Happy Holidays Everyone!
May you each have an enjoyable and safe Christmas and New Years! We love and miss you all!
- Posted using BlogPress from Britt's iPhone
Location:Biddle House
Monday, December 13, 2010
Princess Snow Woman
Since second grade started, Caitlin has been given projects to work on at home. Projects using creativity. The winter one was a snowman. Her teacher gave each student the head and the body...past that they had to each design their own. Caitlin was creative with cotton balls, paint, beads and bracelet, as well as different candies. She had a lot of fun working on it and wanted to share the end result with our family and friends!
Happy Holidays Everyone!
May you each have an enjoyable and safe Christmas and New Years! We love and miss you all!
- Posted using BlogPress from Britt's iPhone
Happy Holidays Everyone!
May you each have an enjoyable and safe Christmas and New Years! We love and miss you all!
- Posted using BlogPress from Britt's iPhone
Over the past month...
I know it has been too long since I have updated on here. Things have just been busy with the holidays, kids, school (mine and theirs), Kevin's work schedule, health issues, kids coming down with illnesses... you name it! Seems like the last two months of the year are always the most chaotic.
There has not been a whole lot going on to really update on! The girls have one more week of school before their Winter Break begins. Kevin is working half days and may take some leave. We are waiting to see if his leave packet was approved or not. Even if he takes a few days, we are just staying around the house and spending time together! It will be so nice!
Bre ended up being pretty sick last week. She started off with a sore throat (which turned out not to be strep like the docs originally thought). Following the sore throat, she ended up with a severe upper respiratory infection, which also led to an asthma attack filled week. She came home early on Monday and did not go back to school until Friday. Then over the weekend we still had to keep the nebulizer out due to her having another bad attack on Friday night. We feel terrible for her and hate that she has been facing this since she was 15 months old. It breaks my heart to hear her when she can't seem to catch her breath or with her horrible, croupy sounding cough. She does great with it all and knows to always keep her inhaler within reach. The doctors have put her back on her Flovent inhaler, that she takes twice a day, as well as another medication. Of course, she has her albuterol inhaler and the albuterol for her nebulizer. Bre has been referred to an ENT that she sees soon. We are going to discuss the possiblitly of her tonsils being removed to help avoid her being as sick with tonsillitis. She has been diagnosed with that 4-5 times since school began in August. At the end of the day, however, after all of our struggles with getting her here, her surviving the pregnancy (even when the doctor's didn't think she would), her being a tiny preemie, and the health issues she faced the first year with the apnea monitors at all times and her reflux... if this is what our battle is with her now, we will deal with it and cross whatever bridge we have to. Afterall, we have been incredibly blessed and are so lucky to have her here with us!
Nicholas tends to be nonstop now. He is always into something and very outgoing! He loves being the center of attention in all he does. He loves the ladies! He now asks us if he can go flirt when he sees a pretty girl! This child is a mess! He is finally talking more and so plainly! It is amazing how far he has come in 17 months. He has the best sense of humor and always keeps us on our toes!
Caitlin is reading more and really trying when it comes to school. She has pulled her grades up in most everything. We keep busy with her and continue trying to get her grades up more every day. She is enjoying school and socializing a lot more than before.
Kevin is doing great! Just ready for more news from the army. As we have learned over the years, the motto "Hurry up and wait" is by far the best one for the army. It seems as though nothing ever takes place with the speed we would all like. Hopefully we will receive more news after the first of the year. Please continue to be patient. As soon as we have dates we will make the phone calls necessary as well as post the information on here. There is nothing we can do to speed the process and there are no answers we can give at this time. Trust me, we are more ready than anyone else could possibly be!
I have stayed busy with Kevin, the kids, and all that they have going on. As well as the normal household duties and I started on my medical terminology course, which will follow with a medical billing course. The terminology course has really had me thinking about my educational future and what I really want to do... I have gone back and forth with some things dealing with what I really want to study and go into. More to come on that after I make my decisions! As far as my health goes, I have pretty much stayed the same as I was in November. I did go for more lab work two weeks ago and for a renal and bladder ultrasound this past Friday. I have an appointment with my doctor on Wednesday for all of the results. I am nervous, but ready to know more. For the ulcerative colitis that was found while I was in the hospital in November, my doctor has referred me to a GI (gastroenterlogist) specialist. I am still waiting on the refetrral. I am also going to be seen by a specialist for my kidneys. She is wanting a more definite answer on why I keep falling into kidney failure. She pulled me off some of the meds I have been on until we have further results to all of the testing. The ones that I have been kept on are the ones I am life dependent on. I also have an appointment with a neurologist tomorrow morning. Hoping for some good news and results this week! To everyone that reads this, please just say a prayer.....
Below I am going to include some picture that have been taken recently. Hope you enjoy!
There has not been a whole lot going on to really update on! The girls have one more week of school before their Winter Break begins. Kevin is working half days and may take some leave. We are waiting to see if his leave packet was approved or not. Even if he takes a few days, we are just staying around the house and spending time together! It will be so nice!
Bre ended up being pretty sick last week. She started off with a sore throat (which turned out not to be strep like the docs originally thought). Following the sore throat, she ended up with a severe upper respiratory infection, which also led to an asthma attack filled week. She came home early on Monday and did not go back to school until Friday. Then over the weekend we still had to keep the nebulizer out due to her having another bad attack on Friday night. We feel terrible for her and hate that she has been facing this since she was 15 months old. It breaks my heart to hear her when she can't seem to catch her breath or with her horrible, croupy sounding cough. She does great with it all and knows to always keep her inhaler within reach. The doctors have put her back on her Flovent inhaler, that she takes twice a day, as well as another medication. Of course, she has her albuterol inhaler and the albuterol for her nebulizer. Bre has been referred to an ENT that she sees soon. We are going to discuss the possiblitly of her tonsils being removed to help avoid her being as sick with tonsillitis. She has been diagnosed with that 4-5 times since school began in August. At the end of the day, however, after all of our struggles with getting her here, her surviving the pregnancy (even when the doctor's didn't think she would), her being a tiny preemie, and the health issues she faced the first year with the apnea monitors at all times and her reflux... if this is what our battle is with her now, we will deal with it and cross whatever bridge we have to. Afterall, we have been incredibly blessed and are so lucky to have her here with us!
Nicholas tends to be nonstop now. He is always into something and very outgoing! He loves being the center of attention in all he does. He loves the ladies! He now asks us if he can go flirt when he sees a pretty girl! This child is a mess! He is finally talking more and so plainly! It is amazing how far he has come in 17 months. He has the best sense of humor and always keeps us on our toes!
Caitlin is reading more and really trying when it comes to school. She has pulled her grades up in most everything. We keep busy with her and continue trying to get her grades up more every day. She is enjoying school and socializing a lot more than before.
Kevin is doing great! Just ready for more news from the army. As we have learned over the years, the motto "Hurry up and wait" is by far the best one for the army. It seems as though nothing ever takes place with the speed we would all like. Hopefully we will receive more news after the first of the year. Please continue to be patient. As soon as we have dates we will make the phone calls necessary as well as post the information on here. There is nothing we can do to speed the process and there are no answers we can give at this time. Trust me, we are more ready than anyone else could possibly be!
I have stayed busy with Kevin, the kids, and all that they have going on. As well as the normal household duties and I started on my medical terminology course, which will follow with a medical billing course. The terminology course has really had me thinking about my educational future and what I really want to do... I have gone back and forth with some things dealing with what I really want to study and go into. More to come on that after I make my decisions! As far as my health goes, I have pretty much stayed the same as I was in November. I did go for more lab work two weeks ago and for a renal and bladder ultrasound this past Friday. I have an appointment with my doctor on Wednesday for all of the results. I am nervous, but ready to know more. For the ulcerative colitis that was found while I was in the hospital in November, my doctor has referred me to a GI (gastroenterlogist) specialist. I am still waiting on the refetrral. I am also going to be seen by a specialist for my kidneys. She is wanting a more definite answer on why I keep falling into kidney failure. She pulled me off some of the meds I have been on until we have further results to all of the testing. The ones that I have been kept on are the ones I am life dependent on. I also have an appointment with a neurologist tomorrow morning. Hoping for some good news and results this week! To everyone that reads this, please just say a prayer.....
Below I am going to include some picture that have been taken recently. Hope you enjoy!
This one melts my heart! My guys playing a game on the computer.
Crazy boy! This was right before Halloween.
My amazingly attractive husband! He was sitting at the hospital with me in November.
Lol. We have no idea where Nic picked this up. Now when he is told to do something, he salutes while saying yes ma'am or yes sir. Crazy kid!
Little Miss Caitin
He thinks he is hot stuff being able to take a bath in our "big" tub.
Aww, another one that just melts my heart. This was after some Daddy and Nic time! I love this one!
Me, after getting my haircut. We had a girls evening out... I took Bre, Caitlin, and Destiny for us to all to have our hair cut! It was a much needed night.
This is too funny... Nic's blanket finally ripped into one large piece and one obviously small piece. He decided on this day to take the smaller one with him in his pocket! He thought it was hilarious when I noticed how big his pocket was!
We let the girls have their first real slumber party... of course this was while Kev worked all night! So I had six girls to myself (as well as Nic) Thank God for my good friend out here, Lauren. She came over for a few hours! We baked cookies and let the girls go to town with decorating them. They had a blast. In the picture they are getting down on some Americal Idol on the PS3.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
A Tribute to Our Vets
This Veteran's Day Kevin and I spent the morning and lunch time together at home, then loaded up Nicholas to head to the girls school. The third graders had a special program planned for this special day to honor our Vets! To start the program off, they sang the National Anthem, then went on to say the Pledge of Allegiance as well as the Pledge to the Texas Flag. Following that was a moment of silence, then a few words were shared by a couple Vietnam Vets. The student council then presented Certificate of Appreciation to the vets that were there. Kevin received one, of course, when his name was called him and Nicholas had just walked outside. Kev was trying to get Nic to calm down from where he was acting like a typical three year old with no nap. With that being said, when Kevin's name was called, I had to walk up and receive his award. Not the way it was supposed to go at all! Following this, the third graders sang a few more songs then everyone was released since it was almost 3pm. Caitlin was able to sit with us during this program since Kev was able to attend and is a vet.
Happy Veteran's Day to all that have served and are currently serving! May your selfless acts and sacrifices never go unnoticed!
Happy Veteran's Day to all that have served and are currently serving! May your selfless acts and sacrifices never go unnoticed!
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Stabbing of The Orange Soda
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
A Re-cap of Britt's Hospital Stay
First, thank you to everyone for all the prayers, emails, text messages, and phone calls! I am sorry to the ones I have yet to respond to. I tried my hardest while in the hospital to respond, but honestly, I was in a lot of pain and quite uncomfortable. So, in between the visits from Kev and our kids, I mainly slept. They had me on Demerol and phenergan every four hours.
So, onto what all happened.....
We celebrated Bre's ninth birthday on October 30 with our friends and her friends out here in El Paso. Which turned out to be a big hit and Bre had a blast! Thank you to those that made it out, called, sent her cards and gifts! She appreciates it all! Kev and I did buy her a cell phone and added her to our family plan. Contact me if you would like her number! She has a "cool" baby pink phone with a full keyboard and let me just tell you... she LOVES being able to text message everyone. So if you have texting on your phone, be prepared! : )
Around midnight I went into the bathroom, feeling totally normal. I came out doubled over and screaming because the pain was so intense. As the night went on I got worse. None of this was a gradual come on, it was all sudden. Yes, everyone had already left at this point. For about six hours I slept off and on. When I wasn't sleeping I was vomiting and screaming in pain. The pain continued to get worse. Kevin tried everything to help make the pain stop. I kept telling him I was scared because the pain felt like it did when I went into kidney failure a little over two months ago. So, at this point when nothing was easing the pain, I couldn't stand up on my own, I was crawling on the floor, I was once again unable to urinate on my own, I was shaking uncontrollably from the pain, we decided it was time to make that much dreaded trip to Providence's ER. Thankfully Justin and Lauren had stayed over so they helped us out by staying with the kids. So, off to Providence we went. When we arrived Kev rushed into the ER to get me a wheelchair, then came out to get me, which they took me straight back. It took four or fivev nurses to finally find a spot in my arm in order to get blood and push the fluids through. Which of course as soon as I got upstairs, another nurse had to place a new catheter in a different spot for all that was being pushed through me. (I am still real bruised on my right arm). After hours of testing, around 230 they came in to my triage area to announce that I was going to be admitted due to kidney stones, an infection in my colon, and severe dehydration (which was caused from six hours of vomiting). Kev went ahead and headed home at this point in order to relive Justin and Lauren, get the kids, go to Wal-Mart, come by the hospital with some of my things, then go home and get the kids ready for trick-or-treating and take them out. Talk about a crazy and hectic Sunday in the Biddle house! I was finally taken to my room around 4 or so that afternoon. I am beginning to think they should just make me a permanent room! Haha, just a joke!
Once in my room, they started pumping me full of the meds and more antibiotics. I was told I should be able to go home the following day.... That of course, didn't happen. I was not discharged until Friday afternoon. It was an insane and intense week full of testing, labs and so much more. There was more going on that we originally thought. Come to find out I went into kidney failure once again on Monday at some point. By Thursday they finally had my kidneys up and at functioning properly. I was under the care of a primary doctor as well as four specialists. I underwent a few procedures and lab work three times a day. On Friday all the docs came by to sign off on my discharge papers and to update me on all that was going on. Turns out I did have kidney stones, a few that I passed through the catheter, still have one that will remain in my kidney until the meds break it up and it dissolves, not only did I have an infection in my colon (colitis) but I also was bleeding outside of my colon. To this point we are still not sure what caused this. From all of this I started vomiting uncontrollably, which played a part in me falling back into kidney failure. I am also anemic again and Vit D deficient. From this point on I stand very high chances of more kidney stones forming and am at a risk of kidney failure occurring more times in the future. I was told that if I start vomiting and within one hour am not able to hold anything down I have to now report straight to the ER for an immediate IV in hopes to reduce my chance of kidney failure, as well as watching the meds, drinks, and food that I take in. This is for the rest of my life. Needless to say, many things have now changed. All things that I can change up with a smile on my face because I am still here, breathing and living my life. Yes, it does stand in the way of certain things, like me being able to work right now. I can no longer go meet up with the girls for a drink or enjoy a couple of drinks out with my husband. I cannot take certain medications anymore. I can't go without having something to drink almost at all times. I have to limit the amount of food and drinks that acidic. There is so much more, but as I said, I am just forever grateful to still be here with my kids, husband, family and friends. There is no other place that I would rather be than sitting here in my bed right now writing this.
Thank you to everyone that has stood beside us and thank you even more for all the prayers! I know I/we have a long road ahead of us with all that my health has to go through, but it is another obstacle that we will fight and come through on top! I am determined not to let this keep me down. As you all know, I have other health issues that I have been facing daily for many years now. This just adds to it all, but I am here and with my family. God is keeping me here for a reason and I plan on living and enjoying my life every single day! As for now, we are just living day to day and not stressing nor planning anything too far in the future. Life is too short to not live for today! I am sure we all know this and have learned it over the last few years. I could not be anymore blessed than I am to have the amazing family and extended family and friends that I do have. I love you all!
So, onto what all happened.....
We celebrated Bre's ninth birthday on October 30 with our friends and her friends out here in El Paso. Which turned out to be a big hit and Bre had a blast! Thank you to those that made it out, called, sent her cards and gifts! She appreciates it all! Kev and I did buy her a cell phone and added her to our family plan. Contact me if you would like her number! She has a "cool" baby pink phone with a full keyboard and let me just tell you... she LOVES being able to text message everyone. So if you have texting on your phone, be prepared! : )
Around midnight I went into the bathroom, feeling totally normal. I came out doubled over and screaming because the pain was so intense. As the night went on I got worse. None of this was a gradual come on, it was all sudden. Yes, everyone had already left at this point. For about six hours I slept off and on. When I wasn't sleeping I was vomiting and screaming in pain. The pain continued to get worse. Kevin tried everything to help make the pain stop. I kept telling him I was scared because the pain felt like it did when I went into kidney failure a little over two months ago. So, at this point when nothing was easing the pain, I couldn't stand up on my own, I was crawling on the floor, I was once again unable to urinate on my own, I was shaking uncontrollably from the pain, we decided it was time to make that much dreaded trip to Providence's ER. Thankfully Justin and Lauren had stayed over so they helped us out by staying with the kids. So, off to Providence we went. When we arrived Kev rushed into the ER to get me a wheelchair, then came out to get me, which they took me straight back. It took four or fivev nurses to finally find a spot in my arm in order to get blood and push the fluids through. Which of course as soon as I got upstairs, another nurse had to place a new catheter in a different spot for all that was being pushed through me. (I am still real bruised on my right arm). After hours of testing, around 230 they came in to my triage area to announce that I was going to be admitted due to kidney stones, an infection in my colon, and severe dehydration (which was caused from six hours of vomiting). Kev went ahead and headed home at this point in order to relive Justin and Lauren, get the kids, go to Wal-Mart, come by the hospital with some of my things, then go home and get the kids ready for trick-or-treating and take them out. Talk about a crazy and hectic Sunday in the Biddle house! I was finally taken to my room around 4 or so that afternoon. I am beginning to think they should just make me a permanent room! Haha, just a joke!
Once in my room, they started pumping me full of the meds and more antibiotics. I was told I should be able to go home the following day.... That of course, didn't happen. I was not discharged until Friday afternoon. It was an insane and intense week full of testing, labs and so much more. There was more going on that we originally thought. Come to find out I went into kidney failure once again on Monday at some point. By Thursday they finally had my kidneys up and at functioning properly. I was under the care of a primary doctor as well as four specialists. I underwent a few procedures and lab work three times a day. On Friday all the docs came by to sign off on my discharge papers and to update me on all that was going on. Turns out I did have kidney stones, a few that I passed through the catheter, still have one that will remain in my kidney until the meds break it up and it dissolves, not only did I have an infection in my colon (colitis) but I also was bleeding outside of my colon. To this point we are still not sure what caused this. From all of this I started vomiting uncontrollably, which played a part in me falling back into kidney failure. I am also anemic again and Vit D deficient. From this point on I stand very high chances of more kidney stones forming and am at a risk of kidney failure occurring more times in the future. I was told that if I start vomiting and within one hour am not able to hold anything down I have to now report straight to the ER for an immediate IV in hopes to reduce my chance of kidney failure, as well as watching the meds, drinks, and food that I take in. This is for the rest of my life. Needless to say, many things have now changed. All things that I can change up with a smile on my face because I am still here, breathing and living my life. Yes, it does stand in the way of certain things, like me being able to work right now. I can no longer go meet up with the girls for a drink or enjoy a couple of drinks out with my husband. I cannot take certain medications anymore. I can't go without having something to drink almost at all times. I have to limit the amount of food and drinks that acidic. There is so much more, but as I said, I am just forever grateful to still be here with my kids, husband, family and friends. There is no other place that I would rather be than sitting here in my bed right now writing this.
Thank you to everyone that has stood beside us and thank you even more for all the prayers! I know I/we have a long road ahead of us with all that my health has to go through, but it is another obstacle that we will fight and come through on top! I am determined not to let this keep me down. As you all know, I have other health issues that I have been facing daily for many years now. This just adds to it all, but I am here and with my family. God is keeping me here for a reason and I plan on living and enjoying my life every single day! As for now, we are just living day to day and not stressing nor planning anything too far in the future. Life is too short to not live for today! I am sure we all know this and have learned it over the last few years. I could not be anymore blessed than I am to have the amazing family and extended family and friends that I do have. I love you all!
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