Summer "vacation"

Since Memorial Day, our summer break went from being pretty busy to crazy hyper-drive!  We have been swamped boxing and cleaning our house to get it ready to sell, handling some challenging decisions with the new house, hosting lots of family, starting new and intense therapy with Michael, getting the kids in the new summer routine, and keeping Liz's feet from swelling too much.  The baby is due this Friday and Liz is ready for the baby to arrive sooner than later.  A friend recently said to Liz, "I don't know anyone who has ever put their house for sale when they were 39 weeks pregnant."  This is not what we would have imagined for ourselves either.   Our house will be on the MLS Monday morning.

We can hardly believe this is all happening at once.  We also had a big hail storm last night so we've got leaves littering our lawn to clean up in the morning.

Last weekend Tim's sister Emily came to visit us with her husband, Tony and their kids.  The intent was to help us get ready for the baby to come, little did they know what that implied!  They worked hard helping us with landscaping, decluttering, cleaning, moving stuff to storage, and helping to watch our kids.  It was amazing to see what we were able to accomplish in a weekend with their help.  Their timing couldn't have been any better.

Riding the local kid's train with the Bradshaw's

On Saturday just as Tony and Tim were driving away from the house to take a load of our belongings to storage, some of the kids came running out of the house to tell us there was water dripping from our basement ceiling.  Tim went to investigate, and sure enough, one of our water pipes was leaking.  He cut open the drywall and fixed the leaking pipe, but here we were, just days away from listing our house on the market, and our basement ceiling looked like this:

The earliest we could get someone to patch the drywall was on Friday, the same day the real estate photographer was coming to take pictures of our house!  Talk about cutting it close.  The photographer came in the morning with the instructions to use a camera angle that didn't show the hole in our ceiling.  The drywall guy came in the afternoon and did a beautiful job repairing the hole. We are finally ready to go!

Here's some more of our summer fun:

The water table Grandma got for Spencer and Michael's birthdays has been a super hit.  Michael's Real Kids Shades have transformed his life as he can be outside in the sun now without his eyes killing him because he can't squint.

Michael has had several evaluations and therapy appointments in the past couple of weeks too.  We started a new speech therapist in Denver that focuses on oral-motor skills.  She is fantastic!  Here she is working with Michael to teach him how to blow into a whistle, something we wondered if he could ever do.  She is confident Michael will be able to eventually say all vowels and consonants.  We are going to try and see her often as possible during the summer with our busy schedule and then see her weekly when school starts.  She also recommended we see a regular speech therapist once a week locally as well to work on Michael's language acquisition and vocabulary skills so he will eventually have two speech therapy appointments a week.  While he understands just about everything we say to him, he is about 75% speech delayed, so we've got a lot of work to do to help him catch up.

Tim's brother, Scott, and his family stopped by for a day on their drive from California to Nauvoo (Illinois).  He and the older 3 kids spent the day with them at Rocky Mountain National Park.  It was so fun to see them.

We had a great night out with good friends in Fort Collins at the local dinner-theater.  It was great to get together and catch up.  Tim started out with these guys as friends at BYU.  They all eventually married and we now have almost 16 kids between all of us!

The kids just finished up 2 weeks of swim lessons.  On the last day, Sarah had the courage to jump off the diving board for the first time!  She did awesome.  Whitney and Spencer were in the same class and unfortunately still haven't made progress in getting their faces wet.  Whitney is almost too old for the classes offered for her skill level since she hasn't made progress for a few years so we will be looking into a good private teacher to help her.  Any suggestions?

Next post:  hopefully about a new arrival or a house sale!

We're Moving!

It's been a very eventful last few weeks.  For this post we'll talk about the house.  We've known for years that we'd eventually outgrow our starter home and need to get something bigger.  So we've been looking off and on for the last few years but never found anything we liked well enough to justify a move.  And with Michael's illness, any thoughts about moving have been put completely on hold for the last year and a half.

About a month ago Liz and I had a conversation to see if wanted to start looking at houses again.  We're starting to feel awfully scrunched with another baby joining our family in a few short weeks.  She's literally going to be sleeping in a bassinet in our upstairs hallway when we bring her home from the hospital.  But we decided there's no way we'd want to move this year, with a baby being born in June and how intense Michael's therapies have been.  We decided that if the right house came along we'd wouldn't turn it down, but we wouldn't be actively looking and we'd plan to stay in our current house at least another year.

Within a week of making that decision, we put an offer on a house.  It was a great house, in a great neighborhood, had everything we needed except a yard.  The next day we decided the lack of a yard was enough of a deal breaker and withdrew our offer (it hadn't been accepted yet).

A few weeks later we saw another great house in another great neighborhood and ended up putting an offer on that house.  Our offer was accepted!  So now we have to get our current house ready to sell, and we're going to be moving, and we're having a baby in a few weeks.  Are we insane?! :-)

Family Portrait

My sister Emily drew this wonderful family portrait for us in honor of Michael's brave battle with cancer.  The portrait of Michael is based off of one of the last pictures we have of his charming smile.  The rest of the portrait is based off a family picture we took last summer shortly after Michael completed his cancer treatments.  We are so grateful he's still with us and thriving!

Sarah, Whitney and Spencer finished school last week, so summer vacation has officially begun!  We're enjoying our Memorial Day weekend with Liz's parents here in town.  They were originally planning to come last month for Liz's birthday but at the last minute they had to change their plans.  They've been a tremendous help around the house and with a couple of home projects.

My brother ate my homework!

This is the last week of school for our kids.  Sarah has a big report due on Monday about sea turtles and we've been trying to encourage her to get it done early so she doesn't have to worry about it.  She managed to get it done a week ago, but the other day Michael found it on the floor.  In a blink of an eye he managed to rip it to shreds and start eating it!

It's a hand written report, so it's not a matter of simply printing off a new copy of it.  What's Sarah going to say to her teacher on Monday?  That her brother ate her homework?  We managed to gather together all the pieces Mikey hadn't digested and taped the report back together as best we could.  We emailed the teacher to let her know what happened.  If Sarah was in high school or college she'd probably want to rewrite it, but for a first grade report we're calling it good enough.

Sarah's repaired report...almost as good as new!

Mikey's funny that way when it comes to eating.  He still mostly eats bread, cheese, and milk.  Even in nursery at church they give him all kinds of crackers and raisins and he'll barely touch them.  But when it's coloring time and they bring out the paper and crayons, he quickly starts shredding the paper and stuffs the pieces in his mouth.  Oh well, at least he's getting fiber in his diet.

Spencer turned four on Tuesday.  He loves balls and playing with his indoor basketball hoop, but the indoor hoop was getting to small for him.  We found a great deal on an adjustable outdoor hoop, so he was thrilled to receive it for his birthday. 

Spencer testing out his new hoop

Spencer's gumball cake

"I wish for...more gumballs!"

Happy Birthday Spencer!

 Spencer's been going through a bit of an identity crisis lately.  Whenever we call him Spencer he always corrects us by saying, "I'm not Spencer, I'm Peter Pan."  Or "I'm daddy".  Or "I'm baby".  Or someone else.  Sarah went through the same phase when she was Spencer's age with Disney princesses.  The other day when we asked him to clean up a mess he'd made Spencer told us "I'm not Spencer, I'm a grown up".  When we asked him why he was a grown up he said, "Because grown ups don't have to clean up!"  We got a good laugh about that one!  I wonder what he thinks we do all day and especially at night after he's in bed.

At school last week Whitney got to say the pledge of allegiance over the school's PA system with a few of her classmates.  One of them, a boy who hasn't been very nice to her, showed up late.  The other kids didn't want to make room for him, but Whitney invited him to come stand by her. 

Later that day there was an awards assembly at school.  Sarah won the academic achievement award.  We're so proud of her for working hard in school!  Whitney didn't win any awards and was feeling a little sad about it.  But after witnessing what she had done for that boy in her class, when Whitney got home from school Liz presented her with the "Kindest Kindergartener" award, complete with a certificate and flowers.

Whitney and her classmates reciting the pledge of allegiance

Sarah wins the academic achievement award

During Michael's vision therapy appointment last week the therapist acknowledged that Michael's vision is doing so well that there isn't much left that she can do for him.  Such a tremendous blessing after being mostly blind a year ago!  His vision isn't perfect and never will be, but especially after his eye surgery last December it's doing very well.

We also found a new speech therapist for him down in Denver.  There aren't any speech therapists close to us that have any experience with facial paralysis.  A typical speech therapist gets their face close to Michael's face and repeats syllables over and over (such as as "ba-ba-ba-ba-ba") until he gets the hint and starts repeating them as well.  Well, in Michael's case, that's like a physical therapist walking around and around a paraplegic in a wheelchair until he gets the hint and starts walking.  Michael's facial paralysis renders him physically unable to do certain things, so merely demonstrating those things to him is completely useless.  This therapist in Denver has specific training and tools for facial paralysis, so we're hoping it will make a difference.  It's expensive and it means going to Denver on a regular basis, but if it helps him with his eating, drinking, and speaking, it will be worth it. His first evaluation is in June.

Let's Play Music

Three years ago Sarah started taking music lessons from "Let's Play Music".  It's a great three year program introducing young children to music in fun ways.  Sarah's done very well in it, but there have been times we wondered if she'd ever complete the program.  For example, there's been a lot of driving across town to Miss Emily's house for lessons, so we're grateful to friends who have gone out of their way to take her to lessons when we weren't able to.  Parents have an active role in the program and have to be there for some of the lessons, so we're grateful for babysitters who have watched our other children on days when Liz had to be there with Sarah.  Not to mention the numerous times Sarah got frustrated when she couldn't learn the songs right away and didn't want to practice anymore.  She's such a perfectionist (takes after her parents) and we debated whether it was worth all the backtalk and tears to keep her in music lessons while she's so young and with everything else going on in our lives.

But Sarah stuck with it (as did we), and on Friday night she wrapped up her three years with a recital where she played a song she composed herself to a large gathering of parents and fellow students.  We were so proud of her!

Sarah's recital

Sarah's song is called "Snowflakes".  Sarah's teacher emailed us an mp3 of it a while back so we could hear what it's supposed to sound like.  When Liz played the mp3 for me I didn't know what it was at first and said, "That's a pretty song, who wrote it?"  She gave me this incredulous look and replied, "Sarah did."  "What?! Let me hear that song again!"

Watch Sarah's performance of "Snowflakes"

After the recital we gave Sarah a bouquet of purple flowers--that made her beam!  She also received a song book with all of her fellow classmate's original compositions.  She's trying to learn some of them and is already starting to write more of her own.  Upon seeing the purple flowers Whitney asked Sarah to teach her how to play her song so she can get flowers too!  Unfortunately we don't feel like we have the bandwidth to put Whitney in Let's Play Music, but she is definitely showing an interest in learning to play music and we hope to put her in piano lessons before too long.

Our kids had another snow day on Wednesday, the first day of May.  In the course of one week they went from playing in the snow, to playing in the sprinklers, to playing in the snow again.  That's Colorado for you.

MRI results

Liz took Michael to Children's hospital this morning for his 3-month MRI.  It's clean!  Dr. Foreman was very pleased with the progress Michael is making.  He's actually grown 4 inches since his last MRI 3 months ago.  This is remarkable since there was a good chance radiation was going to wipe out his ability to produce growth hormones.

Also, this last week we've seen him trying to close his eyes!  He mostly does it when he's upset, like when we try to feed him puree's from a spoon.  In the past he could only close them at night when he's asleep, and he's progressed in recent weeks to being able to half-close them when he blinks.  It's great he's still making progress in that department.

He still likes to climb up the stairs whether we're watching or not.  He can do it pretty well for the most part, but he's had a couple of tumbles when he loses his balance.  Fortunately nothing serious.

First winter snow storm

We've had a pretty dry winter with very little snow.  Now that we're halfway through April, we got our first "major" snowstorm last week with almost two feet of snow!  I don't mind the spring snow too much, since I know it will melt pretty quickly.

Tim and Whitney clearing the driveway

Sarah having way too much fun clearing snow off the trampoline

We still haven't figured out what the bedroom arrangements will be in June when our baby girl is born. So we tried a couple of experiments over the weekend.  On Friday night we put all 4 kids in Michael's room.  Michael slept in his crib and the other three slept on the floor.  Spencer lasted about ten minutes before he was sent back to his own room for "disturbing the peace" one time too many.  Otherwise the night went pretty well.  On Saturday night we tried having the three older kids sleep in sleeping bags on the floor in the basement rec room.  They've always wanted to go "camping" down there and had a ball.  There are a lot of toys down there, so this was the scene I found when I went to check on them this morning.

This Thursday Michael has an MRI on his brain and spine down at Children's Hospital to check on the status of his tumor.  We're praying for good news!

Hazel's Birthday

Yesterday Michael's friend Hazel celebrated her second birthday.  Hazel is just a few months older than Michael, has the same cancer as Michael, and was diagnosed a few months before Michael.  We met Hazel and her family last year at Children's Hospital while Michael was recovering from his first surgery and Hazel her second.  Hazel is such a sweet little girl and comes from a wonderful family.  We're so grateful to know them.  Sadly, Hazel's cancer has returned, so her birthday party was both a wonderful and a sobering event.  She and her family are always in our prayers.

At the party we visited with two other ependymoma families who are also being treated at Children's Hospital in Denver.  Tanner and Natalie were both diagnosed at a very young age.  Tanner is now a teenager, and the Tanner Seebaum foundation founded by his family has brought millions of dollars into Children's Hospital to help fund pediatric brain cancer research.  Michael is very much a beneficiary of his foundation.  Natalie was diagnosed a few months before Hazel and has made a miraculous recovery thus far.  Watching her play and interact at the party she seemed just about like any other three year old.

Thanks for the birthday wishes, Mikey!

Here's a birthday kiss!

Michael's daily physical therapy is really starting to pay off.  This last week he started crawling on his hands and knees a bit more, rather than his usual army crawl.  He also climbed to the top of our stairs all by himself for the first time!  I have to stay behind him in case he loses his balance and takes a tumble.  But for the first time I didn't have to help him or catch his fall even once.  Today he climbed the stairs again by himself, crawled over to Spencer's toddler bed and climbed onto it, pulled himself up to the foot board, and stood there clapping to himself for several minutes.  "Look dad, I'm king of the mountain!"

Special Needs Kid

This is me and Michael today.

The girls are at school and Spencer is sitting next to us finishing up a game on the Nabi.  It's a snowy April day.  I love the snow, even in April.

Yesterday, Michael astounded us by spending most of the day crawling with his arms extended.  For Michael this is nothing short of extraordinary.  We wonder and hope that maybe one day he will walk.

He's able to stand stable for longer periods of time, long enough for me to snap a picture of the boys waving goodbye to daddy in the front window, our daily morning ritual.

We enjoyed a weekend of General Conference for our church.  We set up a "tent" for the kids and had all sorts of games, activities and treats while we watched the beautiful inspirational messages from the worldwide broadcast on television.  Our kids love this weekend and are always disappointed in only comes every 6 months.

Mikey found a balloon to bounce around and play with

The kids having a relaxing morning

Although Michael is making progress, his needs are still sky-high and each day presents numerous challenges.  He is still on anti-nausea medicine everyday and even with that will vomit every once in a while, like last night at dinner.  He eats poorly and we have to spoon feed him at least a couple of times a day to make sure he gets adequate calories and nutrition.  Several times a day he becomes exhausted or doesn't feel well and needs to rest in our arms.  He is prone to accidents and falls, especially as his interest in things around him increases.  We have to keep a hawk's eye on that little guy.  And as I mentioned last post, communicating with him is very difficult.  His physical challenges make it seem like he is a special-needs 12-month-old, rather than a 21-month-old.  Nevertheless, despite it all, we feel so blessed everyday we have with him.

Turning a page

                                                     Happy Easter everyone! 

Here's some updates of the latest around here.  Today is April Fool's so our jokers Whitney and Spencer like putting on each other's pajamas:

Sarah lost her two front teeth and is as cute as ever.  This only happens once in a little one's life and I can't help but love this grin:

And I love it when the kids are all home from school and we have lunch together:

The kids had a great Easter with what we thought was plenty of "stuff."  But funny enough, our oldest remarked that she was pretty disappointed that this Easter wasn't like last Easter because, "we didn't get very many things this year."  Of course, last year we had so many wonderful people provide us with beautiful things for our children for Easter.  So I guess this year was time to readjust expectations for these guys!

We had a little egg hunt in our backyard:

Whitney

Spencer

Daddy and Mikey

Sarah

Sunday we enjoyed beautiful weather and celebrating the miracle of Easter.  The kids also loved their new Easter clothes.

Had to capture one of Sarah at the piano.  She just recently finished writing an original piece for her piano class and I might say I think it turned out pretty awesome. 

Captured this one just after Whitney had been sobbing her eyes out over one thing or another, a daily ritual for her lately.  But it made her cheeks cute and rosy nonetheless!

Spencer ate through his candy faster than anyone.  He doesn't like chocolate so he plowed through handfuls of jellybeans.

Everyone got empty baskets except for Mikey who took home the biggest stash (just kidding).  He just happened to have the basket we had compiled all the candy into.

Along with these happy days, the last couple of weeks have been filled with some bittersweet moments for Tim and me.  It's been the turning of a page in our lives, so to speak, as we've come to terms with the new Michael.  Saturday, March 30th, marked one year since Michael's second surgery which left him with significant disabilities.  It was one year ago we last saw him smile as he once did.  It has seemed like a long road in which every day we've had to take a walk with grief, some days brief, and some days longer. 

Michael practicing his signs while watching, "Music and the Spoken Word," his favorite Sunday show because he loves the music so much.

He also loves rolling balls back and forth with us

Each day is a challenge is trying to communicate with him as he was our baby that "talked with his face."  He has trouble forming words because of his paralyzed face, and his sign-language skills suffer because of his impaired coordination.  Some days I go to bed wondering if I even understood any thing he was trying to say to me that day.  But we get up the next day and try again.  And again.  And we have marvelous days and terrible days and everything in between.

But perhaps because of the promise of Easter, the newness of Spring, and brighter days that fill us with hope, we have begun to see and accept the new Michael as a gift.  Truly, we feel blessed that he has a little smile on his right side so we do know when he is happy.  We have beautiful pictures of him taken just before the surgery, so we will always know and remember that smile.  And his personality is so great and he is so much fun to be around that each day is a special day just to be with him.  Sarah commented the other day that when she's feeling down, Michael somehow always seems to help her feel better.  Perhaps we are coming to realize that this is how it was always meant to be and that if we look for it, we will realize this life will be sweeter than if none of this had happened.

And here is 21-month-old Michael as he is right now:

I *heart* the smartphone

Did I mention I also *heart* reading Whitney's readers from Kindergarten?

These will keep me occupied for a long time

My body may not be perfect...

but I've got a lot of love to give.

I'm also into getting into cupboards and drawers and dumping their contents.

While this might annoy some moms and dads, it makes mine super happy to see me able to do so much.

Happy Easter everyone!