Merry Christmas 2019

 Our 4 sweet kids waiting to come downstairs to see what Santa brought!

 Lucy loved her big bear.  She named him Honey!

 Eliza and her love for everything sloth and Air Pods

 Anne Air Pods and lots of clothes and hair stuff.

 Jason clothes and Air Pods too.

Max also enjoyed his gift of dog snacks for Grandma Young!

It was a wonderful Christmas and we enjoyed being together as a family! 

We are ready to take on 2020 and are excited for the new year to come!

Christmas Eve

 Our main goal was to get trained and prove to the nurses and Dr that we were ready to take home Lucy on Christmas Eve.  That morning at the hospital Santa had come and dropped off gifts for all the kids that were in the hospital on Christmas.  Lucy and all our kids received presents from wonderful people in the community!  It was just amazing!

 At the hospital, the kids did their gift exchange with each other.

 Mike and I finally passed the Diabetes test and we took Lucy home Christmas Eve afternoon!  How grateful I am for Mike and the partner I have in helping Lucy through this throughout her life.

 That evening we had our Christmas Eve dinner and Dad got the almond and opened the family gift.

 Christmas Eve Jammies

 That night Santa came!

Lucy's Diabetes

 The week after Lucy's birthday she got sick with the flu.  She was home from school for a couple of days, but we felt she never fully recovered from it.  She started losing weight, going to the bathroom a lot, super emotional, and was thirsty all the time.  I knew something was wrong, but I just thought she was still recovering from the flu.  One evening Mike commented to me that he was worried too.  It was just what I needed to really get the ball rolling in figuring out what was wrong with her.  I looked up her symptoms and all her symptoms pointed to Diabetes.  The next morning we woke up and we took her to the insta care to voice our concern and have her blood sugars checked.  Her blood sugar was at 330 at 8am.  They told us to immediately take her to Phoenix Children's, Lucy had diabetes.  We took her straight to the ER.  Mike and I were trying to be strong for Lucy, but we both her devasted inside for our sweet little girl.  She was diagnosed with diabetes at the hospital and admitted into the ICU.

I had some pretty incredible spiritual experiences while at the hospital.  I knew that the Savior was aware of Lucy and of this trial, she would go through.  I felt his arms around me that day and felt the enabling power of the atonement strengthen me in my ability to take care of her as her mother.  I felt the power of covenants that I had made and that Lucy had made at her baptism that gave us power to be strong and knowledgeable about managing Diabetes.  How grateful I am for Savior and his grace!

 Lucy spent a couple of hours in the ICU so they could monitor her and get her stable.  That night she was moved to the diabetes floor.

 This was Lucy the next morning.  All smiles and looking and feeling so much better with her blood sugars in better control.  We woke up and jumped into Diabetes training.  The nurses and doctors at the hospital were amazing and patient with us as we learned.

 Lucy loved Phoenix Children's.  She got gifts, crafts, watched movies, and got to meet a professional Soccer player down in the game room.  It was an incredible place to be for a couple of days.

Here was our learning board.  This is how we would figure out how much insulin to give Lucy.

December Little Things

 The girls had their Christmas piano recital.  They all did so well!  We are grateful to Bev and her patience and kindness in teaching our girls piano.

 3rd grade Christmas performance

Lucy received the Character award for the month of December.  Eliza was also up doing skits as part of the student council!

We really miss the Mesa Temple and their Christmas lights.  But, Raparian park in Gilbert put Christmas light all through their park and we enjoyed walking through those lights. We went to dinner after to celebrate the start of Christmas break.

Eliza's Peace Poster

 For school Eliza had to paint a poster that represented peace.  She worked on this idea and art work for weeks.  She turned it in to the school and her poster won for her Elementary school.  It then went on to district and her poster won at District!  We are so proud of her!  She really has enjoyed painting and drawing this past year and has developed this talent!

 We love her six grade teacher Ms. Oeter!  She really was such a blessing this past year!

Congrats Eliza!!

Thanksgiving at Disneyland

 We decided to head to CA and to Disneyland over Thanksgiving.  We invited Grandma and Grandpa Schwitzer for the trip.  They were so excited to come with us since they have not been to Disney since their kids were little.  We rented a big van so we could all drive to CA together!

 The weather did not quite cooperate for us!  We thought we would be in the park on Thanksgiving, but it was raining so hard that day we decided to do some other activities.  We went and saw Frozen 2...

 We went bowling

 and then at a Thanksgiving feast at a restaurant.  It turned out to be a really great day!

 The next morning we headed to Disneyland!  It was still a little rainy, but the park was not super crowded and we were prepared with our rain ponchos.

 Star Wars land was super cool!

 We got Grandma and Grandpa Schwitzer on Splash Mountain!

 It was so fun to be there during Christmas.  The decor at Disney was beautiful!

 Goofy photo bombed us!

 Anne and Dad being brave on Guardians of the Galxey

 Next day we did California Adventure and no rain today!  We all went on the cars ride

 Dad and Jason on California Screaming!

We love Grandma and Grandpa and were so happy they could spend Thanksgiving at Disney with us!