Birthday recovery week!

Thank you everyone for all the great birthday wishes for Kindahl, Khloe and myself! Thursday and Friday were wonderful days for the girls and yesterday was just as nice for me!

Larry and I enjoyed chaperoning the prom last Saturday night. I would say all the kids attending (the ballroom was packed at the Davis Conference Center) had a fabulous night to remember. Jamin and Kaitlin both had terrific dates and it was fun to have all of theirs, and also Jonah's friends, say hello through out the night. As chaperones we got to have our picture done by the photographers there so we had Jamin and Kaitlin pose with us for a typical prom night "group picture" that will be added to the Lewis Family memory album.

Larry's cousin Tom and his wife Sherry came into town Saturday night and their daughters Jessica and Amanda, along with Jessica's fiance Daniel, came up from Provo yesterday for a visit. We had a great time...especially the Wii competition in the evening that had us all yelling and cheering and Khloe having to take breaks to calm down her breathing and blood pressure! The Lewis branch of the family hear by issues a challenge to the Hickman branch for further family competitions! :-) I would imagine that just between Jess and Daniel and Karissa and Troy our family honors will be kept at a high performance level!!

Khloe is having a quiet day today to make up for all the excitement yesterday. She decided to not use her wheelchair at church and she did very well, and even though her breathing and blood pressures were labored several times last night, activity like this is too important to all of our mental well-being to keep her away from it. Who wants to constantly have to sit out on family fun or not do things at all in case it could cause a problem? And who wants to be the one having to enforce it? The answer to both is no-one and the even better answer is that doing things like this are more helpful than the possible risk of causing harm. So...bring on the fun!

Along with all this Khloe has decided she would be happier having her bed back upstairs with the other kids so today we (meaning Karissa and I) are also moving bedrooms around. She can go up the stairs now a couple of times a day with sitting to rest on the landing and she enjoys being up there with all of her siblings, so for now this is another thing we can do for her mental health (which we are learning can be as equally important in how she feels as all the medical support). She will need to plan her trips up or down so that she is only taking the stairs a couple of times each day and this will take some getting used to; for now I am preparing to be her "gopher" but I hope it wont take too long for her to be used to thinking ahead for what she needs and where she wants to be. We know that this is a temporary situation and that at some point in the future her physical needs will again dictate a different place for her bedroom, but since we don't know when that will be, this is the decision today. I want to add a HUGE thank you to Khloe's sisters who, out of necessity, are having to move their things around and adapt to different rooms/closet spaces in order to have the best possible arrangement for Khloe and her medical equipment...I am so proud of each of you and the understanding you show! And the boys, too, for all their help (even though they are glad that being the only boys means they never have to move bedrooms!)...ALL of my kids are WONDERFUL!!!!!