What little boys are made of...

These pictures warm my heart seriously. Jay was working right along side of me in the garden all morning with his trucks just having a blast. 

 Then he wanted to find worms in the dirt I was sifting. The funny thing is that this kid is terrified of all bugs! Screams like a little girl if he sees a piece of hair on the ground thinking it could possibly be a spider. Seriously. So I was watching him in amazement pick up these little worms and bring them to his trucking depot. Hilarious. 

 He had a mommy worm, daddy worm, sister and brother and a really big grandpa worm and a grandma too. He just wasn't going to stop until there was an entire family it was pretty funny. (Love the dirt in the fingernails ;)

After a good 3 hours working and playing, he wandered over to the patio chair and took a little snoozer.

 Just precious. I love this kid.

Easter and Other Happenings

These four are my life! I wouldn't survive without them, and love them to pieces!

We had an enjoyable Easter listening to General Conference and doing the usual rituals ;)

Kids decorated eggs and this year I got smart and had them do it outside (Much better!)

Easter Egg Hunt in the backyard...all four in their robes of course lol

Can you tell what Arianna's favorite color is? They always collect the same color as their basket so that it's fair (mostly Scott is the one who needs fairness to be happy lol)

Most days Arianna and I don't do anything special while Jay is napping, but one day this month we decided to make some bird feeders to put in our new trees. Ari had a blast! (Especially spying out the window to see if the birds would come)

 On April 11th I had my 31st birthday!

And then a few days later it decided to snow several inches! Joy! (I'm joking of course)

But the kids had a blast and Hailey and Jay lived outside for 2 days. Had a blast! :)

6 Month Update

I can barely believe it's been 6 months since Scotts surgery. It really seems like it was just yesterday sometimes, and those emotions are still pretty raw for Kevin and I. Scott too. We have been doing MRI in 3 month increments and had the last one last Monday. We headed back to Primary Childrens today to speak with Scotts neurosurgeon about the results.

Pretty much in a nutshell the tumor is unchanged in all ways comparing to the last one he had in January. It's still showing itself about the same as the last one, which is better than in the begining. He said it's going from microscopic to macroscopic in his words (whatever that means) With this MRI in some of the slides you can see the tumor is a perfect oval, and then from a different angle on a new slide you can see how it's completely intertwined with the brain stem. And the part especially in the brainstem that deals with your balance, it's wrapped around. So that's why Scott is always getting dizzy and a bit clumsy you could say. He pretty much only gets dizzy when he runs. He wanted to take a break from soccer this season, so that really just means he gets dizzy in PE. He is also a little clumsy with the "drunk test" standing one foot in front of the other, but he's always been. They always do an exam on him at these appointments to make sure nothing has changed. 

The neurosurgeon always tries to add a little humor like telling Scott his teacher better not be easy on him just because he had "brain surgery" or anything like that. And he wants to make sure we know that if he himself were to die tomorrow, to not let any surgeon near Scott because of the risks. 

He still wanted another MRI in 3 months again and then hopefully if that one shows no growth we can space it out 6 months from there. Most importantly we are just watching Scott for symptoms of headaches, nausea, worsening in his dizzy spells or vision, or weakness in one side which would all mean the tumor is growing or hydrocephalus. Those are the worse case scenerios. We continue to hope and pray that it stays the same or can go away on its own. 

He did say you can see on the imaging some inflammation where he is guessing the body is trying to fight the tumor, but that has been on the other results as well. He said we wouldn't want the body to attack it too much or that can be dangerous too...so if his body does take care of it, it's going to take a whole lot of time. 
We are grateful he is doing so great and I am thankful every day I was entrusted to be his mom. He is such a good kid. Side note on the picture: he picked those sunglasses out himself. He said "well these are the darkest and I think they look pretty good on me too". I agree :) 
Love him to pieces.

 Spring Break Fun!

We decided to stick around Cache Valley and work on our yard. Kevin took the week off and has been doing most the work on the yard while the kids have been just enjoying the warm weather. (In my defense I was majorly sick for the first 4 days of Spring Break. After that I kicked my but into workhorse mode to make up for it!) 
Jay thoroughly enjoyed being outside with Dad, and rarely left his side. It was pretty funny the other day my neighbor brought over a screw driver and sprinkler part and said, "Your apprentice dropped his tools in the road" I thought that was pretty funny because he was truly by Kevin's side talking and asking him questions about what he was doing all week :)

To make Spring Break more fun, we squeezed in one "fun" thing each day.
Monday I needed to get groceries, so our "fun" was pizza for lunch at Sams Club lol
Tuesday we met some friends at the Jump Zone

This was our first time going, and the kids had a blast! Scott and Hailey were good to go after an hour, but Arianna could have stayed all day if she had the choice! :)

Wednesday we went on a very brisk bike ride to the park where I pretended to have a phone call from the school which decided to cancel spring break. The kids all burst into tears when I told them the school needed them back for testing the rest of the week. Then I yelled out April Fools and did a dance. I can't believe they actually believed me! haha (mean Mom!)

We also built a fire in our backyard at night which is always fun!

Thursday I took the kids to a movie and Dad took them bowling too.

Friday we all went to Baby Animal Days

Jay and Scott holding baby ducks. Jay was in heaven. It was just adorable!

Kevin stood in line to see the baby bears for an hour, while I walked around with the kids. Scott loves to carry Scott around on his shoulder and it just cracks me up

Especially from the back lol

The kids had fun in the little cabins

and playing pioneer games

They even had candy shoot out of a cannon, and after that we were next in line to see the baby bears! So cute!!

After that we went to lunch and then to pick up some trees for our yard and spent the rest of the afternoon and into the late evening planting them. We had to dig huge holes which took forever because of all the rock. Scott jumped right in helping sift all the rock. He was such a hard little worker and did it completely voluntary so I said, "Scott I'm sure Dad would be more than happy to pay you for helping." He said "Really? What do you think? A dollar per tree?" (there were 3 trees total) I had to explain to him what he's worth (and especially if it's Dad paying). He worked from 3 pm all the way until 9 pm without complaining or stopping except for a very quick bite to eat. I'd say that was worth way more than 3 bucks! He was thrilled Dad gave him $20. $5 per tree plus extra for a few other things he did.

Saturday we did the last finishing touches raking out the rest of the rock and getting it all ready for curbing and sod in the next few weeks. Look at all the rocks that came out of our yard! Seriously!

Notice Jay's shirt says, "Me + Bro = The Awesome Duo"

And then after a few more hours of work, and being tired from his 6 hours of labor the day before...Scott finally crashed. lol

It wasn't a fun family vacation by any means, but the satisfaction of a yard almost complete is pretty awesome I won't lie. ;)

Scott also had an appointment down at Primary Children's today. We were suppose to do the MRI and see the doctor today, but had to reschedule with the doctor, so today was just the MRI. I will update next week after the doctor visit with the latest.