This Year's Recap!

     I know I've been sorely neglecting the family blog. Shame on me. But let me give you a little taste at what's been going on in the Sorensen family since the start of the new year. It's been more than a little busy at times and we're all still trying to adjust to being a family of 4. You'd think we'd have it down by now but nope! Things are always changing with these little guys. :)

January...
     January was not my favorite month. Actually, it was my least favorite month, followed closely by February. And then maybe April... Early in January we returned home from our 2 week, family filled vacation to find that our much needed second car had been stolen from our parking lot. After lots of prayers, lots of praying, and sacrifices offered from family members who don't  have much more than we do to help us find a way to afford another car, the police called at 4 AM a few weeks later to let us know our car had been found. We were excited, but still a little nervous because they wouldn't tell us what condition our car was in. Spencer waited at the tow yard for hours and hours to get it back (that's a whole other story...) we finally had our car turned over to us in perfect condition. They stole about $2 worth of change out of the change drawer and our driver side window sticks now, but otherwise it was perfect. Spencer was excited that all of his fishing gear was still in the trunk. :) It was a huge blessing after weeks of worry and stress, and wondering how in the world we could ever afford to buy another car while Spencer was still in school.
     Shortly after that fiasco was cleared up, Ashley came down with another episode of asthma pretty bad. Isaac had been quite ornery too so we took both of them to the doctors office. As it turned out, Isaac had asthma pretty bad too. Worse than Ashely even. And he was only 4 months old! It took us WEEKS to get them healthy again.

February...
     And February was my second least favorite month because the asthma issues spilled over into February. The end of January was only the start of the asthma issues. By February Isaac was so bad he couldn't eat or sleep (which meant I didn't either...). In one week we had both kids into the doctor 5 times. Yep. Every day that week. By the end of that week Isaac was receiving steroid injections, oxygen at his appointments, and oral steroids while still needing to be treated with albuterol through a nebulizer every 4 hours, even through the night. Nebulizer treatments take about 15 minutes so with both kids needing them every 4 hours, I spent 30 minutes every 4 hours treating children, then another 20 minutes every 2-3 hours feeding Isaac. We didn't go anywhere for a looong time. If Isaac didn't get better over that weekend he was going to have to be hospitalized. Fortunately, again through much prayer and fasting, Isaac improved over the weekend and though we still had to treat him every 4 hours or so, in a few weeks he was back to his normal happy self. He was still having trouble feeding though and I ended up going to a lactation specialist because he had lost so much weight through the illness and we needed him to gain weight. We were told that he was feeding fine and that he would start to catch up, which he did. For a while. More on that later...

March...
     March was pretty uneventful which is saying a lot for us! The kids got sick again, but knowing that Isaac had asthma as well helped us to catch everything when it started so that we could treat the two of them right away and stop the problem before it got to bad.

Sibling love! Saying good night before bedtime. :) So sweet!

April...
     In April we had visitors! Ashley's Grandma Sorensen and her aunt and cousins were able to come play for a weekend! Ashley just couldn't believe that they would come play at her house with her toys! This was a first for her. Usually we go do the visiting so it was a real treat to be the ones that were visited! I was busing sewing another sister-in-law's crib bedding for her baby girl due in May (though the baby came just yesterday!). The sewing took up tons of time took about 3 or 4 weeks of straight sewing to finish and I think my kids were SO glad when I was finally finished. :) We had another somewhat unexpected problem in our house after that. We get cockroaches every year when the weather gets warmer so we spray and usually that's the end of it. But no. They just kept coming. It was like a horror movie. Our kitchen was full of baby cockroaches and lots of bigger ones too. It was so bad we would see them on the counter during the day! They were in our pantry, in our dish cupboards, in our dishwasher (how they got in there, I just don't know) behind the fridge, in the drawers... I was horrified and disgusted! In one night we killed about 25 cockroaches in our kitchen. Those were just the stupid ones who didn't have enough sense to scatter when we turned the light on. I spent an entire Sunday (aside from stopping to feed Isaac and to go to church) emptying every cupboard, throwing away open food, and rewashing every single dish we own. I scrubbed down the entire kitchen and hunted down every filthy cockroach and egg sack I could find. (I'll spare you the details of where the egg sacks were found...) I won that battle, and we've won many battles since, but we're still fighting the war (and the stupidity of the management company who says they'll come spray but never do). I can't wait to get out of here! Between the cockroaches and the SWAT team that has visited our once safe complex 2 or 3 times in the last 6 months (once they were at the apartment directly behind ours, the one we share a wall with, the one we suspect was the source of the cockroach infestation that has now leaked over to our apartment) December and move-out time can't come quickly enough! Though I have to say I'm going to bawl my eyes out leaving our ward.

The finished quilt. I'm dump and didn't take a picture of the rest of it.

May...
     My brother graduated from SUU with a bachelors and a masters so we traveled up to go to his graduation! It was fun and we're super proud of him. He's moving up to Idaho now and we'll be sad we won't see him for a while but we're happy he gets to start what we like to call "real life." We still don't know what that's like haha. Ashley had her 3rd birthday and a fun party! She was so cute and had such a great time getting all the attention. :) Also unexpected in May was a random trip to Salt Lake to see the Sorensen family! Spencer came home the Friday of Memorial Day weekend around noon and said, "Honey, I know this is going to stress you out, but I really want to see my family. Can we go to Salt Lake this weekend?" Being the spouse who use to never see her family, of course I was supportive. "When do you want to leave?" I asked, thinking he'd like to leave first thing in the morning. "Well, I want to leave today. In a couple of hours. Sorry." Haha, stinker! After hours of scrubbing our house and doing laundry we finally left and had a great weekend with the family.

The birthday girl after eating a cupcake at her party!

June...
     So far June has been okay, though I suffered a little emotionally when we decided it's time to wean Isaac. Both kids had to go back to the doctor with asthma again. Exposed to too many cold germs in Utah haha. Ashley had a double ear infection and I took Isaac in to hopefully prevent another episode that I thought was about to happen. As it turned out Isaac has not grown in the last 2 months. He was down to 25% for weight and 5% for height. At birth he was in the 80s across the board! I thought he was looking a little small, but he was happy, fat, and well hydrated and it seemed like I had just been to the lactation specialist who assured me everything was fine. I pumped all the next day to see what Isaac was getting. A grand total of 18ish oz plus 2 jars of food. He should be getting 32 oz! We've now done a full week of supplementing with formula and he's already grown. Poor baby! I was starving him! The doctor and I talked about it and we agreed that Isaac is just too impatient now to sit through a feeding since he can move and always has Ashley wanting to play with him. Because of his distractability (which has always been a problem, but more so now) he never gets all of it and just wants to get down to play. He got enough to stay fat and happy and hydrated, but not enough to grow. He's down to breastfeeding only 3 times a day (my supply is much better now going only 3 times instead of 5) with 2 bottles and 2 jars of food. I'm sad that he's being weaned, but happy he can start to grow again.

Ashley followed Isaac under the table. He likes to hang out there. I think it's because he likes to see if we dropped any food. He's kind of like having a puppy.

     So that's our year in just a few minutes! Sorry it was long... but I figured I'd gotten so behind I should just do one big long post about the whole year and call it good! Hopefully I can stay caught up so you don't have to read ridiculously long posts every 6 months. ;)