My Heart Challenge Wrap up! #myheartchallenge

 Camping, Family, Geocaching!, Holiday, My Heart Challenge  No Responses »
Aug 012016
 

Hi folks!  Well it has been a month now since we were last updating about the My Heart Challenge, and it has been a busy month.  We have been running all over.  It has been good for the kids and their screen time to be away from the screens.  I sit here now writing this after the challenge has finished, and I have some interesting thoughts about it.  Those will be later.  First, lets talk about what we have been doing this past month!

First up, was the Twilight Walk 5k.  We went to Murray park with everyone from the Heart Challenge and covered 5 kilometers!  Leatha and I sped walked, while Tristan and Cameron decided to run.  Cameron did great and finished first in the family, while Tristan ended up Second!  We thought that Tristan would have to be carried at the end, but he ran the whole way.  They had a drawing afterwards where the kids won some fun prizes and I won the $50 gift card to Harmons, which I promptly used to buy the rest of the groceries for our camping trip.

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My Heart Challenge June 1st to June 7th #myheartchallenge

 Geocaching!  No Responses »
Jun 072016
 

Hello again!  Well we had another wild week getting out and getting active for the Heart challenge.  That isn’t quite right.  We had another wild week getting out and getting active for us, BECAUSE of the Heart Challenge.   This week  all of the kids were home from school.  That was hard to keep them limited to their 1 hour of screen time….They didn’t do as well this week as some of the others.  But we are still not watching the TV or the computer even a third as much as they did last summer.  It is a dramatic improvement.  We are also getting out more of our board games, legos and even books!  Leatha has always read like her life depended on it, but the others are really making it a point now.

Saturday was Cameron’s Birthday!  He finally turned 13 and was a little bit crazy about it.  We did a bunch of outdoor activities in between opening presents and doing our regular household chores.  We started out in the morning, at the giant kick off party held by Salt Lake count libraries.  They were kicking off the summer reading program.  We do the program every year, one, because we like to read, and two, we get free passes to the Natural History Museum if we complete the program.  It is a bunch of fun.  So was the kick off party.  IMG_5237 IMG_5232 IMG_5227

The kids got to sit in fire trucks again and learn some fun things about DNA, as well as play in some bounce houses.

 

 

 

 

 

Cameron thought it would be fun to sit in the back of the police truck, and then close the door.  Continue reading »

What?! A post?! Yes, and the return to Give Kids the World.

 Geocaching!  No Responses »
Mar 312016
 

Hello everyone.  I know this is a surprise, we have not posted on this site for quite a while.  But here it is.

Brenda has been asked to go to the National Case Managers convention in Tampa Florida this year.  And I get to join her later in the week.  We had never really planned on going back to Florida, because it is so far away, but since we will be there, we are going to go visit Give Kids The World!  0010 Welcome to Give Kids The World

We will be able to go and see Amelia’s paver that Grandma Kelly bought after we went.  It is hard to believe that it has been 4 years (almost exactly) since we went on that make a wish trip.  If you want to look at those pictures again you can go to Amelia’s Make A Wish site  or here are some pictures from then and some from now!  The kids grow up quick!

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Camping with the older kids

 Geocaching!  No Responses »
Nov 272013
 

The last weekend in September brought about a new chapter in our lives.  Splitting the family for a couple of days.  This year for my birthday the rest of the conspirators in the family decided that it would be a good time for me to go with Leatha and Cameron, into the woods by ourselves.  It was justified as “too cold” for the younger kids, (it was), and a good “bonding time” with the older ones.

So with that, we got things together and left.  We decided that, well I decided that we were going to save some cash and not camp in a campground.  That has always been fine with me, I get tired of campgrounds anyway.  The kids had a new experience.  They had never stayed anywhere without the flush toilets and concrete fire rings of a campground.  Cameron called what we were doing  “fake camping”.  I just had to laugh, because it only gets more real for him when he starts backpacking in Boy Scouts.

We got to the lake, drove up one of the side canyons that we have always wanted to explore, and

***Editors Note****

This post is not finished.  But it is old.  Over a year now.  So, I am posting what there is, and the pictures from September 2012.  NO more old stuff after this, only new posts.  Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming in the next day or two.

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The one about Amelia and the Tonsils of Doom!

 Geocaching!  No Responses »
Jan 292013
 

Well folks, Amelia is a few grams lighter after this weekend.

I know it has been a while since an update and I owe everyone a Halloween and Christmas update, but this one will have to come first.

Amelia finally hit the point where her tonsils were big enough that they had to come out.  Her tonsils have always been big.  The nephrologists have been watching them since dialysis started and they have always been big.  Finally they were touching and making it hard for Amelia to breathe and sleep.  So they had to come out!  This is not unusual in transplant patients and something we had been planning on for a while now.

Friday the 25th we went in to Primary Children’s again to get those tonsils taken out.  They were planning on keeping her overnight so make sure she was drinking enough so we packed for a night in the hospital again.  However!  She was doing well and drinking enough that we left the hospital at 7:00 that night and went home.

She continues to get better and is feeling well enough now that she is going to make it to school on Wednesday the 30th!  We are all glad that she has recovered so well from what is actually her 24th surgery.

Thanks to everyone reading this, and thanks for continuing to keep Amelia in your hearts and prayers.

Until the next one,

-Justin

PS.  Check it out, they took the camera into the surgery for us and took some pictures!