Baby Gaven

This is Nakia's newest addition - Gaven - born May 25. Isn't he so cute??

Ray's Birthday - Before West Nile

I guess this is what you call digressing. The West Nile incident happened after Ray's birthday, but I had a minute the other day, so I thought I would get that blog out of the way. We actually had birthday cake for Ray on the Sunday after his birthday and we really didn't celebrate. His 2 friends Brandon and Tyler came to visit for a minute and I had bought a cake the day before, so we had cake with them.

I am not sure what to think of this picture. He is looking a little silly for sure, but he looks half asleep too.

Well, in looking at the rest of these pictures, everyone must have been in a pretty silly mood.

I think Tyler wins the silly picture award for sure!!

Or is it Peyton? What a bunch of fun people we have in our lives!! They really make it all worth while.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAY!! We love you!!

Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy

Continuation of Utah - May

This was the night that we bought our car.  We were so tired and this was about 8 that night.  We ate at the Myan and the girls really liked the divers, but the food wasn't the best.  It was one of those things where once was good enough.  But, at least we were all together, which is not usually the case, since Ray doesn't travel with us on our adventures.

I think this was how we all felt by the end of the evening.  We did have fun, we were just so ready for bed.

Life as we know it.....

Enough time has passed now that I feel like I can tell about our most recent medical issue.  About 3 weeks ago on a Friday, I talked to Ray a few times throughout the day.  I thought he didn't sound like he felt very well, but he will usually tell me if he is under the weather.  Well, the last time I talked to him I decided to ask him what was wrong.  He told me that he didn't feel very good at all, his head hurt, and so did his neck and throat.  He was on his way home, so I told him to just try and get home and we would dope him up and put him to bed when he got home.  He called me when he got close to St. Anthony, which was where he was supposed to unload, and didn't sound any better at all.  He was trying to get one of the other guys to unload his truck for him, but none of them would because he has a BRAND NEW truck and they were too nervous to drive it.  The next call I got was from Kinlee saying that dad was home and he was mowing the lawn, but didn't look good and that he had just asked her what her name was. 

I am going to go off track here for just a minute.  A little over a year ago Ray starting asking questions about people he saw in pictures that he should have know, like who are they or what is their name.  It started getting a little freaky when he didn't know the neices and nephews names.  He blood pressure was on the rise and the doctor here hooked us up with a cardiologist in Idaho Falls thinking that maybe that was the cause of the memory loss.  So, Ray has been seeing a doctor in Idaho Falls for his high blood pressure so they can hopefully figure out what is going on.  But, he has always remembered our names and others he sees regularly.  So, when he asked Kinlee what her name was, she was a little alarmed, but we weren't frantic yet.

Back to the story......The next phone call I got was from Jerika.  Side note.....Jerika is in charge of mosing the lawns and her dad really doesn't let her get out of it very often.  That being said, when she called me she said that dad wouldn't let her mow the lawn that he was doing it and she just needed to go hang out with her friends or something (red flag).  I told her to go out there and give him the phone.  She handed him the phone and I told him that she needed to do her job and not him.  He started to argue with me and so I told him to chill out, he told me that his head hurt really bad and I told him to shower and I would meet them in town at the doctor's office.  After that I got another phone call from Kinlee and she was crying, he didn't remember Jerika's name either.  I told her that I had told dad to come into town and I would meet them, Jerika got on the phone at that point and told me that dad said she was supposed to drive him somewhere, but he couldn't remember where.  At this point, with two sobbing children I jumped in my car and headed home.  When I got home, they were all crying in the living room, Ray included.  He could remember anything, it was so scary.

I loaded them all up in the car and went to the emergency room and he asked SEVERAL times on the way there where we were going.  When we got there they checked him in and did the basics and he had a 102.5 fever and he said his head hurt so bad.  The amazing thing was that his blood pressure was lower than I had seen it in years.  I thought that maybe that was what was happening was something with his blood pressure, so that ruled that out. 

Luckily mom headed out from her house as soon as we left the house so she was there a few minutes after we were to sit with the girls, who were beside themselves, poor kids.  The doctor gave Ray some pain meds and then started asking several questions.  Most of which I had to answer, but when the doctor asked him if he had been around misquitos lately he remembered that, because he had been in a swarm (I guess you would call it that) in Canada the week before and they were the size of flies.  The doctor ordered some pain medication and then we headed down to the CAT scan, where Ray kept asking the techs every two seconds where we were going.  Oh and that was after he asked me what my name was and kept calling Kinlee that little girl.  When they got him in the CAT scan he asked me if he had a son and what his name was.  The CAT scan ladies kept yelling at him through the speaker not to talk, he must not be a good minder even when he is delirious.  After that they took what seemed like a gallon of blood out of him to run some other tests and then we just had to wait. 

After the pain medication started working he seemed to little more cohearant, which made us feel much better.  The one thing the doctor was really worried about was meningitis, but the only way to know if he had that was a spinal tap, which would just make the headache worse.  Anyway, all the other test result came back, no tumors or brain bleeds, and nothing else that looked out of the ordinary.  Then the doctor informed us that he was pretty sure it was West Nile Virus, but they would have the tests results back for several days.  He said that since Ray was feeling better and starting to remember things better (the kids and my parents both came into his room and he knew all their names) he didn't want to do a spinal tap.  They monitored him for a little while longer and then at 6 our neighbor, SUPER LORI (she's awesome) who works at the ER came in and he knew who she was, which was a good sign also.  The Dr. agreed to let Ray go home and rest, but if anything took a turn for the worse we were to go back to the ER.  I took him home and he slept pretty sound that night and then the next morning the doctor called to check on him (nice, right?).  He had made it through the night without incident, so that pretty much ruled out meningitis.  And he lived to tell about it all, well, what he remembers of it anyway.  He did call the hospital to get his results last week, and he kind of got the run around so we haven't tried back.  We are just going with the West Nile diagnosis, which by the way you should go online and read the symptoms, it is pretty freaky.  The bad thing is that there is no treatment for it because it is a virus so, he just has to get lots of sleep and stay up on his pain meds. 

He is feeling MUCH better and remembering things better than he seemed to before.  I guess this is just another learning experience in the life and times of the Young family.  We are just so thankful that it wasn't anything worse and we know that this too shall pass. 
(Note: I didn't proof this, so don't judge me if there are errors.)

Silly people!!

I just noticed that my last 3 blogs have something to do with the word last. So, I made sure this one didn't.
Well, our Honda took a turn for the worst. He started smelling really sweet and upon further examination, Ray realized that there was antifreeze going into the engine block. So, Ray decided that I need a reliable car, since he isn't home a lot. He searched and searched and searched some more to find a good car that was in our price range. He finally found one, so we made a quick trip to Utah to pick it up. These are actually pictures from the hotel room and not of the car. It was quite a trip and the girls were so patient, even though we spent way too much time at the car dealership. I will post a few other pictures of the rest of the trip later and maybe a picture of the car. I am not really even sure I have taken one yet.

I don't know what is worse.......my double chin or......

Seeing up my nose. Anyway, Ray took this pictures, so I am blaming them on him.
We were there long enough to swim at our hotel, and Ashlin even came to hang out with us for a little while. One of these days she is going to be very sad because there aren't very many pictures of her because she doesn't like her picture taken. We also went to lunch with Shelby and his family and I guess dinner too Ray decided that he can wait a very long time before he travels with us EVER. Us girls are just used to doing things without him that it was hard for us and him to remember that we have to make decisions together. In other words, I actually have to consult with another adult instead of making all of the deicisions myself. It was weird.
All Kinlee ever wants to do is swim when we go anywhere, so she was happy. She was even more happy that there really wasn't much time at all to go shopping this trip.

Last dance recital???

Here are Kinlee's costumes from the dances she did this year. She had so much fun and loves it, but I would rather she take piano lessons. However, she did a really good job this year. It is funny because she is so much taller than all the girls in her class. They are all in the same grade, but she is definately the tallest. Isn't it funny how a little premie baby can grow up to be taller than most of the other kids her age.

She loved this dance, the hit woofle balls into the audience, and our granny actually got hit in the head with one. But, that is how we roll, if someone is going to get hit it is going to be someone in our family. There was another group that had water guns and oh yes, we got wet too. Poor Granny, I don't know if she will come to another dance recital anyway.

Her hat says Ray. She was a construction worker. The theme of the recital was "Our Town" and it had dances about places we have in Rexburg. Her dance teacher is so clever. She always dances at the end of the recital and she is pretty amazing and she's a grandma too. The one thing I really like about her is that she "loves" all the girls and I think that is one of the reasons Kinlee doesn't want to quit is because she LOVES Miss Melanie.

In action. For the life of me I can't remember what this dance was and what thing in the town it represented. But, she did a really good job. When Ray doesn't go with me it is really hard to take pictures and video at the same time. I had mom do the pictures and she did a pretty good job.

Jerika, of course, helped back stage, but I didn't get a very good picture of her when they came out on the stage.

Jerika's last Sugar City choir concert

I am really hoping that in this picture they haven't started yet.

I think they all look pretty excited here, although Mr. Cherrington looks baffled. Maybe this was after he cried, because he is going to miss Jerika next year. At least I am pretty sure that is why he got teary eyed, even though he didn't say that in his little speech.

At this point I am wondering if I actually took any pictures of them singing. It was a stressful night and I was just glad I made it to the concert. Thank goodness for my leaders in Young Women who took over Senior Graduation night at mutual.

Okay it is confirmed, no pictures of them singing. At least I took pictures, right? Once again, MOTHER OF THE YEAR!!

Kinlee's last volleyball game

Wow, volleyball is over. It was quite a commitment, but she had so much fun. She is really a good little player and she has turned into quite the server. She is going to a volleyball camp right now at the high school and loves it. Maybe I will end up with a sporty child after all. Jerika didn't want anything to do with any of it, espcially the running back and forth of soccer.

This is most of the team, I think there might have been at least one missing. They all got medals and were pretty excited about that. I think for her first year she did an amazing job.

SCRAPBOOKING

Once again I will state that I am so behind!! I have been Utah twice since this event. Tiffnie and Tonia were going to meet in Layton for the weekend and scrapbook, so they invited me along. I can't believe how much I got done and boy did we have fun!!
Our hotel had 2 bedrooms and a kitchen, so we sat everything up in the living room and scrapped there. The first night we all went to bed and I fell asleep with my television on (each room had one and so did the living room.) I woke up a little while later and realized it was still on, so I turned it off. Then I heard the tv in the living room going (and I remembered turning it off myself). So, I got up and both Tiff and Tonia were sound asleep, so I looked around the hotel room and found nothing. I was totally freaked out, but I got back in bed and went to sleep. The next day Tonia was watching tv in the living room and Tiff was switching channels in her room and it was changing Tonia's channels too....mystery solved, all the remotes worked on all the tv's.

These were bracket things that you would put around words, so we used them as mustaches, hey we thought it was pretty funny.
(No, we don't get out very much.)

Thanks for taking me with you guys!! Lets do it again very soon!!