Spring Vacation!

Good Afternoon Everyone! We are in the middle of a glorious Utah spring day, blue skies and temperatures in the mid 60's! A nice start to the kids spring break! I began the day with an early morning walk with Kimber and then later this morning we all took Jetta, our German Shepherd, down to a nearby field to run and play fetch. She wore herself out racing around all of us in the field and then running back and forth to the suburban where Khloe was sitting to watch all the fun. Now we are all home getting the house in order so we can play the rest of the week!

These past few days have been a lot of fun for our family. First we were able to visit with a group of good friends from Camas several times over the weekend; they came down to attend General Conference. Seeing them all after 3 years was a real treat; all of our kids had a blast catching up with their friends as did Larry and I. Khloe got to see them, also, which she enjoyed a great deal, even asking one of my friends to keep me talking one night so she could visit longer! On Friday night Jamin had his "Mr Syracuse" pageant. He had been nominated by the school's dance line and he in turn asked Khloe to be his escort. Jamin did a great job making up a Hip Hop routine for his talent, as well as all the activities during the week; he and Khloe even coordinated their dress clothes so they would match! Then that night, Khloe felt so special as Jamin knelt in front of her on stage and gave her a rose...it was pretty special for all of us watching, too! He did not win the title, but he sure is a winner in our family! On Saturday Kindahl had a cheer competition at the University of Utah and her team took first place! Kindahl was very excited as was Karissa since she is one of the coaches! Then since the men in our family were attending the Priesthood Session of Conference and traditionally go out to dinner afterwards, I took the girls out to dinner using the victory as a reason, though I really did not need an excuse to have a fun night out with all my daughters after the last month we have had! Finally, yesterday we all enjoyed a restful and uplifting day watching Conference from home. We were all together, even Troy our future son-in-law, except for Larry as it was his drill weekend, but he came home to a peaceful, happy family.

Through all this Khloe did very well. She is getting better at realizing how much activity she can do and monitored herself each day to plan ahead for things she wanted to do. For example, she knew we could visit with our friends from Camas on Friday morning and then that night had Jamin's show so she used walking to and from our next door neighbors house where the Camas friends would be gathered as her walking goal for the day and used her wheelchair for all the time she was at the show that night since she could not be sure how much standing/walking would be required of her. It was a good plan and throughout the day she was able to get information about how she does when being more active. She needed a nap about an hour after getting home from the visit and slept for almost 4 hours, then charted her blood pressure several times during the day and saw that it was up in the high 120's (if it reaches 130 we have to call the cardiology team). Right before going to bed that night it was 124/78, so now she knows that using her wheelchair in the evening helped it not go too high and planning a very quiet day on Saturday before using her wheelchair when we went out to dinner gave her the rest her body needed to recover from the day before and her blood pressures averaged in the low 100's. This information gathering has been good for the other kids, too, because they knew 120/80 was a good blood pressure and were wondering why we needed to be concerned with Khloe's in that range. It gave us the chance to talk more about how most peoples systems regulate their own pressures naturally, even with exercise, but that it is all the medicines that Khloe is taking that are regulating her system and the doctors are still watching to see if they have the right combination to support her the best.

So, all in all we had a great weekend with special activities, visits, and information gathering. And now we have a whole week ahead to schedule whatever we want to do..what could be better? :-)