Happy (late) Thanksgiving!!!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Ours was great! For the last 4 years, I always did Thanksgiving with my mom, and David with his family. Since we are married now, we decided that it was time to join the families together and start a new tradition. So, we hosted our first annual Thanksgiving at our house! 

I was really proud of myself as I managed to do the grocery shopping all by myself – and I used coupons too! 

My mom and Lilly came over Wednesday afternoon and we started prepping everything for the big day. We brined the turkey, and made the cranberry sauce, pumpkin pies, candied yams, artichoke dip, chex mix, and muddy buddies.

Later that evening my sister and Kyra came over and we started crafting. We turned plain wood napkin rings (a deal we got from Pick Your Plum) into super cute Fall themed napkin rings.

Crafting with Kyra was quite fun. At one point she managed to get us all looking away and she grabbed a paint brush (with maroon paint on it), painted her shirt, took off running, and painted my couch! I swear she did it in less than 3 seconds – that girl is quick! Side note – yes, Kyra has a shiner. She was playing under a bridge outside at daycare, forgot that she was under said bridge, and jumped up and knocked herself pretty bad. 

Thursday morning my grandma text messaged us each a sweet Happy Thanksgiving text at 5:56am (Grandma still needs to learn the rules of texting)! The text woke my sister up, so she decided she needed to go to the bathroom. She got up, and then Kyra started crying. So my mom got up to check on Kyra, but then Lilly (my mom’s dog) started whining/barking for my mom. So then we were all up (except for David - he can sleep through anything).

We lounged around for bit, then prepped the turkey, put it in the oven then started getting everything set up.

Once people started showing up we set out all of the appetizers

Finally it was dinner time!

Some people ate a bit too much and needed to take a little nap

And then it was time for dessert!

All in all, I’d say that our first Thanksgiving quite the success!

 

Tough Weekend...

This weekend has been a trying one for my family…

Thursday night my niece, Kyra, was fussy all night and she seemed to be stuffed up. My sister thought that is was because Kyra was teething (she had 3 teeth about ready to break skin), and didn’t really think anything of it. Friday morning, Kyra was dropped off at daycare as always and my sister and her husband went about their normal workdays. At about 11:00 the daycare called my sister and said that Kyra had not stopped crying and she was having trouble breathing.

My sister left work, picked Kyra up from daycare, and took her to the doctor. After running a few tests they realized that her oxygen counts were low, so they did two breathing treatments on her and neither was successful. The doctor then decided that it was time for Kyra to go to a children’s hospital.

An ambulance came and picked up my sister and Kyra. Once she got to the hospital she was immediately admitted to the PICU (Pediatrics Intensive Care Unit). They ran a few tests on her and deemed that Kyra had bronchitis and RSV. I have not allowed myself to do any Internet research on either, but from what I know is that neither are good for babies at all.

My sister and Kyra stayed the night in PICU (only one parent was allowed to stay) and I don’t think that either of them got much sleep at all. They had Kyra on an IV and were having her breathe through their oxygen feeds. Throughout the day they dropped her oxygen levels and monitored her closely. At 7pm on Saturday they allowed Kyra to leave PICU and move to the Pediatrics floor of the hospital. 

According to the nurses, they are moving Kyra through pretty quickly. One nurse said that most cases that come in like Kyra’s usually stay in the PICU for 5 days! So being that Kyra was only there for about 24 hours seems promising.

All day Sunday they continued to drop the oxygen levels they were feeding her, and to monitor her closely. Once they have her completely off the oxygen feed for 7 hours they will consider her stable and ready to go home. Hopefully this will be sometime today. Kyra is not one to stay still and is going stir crazy being stuck in the hospital room.

Watching my sister go through this has been heartbreaking; I really don’t know how she has managed to keep it together. When we went to visit her at the hospital, it was extremely difficult to not break down crying right there. Seeing sweet Kyra with all of the tubes and IVs sticking out of her and being poked and prodded by the nurses was something that I never imagined I’d see. Kyra, being the smarty pants that she is, would try to hide whatever body part she thought that the nurses were going to go for. I swear, she is incredible and never ceases to amaze me. The whole time were visiting her she was in good spirits and was laughing and playing, and she was even learning how to maneuver around without letting her tubes get in her way.

Thankfully that child is strong and is going to make it through this entire ordeal okay. Once she is out she will have to be monitored for a while to make sure that this does not turn into asthma, but other than that there should be no lasting effects. We said lots and lots of prayers this weekend, and it appears that they have all been answered.

(Last) Weekend Wrap Up

Last Saturday David and I got up pretty early, went out to breakfast, and then headed down to my sister’s house to take Kyra to her first Harvest Festival.

 

Kyra and her Nana and Grandma

Kyra had no idea what-so-ever what was going on, but she had a blast! She played all of the games, went down a big slide, and even won a fish!

Afterwards, we all went back to my sister’s house to have a family BBQ. One of my brother-in-law’s patients gave him a bunch of pomegranates and they were about to go bad. So my sister and I randomly made white chocolate pomegranate cookies that were ah-mazing! I would share the recipe with you, but all we did was google “pomegranate cookies” on her iPad and went with the first recipe that we saw. 

When David and I got home, we were very happy to see that our roommate moved out (he was supposed to be out a month ago)! So all day Sunday was spent cleaning out the roommate’s room, turning it into our guest bedroom, re-decorating our guest bathroom, and doing lots of laundry. 

All in all it was a pretty great weekend!