heart into fibrillation on purpose to check whether or not the defibrillator is functioning properly, and if it isn't they will be there to rescue him from the fibrillation and correct any problems. The reason that this would be necessary is because as he grows, the leads that are screwed into his heart are being moved around a bit and in order for the ICD to work, the leads need to be in just the right spot. And now we're back, and if all goes well, we wont need to go back for SIX MONTHS!! That is only the 2nd time in 4 1/2 years that we have been scheduled that far out! YAY!

Nick was delighted to get to see Dr. Cowley. He was concerned that Dr. Cowley wouldn't have a "trick-or-treat" so he made sure that we brought him something good... Nick wore his Batman pajamas as his costume and gave the doc a rubber bat, a York Peppermint Bat, & a hand drawn card in a bag with bats on it.
I thought it was really cute. I can't express enough how much Nick adores Dr. Cowley. We are just so fortunate to have such an amazing cardiologist!

Here are some pics of the day at the hospital.


THE ECHOCARDIOGRAM



THE X-RAY



THE EKG



DR. COWLEY & NICK



DR. COWLEY & BATMAN

Pancakes

We had some fun the other night with "Breakfast for Dinner". We decided to make words with our pancakes.... well, names anyway. We've done shapes and faces and stuff before, but I thought it'd be fun to write the boys' names for them. They had fun with it and ate so many pancakes that I had to make another batch. These days in childhood can be so fun~ It requires just a little effort to make something boring a memorable occasion!

Scouts!

Paul is a Tiger scout now! I didn't know that he could be a scout at only 6 years old, but it's true! He'll have to meet with a group of scouts at the Methodist Church until he's 8, because the LDS church doesn't sponsor/participate in the scouting program until that point-- but it's only 15 months away and just $10 a year. He only signed up about a month ago, but it's been a big success and A LOT of fun!
On this night there was an "Ice Cream Social" and BOTTLE ROCKETS! (Sorry about the sound on the video... not really sure what the deal is...) Anyway, his bottle rocket ended up going the highest out of everyones, which couldn't have made him any more proud!

Pumpkins for Sale!

Grandpa Keith grew some pumpkins this year and thought that the boys might like to try to sell them (it's something we used to do when I was growing up and we thought it was a lot of fun), so we made a sign and put some pumpkins on the lawn. I was gonna just leave it at that, but Paul had different ideas... I came outside only to see him standing by the pumpkins waving at passers-by and neighbors and calling them over. He had this ball park kind of yell-- "PUMPKINS! PUMPKINS! ONE DOLLAR! GET YOUR PUMPKIN! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!"

He did pretty good! He sold 17 out of 18 pumpkins! (I decided tonight that we're gonna use the last one for pumpkin seeds and cookies! Yum!)

The Case Lot Sale

I am a bargain shopper. I love coupons, free things, and just getting more BANG for my buck. This week and next, a lot of stores in our area are having their semi-annual case lot sales. I love when they do this because it gives me an opportunity to try to load up on our family food storage. Well, last night as I was transferring some items into storage containers, an idea struck, and the boys were more than willing to take part.... Just take a look.

A 50lb bag of oats...


A 25lb bag of sugar...



And a 25lb bag of bread flour...



I think I got quite the bargain.


I was hoping to convince them that these would be great Halloween costumes~ unfortunately for me, they are stuck on the idea of being stuff like BATMAN, SPIDER MAN, SUPERMAN, DARTH VADER, and so on. Too bad too. This would've been way cheaper. Oh well...LOL