All Ready

Well, I think we're as ready for tomorrow as we're going to be. Olivia is packed and off to mom's, Reece has more stuff than 4 women, and I have the Uhaul.....David's bringing a Ziploc bag for his suitcase. We bought an inflatable mattress to put on top of the pull out couch for us to sleep on, therefore we had to bring our own sheets, blanket and pillows. While I'm at it I packed a couple of towels from home since I know hospital towels are like sandpaper. I also went ahead and packed all of Reece's food (for a week) since I just know how picky he is and will probably refuse the hospital food and starve to death...or at least complain enough that I'll go mad. I also have enough clothes for about a month...you never know what the attire will be on the 4th floor. I'm not sure if I'll feel like wearing cute shorts, or maybe my pj's all day so I'll just bring lots of both. I've also packed a fitted crib sheet from home and all of Reece's toys and blankets from his bed to make the hospital, cage, I mean crib more comfy. I asked David if he would like anything special from home and he said, nah, "IF I take a shower or anything, I'll just come home". Okay, IF he takes a shower...right we're in a shoe box sized room sharing what looks like a twin size mattress under a tremendous amount of stress...he IS taking a shower daily and if he doesn't pack accordingly, he just might smell like Wild Honeysuckle Bath & Body Works shower gel all week :o)

Yep, I'm a little crazy today, but in good spirits. The surgery is set for 9:30am but we have to be there at 8am to start the factor treatment. I'll post again sometime tomorrow to let everyone know how it went.

Olivia's 5th Birthday

Well, "Miss Thing" had a great birthday party yesterday! We started at 8am when the inflatable jumping house was delivered. This worked out really well because Olivia, Reece & David had some alone time with it before our guests arrived at 10am. Thanks to Granzie and Grandad for also arriving early and helping us set up. We had about 9 kids here and their parents which turned out to be the perfect amount. We were able to have the whole party on the back porch and thank goodness we had PERFECT weather! Thank you also to all our guests for coming and celebrating Olivia's special day with her. She is still talking about how much fun she had....and wanting to know when we can start planning her 6th b'day party :o) Here are a few pics of the festivities.

Meeting with the Surgeon

Well, the meeting with the surgeon went pretty well. He was very nonchalant about it. He said that the actual procedure will take less than an hour in which they will place the portacath under the skin, hopefully on the left side of his chest. We will arrive at the hospital an hour or so before the procedure for him to get a factor treatment to get his levels up before the surgery. He went over the risks with us, the most serious being a punctured lung, but he did say that has never happened to him during this procedure. There is also the risk of anesthesia but I don't want to think about that. The surgeon said that after the procedure, we would then be admitted into the hospital by our hematologist. They will need to leave the needle in the port during our 7 day hospital stay so that they don't have to stick him on that sensitive skin every time they need to give him factor. At the end of the 7 days they will remove the needle before we go home. The whole appointment only lasted about 45min after which David and I left feeling a little lacking. The good thing was that this particular surgeon has done this procedure before on Hemo kids and seemed very familiar with their specific needs. He was also the one our Hemophilia doc. recommended, so that's all I need. I don't need his bedside manners to be good, just his surgical skills :o)

NOW, I will say I'm TOTALLY stressing about staying in the hospital with a 16mo for 7 days...even if it is Children's Hospital. They have tours set up for families to get a good visual idea of where we will be moving into next week. We are doing that on Sunday, so I'm trying to hold off on getting too wound up until I can see what it's like. The good thing is I have Olivia's birthday party this Saturday so that's keeping my focus away from everything.

Stay tuned for an update after the festivities this weekend :o)

Anyone Up For Grilling Out?

When Jaime and I decided to move, there were many things on our list that we really wanted to have. I use the term "our list" loosly.......primarily due to the fact that my list only included a 3 car garage and a new outdoor BBQ. Well, we are two months in and finally done with the outdoor BBQ which turned into a kitchen with fireplace. A huge thanks goes out to Georgetown Stone for providing the rock to make our outdoor BBQ much more that I ever expected. In addition, an even bigger thanks goes out to Jack Smithwick for helping us with all the Masonry work. We truly could not have had something so nice without your generosity.

Initially I was thinking I could make my old grill fit into a countertop, but that was nixed when I discovered how rusted out that thing was. Just because the cover is stainless doesn't mean the rest of it will not rust out. Luckily Lowe's is going out of season on grills and we were able to pick up a completely stainless built-in on clearance. Jaime and I grilled out some steaks tonight for the first time and man were they good. Look forward to lots of invitations once it gets cooler outside.


Here are some pics of the progression and final product.

Half Way Thru!!

The Finished Product!! I still need to build a door for the propane tanks.

Big Weekend

Well, we have had a very hectic weekend. First, one of my closest friends, Natalie, got married this weekend in Dallas. As a bridesmaid, I went up on Friday for the rehearsal before the ceremony on Saturday evening. David came up Saturday for the ceremony while the kidos stayed with my parents. The wedding was amazing and Natalie could not have looked more beautiful. I'll have some pictures to post in the next day or so of all of this. When the reception was over around 11pm, David and I saw that I had a missed call from my mom at around 10:30. I knew something was up when I saw how late she was calling. Sure enough, she had left a message that there had been an accident and they were on their was home from the ER. Apparently, Reece was just walking through the living room and bumped into the corner of their china cabinet which caused a significant cut on his eye. Okay, so at this point David and I have both had a couple (a term I use lightly) of adult beverages and are panicking. However, after I got up to the room and actually spoke to mom, all was under control. She was able to get a hold of our Hematologist right after it happened and she recommended bringing him into the ER since it sounded like it did require a stitch or two. They had to also administer a dose of factor to ensure the wound would clot properly. After about a 5 hour ordeal, the kids were back at my parents house asleep. David and I finally went to bed around midnight and got up at 6am to get back early this morning. Needless to say, we all had good naps this afternoon.

The sad part was that yesterday was Olivia's birthday and I feel like it took backseat to all the other events. She did have a mini party at my parents before the accident, and she is still talking about how the cake was the best she had ever eaten. Luckily she is also still young enough, that I think the trip to the ER was more of an adventure than her missing out of anything. We have her "official" birthday party this next weekend so we'll keep talking that up. Here are a couple of pictures that I took this afternoon. I'm sure the cut on Reece's eye will turn a few different shades of purple so I'll take some follow up pics in the next day or so.

On Tuesday, we meet with the surgeon about his port surgery so please keep us in your thoughts this week. We'll post after that meeting to keep everyone up to speed.

Happy Birthday OLIVIA !!!

Surgery Scheduled

Well, we found out that our surgical group at Children's Hospital did finalize their contract with Blue cross so we are all set to move forward on Reece's port surgery. Our consultation with the surgeon is next Tuesday, but they did let us go ahead and schedule his surgery for October 1st. We will post an update after our consultation next week.

Livi isms

Here are a couple of new quotes from Olivia that I had to share. Here we go...

1. As we were leaving the neighborhood this morning we saw a large rock with an ant mound on top of it. Olivia saw this and said...

"You know Mom, I guess those ants built their house on top of that rock because they wanted tile in their house instead of carpet."

2. Secondly, during the Olympics Olivia stayed at my parents house one night. While the track and field was on, Mom asked her if she had been watching any of it at home and Olivia said....

"Yes, we watched last night and the United States lost the race because they dropped their flute"

Love it!!!

2nd Home

For 31 of the last 60 days, I have been at my second home. Primarily row six seat A on Southwest Airlines. Well...........guess who is back in town for a while!! Yea!

As a frequent traveller, you can say that nothing bothers me when it comes to airports, airplanes, delays, rental cars and hotel issues. In fact, due to the amount of time I have spent with these, I have gotten really good at watching (making fun/laughing) at those people who are not as seasoned at travelling. I am always coming home and telling Jaime something funny that happened................except for the fact that I begin laughing so hard trying to tell Jaime that it is hard to get out. Here is an all time favorite from this year:

To set it up, a businessman has just showed up to the gate late for his flight. They have already closed the door to the plane, although it is still in the gate area. The man is making a fool out of himself yelling and screaming at the gate clerk trying to have him re-open the door of the plane. Finally..........with everyone in the gate area watching this play out for 10 minutes, the man marches up to the desk agent:

SW Agent: Sir, how can I help you.
Angry Businessman: You guys have a real problem now. You saw me coming and closed the door to the plane so that I could not get on.
SW Agent: Sir, the door to the plane and gate were closed so that we are able to depart on time for the other passengers aboard.
Angry Businessman: Do you know who I am?
SW Agent: Picking up the intercom........... "Attention travellers in gate 12, we have a passenger who doesn't know who he is. Any help you are able to provide would be greatly appreciated."

With the roar of laughter and the realization that he was making a real fool out of himself, the angry businessman stormed off. As a salesman, I am always trying to take away something from every situation. In this instance, SW proved that it is ok to have one angry customer to be able to please 250 others.

Dave

Cowan Family Novel...

I'll preface this by saying, get comfy...this make take awhile :o) Here we go....

Today was Olivia's 1st day at school! She is still in preschool, but she will be going Tues-Friday this year and it's referred to the Bridge class for all the kids who will turn 5 between Sept. 2 and Dec. 31st. She was SO excited because her best friend Alyssa from last year, is in her class again this year. We didn't get to see her all summer so the girls practically tackled each other this morning when they saw each other. Here are a couple of pics of before school and one with Alyssa.

I also can't believe that she will turn five in a few weeks. Just seems like yesterday we were decorating the nursery getting all ready for our baby girl. Now all I hear is "Mom, why don't you like Hannah Montana? I love her and it's not fair that you don't too" or " Mom, I cut my hair short so I didn't have to wear hair bows anymore, please don't make me wear that". Ahhh, they grow up so quickly!!!



An update on Reece ....well, we have now gone three weeks straight with no successful factor treatment. The nurses at Children's Hospital have been really careful but each time, we end up blowing the veins on both tries so we have to toss the factor and hope for better luck next time. I'm just so thankful that he doesn't even whimper anymore when they do this. He still flirts with the nurses when we get there and is more concerned about getting a hold of the alcohol swab wrapper than the pain. I have a call into our Hematologist to find out if we should still keep trying or go without for a few weeks. As for the port surgery, we are in the process of waiting for the Pediatric Surgical team to finalize a contract with Blue Cross Blue Shield so we can schedule the surgery. We were wanting to have it done this month, but it looks like unless he has another joint bleed we will either wait until October, or go to San Antonio Children's Hospital to have it done. I'm just hoping that we are able to have it done here in Austin because we will have to stay down there for 10 days before we are able to bring him home.

On a lighter note, this is what Mr. Reece is into these days......the BATHROOM!! He is such a turkey! He snuck into our bathroom yesterday and this is what happened :o)


Never ending Olympic fever! Olivia enjoyed the Olympics as much as we did I think, and it wasn't until we took this video that I see how closely she watched the gymnastics. This is her rendition of an Olympic floor routine.

Lastly, we finally made the decision to turn loose of the Tahoe. It was starting to go down hill pretty quickly and with gas being so high, it was time for us to say goodbye to it. We found a really great deal on a Honda Pilot that was only a year old and really low miles. So far we are really enjoying it! Here are a couple of pics of the before and after.