New Year!

Yikes! I did a bad job keeping up with last year. 2016 was a year to remember!

Here is our family now:

This was our Christmas card this year:

 The back:

I guess to start off I want to talk about each of the kids. They are growing like weeds.

LYDIA- She is such a trooper. She handles diabetes like it's nothin. She seems to get the most annoyed when she drops low because she has to stop what she's doing. But the pricking her finger and the shots are much much better than it used to be. I'm not quite sure if we've hit the "new normal" but we are getting there--something I never thought would happen.

She has started going into East Wenatchee for 6th grade. She cares about her hair now! Yikes! She likes to do buns on the top of her head. She is doing band, trumpet. We are still plugging away at piano and spanish but we definitely need to put more effort into both of those. She is pretty open about liking a boy named "Tyler". Grrrr. He's in ALL her classes apparently. Hopefully we will get to painting her room in the next month or so, she's been patiently awaiting that! Her best friends are still the 'ol gang from Palisades School. She is in LOVE with an app called Musically. She makes selfie videos of herself singing and being weird! She is into basketball and volleyball. Really seems to hate running. We got this girl her dream come true in March, a husky puppy named Saber. He has been ALOT of work, ALOT more work than any of us realized. We, even Lydia, are still trying to decide if we even like him all that much. But now I won't have the guilt of never getting Lydia her dog. Ha!

CARTER- This boy is the Mr. Planner. He loves science, experiments, bop-its, robots, pokemon, skylanders and playing kickball. He is very fast, but doesn't know it yet. He really wants a baby sister. It's really cute when he plays with Jake. He is very sloooow at doing his chores. His best buddies are Jonny and Thomas- both live out here in Palisades. He still doesn't like potatoes, but will manage to choke them down. He's a big fan of salad now with homemade ranch. His 3rd grade teacher this year, Mrs. Risdon, has really helped Carter to excel. He was slow in his fluency to read, but has caught up. And he claims to like math:) One night he was doing his homework in bed and started yelling, "is rooster the verb? Is rooster the verb?" So funny.

COLE- My cute little blonde. I will be sad to see him go to kindergarten next year. He guilts me all the time now about learning his numbers and letters. He is a great help with Jake and loves being Caters sidekick. They have started to fight more than normal tho. Cole is old enough to not let Carter get away with stuff! Cole loves to go work with his dad. He wanted 'work gloves' for Christmas:) He always has to go the bathroom when it's time for dinner. Both he and Carter earned enough money working this summer to buy themselves their own ipad/kindle. They have been loving that. Cole has a thing for shoes. Nothing makes his heart glow more than a nice pair of shoes or boots.

JAKE- My Jakey boy has been a spitfire since the 2nd week of birth. Right as he (finally) started sleeping through the night Lydia was diagnosed--had to get up and check her. So I haven't had much sleep in awhile. He does alright now, except when a tooth is coming in. Just a few days before Christmas Jake learned to climb out of his crib. So we are off on that adventure. He was found at 4am walking around the living room in the dark. He has quite the temper. If he doesnt' get what he wants, he will lose it. Even if you give in, and give him what he wants, he doesn't care. He's in the middle of his fit and is gonna throw it. I'm pretty sure half the time he's more into throwing fits and forgets what he wanting. Jake has ALOT of facial expressions. So many, that lots of people comment to me about it. He really goes from horrible to adorable in a split second! He has a dimple on his left cheek and it melts my heart. He has crazy hair in the back that WON'T go down. He LOVES his baba. Someday I"ll wean him. haha. I nursed him until he was about 10 months. He loves to go into my room and play with my garments. Soft and silky. Just the way he likes it:) Grandma made him a blue and green silkie for Christmas so hopefully that will replace my underwear!

JEROMY- Mr. Bishop. He's doing great. Seems to enjoy it. He's had some crazy things happen his first 6 months. He is installing new orchard. We have the pink lady and granny's in. This spring we are getting more root stock- not quite sure what we are gonna bud it to be. He's incredibly patient with his father. Like, incredibly patient.

LINDEE- I have been doing more photography and working at the school. I do each of them just enough to enjoy it on the side and not get overloaded or stressed...most of the time. I like living in the country, but I don't. I just got called into YW, so that will be fun! I haven't been in since Denver. I want to learn Spanish. I go through spurts and am gonna pick it back up for New Year. I played a piano solo in church a few months ago. Crazy, I know. Now people think I play the piano. haha! I have lots of dreams for my house and yard. None of them that will really happen, but a girl can drearm, right?! My teeth aren't getting better. I had two crowns done in 2016. I need a rootcanal done and probably more. Boo. So depressing. Next week I am going to AZ to see Baby Violet's blessing. That will be fun, I have never gotten away from the kids. I do have to take Jake tho. I guess it's better than nothing:)

Carter's Baptism

It's GREAT to be EIGHT!

My cute Carter decided he wanted to get baptized. If you ask him why, he will say, "because I know it's the right thing to do." When Carter was small enough to talk, he never wanted to pray or get baptized or serve a mission. He still isn't sure about wanting to serve a mission, but he has come a long way and gives great prayers and was very open to getting baptized.

It was a Stake baptism and there were 4 kids baptized that day. He did a great job and only seemed a little nervous about it all. He loved having all his family, cousins and ward members come.

 

His buddy Teagan Meyers came up from TriCities to be at his baptism. He drove up with my parents because his mom and dad were out of town.

 

 His Uncle Aaron bore his testimony at the baptism and Lydia sang a beautiful song all by herself.

 

 This is Ellarie, a girl from Carter's class who was also baptized that day.

 

 

 

We are so proud of you Carter! I know you made the right decision. Thanks for being such a good example to your younger brothers, too!

Diabetes Continued....

I remember one of the funny things...probably THE ONLY funny thing in the hospital was when Lydia said, "Can I look at my food now?" They always brought her lunch, made her decide how much she was going to eat, calculate the carbs, give her insulin and then she had to wait 15 minutes to eat. Ya...her food was nice and cold. Bleh. The 15 minute rule is still annoying.


Carter and Cole ended up at Aaron and Lisa's house and we had Jake in the hospital with us. Boy was that fun.Fortunately while we had our classes there were volunteers at the hospital who came to watch Jake. It was marvelous. I don't think I would have learned a thing, had they not had angel volunteers.


We set off for home on Wed late afternoon and made our first "out of hospital to eat" trip to Subway. It was a bit stressful, but you have to make it as low key as possible to help Lydia. She has been absolutely great about the whole experience. I also can't believe how much and how fast Lydia has gotten healthier and gained weight! It's amazing. I've read some neat things about the beginning of insulin and how it helped dying children just pop to life. Amazing the medical advances that it has made in such a short time and the possibility of cure.


Well, three weeks later we had Lydia's follow up appointment. That was interesting. The doc was great and answered all of our questions. And then he decided to throw some crazy test results in at the end. She tested positive--very positive for celiacs disease. However, she hasn't been showing any symptoms... So we are hoping and praying that it is a false positive. Doc said her body was pretty messed up when she came in and so it's a definite possibility. I'm pretty sure that would break her. But so far, so good.


They also did a test to see how many anti-bodies were in her blood to see how much of her immune system is attacking her cells. Most people who come in first diagnosed and sick, like Lydia, have 3 or 4. But Lydia had none. So that throws out the whole "auto-immune" disease. They said they will still call it and treat it as type 1 diabetes, but she is in a very very rare category for type 1. The doc also said that we have .7 insulin in our bodies. When kids are sick and first diagnosed they are at .4 or .3 but when Lydia was tested she was at .1- which means she had hardly a trace of insulin in her system. Not good. She is a freaking walking miracle.


Lydia decided she wanted to talk to the school about her diabetes. Very smart, afterall I'm sure all the kids in her class are wondering why she's poking herself all the time. So Jeromy, Lydia and I prepared a little something for the two oldest classes and it went really well. That's what I call taking control of her diabetes.


I have yet to mention our "pricker" problem. If it isn't bad enough to get sick and almost die, but then to find out you have a chronic disease that you must manage every hour of every day for the rest of your life-- only to come home and have "pricker" problems. The prickers they used in the hospital just weren't the good ones. And how are we to know that?! By the time we get home the tips of her fingers are bruised and super sore. So having to prick her is a nightmare. And then you prick her and she won't bleed. So you prick her again, and again and again. I'm telling you it's the worst thing ever.


One specific night we got home late and I was trying to 'hurry' and calculate carbs and figure out her dinner stuff and I had to prick her FOUR freaking times. On the third time I said that if it didn't work I don't care and she can just eat. Luckily by the fourth time she did bleed. But I was feeling really bad and frustrated and apologizing and she said "I know it's not your fault." What an angel. She is so strong and has never complained.


Another time I want to share was when Lydia and I stayed home from church and we were having a little chat at lunch. She said to me that when they were putting in her IV that she would tell herself that she's happy Carter and Cole don't have to do this. She would rather have to do it than them. Speechless. This girl has me speechless. Well, actually after she said that I just cried. Carter and Cole don't know how wonderful of a sister they have.


We have seen a lot of love from family and friends and ward members. Three dinners were brought in. Presents, calls, texts. So much love.


So here we are almost two months in and doing good. Lydia has really taken good care of herself- she can count and calculate her carbs and give herself insulin shots. She REALLY hates the Lantis she has to take at bedtime. I just try to get it over and done with quick so there's not much fuss about it. We are still getting up in the middle of the night (3am) to check her BS. Jeromy has been doing it a lot, because I'm up with Jake a lot (still) ugh.


On top of Type 1 Diabetes we were called in by the Stake President to switch wards. We are now in the Rocky Reach Ward and they have asked Jeromy to be Bishop of the Columbia Hills Ward. So they are doing a boundary change to make it happen. They made the official boundary change last week, at stake conference. Today was our last week in RR ward and next week will be our first week in CH ward and then the first week of March, Jeromy will be called as Bishop. I always knew he'd be a Bishop someday- no real surprise there. But, in a ward we aren't even in?! AND a month after our daughter has been diagnosed with a chronic disease AND in a struggling ward to top it off.


We haven't told kids about Bishop yet, they shed some pretty sad tears when we told them about the boundary change. It will be hard....our rough year is just beginning! I'm trying to be optimistic about our new ward and having to share my husband with them. I do hope tho, that this ward will welcome us and accept Jeromy's call and that it won't ruffle any feathers! I know Jeromy is qualified, I'm just not convinced I am!

Hospital Trip

 I guess I will start from the beginning of it all.

We went to Great Wolf Lodge over Coles birthday in November. There is when I noticed she was starting to thin out. When we went to my parents house for Thanksgiving and my dad (should have been a red flag right there) noticed that she had lost weight, too. But she was eating constantly so I thought nothing of it.

She kept getting thinner. People started to comment. Those who couldn't narrow it down to weight loss would ask if she was tired. She would always reply that she was "good". Her teacher, Linda Cashman tracked me down at the school Christmas performance and asked about it. At that point I had been weighing her. I knew she was around mid-60's. She was about 56 pounds mid-December. Soon enough she was 55, then 54. I told myself if she got to 53 then I would take her in. She was eating me out of house and home, so it didn't make sense. But still, I wasn't too worried.

On Christmas Eve my SIL, Lisa had come over to prep food for out get-together. She took one look at Lydia and told me to get her to the doc. She started asking me more questions about Lydia's behavior and mentioned that the first thing they would cross off the list would be juvenile diabetes. My first thought was, diabetes is better than allergies- at least she could still eat whatever. Which is true, but I had no idea what it really entailed.

Lisa started asking if she was thirsty a lot. She was thirsty some days more than normal, but not everyday. She asked if she was eating a lot--yes, yes she was. She asked if she had abdominal pain. Which yes, she would get that randomly.

So that night Jeromy and I looked up type 1 diabetes (thanks to Lisa) and she pretty much crossed off every thing. But it was Christmas Eve and Christmas Day the next day- so we just enjoyed our time, knowing in the back of our minds life was about to change. There's this sweet video of Lydia making Jake laugh- where life was just perfect in that moment. Oh how I want to go back to that sweet Christmas Day- instead of the he**we went through 2 days later.

Christmas Day was on Friday. On Saturday- Andy's family who was in town ended up coming up to the farm that day and played in the snow. It was crazy cold. That night Lisa had texted us asking to meet up with her in Wenatchee to take Lydia's blood. We decided to. I also saw as a symptom for type 1 was a yeast infection. So I asked Lydia that night before she went to bed if she was having symptoms. She said yes. That kind of freaked us out. Another thing on the list.

When we got up the next morning and getting ready for church, we had Lydia weigh herself and she was 50 pounds. She had lost several pounds in a matter of days! That's when I freaked out. She put on her church dress and it fit her so differently, she looked so sick. And all this time she would say that she was doing "good". Lisa had mentioned that we might want to pack a bag for Lydia- just in case- her blood numbers weren't good. So she had a bag packed. But after we weighted her before we left, I was certain no matter what her numbers were, she needed to go to the ER.

When Jeromy met up with Lisa (I was teaching my Sunday School class) and her number was 323. So he came to pick me up- we went in the church for a minute to give Lydia a blessing. Brother Richter, Brother Howe, Papa Riggs and Jeromy administered it. Then we headed to the ER.

Her blood test at the ER was 250 or something. They pricked her and took her blood. They basically said she needs to go to Seattle Childrens. They got everything ready. We brought her into the ER around 11am, she left in the ambulance around 3pm and got to Seattle around 7:30pm. Jeromy went with her in the ambulance while "lucky me" got to go home pack everybody's bags then deliver Carter and Cole to Aaron and Lisa's house. I stayed the night there and headed to Seattle the next morning with Jake.

Jeromy would send me text updates on her blood sugars. I swear the gal in the ambulance pricked her every 20 minutes for 4 hours! I wanted to hurt her! Poor Lydia's fingers had bruises on the tips from all the pricks.

I got there on Monday afternoon. I missed the first couple training classes. We were there three days learning and being trained on how to take care of Lydia. Lucky me started getting sick on Tuesday and was very sick on Wednesday. I wanted to die. I'm sure the stress of it all made it worse. My mom was diagnosed with pneumonia, so that's probably what I had. I ended up being sick for a good two weeks, too. Ugh. But I shouldn't complain I'm not the one who was diagnosed with a chronic disease.

Here's Jakey. He didn't sleep a wink.

 Lydia looked a lot more at home when I brought all her stuff.

 Not a good picture of it. But her poor fingers...

 She polished a rock and turned it in to a necklace. Carter is sooo jealous:)

 We bought her a present in the gift shop she got a husky puppy (of course) and named it Bete.

Christmas 2015

 Merry Christmas! Here is our Christmas card we sent out this year. I love it. My kids are so cute:)

 This was on the back:

 

I couldn't NOT take a Rudolph pic since I have a baby! Jeromy is appalled. But I needed the practice haha.

I love this one, too.

 We celebrated Christmas with the Riggs side on Christmas Eve at the Grange. We acted out the Nativity- it was interesting- but fun!

 Santa came!

 The beloved Christmas morning! I woke up to Cole yelling, " SHARK MANIA!"

 

Thanksgiving Time

Thanksgiving time was fun this year. John and fam came to WA. I did some family pics for them on Thanksgiving day. They came out to Palisades to ride horses. Unfortunately every year they decide to come on the coldest, windiest day of the year. The adults minded, but little Emma was in heaven!

 She didn't care much about Chente, her heart is set on Apple Crisp:)

 Don't let the sunshine fool you- it was freezing!

 Beautiful Jane.

Getting some snuggles in before they had to head home.

 Jeromy's Grandma was sick and had to have surgery over the Thanksgiving holiday. On our way home from TC, we stopped in Moses Lake at the hospital and saw her.

 My cute Jakey.

 Lydia did basketball again this year. There were only 4 games this year. Boo. She ROCKED the one game Jeromy wasn't able to go to! It was so fun to watch!

 Here's my cute Jakey again:)

 This year we have gotten A TON of snow! Here's the first of the season.

 Lydia REALLY wanted to invite her buddies over- so we decorated graham cracker houses. Melanie and Melissa are the sweetest girls, I'm so glad they are at the school and are such good friends to Lydia.