"Mt. Rainier called...

...and said it wanted it's snow back!"

That was Matt's joke first thing this morning. 

This is what it looked like out our backdoor:

It started snowing yesterday morning about 6 a.m. and didn't stop until this evening. Spokane hit a record of 19" during the first 24 hours. This afternoon Reagan and Kelsey played in the snow that measured 26" for about 2 hours.  

Maya likes playing in the snow too. She was playing in the footprints that Reagan and Kelsey left behind. She would probably get lost if she wasn't in their trail.

Matt was dying to take a flying leap into the snow. 

This is what Matt said about global warming: 

"Yeah the polar bears are moving south... they're coming to Spokane!"

and

"Let's go to the park to feed the birds... they're penguins!"

He tells these jokes to get a big laugh out of Reagan. She's thinks he's just hilarious.

Luckily Gwyn was taking her nap. The snow would have gone over her head! She does like playing in the snow though. This is about 24 hours earlier. I let her play outside for 15 minutes or so yesterday. What a difference 24 hours of continuous snow can make!

Christmas Cookie decorating

Every year I make holiday cookies for the girls to decorate. The last couple of years I've done Halloween cookies and this year I did Christmas cookies. I let them invite a couple of friends over to help them. They like decorating them almost as much as they like eating them. 

Does anyone have a good sugar cookie recipe? Matt likes them to be soft and chewy and for some reason the ones I make are always crunchy, even if I take them out a little early. 

Kelsey update

Kelsey got her blood checked again and her platelets went up 40,000 in 2 weeks! It's now up to 53,000! Yay!!! I'm so glad to know it's going up on it's own and that she's out of the "danger zone." Only 100,000 or more to go. 

What do you think?

A friend of mine says that Matt reminds her of The Edge from U2. Matt says it must be his awesome guitar skills that makes the resemblance. Here's a picture to compare. (I'm sure I could've found a better picture but I didn't want to spend all day looking). What do you think?

Christmas Tree

Here's a few pictures of us decorating the Christmas tree. 

Gwyn found the stockings. What else do you do with stockings? Put them on, of course. 

Kelsey got to put the angel on this year. 

The best thing I like about having a Christmas tree is waking up in the morning with the Christmas lights on. 

Gwyn's 2nd Birthday!

Gwyn turned 2 last week. She had a "Yo Gabba Gabba" birthday. This is Yo Gabba Gabba.  It's a kids show on Nick Jr. Most people I ask have never heard of it. 

Gwyn is obsessed with Yo Gabba Gabba. Gwyn got lots of Yo Gabba Gabba toys and Foofa (the pink one) and Brobee (the green one) cupcakes. I thought they turned out pretty good. Gwyn knew who they were anyways. 

Grandma Marini was here and we also had a few friends over to help us celebrate. Here's a few pictures of Gwyn with her presents and eating her birthday cupcake. You can tell how excited she is. I just can't believe she 2.

Kelsey update

Here's an update on how Kelsey is doing. We checked her blood yesterday and it went up a whopping 1,000. What? It went from 12,000 to 13,000 in 10 days. The ultimate goal here is 150,000, so it's not moving up as quickly as we would like. However, it's not going down, so that's a good thing. Thanks for all your prayers and comments. I read them to Kelsey and she got all teary eyed. I would start reading one and she would say, "Oh no... tears." Then I would read another one and she'd say, "Oh no... tears again." It was cute. 

To answer some of your questions, it hasn't been too scary of an experience so far. Kelsey feels and acts fine and her bruises don't hurt any worse than a regular bruise. Her platelets are supposed to come back on their own and she'll be back to normal. I am a little worried now that they are not coming back as fast. I'm afraid that they might have went up more and now they're coming down again. But we'll know more in a couple of weeks when we check her blood again. So thanks for all your prayers. We want her to get better soon!

First snow of the season

It snowed a little on Thanksgiving Day and quite a bit the next day. I just happened to pick up a couple of snow suits for Reagan and Kelsey at Fred Meyer during their black friday sale. The snow suits they wore last year were so small that they were giving them wedgies so I knew they would be needing them. I didn't think they would need it that day! Anyways, Grandma went out and played with them. Reagan and Kelsey have this thing with their Grandma about snow. They all love snow so much that they always call each other every time it snows. They played for about an hour and a half and made a snowman and a huge snowball. It was perfect snow for that.

Gwyn wouldn't put on her snowsuit. I don't really blame her... it's so bulky. So she ran around for awhile. It was fun to watch. This year has been fun with Gwyn because it's like she's experiencing all the holidays and seasonal stuff for the first time. Even though she was around last year, she doesn't really remember stuff like Halloween, her birthday, snow, and Christmas. It's been fun experiencing these things again through the eyes of a 2 year old. 

The snow was gone by the next day. I hope it takes it's time coming back. 

Thanksgiving Day

Just wanted to do a quick post about Thanksgiving Day. This year we stayed home so we invited our friends, the Buers, and my mom came over from Bonney Lake. The Buers brought food and my mom helped with the food I made so we had quite a feast. 

Here's Reagan, Kelsey and Hannah at the big kid table, which was really the kitchen counter. 

Next are Landon, Dade and Gwyn at the little kid table.  

Wendy and Jason... What a cute couple.

And Grandma.

Here's me and Matt relaxing afterwards. 

Over all it was an enjoyable day of good food, family and friends. 

Kelsey's trip to the hospital

A couple weeks ago I noticed some red spots all over Kelsey's legs. It  didn't look like a rash but looked like broken blood vessels. She also had quite a few bruises on her knees and legs and one that was very large and swollen. I kept an eye on it and by the 2nd day I noticed it was not going away, but was getting worse. She now had broken blood vessels on her face and neck. 

I took her to the doctors and they checked her blood. It turns out that she has ITP.  Her platelet levels in her blood were extremely low. They were at 8,000 and normal is 150,000 - 450,000. Her other cells are normal which means that her blood is otherwise fine. The only danger to her would be if she was to start bleeding, for whatever reason, her blood would not clot like it's supposed to. Otherwise she feels and acts fine. The doctor gave us instructions to take Kelsey to Sacred Heart Children's Hospital for more testing. He said they would most likely want her to stay the night for observation. We went home to pack her a bag when the doctor called and said we didn't need to take her that night, but to come back in 2 days to recheck her blood. 

During the next 2 days you couldn't even look at Kelsey without her getting a bruise. Here's a picture of one of them. You can't even see how swollen and puffy it is. She had about 4 more bruises like this on her legs. 

We went back to check her blood and it had dropped down to 5,000. The doctor said it should go up on it's own and to come back in 10 days to recheck it. The next day Kelsey woke up feeling sick and she had a fever of 101. It was a Saturday so I called the doctor and he said to take her to Sacred Heart to check her out. The fever was not a concern, but she had coughed a lot the night before so they wanted to check her lungs for any internal bleeding that might have occurred since any bleeding is dangerous. I didn't really think she had blood in her lungs but I'm not a doctor and I was really worried about her platelet levels being so low so I took her in. 

Reagan wanted to come to be there for Kelsey in case she got scared or anything. Reagan had been to the hospital about a year ago when she broke her foot so she knew how Kelsey was feeling. How sweet. She made sure that Kelsey had her stuffed animals by her side and when they wheeled the bed out to get the X-ray, Reagan held her hand and walked with her. 

Reagan and Kelsey always grab each other's hands when they are nervous about something. I've caught a few of these moments on camera. This first picture is from a year ago at Silverwood when they were about to go on a ride together, without Mom or Dad. The second picture is when Kelsey just turned 2 and Reagan was 4. They got to sleep on the floor together and Reagan held Kelsey's hand so she wouldn't be scared. They fell asleep like that. 

Anyways, Kelsey turned out to be fine and her platelet levels were up to 12,000. If her platelets had gone down any further they would have given her a platelet transfusion. So, even though 12,000 is still a really low number, it's getting better. Kelsey's bruises are finally starting to heal and she's only gotten one new bruise this week. Kelsey goes back in a couple days to check her blood again so we'll let you know how it is.