October

I feel like this month has kind of kicked me down. Of course, the majority of that is all of our health issues. The boys both got some sort of flu bug a few weeks before Dane's big sickness, and at the same time Dane was in the hospital Graham had an ear infection and pinkeye and then Tommy got both of those too! What in the world? Our normally pretty healthy family has been overrun lately. It has been rough. And before all of this, I hadn't really been myself for a few months with the morning sickness so it's been a long time since we have really been on top of our game around here. But we still had a few cute/good moments this month in between all of the mess.

I was Pinteresting hard core getting ready for General Conference. I felt really strongly that we needed to prepare SOMETHING or else Dane was going to spend the entire eight hours of Conference moaning about how "someone needs to play with me" like he did last time around. I made these Conference bags with little activities for him for each speaker. It worked for about 2 of the speakers, haha. I bet in a few Conferences it will be worth the energy.

What worked better was bringing all of the train tracks into the family room and building trains with him while watching. Both boys were entertained by this.

We got to have Grandma and Grandpa come visit us in between all of our sicknesses! They were actually here for Kurt's white coat ceremony for med school at UTSW but we got to have them staying at our house and spending time with us. Dane and Graham loved it. We kept it super low-key and hung around the house (except for the med school stuff).

Grandma and Grandpa are always so happy to play with the boys and read to them. It's all they want.

Graham couldn't have been happier.

While they were visiting, it was Graham's first Sunday of nursery. HALLELUJAH WE ARE THRILLED THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF OUR LIVES THANK YOU NURSERY LEADERS.

He could not have cared less about Tommy leaving him. He was like, what? There's a room full of toys here and you've been making me wander the halls for months??

My birthday was a few weeks ago. The big 2-8! It was actually an awesome, very laid-back day. I got a nice breakfast (complete with Lucky Charms) and Tommy got me all three High School Musical DVDs so that I could still get my fix even though I won't be seeing them at my family's house any more. I took the boys for a nice walk in the morning. We had a friend (my friend, who has boys my boys' ages) come over and play/chat in the morning, and then I went to the gym in the afternoon. Dane got sick that day, and Tommy was so nice and came home early so I could still go work out and leave him home. It was a lovely day. I truly had no expectations and felt totally satisfied with the little bit of celebration that we did. 

A few days after my birthday I took the boys to this little shop to buy a wall hanging I had seen that I wanted to buy with my birthday money. They loved this little bench outside the shop and sat here for a while.

Graham. So proud of himself that he can now crawl up onto the couch. So dangerous in every way.

He's always putting on my shoes. He has an uncanny ability to distinguish between my clothes and Tommy's. He will point at our shirts in our closet and say, "Mommy! Daddy!" I have no idea how he is that observant when he still can't even say words like "hungry" or "drink."

We love Danish chocolate toast. Danes are GENIUSES. (The Danish kind and our Dane kind.)

We finally re-filled our sandbox with more sand and the boys have loved it.

And yet they still want me to take them to the park near our house with a sand volleyball court so they can play there too.

I took them there in the bike. I wish we could use this more often. I LOVE biking places but almost nowhere is close enough that Graham will last without screaming his head off.

 Graham playing peek-a-boo with the tablecloth, haha.

I am so bad at giving haircuts. But it has to be done. Although I kind of wanted to leave Graham's hair like this.

Family pizza movie night--and both boys just wanted to lean on me the whole time. I love having them snuggle me.

And look--this was yesterday. I'm starting to look pregnant! I should probably make a general announcement so people know they can ask me about it and not just wonder. I am 19 weeks along now and starting to feel like it's hard to bend over. I haven't really had the chance to think much about this baby yet though... I would love to start thinking about names but it is going to be hard. I guess I haven't mentioned it here, but while Dane was in the hospital I had an OB appt and we found out the baby is a GIRL! I am nervous because I feel like we've figured out the whole boy thing--and now we're starting from scratch again. But we still will love you baby girl, even though we hadn't had much of a chance to bond with you just yet. I guess that goes with the territory when you're baby #3. We're all going to have to get used to going with the flow soon.

Dane goes to the hospital

It sounds so dramatic to say it like that. I felt almost bad telling people that Dane was in the hospital because it sounds so scary and awful, but I actually was relieved to be there and felt the whole time like everything was going to be fine. It was such a relief to have the doctors recognize what was going on, and take it seriously, and to remove the responsibility of deciding what to do about him or if his fever was high enough from my shoulders. It was a very stressful few days leading up to the hospital before we went there, but once we were there, the hardest thing was just juggling Graham and keeping an eye on Dane's temperature. I just wanted to write this all down, although this is way more detail than anyone else needs to know. Feel free to skim.

It all started on my birthday (what a great day) when Dane came in and told me he wasn't feeling good during his naptime. I was literally in the middle of texting the words, "No more sickness! We are finally all feeling better!" to my sister-in-law who had asked how we were doing when he walked in. It seemed just like a normal fever, and the next day (Thursday) I brought him to the walk-in clinic and he had an ear infection, so the doctor gave me an antibiotic and we went on our merry way. Then three hours later, Dane's eyes got watery and red and started leaking non-stop goop, so we went back to the walk-in for some antibiotic eyedrops for pinkeye. But he kept getting the fevers on Friday, and they were getting pretty high. On Saturday we were about to head out to go to an air show in Fort Worth when we realized he had a 103.5 fever and a rash all over. So I took him to the urgent care and they said he had scarlet fever. (!!)

Apparently scarlet fever is taken care of by the same antibiotics he was already taking for his ear infection, so they said not to worry and just carry on. But his fevers kept spiking Saturday (up to 104+) and on Saturday night he came out of his room at about 9 having thrown up all over the bed. He threw up several more times during the night and all day Sunday. He basically didn't eat anything and eventually was throwing up even the water and even worse, the Tylenol, which he needed with his fevers going so high. I got so worried I called his pediatrician (the on-call number) and she said just to keep giving him Tylenol/Ibuprofen and cool baths and to come in first thing on Monday morning. So we did, and she said his ear infection looked like it wasn't getting better with the antibiotics they gave him and she gave him an antibiotic shot which she hoped would clear everything up. Just in case, we scheduled a follow-up for Tuesday morning as well. I can't overstate how stressful the weekend was. He was acting so sick and refusing the medicine and screaming about the cool baths and not wanting to drink the water and gatorade we were trying to give him and I kept thinking, should I bring him in to the ER?? (Because of course it was the weekend and his pediatrician wasn't open.)

This was how he looked on Tuesday morning before we went in to the doctor's again. I decided not to give him Tylenol until right before we went in, because she needed to see how bad he really was. On Monday, Dane had perked up by the time we got there and was acting totally normal and even asking for snacks, which he hadn't done for a few days. But when we were there on Tuesday, our doctor knew something was up and told me it looked like something called Kawasaki disease. She wasn't very familiar with it, she'd only seen it a few times in her residency, but she looked it up and said he met all the criteria of Kawasaki: high fevers for five+ days, scarlet fever rash (so he didn't have scarlet fever, it was just the Kawasaki looking like scarlet fever), red chapped lips and mouth, red swollen eyes, swollen hands and feet. The problem with Kawasaki is that it is inflammation of the blood vessels, and although it will eventually go away on its own, it may affect the arteries around your heart and cause aneurysms. So they take it very seriously--and we were sent over to the ER at our children's hospital, which is luckily right across the street from Tommy's work.

I feel so, so, so very grateful that our pediatrician recognized it for what it was. She hadn't ever dealt with it before. But she was able to recognize it and send us to the hospital where they saw it pretty frequently. Those doctors at the hospital knew exactly what to do and were able to answer all of our questions. We felt so blessed that we were in good hands all along the way.

Dane waiting in the ER to be checked in.

He did NOT want to get the IV put in. He cried and cried and it took about five different people trying to get it in. But once it was in he was a good sport about it and he totally left it alone the rest of the time we were there. 

Look how sick he looks. 

Anyways, we got to the ER and they did some bloodwork and we waited for about five hours watching TV while they did a bunch of tests and decided where to send us. They also did a chest X-ray of Dane to make sure he didn't have a silent pneumonia (since he also had a nasty virus on top of the ear infection, pinkeye, and Kawasaki's that was making him cough horribly). Eventually they admitted us and sent us upstairs to spend the night. The doctor up there decided to monitor him overnight and see how his fevers got before starting to treat him, because there's no test to say if you have Kawasaki or not, so they didn't want to over-treat him in case it was something else they hadn't checked yet. 

He had fevers throughout the first night but they were giving him Tylenol and Ibuprofen regularly so it never got that high. But in the morning they decided to hold off on the Tylenol to see what his body did regularly, and within a few hours he had spiked up to 104.5. So they jumped into action, and we had to wrestle with Dane for 10 minutes to get him to swallow the Tylenol (he was SO DONE taking medicine!), and they gave him an IV with immunoglobin antibodies to fight off the Kawasaki. The IV took 12 hours and they had to check his vitals every hour to make sure his body was responding fine. 

When he wasn't feeling terrible we played a few games--they brought us Candyland and a Memory game.

They also gave him an EKG to check and see if his heart had been affected at all by the inflammation. It looked perfect.

After they finished the IVIG, Dane basically started feeling better. They want to keep you there for observation for at least 36 hours after the IVIG ended, and he kept getting low-grade fevers so they kept extending our stay to see if they would need to do the whole treatment again (and then extend it another 36 hours after that). But he was feeling so much better already. The last 2-3 days in the hospital were mostly just the nurses taking his temperature every four hours. It was super low-key and Dane literally watched the same 2 Paw Patrol DVDs on repeat for two days straight. He would not let us change them and if we turned them off he went berserk. It was CRAZY. I honestly think he liked the hospital because he was watching non-stop TV and he got to order hot chocolate and juice and soda from the cafeteria. He was pretty much in heaven.

We smuggled Grahammy in to visit him every day even though we weren't supposed to because of his virus. Graham wasn't a great visitor though. He got bored after about 30 seconds and wanted to leave the room. We kept saying how grateful we were that it wasn't Graham who was the one stuck in the hospital bed with an IV in his arm.

 Kurt came to the hospital on Friday night so we could all have our family pizza movie night like we always do. We watched Planes Fire and Rescue and Dane at least was totally enthralled.

Finally on Saturday they deemed him fit enough to go home and we brought him home! We were so happy to have him feeling better. They kind of scared us with dire warnings of "If he has any fever at all this next week, you need to bring him straight back to the ER" and it created a pretty stressful day on Saturday when he started getting a mini fever. He cooled off naturally without any Tylenol though and we decided not to check ourselves back in at the hospital. I never felt that stressed in the hospital--it was before we got there and then after we got home that it was pretty awful. He still looked pretty pale and tired after coming home for a few days though.

So happy to be home!

After a few days in the hospital I was just thinking, "I am going to buy Dane any presents he wants once he gets out of here because HE DESERVES IT." Plus I was just so grateful he was okay that I was feeling like a cheapo for having refused to buy him the turntable he's been asking for for his train track. He gets all the presents! I spent a while searching around the Thomas and Friends website and got him a few (not-as-expensive) special track things that were waiting for him when we got home.

The first two or three days home from the hospital he was super, super tired. We had our Primary program at church the day after he came home and he just marched up and said his part super loud into the microphone (the loudest of all the kids) and sang, but then we had to take him home partway through the second hour because he looked like he was really wilted. Monday he took a long nap. But ever since then he has been back to his normal self and hasn't needed extra naps and he's looking much better too. He has to take aspirin for the next two months to make sure his heart doesn't have any residual issues, and he has at least one follow-up with a cardiologist coming up, but he should be fine and after the aspirin we should be home-free.

Like I said, the main feeling of this experience has just been gratitude. I was so grateful that our pediatrician caught this. So grateful that the doctors at the hospital dealt with this frequently and knew what to do. So grateful that the hospital was only across the street from Tommy's work! And that his boss was so flexible and told him not to worry about work the whole time we were there. So grateful for Kristin Myres watching Graham for two days for us so Tommy and I could both be there when Dane needed us. So grateful for modern medicine at all and that we don't live 200 years ago for Dane to have his heart damaged from this disease that would have affected his health for the rest of his life. So grateful that Dane was such a champ and never complained about being stuck in the hospital for days. So grateful that Kawasaki is not a chronic thing--it's over and done with and we won't have to worry about it any more, knock on wood. We had about five people bring us meals once they found out about Dane--so we were so grateful for all of the support here, and I was getting texts and calls from people all over the world asking how Dane was doing and telling us they were praying for him.

We LOVE our Dane boy.

Grandpa Murphy

I found out on Saturday that my Grandpa Murphy passed away. 

Halloween 2009 with Grandpa and Jolysa.

A favorite picture of me with my two grandpas.

I have always felt so lucky to have all four of my grandparents living, and even more so that I know them all very well. I remember being so sad when Grandma and Grandpa Myres moved to Utah when I was 16, because we loved their house in San Diego and couldn't imagine them living anywhere else. Well, it turned out that their move to Utah--and Grandma and Grandpa Murphys' move to Utah a few years later--was one of the best blessings of my college career, because it allowed me to get to know all of my grandparents much better than I had before. Although I saw my grandparents as often as we could growing up, I was never very invested in spending time with them or getting to know them because I just wanted to play with my cousins (and there were always cousins, at both of my grandmas' houses). I have good memories of such fun times at both of their houses, and good memories with them there, but I didn't truly get to know them until I was in college and started to come to their houses for cousin dinners and other things. 

I loved, loved, loved cousin dinners while I was in college.

And Grandpa Murphy was not hard to get to know. He was strong-willed and outspoken and thick-skinned and funny and filled with advice (good and bad, sometimes) and super, super strong in the gospel. He had lots of ideas about dating, majors, speaking habits, careers, activities, and he liked to share those ideas whenever he could. He loved being with his grandkids and making us laugh by teasing us in turn. He never minded when we got mad at him and never held grudges (and he expected us to do the same). He felt no compunction about asking (forcing) other people to help him with any random projects he had in mind or specific requests, particularly his grandkids, like when he'd come up with random songs he'd make us sing during cousin dinners, or when he'd single-handedly organize a square dance in his basement and expect us to invite all of our friends and dates to square dance the night away. 

Proof of the forced singing. Even my random friends who came over for dinner were forced to join in.

My friends and roommates would fight over who got to come to dinner at Grandpa Murphy's house next because of all of the stories we would tell about him.

He loved missionary work--one of the best places his complete lack of fear of speaking his mind came in handy. He also loved setting strangers up on blind dates (even if they were strangers to him) and didn't mind at all when nothing came of it. He was one of the most creative and inventive people I've ever known--he never met a problem that he couldn't come up with and implement a solution for it. He had lots of ideas and wrote them all down and published them in his many books. He didn't let his stroke stop his projects and publications.

Holding my two cousins (not his granddaughters) in his lap at my wedding. 

So grateful Grandpa got to know Tommy so well too.

He annoyed me sometimes, like when I was 13 and he spent his entire week-long trip to California testing me on the conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius, which I refused to learn just to spite him. Or when he would point out every time I said "like" in our conversations--basically any time in the last ten years since I was in college. (The last time we were in Utah, he kept pointing it out and then said, "Whoever next says that awful word will be asked to leave the table!") He never felt bad about being annoying, because I don't think he had that shame gene--in fact, I think he relished it. He liked to make his point--and he didn't want me to say "like" so often, so he would keep pointing out when I said it. 

Saying good-bye to Jolysa at the MTC.

But he was super tender with me and my kids especially when he wanted to be. He would call me and say, "How's my favorite granddaughter?" And especially in the last few years, he would email me and tell me how much he loved the pictures from my blog. He told me a lot of times how he was proud of me and thought I was doing great things. And those things stand out because of how they aren't necessarily the norm for him, since he's usually teasing and correcting. I loved bringing my boys to meet him. He always wanted to hold them and talk to them, even when they were tiny.

Meeting Dane for the first time.

I am so glad that Grandpa got to meet Tommy and that Tommy knows him. He and Tommy were good friends, and he loved getting Tommy's input on things. He would call him and ask him for help for techy questions and any time we were there he would make Tommy go help him in the yard (like he would every man who walked through the door). I like to joke that Tommy was his favorite grandchild, even though he wasn't even his actual grandchild--although that was really just because of Tommy's major in statistics (which was Grandpa's preferred major for a while), and probably because Tommy never was offended or put off by any of Grandpa's ideas or jokes. 

Even though Grandpa loved Tommy, it didn't stop him from telling us all along our dating life that he thought I was too young. The second time he ever met Tommy, he brought him outside onto his deck for an interview of sorts, in which he told Tommy he probably shouldn't get very serious with me because I was too young. He repeated that advice throughout the next year and never gave it up. At our wedding dinner, my dad unsuspectingly gave him the mic to let him talk. Grandpa grabbed it and just said, "Waaaaaaiiit. Waaaaaiiit. Waaaaaaaaaaaaiiit." (He was never allowed to speak at any other grandkids' weddings.)

I forgot about this moment until I found these pictures. Dane found some random CDs and was very interested in playing with them. Grandpa dug around until he found some that Dane could keep and play with on his own. Dane was very serious about it and it was very cute.

Grandma and Grandpa singing "Grandkids are precious" and "Wrinkles" at a family reunion. Bethany had that first song memorized. I always loved our family reunion talent shows.

Grandpa was always up for a game of any kind. It was a requirement that if you were at the Murphys' house for the evening, you had to play a game. 

No shame playing Minute to Win It at our family reunion.

He loved trying to convince people to take a ride in his wheelchair. I remember him taking Bethany for a ride when she was like 15. This was him taking Dane at almost 2. Dane looked very uncomfortable.

It meant a lot to me that we could do Graham's baby blessing in Utah last year, because both of his grandpas and both of MY grandpas were able to be in the circle when we blessed him. There was so much power and love in that circle.

It seems so sad that any future in-laws and great-grandchildren won't know Grandpa or understand him and our stories about him. Because Grandpa Murphy is legendary, and it's hard to picture him without having met him. It's hard not to love him once you understand him. It's sad to me especially that my kids won't remember him. But I guess this is the circle of life. And we have a lot of pictures as proof that they met (as you will see below; I scoured my computer for all the pictures I have with him). 

Eating his J-Dawg's hot dog at his 80th birthday party last year. Another party I'm so glad we were able to go to.

I think that one of my favorite trips there was this summer, when I spent a few days at their house all by myself with my two boys. It was so memorable because Dane was old enough to finally make connections with all of my grandparents and to have full-on conversations with them. Here is Grandpa introducing Dane to his missing finger (a classic Murphy moment). 

A neighbor had this super old car out in front of their house and Grandpa wanted to go down and show it to Dane.

Grandpa loved his garden--harkening back to his farmer days of his youth. Any time we were there in the summer (or in the fall, as a BYU student) he'd get us to help in the garden. We picked raspberries a few years ago and Dane remembered doing it so well he wanted to do it again.

Helping with the watering.

Graham was not a fan of getting a ride on the wheelchair.

We got to talk to Grandpa for a long time one afternoon, and I used our videocamera and recorded the sweet conversation between Dane and Grandpa. He told him all about his farm and what he did growing up on it. He showed him some pictures of his farm on his computer and Dane was duly impressed.

I was lying on the couch feeding Graham his bottle before bed and Grandpa came over and insisted that I let him take a picture of us because he loved how happy we looked right then. It was very sweet. Grandpa really loved these great-grandkids. He loved talking with Dane, and he wasn't bothered at all by the screaming of the two toddlers walking around his house when we were there in September. Every time Graham or Cora would waddle into the room where he was he would light up and say, "Hiiii!" I loved it.

I have to say that I did cry a bit on Saturday after hearing the news. It is the first time someone this close to me has passed away, and I felt so sad that I hadn't had a chance to say good-bye. But I did get a lot of chances to see him in person this summer, in July and September--I really did make an effort to get to see him, knowing he wasn't doing very well. And I am so grateful I did, because these trips will really stand out to me now. But even though I was sad, I also felt so happy for him, knowing how his body has failed him the last ten years. Ever since his stroke, he has been frustrated in not being able to do everything he wants to do, and it's been easy to see how he has gotten weaker and weaker over the last few years especially, particularly when we would only get to see him once a year when we came back to Utah. I teared up a bit thinking of him walking around painlessly, and playing basketball again like we used to. I bet he is just loving his body being freed from the difficulties of mortal life. I knew, even just after he died, even while I was sad and shocked, that he was being reunited with his parents and family up in heaven and that he is happy to be there. And I know still that we will see him again someday. It is a very bittersweet thing to say good-bye to him. I am sad that we won't be able to be there for his funeral tomorrow, but it's obvious that it wasn't meant to be for us to be there. 

We sure love you, Grandpa. You made us laugh and you're still making us laugh as we remember everything you did in this life, and you're making us cry as we think about you being gone. 

My mom asked us to write down a few of our memories of Grandpa and this was what Tommy and I came up with:

Me:
-Playing basketball with Grandpa during our family reunion basketball tournaments. For several reunions in a row, Madsen, Grandpa and I were on a team and we always won. I loved playing with him.
-Grandpa always liked to quiz me on the conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius when I was 11-14 ish and I HATED it. It always made me so mad.
-Grandpa sent my senior picture (along with Aubrey's and Jolysa's) to the priests in his ward asking if they would like to take us out on dates. Many of them ended up in the dorms with me a year later and recognized me at BYU.
-Grandpa liked to tell me that I only signed for the English major because it was "easy." He also told me I only became worthwhile once I married Tommy (because he was a statistics major).
-Our square dances in their basement. He made us all invite people and was very offended when there wasn't an equal number of boys and girls. And after a few HOURS of listening to the caller and doing square dances he got mad when we all wanted to be done.

-One year around Easter (maybe when I was a sophomore at BYU) he set up an "Easter Egg hunt" in their yard, but really, it was a bunch of rocks that he'd strewn around the yard and wanted us to pick up. And then he somehow turned it into a matchmaking thing where he wanted us to bring the eggs down the street to introduce ourselves to his neighbor's grandsons.
-Playing Rook, Quiddler, any sort of card game.
-He was so sweet with my boys this summer. Every time Graham walked into the room he would light up and say, "Hiiii!" He spent a long time talking to Dane about his finger, about his farm, about working in the garden.
-At our wedding dinner the night before our wedding, Dad gave him the microphone and he says, "Waaaaaiiit. Waaaaaaaaiiiit. Waaaaaait." He thought I was too young to get married. He was never allowed to speak at any other grandkids' wedding dinners afterwards.
-All of my roommates and friends at BYU would fight with each other to get to come over to Grandma and Grandpa Murphys' house for cousin dinners. Everyone wanted to get to meet Grandpa Murphy and to see his humor firsthand.
-His "Jokes You Can Tell In Church" book.
-The window with floating pictures of his kids, and the grandkids looking down into his bathroom.
-His work on the composter and experimental hand soap and flushable wet wipes. He always made Tommy come help turn the composter.
-I remember at one family reunion putting stickers all over his face (and then all over everyone). I don't remember why.
-The Abraham Lincoln mask at a family reunion.
-I remember Grandma and Grandpa coming to visit us in our Lindberg house, and Grandpa got some mortar and re-did the bricks on our planters in the front yard. For some reason that stands out to me.
-When I was a sophomore, Grandpa called me and insisted that I talk to all the boys in my ward and ask them for old ties so that he could put them together and make a curtain to go in between his bedroom and his office. I just went to DI and bought some instead.
-Grandma and Grandpa singing "Grandkids are special" at family reunions.

Tommy:
-The second time I met him, we did some yardwork and had dinner, and then he pulled me outside and we had a long talk about my intentions to date Alyse and how to be a good intern at Hewitt that summer. He told me that I shouldn't get serious with Alyse because she was too young. Alyse was sitting inside with Grandma and cousins and cringing the whole time.
-Going to McGrath's Fish House with both sets of grandparents (G and G Murphy and G and G Myres) and Grandpa asked the waitress for buttermilk. He was very disappointed that the waitress didn't have any. Then he tried to set Alec up with the waitress.
-Tommy's siblings came over for dinner and he made Kristen come over and give him a huge when she was leaving, and he pulled her in and gave her a big kiss.
- One time Kristen was with us at Grandpa Murphy's house and Dallin also happened to be there (might have been when he cam to help us get ready for our move to NC). They both happened to be in the living room with Grandpa and Grandpa asks them, "Kristen, have you met Dallin??" (in a suggestive, match-making sort of way). To which Kristen responds, "Yes, and he's 16! He's 8 years younger than me!"
- At our wedding dinner, Grandpa Murphy said to Callie (just turned 13), "Have you heard of ldssingles.com? You should check it out...it's great!"
- Grandpa always hassling Alyse for saying "like" all the time even though she was an English major.