A Birthday and a Few Sad Things

Tuesday night last week we had dinner together before Lincoln got set apart as a missionary. Every year that I've been married to Brandon he has blown out candles on a shared birthday cake with his sister whose birthday is the day before. This year the candles were blown out on Chandra's birthday, that same night.

Then we all headed over to the Church for Lincoln's setting apart. I wish I could say it was a good blessing but I really didn't hear much of it, I was trying to keep Mckinley quiet.

I wanted to take a picture of these girls standing by Lincoln so we can see how much they grow while he's gone. Now the only trick is to remember to take the same picture when he gets back. Maybe I'll put an appointment for it in two years on my phone.

The whole family.

The next day was Brandon's 28th Birthday. I made him some breakfast burritos since his parents usually get Beto's breakfast burritos. I would have given them to him in bed but it's always hard to eat in bed so I brought him upstairs.

I brought Brandon a muffin with a candle in it and sang Happy Birthday to him to wake him up and Mckinley slept through the whole thing. So he and I ate upstairs and then she ate later when she got up. She was so excited to hold the little plastic balloons. This girl loves any kind of balloon.

I also snuck into Brandon's office before the setting apart to hang up a birthday sign there and leave him some treats. The best part was that it took him a while to figure out it was me who did it.

For lunch we all went to Pizza Factory to have lunch with Lincoln before he left. Since it was Brandon's birthday he got a free pizza in the shape of his age. (minus 2 years, they accidentally did 26 instead of 28. Still tasted amazing.)

Saying goodbye one last time...

Lincoln with all his nieces and nephew.

Even more sad than Lincoln leaving was our day yesterday. Back up to Saturday first though. Saturday we went to the temple and Karen watched Mckinley. She had a cough and when we were done at the temple she really didn't feel well. We brought her home and gave her some medicine. She fell asleep on Brandon's chest watching TV (which is SO uncharacteristic of her). He was loving it. If only we knew what was in store for us that night.

Mckinley got worse throughout the night. None of us got very much sleep. Not only did she have a horrible cough, but she was starting to have trouble breathing. Her breaths in were really loud and she was breathing faster than normal. Finally at about 5 a.m. Brandon said this is not normal, call the doctor. So we called the doctor and the nurse told Brandon to check and see if her ribs were retracting (pulling in with each breath). They were. She said take Mckinley to the ER.

Um, yikes. I have never been to the ER in my life and I am not the type to run to the doctor as soon as my nose runs. But we were pretty worried about her breathing and of course you will do ANYTHING for your child. We live really close to an Instacare as well so we checked that out but they didn't open till 8. We have new (and crappy) insurance and so we weren't really sure where to go or what to do. At 6 we drove to the Timpanogos ER. But by the time we got there Mckinley seemed to be breathing pretty well. Brandon thought the cold air was probably helping. So we decided to go back home and wait till the Instacare opened. Brandon bundled Mckinley up and sat out on the porch with her in the cold air a few times.

At 8 we went to the Instacare and the nurse checked her out and said they only had one of the medications she would need. They wanted to give it to her, and then transport her by ambulance to the hospital. We thought that was unnecessary so we signed an Against Medical Advice form and drove her to the ER ourselves. The Timpanogos ER was slammed with a few ambulances that had come in so they were verrrrry slow to help us, but eventually we got things figured out.

Over the next 5 hours Mckinley had 2 breathing treatments, a steroid shot, a chest x-ray, and a neck x-ray. They told us she has Croup. It's a viral infection and there's no antibiotics or anything you can take for it. You just have to let it run its course. Which we are hoping is only a few more days. The Dr. was thinking about admitting her to the hospital but in the end, she responded okay to the treatments and we were able to bring her home.

We all took a nice nap once we got home. Later that evening we went to Brandon's parents' house and he and his dad gave her a Priesthood blessing. She slept fine all night last night and is definitely sick today, but at least she can breathe! What a scary experience that we hope we never have to have again. The love in our house grew tenfold yesterday and for that we are grateful. Most of all we are so grateful for modern medicine that allowed us to have Mckinley in the first place, and that helped her little body to heal. I can't get the image out of my head of her little chest pulling all the way in as she struggled to take a breath at the hospital yesterday.

We did enjoy all the time she slept in our arms.

This picture shows you how Mckinley felt about being in the hospital. Whenever we gave her a breathing treatment she would say "all done, all done" and she kept saying "I go" (I want to go). It broke our hearts.

Here she is trying to muster a smile.

She actually did really well for her x-rays and shot. Even though she definitely didn't want to do them, it was as if she knew it had to be done so she could get better. We were very proud of her.

And just to end this post off on a positive note, here is my little "Punky Brewster". Mckinley insisted on wearing her pink dress and pink boots with these purple pants the other morning. And then I wanted to try on this jacket that Kristen bought in Hong Kong. I've been waiting for forever for it to fit her and it finally does. The end result reminded me of Punky Brewster.