Sabbatical Week 3

This week we drove from the Seattle, WA area down the Oregon coast to Crescent City, CA.  We woke up at 3:30 in the morning on Tuesday to get an early start and miss the traffic.  We hoped the kids would sleep in the car in the wee hours of the morning.  They were too excited to sleep at first, then too hungry, then too grumpy to sleep.  So it ended up being a VERY long drive, both in terms of time and crankiness!  The Oregon coast was beautiful, but driving it was much slower than we expected and you don't really see the ocean very much while you're on the highway.  However, the times you do see the ocean the views are spectacular.  Even still, if we were to do it again we'd probably save ourselves a few hours of driving and skip the coast.

We stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory along the way.  Liz and the kids are huge cheese fans, and we took the self-guided tour of the factory and tasted the free samples.  We bought Tillamook ice cream cones for everybody, and soon regretted it.  The workers messed up our order, Whitney almost lost the ice cream off her cone, when Liz tried to show Whitney how to hold a cone so as to not lose her ice cream, the ice cream fell off of Liz's cone, Brooklyn was screaming hysterically, Michael kept losing his balance and falling down with his cone, ice cream kept getting everywhere including all over Liz, ... Before I had even finished straightening out our order, Liz had had it and rounded up all the kids and took them straight to the car (where ice cream proceeded to get all over everything else).  When things had settled down a bit we had a good laugh about it and remembered that when you have your hands full with young kids, something as simple as getting an ice cream cone can be a major undertaking!

We finally made it to our beach house in Crescent City and had a blast!  The beach was a block away, and the kids just couldn't get enough of it.  They'd play there all morning, come back to the house for some lunch, and go back and play all afternoon or evening.  There is a lighthouse that is only accessible during low tide, so we visited the lighthouse and the nearby tide pools, finding all kinds of hermit crabs and sea snails.  The current lighthouse caretaker and his wife are volunteers for the summer and have a special vehicle that can get them to and from the lighthouse at high tide in an emergency.  The caretaker said of course he uses the vehicle responsibly, but joked it's amazing how many emergencies you can come up with when you have access to such a fun vehicle.

The redwood forest was only minutes away as well, so we spent half a day hiking among the huge trees, climbing the fallen ones, and even drove through a particularly large tree on our last day.  We had so much fun in Crescent City we ended up staying an extra day.  It's a quiet little area with so much to do and not crowded at all.  One of the mornings we had the whole beach virtually all to ourselves.  The only real downside was finding a mouse in the master bedroom as we were getting ready for bed!  I caught it with a cooking pot and a baking sheet, and let it go out by the road.  The house was clean and well maintained so we're still not sure how it got in there, perhaps through an open window is our guess.

We continued our drive down the coast to San Jose to spend some time with my parents.  Our drive took us across the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  We spent more time listening to the Harry Potter books on CD.  Our oldest two children are finally old enough to get into the books, so we've been listening to the first few books and then watching the movies (fast forwarding through any parts that are too scary).  We've made it through the first two books and movies so far.

Tillamook Cheese Factory

"Five little monkeys sleeping in a bed.  One fell out and bumped her head." 

Splashing in the ocean in their clothes

Catching more waves (in swimsuits this time)

Plenty of sand to go around

Whitney the mermaid

Daddy and Mikey on our way to the lighthouse

Stout Grove in Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park

Driving through a tree

Approaching the Golden Gate Bridge

Sabbatical Week 2

This week we visited the beautiful Northwest.  We started off with a few days in Portland Oregon.  I lived in Portland for a summer many years ago as an intern and have very fond memories of the area.  One of my favorite places in the whole world is Silver Falls, near Salem.  I've always wanted to take my family there and finally did it!  The trails take you through beautiful forested areas to ten of the most stunning waterfalls you'll ever see.  You can actually walk behind several of the tall waterfalls.  It was just as beautiful as I remember it all those years ago.  It was an exhausting hike with young kids, especially having to carry Brooke and Mike for much of it.  But definitely well worth it.

We also visited the famous Rose Gardens in downtown Portland, which happens to also be next to a large children's park.  The park is handicap friendly, which allowed Michael to explore it easily and safely without us having to monitor him closely.  He still falls easily, so we usually have to keep an extra close eye on him when we take him to parks.

Our hotel was about a mile away from the Portland temple, so we took the family to see the temple and the visitors center.  The temple is very beautiful and our older children in particular commented about how peaceful and wonderful they felt on the temple grounds.  They particularly enjoyed going to the quiet indoor garden area just inside the temple.  The flowers on the temple grounds weren't quite as plentiful as those in the Rose Gardens, but they were just as beautiful.

After Oregon we traveled to the Seattle area to visit my brother, Steve, and his family.  We watched the fish throwing at Pikes Place, visited the infamous gum walls covered in used chewing gum, saw the Space Needle up close, and soaked in other sights and sounds of the area.  On Saturday Steve challenged me to racquetball at the YMCA (he's gotten pretty good since the last time we played) and we attended church with Steve's family on Sunday.

Upper North Falls, Silver Falls

North Falls, Silver Falls.  We are in a cave behind the waterfall.

 

South Falls, Silver Falls.  You can see the path that takes you behind the falls.

Behind the South Falls waterfall

The kids found a fun tree to climb into on our hike

Behind the falls at Lower South Falls, Silver Falls

Admiring the roses at the Rose Garden

This one smells nice

Portland Temple

Portland Temple

Pikes Peak market in Seattle

The lovely (and disgusting) gum wall in Seattle

The space needle in Seattle

Trying to take a selfie while driving past the space needle

Sabbatical Week 1

One of the great things about my job is we get an 8 week sabbatical every 7 years.  My sabbatical started around the 4th of July, so we decided to take a "little" family vacation.  It started off with a Wheeler family reunion in Yellowstone National Park.  It's probably been 6 years since we've all been together as a family.  Other than my brother Scott's three oldest children who no longer live at home, we crammed the entire family together--48 people in all--into two beautiful cabins in Island Park, Idaho, near the west entrance to Yellowstone.  After spending a week in Yellowstone and playing in a river near our cabins, my parents and five of us siblings drove to Meridian, Idaho for our nephew Nathan's mission farewell.  He'll be leaving this week to serve a two year mission in Phoenix, Arizona.  It's amazing how quickly he has grown up.  He'll be a fine missionary.

Celebrating Mikey's 4th birthday just prior to our sabbatical!

  Mikey has come such a long way in these four years and we are so thrilled he is still cancer free!

We're on our way to Yellowstone!

We found a bison trying to make a break for the exit

The bison was just outside our window, close enough for us to touch!

Hiking down to see a waterfall

"Chuck" Norris Geyser Basin

We carried Mike and Brooke on our backs for part of our hike, but tried to let them walk as much as possible.

Mammoth hot springs

On some of the off days from Yellowstone we went paddle boarding near our cabins

Liz got the hang of paddle boarding rather quickly

Whitney paddle boarding with her cousin Josh

Hanging out after a hike to Lower Falls in Yellowstone

Old Faithful

Wheeler Family 2015

Are we done taking pictures yet?

The cutest kids ever!

Family photo just outside our cabin

Mikey and Whitney drinking from one of the water features at Settlers Park in Meridian, Idaho

One Year Club

Early Thursday morning Liz drove Michael down to Children's Hospital in Denver for his MRI and multidisciplinary clinic, which is basically visits with lots of different doctors and specialists.  We had a bit of a hard time finding a babysitter who could watch the other four kids all day, but a good friend from our previous ward jumped in to help at the last minute.

Michael has had a bad cough the last few weeks and we were concerned about having him sedated and being able to hold still during the MRI with his cough.  We called an anesthesiologist friend of ours to ask his opinion, and he thought Michael would probably be okay, but it's really up to the anesthesiologist on duty.  When Liz checked in at the hospital, the anesthesiologists were very concerned and didn't think Michael should go through with the procedure because of his cough.  They thought there was a good chance they'd have to put Michael in a very deep sleep and intubate him, which could mean he'd have to spend the rest of the day and all night at the hospital recovering and miss all of his clinic appointments.  Liz calmly explained that if Michael didn't get the MRI, he'd miss all of his appointments anyway since they're contingent on the results of his MRI!  Not only that, we had no idea how long the cough would last and it could be months before he could get in for another scan.  What if they refused to scan him and there was something there that needed urgent attention?  The anesthesiologists were very displeased, but agreed to at least try.

Back at home we were doing a lot of praying for Michael that he'd be able to proceed with the MRI.  He'd received a priesthood blessing just before leaving for the hospital as well.  Miraculously, everything went perfectly during the scan, he didn't cough a single time, and the scan was clean!  Still no signs of cancer recurrence!

Survival statistics for Ependymoma are tough to come by, particularly for children like Michael who was diagnosed at such a young age.  We've heard some estimates that Michael had about a 20% chance of survival when he finished his treatments nearly 3 years ago.  Since Michael has gone without a recurrence for 3 years, his chances of long term survival have increased substantially.  His oncologist estimated Michael now has about a 65% chance of survival if he remains cancer free 3-7 years after treatment.  It goes up to about 85% if he's cancer free for 7+ years.  At that point the chances of his Ependymoma recurring are slim, but he becomes more likely to develop secondary tumors and other complications.  So he's never going to be completely out of the woods, and he'll need scans for the rest of his life.  But it does mean he has moved on to the "one year club", meaning he only has to get an MRI once a year now rather than every 3-6 months.

One of his doctors visits that day was with an ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat) specialist to evaluate Michael's hearing loss.  One major cause of his hearing loss is some blockage in his ears due to radiation induced scar tissue.  The doctor recommended putting tubes in Michael's ears for the next year to allow fluid to drain, and to have his adenoids removed to help prevent fluid accumulation in the future.  We'll likely do the surgery sometime in August.  Incidentally, the doctor also diagnosed his mystery cough as an upper respiratory infection and prescribed some antibiotics.  We had taken Michael into his pediatrician a few weeks ago to try to get the cough diagnosed and taken care of before the MRI, but the pediatrician misdiagnosed the problem as allergies since Michael's lungs were clear.  Also, the ENT specialist said that knowing now what was causing Michael's cough, he would have strongly advised against the MRI!

Michael had appointments with a host of other doctors and specialists that day, including a neurosurgeon, ophthalmologist, psychologist, oncologist, endocrinologist, and rehab specialist to name a few.  The one appointment we weren't able to schedule was a hearing screening, so Liz was planning to have to bring Michael back later.  Fortunately, the ENT decided to do a hearing screening as part of his visit, so even that was accomplished!  Another answer to prayers!

As expected, Michael registered mild to moderate hearing loss in both ears again, which hopefully the tubes in his ears will help mitigate.  On a positive note, the hearing screening ensures that Michael will be able to attend his sign language preschool again in the fall.  We were getting a lot of push back from the school district about keeping Michael at McGraw since hearing loss isn't considered his primary disability.  Never mind that he has many disabilities, and that sign language is his primary form of communication.  So having evidence of hearing loss actually helps our cause in a big way.

Another thing we learned is that the radiation damage to Michael's pituitary gland means he isn't getting proper hormone levels.  One hormone we'll need to address in the near future is growth hormone.  Soon we'll need to administer daily growth hormone shots to Michael during his growing years, which could be the next 15-20 years.  We're not looking forward to that.  But one potential upside besides helping him grow properly is it could help improve his energy levels.

Overall, the doctors were very pleased with Michael's progress.  They believe that eventually he'll learn to walk and talk.  It's still unclear how well he'll be able to do either of those, and how well he'll be understood when he does talk.  He continues to make slow progress, but it's progress in the right direction and his rate of improvement in the last few months has increased.  He's more interested in talking now, and between his speech and signs we can understand a lot more of what he's saying than ever.  He's such a brave, miraculous little boy who continues to beat the odds.  We're so happy to have him in our family!

Yea for a clean scan!!!

Some improptu family pictures we took one Sunday after church

Brooke is always so excited for bath night she doesn't bother waiting for us to help her get undressed

Spencer and Michael clowning around

This volleyball net was a Christmas present.  We finally had a sunny weekend we could set it up

Taking a break during a bike ride to the Fort Collins temple site