Christmas Newsletter 2017

Merry Christmas!

We have had another great year full of creating lasting
memories. Most of our trips were for sport or family,
but it was great to visit places like Salt Lake, Kansas
City (Westley and Jill), Alaska (Ben), and Disneyland..

Ben stays busy with work (still in the City)
and coaching the University Women’s Swim
Team. He graduated with his Master’s degree in Public
Administration in the Spring and was recently promoted
at work to Assistant Director of Parks and Recreation.
He was asked to serve in the Bishopric this year and that
has been a blessing to our family.

Jill has been busy homeschooling the kids and
chauffeuring the kids to all their activities. She
also volunteers for many of their activities,
including being on the board for the kids’ musical
theater group, and helping with costumes and
backstage at the dance studio. Jill is still serving in
the ward Young Women’s and at Girls Camp this
past summer. She also made a goal to run a 5K with
Westley and has run two this year.

Jenna has been busy with her passion - dance. She is at
the studio four days a week taking classes and being a
Teacher’s Assistant for some younger classes. She was
Glinda in the studio’s production of the Wizard of Oz
this year. Jenna recently turned 13 and is super excited
to be a teenager. She also works hard in her schoolwork
and is a great help to her younger siblings with their
work. She was in three plays this year, including being
Rapunzel in 12 Dancing Princesses. She loves going to
Young Womens’ activities and loved her first Girls
Camp this past summer.

Westley loves sports and anything that can be remotely
competitive. Much of his free time is spent practicing
sports. He played soccer, football, volleyball, basketball,
and participated in track, cross country, ninja warrior
training, and swimming this year. Football is his favorite
and he still says he wants to be an “NFLer” when he
grows up.  Westley qualified for Jr. Nationals in the
1500 M this summer and he and Jill traveled to Kansas
for the meet. Over the last year, he has also learned to
code video games and has spent many hours creating
projects. He won an award for Most Technical Project
in his computer science club. He also enjoys playing with
friends, scouts, and watching sports.

Charlotte enjoys art, musical theater, dancing, sports,
swimming, reading, and sleeping. She was in three
plays this year, including a part as Pocahontas in 12
Dancing Princesses. She participates in several dance
classes and loves to perform. She was very excited to
be taking tap with some older girls this year. She also
enjoys sports including volleyball, swimming, and
soccer. She also participated in track and field this
spring. She turned 8 and was very excited to be
baptized - she had been looking forward to it for years!

Westley's Eye!

Westley had a crazy accident in October. While at a party, they were launching paper rockets that the kids were trying to catch as they came down. The paper rockets being shot up multiple stories with an air compressor. Adults were doing all the launching and adults were all around, including myself.

Well, I guess our son took the "keep your eye on the ball" concept to a whole new level. He was staring straight up at a falling rocket, point come down first, ready to catch it when it hit him right in the eye. I was watching and I remember thinking "surly he is about to turn his head." But no. The rocket hit him right in the eye, and my first reaction was to turn away! I mean Westley screamed and he NEVER screams in pain. That kid can handle a lot of pain.

I did turn back to see my Bishop, the neighbor's house we were at, sliding across the road to Westley. He told me it was bleeding, but wasn't too bad.(Which means it was not gushing out. Which was good, because I was picturing his eye hanging out or blood squirting across the road or something.) 

I was pretty much frozen and good for nothing, so Bishop had us get in his car and he drove us to the Emergency room. And some others told me they will take care of the girls. I am guessing the party ended quite quickly at that point.

Anyway, to make a long story shortish, the next few weeks were filled with almost daily doctor appointments, often twice a day! He had a bunch of damage to his eye, but they thought most would heal. His main issue was extremely high eye pressure do to some damage in the area where the eye drains fluids. For awhile we were doing eye drops every two hours during the day. And usually we had to do multiple kinds of drops each time, with 5 minute wait periods between, it would take like 20-30 minutes to do drops. Then we had to start all over again in 1 1/2 hours. Westley also had to learn how to swallow pills!

I became quite stressed during this period of time because at the same time we had weevils in our pantry, our dishwasher was not working properly, and Ben had recently started putting in vinyl planks, so our main living area was torn apart! At one point I had food on my counter, was hand washing dishes, our fridge was in the living room, and our stove was in the dinning room, I was having to give drops to Westley every two hours, and we were going to the doctor twice a day. I don't really even know what the girls did for like two weeks. The picture below shows all the food from the pantry on our kitchen counter. You can see our new flooring too.

Well, the pressure in his eye was not improving like the doctors had hoped and we were sent home Friday thinking that after our Monday appointment we would probably we going to Salt Lake for a pediatric specialist. We decided to give Westley another priesthood blessing and have a fast for him that Sunday. At his appointment on Monday we were surprised to see all his numbers improving. We decided to give it a little more time on his current med schedule and all week he improved. Over the next few months we were able to slowly cut back on drops as his eye kept improving. We are very grateful for all the prayers and blessing that were giving on his behalf. 

In the end, one of his least favorite parts of this ordeal was missing flag football and having to wear sports goggles! And probably the few days of intense pain and the throwing up. (The high eye pressure caused headaches and throwing up.)

And while he was perfectly willing to show anyone who asked, his bloody eye, I did not take a picture.

Also, I blame this craziness for the lack of pictures and posts this fall.