Kort's 11th Birthday

It is hard to believe Kortnee is 11 years old!!! I remember being that old and I am having a hard time with the thought of having an 11 year old daughter. Oh well, they have to grow up sometime.

So a few years ago Nate and I decided that every other year they could have birthday parties with friends and the off years would be family parties and such. So this year was an off year. So we asked Kortnee what she wanted to do for her birthday and she decided to have her room done.

So we took her to the store to pick out her colors

Pink, Lime Green and Tangerine Orange!

She wanted one color on each wall and then striped

It was a new challenge and experience but

it turned out way cute!

Here is her pink wall.


The green wall.

And the orange wall.

We were very pleased with how it turned out, even Nate liked it.

Now we have to decorate it. (sigh)

Learning Colors

Whitnee has to stand in her stander for an hour every day which on most days is really hard so I have to distract her best I can. So here we are making some yummy sugar cookies which Whitnee helped make, she picked all the colors to make the dough and frosting. Although she looks a little spaced and irritated here, she had a lot of fun and took a great nap afterwards.

Whitnee helping to make cookies

Pink was the first color she wanted to do.

Our finished product. What a wonderful rainbow of colors and

they were so yummy. Whitnee got to try a little of it too.

I am sorry no pictures again. We actually spent most of last week up in Idaho at Grandpa's house. The Viewing and Funeral were wonderful I think Grandma looked great and the Funeral could not have been more perfect (except for the weather). Even the kids letting balloons go at the cemetery was something that Lana would have loved.

Whitnee did surprisingly well as we drove up there, I only had to stop twice, once to buy a portable DVD player (I swore I would never own one for the car, I feel that kids need to use there imaginations like I had to while growing up, But I think Whitnee is an exception to that for now. Although the DS is a must in the car also) and the second for a diaper change. I was really surprised at how well she slept up there too. We did have one night that her Sat's dropped below 88 but I think it was just allergies, so we sat up doing cough assist and suction for a while (as she begged to watch The Bee Movie at 4:00 a.m. which mom and dad said no) we finally got her Sat's up and she did great the rest of the morning. Driving home was interesting, we had a Stoddard/Ward moment where we had to stop to try and do suction and cough assist to help her move things around and stop her coughing. So we stopped in Blackfoot, which is where Kortnee was born so it is our old stomping grounds. This was the fun part, to say that it was pouring rain is an understatement, as Mom and Jessica stood at the van door trying to block Whitnee from getting wet I did suction. Then I left them to do the cough assist while I ran into Albertsons to buy some allergy medicine. While at the check out Jessica came in saying they could not get the pressure up high enough on the cough assist, so I quickly ran over to the SELF CHECK OUT ( which it really is not it is just a slower lane where everyone thinks they can do it but the machines are too stupid to let you do it, so you still have to wait for a checker to come help, which of course there is only one checker for 4-6 stands :{ ) Anyway, as I scanned the item, it told me it was an invalid item so I HAD to wait for someone to help me now you understand my frustration. So finally he came over to help, well it did the same thing to him, so they had to go check the price because apparently the customer is never right! And then we had to wait for him to enter the price etc....

Finally I was able to get back out side to help out with the cough assist. Come to find out my inverter did not have enough power to handle the cough assist (thank goodness we did not blow the electrical in my van) So I said we better get moving so we can get her to Lecia's for cough assist, which was 2 hours away. As we got back in the van, I looked at everyone, Whitnee was dry (they did a great job) But Mom and Jessica were another story. As we drove down the road my mother would flip her hair just right for me get a nice spray of water all over me and Jessica thought that was quite funny. Two hours later as we got out of the car, we all were pretty much still wet it was so funny. But we made it home in one piece and Whitnee did great.
Don't we just love adventures!

We are now awaiting summer vacation, which is only 3 days away (not sure why they did not just let the kids last day of school be before memorial day weekend) what a waisted week. But oh well. I am hopeful we can get away a couple of times this summer now that we have seen how well Whitnee travels I hope we venture out again and soon.

Well, today has been a very hard day. Nate's mother passed away this afternoon due to the cancer in her body. Had we known how fast she was going to go we would have gone up with Nate Friday night. But we were told that she might have a couple of weeks still, so we decided that we would go up later to say our goodbye's. When Nate called this afternoon to see if we could come up tonight I hurried best I could packing up the kids things and Whitnee's machines. I managed to get the car loaded in an hour and a half and while we were waiting for my mother to come to help me with Whitnee, I got a call from Nate letting us know that she had passed.

We are soooo sad to lose such a wonderful and loving mother, grandmother and friend. She brought so much love and joy into all of our lives, and will be greatly missed. It is hard to believe that it has been four year since she was diagnosed with her Thyroid Cancer. She had gone through a lot of pain over the years especially recently. It brings great peace to know that she is not in any more pain.

We love you so much Mom, Grandma you are always in our thought and prayers.