It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Alex, Mom and I got a good start on the Christmas decorating.  It took us nearly all day to get this done!!  My mom LOVES decorating for Christmas, and this year we’re hosting the RS Christmas Activity so I had to help!  We still have more to go, another tree to put up and the bonus room stairs to decorate…but we’re off to a great start!

Family Room & “Family Tree”
The family tree has all of the Christmas ornaments that my sisters & I made over the years!

Entry Way & Main Stairs  

Outside Front Door
This is the area that needs the most work!  But we got a good start!  Plus we (Dad) still need to put up the lights on the house.

We still have our large tree we put up in the living room to do, that’s our ‘pretty’ tree…the other one is more for my mom and nostalgic!!   The RS party is on Wednesday night, so that’s our goal for being done inside (minus the big tree I’m guessing).

Oh…ignore the wreath on the den doors….that will go on the front door once we shave a bit off the top of the door so the door will shut properly with the wreath hanging on it!   Right now it keeps getting stuck!

Black Friday

Happy Black Friday, everyone!  Normally I’m an early riser and hit the stores before the open the day after Thanksgiving, but not this year.  Apparently I ate way to much yesterday and spent the night throwing up…lovely isn’t it!!  So I was pretty out of it when it was time to get up and go shopping!  So I slept in and missed all the good sales.  But after I did wake up I did head out to the mall for some shopping with Brandi, Jaime and the Girls.

Madison found these really cute hats at American Eagle so we modeled them! 

Emmalee trying a gummy butterfly!!  No Jaime wasn’t to thrilled…oh well :)

Emma fell asleep in all the chaos of shopping!

There was lots of sales going on today, but I didn’t end up buying anything.  Maybe tomorrow, when we go back out!! 

Did you go shopping today?  If so what did you get??

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a pretty laid back Thanksgiving with Mom and Alex gone to visit Grandma Plane in Salt Lake City.  We had over Grandma, Zak & Jaime with their girls, Brandi, Aunt Sue, Aaron and Helen…plus of course myself, Dad & Kelly.

Everyone came over around 9:30am and we hung out, watched football, played games, talked and of course ate lots of food!  

     Kelly & Maddie getting prettified for the day!

Emmalee

 

 

 



Dinnertime!

My family, minus Alex & Mom

   
Grandma & Maddie         Maddie & her Daddy


Jaime & Brandi

 
Emmalee

Emma and Me


Auntie Sue and Me

  
Kelly and Daddy


Dad & Zak

  
Helen & Aaron

Hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving!  I know I have a lot to be thankful for….my number one being my FAMILY!!  Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!

Christmastime Already?

I hung out with Julia and the kids today.  We met up at Alderwood Mall at 9:30am for the kids’ Christmas pictures!  They got some cute shots and also got their Christmas cards ordered!  The pictures weren’t ready for pick-up, so we’ll just have to wait to see the professional ones!  Here is a picture of each of the four beautiful Munro kids!  Love these four!

    
After pictures we hit the mall for some shopping, we were SHOCKED to see that Santa is already at the mall!  The kids were all dressed up so we decided to get their Santa pictures done too!  The girls freaked when they saw Santa, so Julia held them and then Santa snuck in behind them!

We had a great day today, but I am pooped!!  I can’t wait until Julia gets her photos back….they are soooo cute!

One Cool Dude!

“You Are So Beautiful….to Meeeee”

Emma was obsessed this morning with the triplets Princess mirror!  She kept looking at herself and laughing!!  She was tooo cute!!

Happy Friday Everyone!!!

Vibrio cholerae

This quarter I had to do another poster like the one I did on RSV.  I tried to talk my prof into letting me do RSV again, since the poster was done, but was told no.  (No I didn’t tell him I’d already done the poster).  So my poster this time as on Vibrio cholerae aka – Cholera. 

This is a horrible pandemic that is extremely prevelent in our world today.  You find it in underdeveloped countries, where water & food contamination is.  This disease infects your instines, and cuases abrupt and severe vomitting and diarrhea for days and weeks.  The loss of all the fluid is what can kill you from this disease.  It’s important to keep the fluid intake up.  Statitstics show that patients with cholera can lose up to 50% of their body weight in just days from lack of fluid!  That number is mind boggling!

We don’t hear about many Cholera cases in the USA anymore, because we have clean water and excellent education on the importance of santitation.  The US will see maybe 5 cases all year of cholera.  So it’s not something to be that frightened of unless you’re traveling to areas where the sanitation and education is poor. 

I couldn’t have done this poster without the help of my side-kick Brandi!  We got all this done in 3 days (yes I’m a huge procrastinator on projects like this), I think it turned out pretty darn well!!  All my lettering was done with Brandi’s CRICKET.  This machine is the most amazing thing ever, and highly recommended for people who do large projects like this, scrapbooking, card making and any paper craft!  I LOVE IT!!

 

Oh I love this CRICKET!  It has come in so handy on many occasions!!

 

Real Reason People Don’t Have Triplets

This morning I took the triplets to the doctor for their H1N1 shot and to get a lingering cold checked out.  Kim had forgotten they had never been to this doctor before, so I was met with a huge stack of papers to fill out…three sets of each.  Medical history, family history, hepa papers, etc.  It was unreal the amount of paperwork I had to fill out for them!  We finally went back and our nurse practioner was Jami!  I love Jami, we’ve known each other since I was 12, she goes to my church and was one of my young women leader! 

All three babies checked out just fine, probably just the lingering effects of their colds they’ve had.  But then we got the bummer…their H1N1 shots are only for children 4+….they didn’t get one!  After all that work they never got the shot!  I (and Kim) were quite annoyed by that.  We got  the same “we have an order in, but don’t know when we’ll get any” response.  I feel that these triplets deserve the shot more than most kids…they were premature and then all last winter suffered from bronchiolitis & RSV…I feel that they are at risk.  It’s just annoying!

Since all the paperwork I filled out required a parents signature we ran to Kim’s work for her to sign the papers so we could return them.  I decided to be brave and we went out to teriyaki for lunch!  I ordered the food before we went to see Kim, so by the time we were done visiting Kim, our food was ready!  So we just sat down and ate it!  Everyone behaved really well and ate a great lunch!

 Us at lunch

After lunch we headed back home for naptime!  I’m off in about 40 minutes, and then have to go continue working on my project for micro!  YUCK!

March of Dimes Fight For Preemies

On November 9th, I blogged about this event [HERE].  Today, is the day we will fight for preemies because we need to fight ― because babies shouldn’t have to.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I have personally known three families who had premature babies, the Elkins’, the Harrington's and my cousins’ little girl Emmalee. 
Elkins Triplets
The Elkins girls were born at 32 weeks, 1 day.  Their mom, Charity, spent one month at home bedrest, and one month on hospital bedrest before she delivered them on April 1, 1999.  At birth the girls weighed: Angelique- 2#15oz, Melissa- 3#3oz, and Kennedy- 3#9oz.  Even though the girls were so small they broke all records and went home 1 week (Kennedy) and 2 weeks (Melissa & Angelique) after they were born.  When Kennedy was released at 1-week-old, she was the smallest (weight & gestation) preemie ever to be released from The University of Washington Medical Center NICU. 

Discharge photo of the Girls together

Today the girls are happy, healthy, beautiful 10-year-olds!  I cannot believe how far these girls have come!  They have overcome so many odds and are absolutely perfect today!!

Recent shot of the girls 

Harrington Triplets
The Harrington’s were born at 33-weeks gestation on April 29, 2007.  Their birth weights were: Jack- 4#7oz, Nate- 3#1oz and Gabrielle- 4#1oz.  I had the honor of getting to visit them in the NICU when they were a day old!  They were so little and on so many instruments it was almost scary.  But amazingly none of the triplets had any real issues.  They spent about a month in the NICU to learn to suck, swallow and breathe on their own.  I had the opportunity to visit them a couple times a week during the month they spent in the NICU, so that was really special!

  First group photo in the NICU

Yikes!  Today, the trio are in their terrible-twos!  However, it really isn’t ‘terrible’ all the time at all!  They are a lot of fun with a whole lot of energy!  These three have also come a very long way and are no longer preemies at all!  They love to play together, chase each other and love on each other!  They have their moments, but I really think their ‘terrible twos’ are better of!f described as ‘terrific twos’!  They are awesome!

All 3 Now!  Yes, I bribed them with candy!

Emmalee Paul
Emmalee was born at 36 weeks, 3 days and was just shy of being full-term (37-weeks) on January 3, 2009.  Emma tried to come at 34 weeks, but thanks to the doctors and preterm labor stopping medication, they were able to stop Jaime’s labor and Emma baked a little longer.  One born, she had a good stay at the hospital and was able to be discharged with Jaime the day after she was born.  However, right after going home, she started to show some real preemie issues.  Emma started having apnea/brady-cardia’s a lot, she couldn’t regulate her body temperature very well and was very jaundiced.  At her first check-up after discharge her jaundice levels were way to high, and they were debating putting her back in the hospital.  However, her doctors chose to give her a few more days to see if her levels would level off and begin to drop, which they did.

  discharge photo

Emma is now 10-month’s old!  She is still having ‘preemie issues’, she has problems at times maintaining her body temperature and breathing still is off occasionally.  But she’s been thoroughly checked out my her pediatrician and doctors at Children’s Hospital in Seattle and everyone says she is fine, and will outgrow it, it’s just a matter of time!  She now army crawls and is on the verge of really crawling.  She gets up on her hands and knees rocking.  She also has started standing holding on to furniture and that means walking is soon!!  She is a beautiful little girl, and I’m so happy she’s part of my family!

  9-month photograph

[Edited 11/17 @ 9:42pm] Emmalee tried to come at 32 weeks, but labor was stopped with tributiline.  She then tried to come at 34 weeks, but Jaime's labor stopped on it's own!

I hope these three stories have moved and inspired you to also feel the need to Fight For Preemies.  They are precious children, who were born to early, but thanks to the amazing doctors and technology available today all will have healthy, great lives!
For more information about the Bloggers Unite Fight For Preemies, please visit their website HERE.