Emily's MRI

Yesterday, Emily had the next step in her neurological evaluation done. We went to Children's Hospital and she had an MRI done of her brain. Dr. Tervo, the neurologist over at Gillette Children's, ordered an MRI, extensive blood work to do chromosome testing, DNA testing, etc. She's having a hearing test on Friday and her vision checked next week. Last week she had a physical therapy evaluation done at Gillette. They are going to give us a guide to outpatient things we can work on with her to improve her motor skills. She was rated as having motor skills of a 24-28 month old. She has shown improvement since she's been going to school and getting 1:1 work with the therapist weekly, but we'll need to work with her through the summer.
Anyhow, we went to Children's yesterday at 8am. She got right into the Radiology Dept. They put the numbing stuff on her arms to get an IV going for the sedation medicine. Poor kids has veins like me, no good ones for an IV. They struggled finding one and after digging around for a few minutes, success and the screaming stopped. We went through the sedation medication with the pediatrician who would be monitoring her throughout the scan. He said that the medication would take effect within 5 seconds of it going through the IV. They weren't kidding, she was out cold in about 2! I wonder if that is available for bedtime use??? (just kidding!)
Anyhow, she was gone to the MRI room for about 40 minutes and then brought back and started waking up. She had a really tough time coming out of the sedation. Very ornry and cried for a long time. Finally, she just popped to her old self and was ready to go home. But only after we went to Grandmas to get her brother. She kept saying "I miss Louis Dano, I miss brother."
It was so cute.
I didn't bring the camera along to the MRI, we didn't need to memorialize that trip to the hospital . . . she was such a trooper and did so great. Dan and I were so proud of her!

Last night, we went to her school for the end of the year social. They had live music, cookie and ice cream. We wanted to meet some of her friends parents to hopefully get together over the summer; especially her best friend Emmett. We looked all over for him and it turns out he was sitting right behind us. It's such a small world! Emmetts dad was a friend of mine in highschool. We haven't talked since graduation! He went to St. Thomas, we all hung out in the same group of friends. What a coincidence.
Anyhow, they were glad to meet Emily too and they're anxious to get together and play this summer.
I have a couple of pictures, but of course, they're still in the camera. Will post tonight or tomorrow.

Sorry, bad blogger. . . .

It's been a busy week for the Pelletier Family. We had a nice laid back holiday weekend. Dan umpired some baseball games on Saturday and then worked for his friend Peter at a Lifetime Fitness event on Saturday night. I took the kids to the farm for the day to have fun with their Tapio cousins.
Louie was in HEAVEN up there. There are a bunch of old metal Tonka trucks in the shed. Well, you would think he had died and gone to heaven. These trucks weigh about as much as he does, but he hauled them around the yard with him. He had a ball. Emily got to take Nick's tackle box and fishing pole down to the lake and "fish" (aka: float a bobber on a line in the water). She was very excited to do that. Louie got to ride around the yard with Charlie on the tractor and then "drive" it. Ever since we were in Florida and I made the HUGE mistake of letting him sit in the drivers seat of the rental car while we installed carseats, he wants to drive everytime he gets in the car. He's quickly approaching the terrible two's, something we never experienced with Emily. Emily went to the doctor last week for a pre-op appointment and the doctor asked why she had all the bite marks on her arms? Dan and I were clueless, until Sunday when she was screaming ouch in the play house in back and there were teeth marks on her arms . . . Louie was running the other direction. It was obvious who bit her. . . .
Everyone was tired and the kids were asleep before we even got to the paved road leaving the farm.
On Sunday, we had Pat and Judy Whalen over for a BBQ. They are the friends that we're going to Hawaii with. What a fun time, we are sure going to have fun over there. Dan told them that I really wanted to go on a helicopter ride around the island for my birthday and Pat announced that he happened to have just received his helicopter pilot's liscence, what a coincidence! Thanks for the offer, but we'll go with the guys that run the trips on the island for a living. I said I would go any day, but Friday the 13th!!!!
Monday, we went to the Como Zoo. It was the first weekend that Como Town was open. We were there with about 10,000 other people. The zoo wasn't nearly as busy though. We saw tons of animals. It was great!
I'll post pictures soon, promise!
Here's two tired kids leaving the zoo.

Exciting news!

Dan is taking me to Kauai, Hawaii for a belated 40th Birthday celebration.
We'll be there June 7-14. Emily and Louie are going to Auntie M's house for the week, with a couple of days at Grandma and Papa's in the middle while she takes Billy to the junior bass tournament up in Sandstone, Minnesota.
We've been telling the kids that they're going to stay with Auntie M and Uncle Scooter. Now, Emily walks around the house asking when Uncle Scooter is coming home from work???
It should be a fun week for all. They'll have lots to do over at the Tapio's; walks to the Como Zoo and the lake, walks to the library and they've got a playground right in their own backyard.
Ted will be heading to Spa Owen with his buddy Ivy for the week.
We'll get home on Sunday afternoon, just in time to celebrate Father's Day with the Florida Jansen's, who will be arriving on Saturday for a week long visit to Minnesota.
Emily and Louie are very excited to see their cousins again, they love to look at pictures from our trip to Florida.

The Ramos cousins are leaving for the Philippenes on Monday, Memorial Day. They'll be gone for 2 weeks! We'll be thinking of them all as they take that 18 hour flight with 7 kids and a newborn, YIKES. Did anyone see that episode of Jon and Kate plus 8 - Plane Ride to Utah??
Hopefully, they'll have a good trip and will all be sane when they get back . . . .

No pix again . . .

It's been a busy week at our house. We had Grandpa Don over for dinner on Sunday to celebrate his birthday. It was so good! Beer can chicken and delicious potatoes (with tons of garlic) that we saw on the Food Network. Louie likes to eat the potatoes like an apple, he just digs into the whole thing.
Lately, both kids have been going through a growth spurt and putting away the food like you wouldn't believe. Emily had an appointment last week for her neurological evaluation at Gillette Children's Hospital, she finally tipped the scale at 30 pounds and she's 35 inches tall. Louie is still a skinny little thing, he's only 25 pounds. It seems like he's grown taller though. All his pants fit him in the waist (they're 12-18 month size!), but they're too short. We had to go to the store and get some 18-24 month with an adjustable waste so he wouldn't have floods. Not sure how tall Lou is though. We'll have to measure him one of these days.
Today was the day that I dreaded. Emily got on the bus to go to school and she started sobbing and got herself so worked up. She was just screaming! I felt so bad for her. Hopefully, she'll be ok this morning and they won't call to have her be picked up. She got to sit by her best friend, Emmett. She pretends to call him on the phone at night and says "Hi Emmett, see you on the bus tomorrow for school. Good night, bye." Hopefully, Emmett's parents will be at the ECSE picnic at the end of the month so we can get together with him over the summer. The aides on the bus and the bus driver both said that they are best friends, he asks about Emily everyday.
We've got a busy weekend ahead. Dinner at the Lynch's tomorrow night and then Mother's Day at Grandma and Papa Jansen's house on Sunday. The husbands are taking care of all the food (at least at our house he is. . . )

All Better

We're all better now. Life is back to normal.
Emily went to school and boy was she excited to see her friends on the bus this morning. She was also excited to wear her new rain boots and rain jacket too. Something about kids and puddles, requires them all to have a pair of rain boots. She and Louie LOVE to run around in theirs.
Dan and I got the whole house ready this morning for the carpet cleaner to come at 8am. We moved everything that would fit through the porch door outside only to find out that his new steam cleaning machine had a leak and needed a new valve. He called and was going to be late. Well, he called a little bit later and said that he wouldn't be able to get it fixed today. He needed to reschedule for next Tuesday. So, we need to move all the stuff back into the house for the weekend. . . . bummer. I really was looking forward to clean carpet, finally!

On the mend . . . .

We're on the mend, but not 100%. So, we're being cautious and staying clear of friends and family (and work) until everything is gone.
Emily and Louie finally got their appetites back last night at dinner, pasta with alfredo and broccoli was a huge hit! Fevers have been gone 24 hours, but each of them still has some sores in their mouths.
Both kids are also full of energy today. Dan may take them on a walk this morning to burn off a little energy.
Funny story, sort of . . . my project of working on pictures etc. at home is continuing and I've been busy trying to learn some tricks in Photoshop. One thing, we needed to get a new DVD burner in our computer as our current burner doesn't read DVD's. So, being one that always need to try and do it myself, I ordered a new DVD burner from www.newegg.com (excellent website for computer stuff, great customer service). Well, it came yesterday afternoon. So, I thought I would install it myself. I got the computer all disconnected from the cuzillion cables and wires and got it all taken apart. The old DVD burner was pulled from the computer, only to find out that I had ordered the WRONG one! Who knew that there were different types of connections to the computer? Of course, I had ordered the other kind from what we needed. . . .
I immediately called Newegg.com and the very understanding woman sent me the correct one right away and also sent me a prepaid UPS label to send back the wrong one. So, we never paid shipping on anything for this thing. That's great customer service, if you ask me. Shipping costs sometimes cancel out the savings you get from shopping on line.
Best news of all, we'll have the right DVD burner by Thursday and I can take the computer apart again . . . I'm getting anxious to get to work on our wedding images.
That's another story, I sent in all the negatives from our wedding photos to www.digmypics.com and they converted them all to .jpg and put them on DVD. We're waiting to get our album made . . . should be soon.

YUCK!

We all came down with hand, foot and mouth disease over the weekend. YUCK!
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hand-foot-and-mouth-disease/DS00599/DSECTION=1
It's disgusting and it's very contagious.
So, I'm working from home today and no school this week for us.

Update on School

Emily went off to school today on a BIG bus. It still had the integrated child seats in it, but it was a BIG bus. She was excited for the change this morning. We got out to the bus and it was a sub driver and aid, but the students were the same. Apparently, Emily's friend Emmett said that he wanted Emily to sit by him this morning. He told Lisa, the aid when they pulled up in front of our house! He was very exicted to have her there.
It's funny, in the last few weeks I've run in to several people that were in my graduating class from highschool. Dan and I went to a "newbies" party at Nativity a couple weeks ago, there were three people from my class at Derham there. As I was standing in line to go through security as MSP on my way to Palm Beach last week, I ran into another person from my class. This morning, the substitute aid on Emily's bus was also a classmate of mine from Derham.
Maybe it's a sign, with Emily going to school in the old Derham building . . .

Ugh! Back-up Photos and Photoshop!

Last Friday night, some "kids" were out and about the neighborhood causing trouble. Being that light sleeper that I am and our bedroom window was open, I heard them out carousing in the street. At first, we thought it was people from the house on the corner outside smoking . . . until the doorbell rang.
Dan and I both jumped out of bed, he to his robe and me to the window to see what was going on. I could hear them, but couldn't see them.
Well, they stopped by and left a box of junk on our step . . . but lit it on fire before running off.
Ever since then, I've had visions of our whole house burning to the ground and all I can think of is all the pictures that we would lose . . . wedding pictures, family pictures, kids pictures, etc.
Currently, we don't have them backed up anywhere. I found SmugMug last year when I was searching for somewhere to scan negatives and make them digital, but never checked it out.
I checked it out in January and have had every intention of starting to upload pictures to their website.
Well, I've finally started uploading and what a project!
http://pelletierfamily.smugmug.com
At the same time, we've gotten all our wedding photos transferred to digital images and want to create an album, but they need a little work. Now we're adding Photoshop to the list of things to work on.
If anyone has a recommendation on books for Photoshop Elements, please let us know. It's soooo user friendly and my patience for this stuff isn't very long.
We're plugging away at all the pictures to Smugmug . . . I didn't realize we had so many pictures.

Ted and Ivy

When we go out of town or simply need a break from Ted, he goes on vacation to Spa Owen where his buddy Ivy lives. He LOVES to go to Ivy's house and goes nuts when he sees the Owen's car pull up in front of our house.

Mary just sent me a couple pictures of Ted and Ivy before their Russian Motorcycle Club meeting . . .