Jace's Skull Fracture and Another Miracle!

These are actual pictures of Jace's fracture! Shane was able to get them off the CD for me. I couldn't get it to work. This shows what a miracle it is that he is doing so well and that his recovery has been so quick. We are SO BLESSED! I really realize it when I see these.

The skinny squiggly lines that aren't deep are called suture lines and are supposed to be there. The rest is what he did falling.
The miracles seem to be flowing at our house where Jace is concerned. Somehow since he came home from the hospital he is potty trained! We have been home for a week now and he has only had 1 accident! I think it is because in the hospital they were always checking to see if he went to the bathroom so they could measure the pull-ups on a scale. I also think he finally slowed down enough to realize when he needed to go! Whatever the reason we are hoping it sticks with him. The hardest part is not yelling "Run" when he says he has to go to the bathroom. Our whole family says it almost every time and they we have to back track and say "no, don't run lets just get to the bathroom slowly!" We are just grateful for our sweet boy and his speedy healing!

Jace-and his miraculous recovery!

On Thursday, June 10th Jace fell out of the window in his room. He fell from the second floor of our house and landed on the driveway. He has a large fracture on the right side of his head. Amazingly, he had no other broken bones. Not only that, he had no scrapes or bruises anywhere else on his body. I had put the kids down for naps and went to lay down as well. I fell asleep and woke up to Abbie banging on my door and running in to say "I heard Jace screaming and screaming, and I went in his room and I can't find him and his window is open." I ran out the front door and I found my sweet boy laying in the fetal position on the driveway with the window's screen right next to him. He was just whimpering. I looked to see where he was bleeding and he wasn't. Then I looked for any bones that looked broken-nothing. So I picked him up as carefully as I could and put him in the car in the same position that I found him in. I called Shane and told him to meet me at the emergency room. Abbie rubbed Jace's arm and talked to him all the way to the hospital so he wouldn't fall asleep. Shane beat us to the ER and had people ready to take us right in.
We got into the hospital and they started to check him out and do CT scans and xrays. When they were doing xrays he started to throw up a lot of blood. That was so scary because we didn't know what it was from. It got the doctor and nurses working at a much faster pace and we found out around then that we were going to have Jace put in a life flight helicopter to Primary Children's Hospital. We were scared to send him off on his own in the helicopter, but glad that he was going to Primary Children's. We liked our doctor at Jordan Valley, but the nurses were totally incompetent and we were glad to get to a place where we could have confidence in his care.
Just as we placed Jace on the helicopter Shane's mom pulled in to the hospital. We were able to give Abbie right to her and get in the car to meet Jace at Primary Children's. Maria was able to get home to be with the girls right after school and for the night. When we got to the other hospital Jace was already in for more scans and xrays. We had to wait a little while to see him and that was nerve racking. This first picture is in the intensive care after we had been there about an hour. He was on oxygen for a while because he wasn't getting enough on his own. We were watched in the intensive care for almost 24 hours while they waited to see how much swelling he would have on his brain. Miraculously, there wasn't any and so they moved us to a normal bed in the trauma unit.

Jace didn't want his picture taken because it was "too scary" he didn't want to see what he looked like in the hospital. I guess he thought it was more real if I could take pictures.

Once we were in the trauma ward we just continued to monitor his vital signs and made sure he didn't have anything else happen with swelling on his brain, or seizures, or throwing up more blood. He did have blood in his stomach for a couple days. The doctors think that luckily the blood drained from behind his ear and went right into his stomach instead of staying in his head causing pressure.

He had to wear a collar for 3 days to make sure he had no damage to the muscles and tendons in his neck. He was unable to keep any food down for 3 1/2 days. Not even Popsicles. Finally on Sunday he was able to eat and keep food down. Sunday he was also able to take off the collar and eat and he turned into a different kid. Sunday morning I felt like we were going to be in the hospital for several more days and by Sunday evening they were saying we could take him home the next day.
This is a cute note that Hallie wrote for Jace. I just think it was sweet and I love the misspelled words.


More pictures of him being shy.

He felt a little better about pictures once he started to feel better. He still had to have something right next to him in case he threw up. I also don't know what we would have done without his special "soft blanket" from home. It brought him lots of comfort when nothing else would.

Here he is checking out all the wires that measured his heart rate, oxygen, and stuff like that. He started to know what all the nurses were going to do to check his vitals and he would help them out. He also knew when the blood pressure cuff was done with it's job and he would tell the nurses they could take it off. It was funny to see him get used to the routine.

On the last day we were getting ready to leave and he started to throw up again, so we thought we might have to stay, but they said it was probably because we ate and then took him for a walk around the hospital. He hadn't moved that much yet so they thought he just overdid it a bit.

Here we are in the car on the way home. We were told to keep Jace within arms length and not to let him run or do anything really for 4 weeks. It is a scary task, but we will sure try! We stopped at Home Depot to get locks for the windows on our way home, but when we got home my dad had already bought some and put them on the windows. My mom and dad came home from their Trek in Wyoming to be with us and to stay with the kids while we were in the hospital. We were so glad to have them and Maria help with the kids. It took lots of stress away from me knowing that they were being loved and cared for. They didn't even miss me being home which is a good thing I guess!

This is Jace less than a week after falling. He was trying on one of the many gifts he was given from family, friends and neighbors. We have felt so much love and kindness from so many people it is just overwhelming. Our ward has been so generous with stopping by, bringing gifts, and making meals. Family and friends have done the same. We feel so very loved right now, and we know that all the prayers for our family have made an amazing difference for our sweet Jace. I am so grateful for how well he is doing. I found out after we got home that another 17mo old was at the hospital the same night with the same situation, but that baby died. It has really hit me how much we were watched over, and that Jace must have other things in store for his life. Now to keep him calm for a month. . . . . .

Super Storm

On June 9th we had a killer hail/rain storm here at our house. This is a picture from our front porch. You can see how the hail looks like snow on the rooftops. Also if you look our trees you can see how high the water is splashing as is comes down. You can't see very well but our street was like a river.

This is a couple minutes later off the same front porch it got really dark and the rain came down so hard you could hardly see. This was around 5pm.

This is the rain coming over the edge of the rain gutter. The hail filled the gutters, so when the rain came it had nowhere to go.

This is a pile of hail that fell over the edge of the rain gutter!

This is my plant that was practically murdered by the storm. My plants still look pretty beat up throughout the yard, and the garden was a pond for a while. I couldn't believe how crazy it was, but it was awesome to hear the thunder and see the lightning so close. Lightning hit one of the neighbors houses and messed up their appliances and tv pretty bad. It was a fun spring storm. I wish we got them more often!

Bingham Copper Mine

We took our first trip to the Bingham Copper mine last Saturday. It is pretty pathetic that we haven't been before. Why you ask? Because it is about 10 minutes from our house. It is the largest open pit mine in the world and you can see it from space. My aunts wanted to go for a while, so we went with them and my sister Dana and her family. These pictures were taken by Dana-I forgot my camera.

Here are Jace, Eliza, Aiden, and Hallie posing by the mine!

I can't believe all these kids belong to just me and Dana. We are getting so old. Here are our cute kids in front of one tire off the huge trucks they use at the mine. I guess each tire costs $25,000 dollars and all the trucks use six tires each. It was pretty fun to see. Not lots to do for the kids or anything, but it was definitely worth checking out. Jace loved the big trucks. All the kids liked their treasures my aunt Jean bought them at the gift shop. A good time was had by all!

Drastic Hair Cut!

I was sick of my hair after having it long for 3 years or so. I wanted to cut it, but I had been pretty nervous about it. I waited until I could go to Idaho and have Colette cut it. She does a great job and makes me a lot less nervous.12 Inches shorter and here is the new do!

I honestly don't know if I love it. I did and first, but I can't do it as cute as Colette. I am round brush challenged. I also just can't believe I cut it after trying to grow it out for so long. It will do for now. If I can just lose weight and get my face looking skinnier I think it will be better!?! Who knows.

Flower Clips and Girl Time!

As we know I have three girls. They are getting more and more into how they look and making sure they are up with the latest styles. The big thing at school is to have flower clips for your hair. When we went to Idaho Falls for Memorial Day we had our fabulous aunt Colette and Grandma Jaussi help us make some flowers. We ended up making 33 bows for $16 dollars! That is what we would have paid to buy 3. We had a lot of fun and the girls kept saying thank you for doing the project with them.

They have looked so cute for school everyday since. We made some single flowers and some that matched for pig tails. We are a stylin' family now!

Just posing by our work!

Of course when we got done Jace wanted to know if I made one for him! We let him try on a blue one. It made him feel like he wasn't getting left out of the fun.

Our Second Miniature Golf Assignment!

The 3rd grade students at Butterfield Canyon Elementary have an assignment each spring where they have to build a miniature golf hole using a simple machine. This is our second time with this assignments. Our theme was home sweet home. For this hole you put the ball up the driveway, and the ball goes out the back of the house and lands in the pond in the backyard.

Here is Hallie coming home with her project. There are some really extravagant holes that people build and some Dad's get a little crazy! We luckily saved this project in the garage from when Natalie did it, so we just needed to do a little touch up. Gotta love the projects that are meant to keep the parents busy!

Another Shining Star Preschool Graduate!

Abbie completed her year of Shining Star Preschool. We were so excited to go to her graduation and to hear her sing all her songs. She was so proud of herself and so excited to have our family there to watch her! Abbie is our third child to go to this preschool. We just love her teacher Rekehl Johnson. She is so wonderful with the kids. I love people that want to do such an awesome job with little kids. They make a mom proud.

Not the best picture, but here is Abbie singing away. We also loved having a reason to go to Iceberg for an ice cream after and we loved having Oma with us for the evening's festivities!

Spring Choir Concert!

Here are Natalie and Hallie at the school choir concert. They go to school an hour early every Wednesday to be in choir. This is Natalie's 3rd year and Hallie's 1st. They love it and they got to sing at Abravanel Hall with their choir again this year. I love that there are teachers out there that are willing to dedicate their time to these extra things for my kids.