A Sad Update

I am sad to say that Jay's condition has only worsened. His family has made the very difficult, but very loving, decision to let him leave this world and go be with God. Two things I know for certain about Jay: He has a thing for birthdays (I think he knew the birthday of every person he ever met!) and he LOVES God. The family believes that, due to Jay's faith in God and his independent nature, he would not want to live hooked up to machines and not knowing those around him. If you want to know the details, or want to leave a message for the family, please click here. They will be having a service, and saying their final goodbyes, tonight around 9 PM PST.

Thank you for your prayers for Jay and for my family.

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Coffee Table Makeover to Tell You About Our Really Icky Weekend

I have a bad habit of starting things and not finishing them...What??? You already know that about me??? Oh....
Well, part of that bad habit is that I buy supplies for these projects that I don't finish. I've had to start sneaking my yarn home so that Phil doesn't know that I haven't quite gotten over that addiction yet (to my credit, I have been buying clearance yarn). My storage areas are filled with scrapbooking supplies, fabric, frames, paint, ribbons etc. So, in honor of the Procrastinators' Party, I not only bought the things I need to fix up my coffee table, I actually got started on the project!

After work on Thursday, instead of my normal two hour nap, I stopped at the hardware store and then spent four hours sanding and filling gouges with wood putty. I was super tired that night but really excited to keep working on my table. Unfortunately, Kai's lungs had other plans for me.....

Around 1 AM, Kai woke up with a horrible cough...a croupy cough. So after spending some time outside in the cool night air, Kai and I spent the rest of the night on the couches with the window open. Not the best night's sleep. Fortunately, he has an inhaler now and it worked wonders on his cough. No ER/Urgentcare visit this time around.

Saturday morning, we woke up to the terrible news about Julie's brother, Jay (see post below). On Sunday, we went to my cousins' house to celebrate Mia's First Communion. While we were there, Kai was playing around on a rocking chair, flipped over, and cut open the back of his head!!!

Sophie brought Kai and Malia to me (both crying) and told me that Kai fell off of a rocking chair and landed on Malia. I noticed that Malia's chest was a little red and that Kai had what looked to be a tiny smear of blood on his forehead. I wiped away the blood and didn't see any cut or scratch so I checked both kids mouths to see if either of them cut their lips in the "collision." Kai kept saying that he hit his head but I couldn't find a lump anywhere. Then, I looked down and saw that Kai and I had blood on us. I looked at his head, but because of all of his hair, I couldn't see where the blood was coming from. Phil took a look and finally found the cut and decided that we should take him to the emergency room.

When we got the the ER, Kai's head was cleaned and checked out. Everyone who looked after him was terrific. After the aide cleaned his wound, Phil asked if they would be able to fix him up with Dermabond. As Kai was asking what Dermabond is, the guy said that he was going to need staples. Of course, Kai heard him and the idea didn't go over so well. Phil and I finally got a good look at Kai's head and Oh My Goodness! It was worse than we realized! It was a good thing I had eaten at the party or they would have had to pick me up off of the floor! Anyway, Kai was a such a trooper! Three staples (we opted to forego the Lidocaine because it would have required two shots in addition to the staples) and he hardly cried. We were so proud of him.

So, he'll have to go see his doctor on the 13th to get his staples out. The nurse at the hospital gave me a "staple remover" to take with us since the doctors' offices usually don't have them. I'll have to hide it from Phil because he wants to remove them himself! UGH!!!

And now Kai has a new loose tooth. At least he's excited about that. Yeah!

Prayer Request

Probably everyone who reads my blog already knows about this, but just in case.....

Jay is the brother of my sweet sister-in-law, Julie. He is in the hospital and things are not great.
Here is some information from the blog that Christy set up for him:

John "Jay" Denison was admitted to the ICU at Arcadia Methodist Hospital on Friday evening (May 1) with a serious infection in his body. We were told to expect that he would be in the hospital for a few days to treat the infection with IV antibiotics.

About 2:30am Saturday morning, his condition collapsed and he went into cardiac arrest twice, as the overwhelming infection was attacking his entire body. If he were not otherwise healthy and relatively young (51) he would not have made it back at this point. He is heavily sedated and on a ventilator. His liver and kidneys shut down and his heart has been seriously damaged, but it is doing the job right now. His brain was probably oxygen deprived when he suffered the cardiac arrests. The extent of that is unknown, but there’s a couple of positive indicators in that when they reduced his sedation he does respond to pain and occasionally moves his body with intentional movements.

Currently, it is very critical that they get his kidneys and liver working again so that he will have a chance at surviving. If they are unable to get his organs working again, there is not much else they can do for him.

Sunday night they brought in the best vascular surgeon in Southern California to insert a catheter to start dialysis. Dialysis is necessary to clean the toxins out of his blood which will set the stage for his liver and kidneys to hopefully restart. The procedure was quite dangerous because his blood is very thin and he could have bled out. The procedure took an hour (though it normally takes 5 minutes) but it was successful and he has been on dialysis since late Sunday night. It will be another day or so until they will see any signs if the dialysis is working or not. There is nothing they can do to "jump start" the kidneys and liver. They have to restart on their own.

I ask all of you to pray for Jay and for the doctors who are caring for him. Also, please pray for his family, Parents-Betty and Kenny, Sister and Brother-In-Law-Julie and Victor, Nephew and Niece-Kenny and Christy and for all of his extended family and friends. If you are interested in updates, you can check out his website at PrayforJay.blogspot.com. If you visit, please consider leaving a message of support for the family.

Thank you.

It's a "Project Procrastinator's Party!"

So, Melissa at The Inspired Room is hosting a Project Procrastinator's Party. I figured this was just the motivation I needed to get going on one of my numerous projects. I wanted to do my desk or Malia's new headboard but I finally decided to fix up the pine coffee table that I picked up from Freecycle, oh about a year a half ago. ;-) I plan to sell our existing coffee table at our upcoming yard sale so I figured I better get going on the "new" one.

So here are the "Before" pictures:

Here is the true before picture. Note the Godzilla toys, Captain Underpants book, the box of Polly Pockets and the stuffed bear in the doll carrier! As soon as I dragged the table up from the basement and dusted it off, the kids made it their own!

Gathering the necessary supplies.
Yes, coffee is a necessary supply!

Ready to get started

A close up of the damage

Yes, the table is a little bit of ugly, but a whole lot of potential......OK, maybe it's a lot of ugly, but I still believe it has a lot of potential! I love the shabby look but this is just plain abused. I plan to fill in the damaged areas with wood putty, sand it all down, prime and paint it white, then distress it. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to paint the whole thing or just the top. I'll have to see how it looks as I go.

If any of my fellow procrastinators drop in, please leave a note and say Hi. I would love any advice from anyone who stops in and I expect my family and friends to keep me accountable for getting this project done!

Happy project-ing everyone! I'm off to start sanding and filling!

RITA

Funny Malia

Last night when Phil went to check on the kids before going to bed, I heard Malia yell out. Phil told me that when he kissed her goodnight, she yelled, "Stop that!" He said, "I'm just giving you a kiss" and she told him, "Oh, I thought you were Kai." That's really funny considering that she is always getting Kai upset by wanting to kiss him and sit really close to him on the couch and he can't stand it!

Go figure!

Time for a Change

So I finally figured out how to personalize my blog. It's still a work in progress but I'd love to know what you think. Any suggestions would also be appreciated.
Thanks!

Edited to add:
A special thanks to Lena at Simply Fabulous Blogger Templates for making this new look possible.

Blog??? What Blog???

Yes, I know, I know. If my blog were a child, it would have been taken away from me due to extreme neglect!

It would be an understatement to say that things have been crazy lately. And we are all adjusting to the major change in my job schedule. Can you say tired, with a capital T???

Instead of trying to catch up today, I'll just share some a few things about the kids with you. Yesterday, when I picked Malia up from school, her teacher told me that she really loved the worms and spent most of the day playing with them. It was raining (again) which brings out the worms, and I guess they put them in the sensory table! I've never known of a preschool to give the kids worms to play with. I LOVE that school! I told Malia's teacher that she's been playing with (and squishing) worms since she was a year old.

So, on the way home from school, Malia informed me that when she's a grown up, she's going to live with her friend, Hannah......in Hawaii! Kai then informed me that he's going to live at home when he's a grown up! ;-) We won't have to worry about missing Malia, because she told Phil that she'll visit us two times a week.

The kids are growing so fast. Kai can ride his two wheel bike pretty well now and Malia is trying very hard to learn. Kai is really taking care of himself now. Getting cereal for himself and Malia this morning, getting ready for school, doing his homework, etc. He doesn't want ANY help when he takes his showers any more (he didn't even want me to hand him his towel the other day!) and he no longer wants to take a bath with his little sister. He doesn't even complain about going to school now and he's learning to read and spell and he's really good at math (adding and subtracting).

Malia is just Malia! She's very loving and great at sharing but she still has her temper....however she doesn't seem to use it as much anymore (she mostly saves it for Mommy!). She is learning to write her letters and it really good at rhyming words and understanding what words start with the same sounds. She loves working on educational workbooks.

Well, I leave you with a few pictures from Easter. We had a great time at Wayne and Rita's, including an Easter egg hunt.

Malia searching for eggs in her slip
dress and jacket!

Kai and Meghan

Don't ask!!!