Gotta Love Sesame Street

So in the past month or so, Logan and I have become fans of Sesame Street in the mornings and I tell you what, that show is hilarious! I don't know if in recent years the show has changed much, or if I just didn't catch the pop culture references and celebrity appearances when I was a kid, but this show seems aimed at entertaining parents as much as teaching kids. A recent favorite of mine was the appearance of "Iron Monster", Super Grover's spoof of Iron Man. We turned the show on halfway through the segment, which starred Super Grover all shiny red and gold with a laundry iron for a head, working his magic in the laundromat. The characters kept referring to him as "Iron Monster", but as slow as I am I totally didn't catch the reference until an electric guitar started rocking out when he said his own name. Maybe it's lame but I couldn't stop laughing. Anyway, if the opportunity arises and you find yourself in the room with an episode of Sesame Street, I personally recommend watching. :)

(image from toughpigs.com)

First Day of the Rest of Our Lives

We've taken the plunge and officially entered the "adult" world... Eric has a job! He started working for an accounting firm called KPMG in Boise on Monday and boy is he off to a start. He went in to his first day thinking he'd be spending a day or two glued to a computer screen completing training courses, and instead they have him helping finish some massive project that has a very strict deadline. Talk about hitting the ground running. His first day of work he didn't get off until 9:00P and tonight's even worse. He's helping wrap up their big project so they can meet the deadline in Asia, so consequently it's after one in the morning and he's still not home. Oh my heck. The time commitment and hours required for this project is abnormal but if I didn't know any better I'd think they were hazing the new hires or something. And this isn't even supposed to be the busy season. Gah. Here's hoping things mellow out a little sometime soon...

Here's Eric getting ready to head out the door for his first day of work.

Somehow I got lucky and ended up with these two handsome guys. :)

PUPPIES!

I never would have thought but we're currently the proud "parents" of a litter of puppies. Eric's oldest sister, Amy, and her husband Sam own a female border collie named Felina who gave birth to four beautiful little puppies just over a week ago. Amy and Sam didn't even realize Felina was pregnant until about 3 weeks ago, and it didn't come as good news because they're moving to New Mexico soon and they're only allowed one dog in their apartment. They're temporarily living here in Boise for another week so the puppies have been staying with us. Out of worry for the puppies futures, Eric and I volunteered to bottle feed them until six weeks when they'll be mature enough to go to homes of their own. After only a day we grew so attached that Eric and I have decided to keep one of the puppies. The puppies are half Border Collie, half Australian Shepherd, with coincidentally two of them looking just like their father and two just like their mother. We're planning on keeping the only girl, and Eric's brother Nate is going to keep one of the boys, but we're still looking for good homes for the other two. One is speckled like the father and the other is black and white like Felina. They should be great dogs since both breeds are very smart, obedient and fairly easy to train. My parents own a Border Collie/ Australian Shepherd mix and he's been a wonderful family dog these past six years. If anyone is interested in taking home one of these puppies in about five weeks, just let us know.

This is the puppy we're planning on keeping. Any ideas on a girl puppy name?

It's a girl!

This is a little belated, but we found out about a week ago that we're going to be having a baby girl! Before the ultrasound Eric and I made our guesses as to the gender and I was victorious. I honestly would have been just as excited about Logan having a baby brother to play with, but I was really hoping I was having a girl because this pregnancy has been different than my last. I was way lucky with Logan, with hardly any pregnancy complaints (besides 5 months of heartburn) but this girl has thrown me for a bit of a loop. For most of this pregnancy I've felt a little "off", with a bit of food aversion and of course some heartburn. I was really hoping that these general feelings of icky-ness could be a sign in the future to let me know early on if I was having a girl, and not just a sign that all pregnancies from here on out were going to be increasingly worse. Who knows if my system will actually work in the future, but for now I'm feeling pretty good about it. All in all though we're really excited to be welcoming a little girl into the family to even things out a bit. Now we just have to come to an agreement on a name. Wish us luck on that venture! :)

Oh Baby!

Baby Channer #2 is on the way! We're way excited about the newest addition to our family, and we're pretty sure Logan will be too. Since leaving Utah and my cousin's kids, he's been getting a little lonely without small people to play with. We're keeping him busy, but I'm sure he'll enjoy a playmate, be they girl or boy. As for me, I'm just starting the second trimester and I feel like a whale already. The baby's due November 11th and already that date can't get here soon enough. Yay for babies!

Way too excited

Our countdown is nearly over. Eric has one final left tomorrow afternoon and we'll officially be done with school! We've had a paper chain going for about 12 weeks now and there's only one link left. Both mine and Eric's parents will be coming for graduation and then we'll be saying our final farewells to Utah this Saturday. We're super excited to be progressing in life, but a little sad as well to say good bye to a lot of good friends we've made here in Utah. Hopefully we'll see many of them again, and if not, know that we'll miss you and we'd love to stay in contact. If any of you are ever in Boise, make sure and look us up! :)

"I've got not strings, to hold me down..."

Pinocchio's song pretty well describes how Logan was feeling once his IV, air tube and numerous other health monitors were removed right before we left the hospital this past Wednesday. Yes, Logan, Eric and I spent the first half of the week in the Pediatric ward of the hospital in Provo. Logan started coughing the previous Friday night, was still coughing and sounding kind of raspy and wheezy by Saturday afternoon and was downright struggling to breathe by Sunday evening/Monday morning. We had a nebulizer and breathing treatment medication on hand from Logan's brief sickness when he was a few months old, so we tried that for a day or so, but by Monday morning he woke up with blue lips and grayish skin so I took him directly to the doctor. I could tell that he was having difficulty breathing but I didn't realize how serious it was until the nurse took one look at him and rushed to get the doctor and an oxygen tank. It was one of the scariest experiences that I've gone through. Doctors and nurses suddenly filled the small room, checking his breathing, giving him oxygen and breathing treatments, and quickly announcing that Logan needed to be admitted to the hospital. A nurse drove over to the hospital with me, holding an oxygen mask on Logan's face in the back seat and helping me rush Logan to the pediatric ward where they were waiting for him. This is where Logan was quickly hooked up to every monitoring machine imaginable. Through tears I answered all of the doctors questions as they worked to diagnose Logan's breathing problems. They were pretty sure asthma had a part in it, but were also concerned about pneumonia and possibly RSV. Logan was essentially moving no air through his lungs when he showed up at the doctors office, and was only doing slightly better after they filled him with a bunch of medications and put him on 100% oxygen. It was the scariest thing to watch my baby hardly moving in that hospital bed, listening as the doctors and nurses made comments about the severity of his condition. For the first few hours they worried that he might have to be transferred to Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake to be hooked up to a respirator, but luckily his breathing was showing a little improvement and his lungs didn't look like they were going to give out from exhaustion. That was comforting, but what could have made it MORE comforting would have been if Eric were there. Yes, Logan was admitted into the hospital at 10:15A Monday morning and Eric didn't find out until nearly 3:00P. We have just one cellphone, and generally Eric takes it to school so I can contact him, but that day he'd left it with me to contact the doctor and set up an appointment. I knew Eric was probably somewhere in the Tanner building only a few blocks away, but I had no way to get a hold of him and the doctors highly recommended that I not leave Logan's side at all. Luckily my mom was inspired to call me, and in a round about way my dad emailed Eric from work to let him know the situation. Eric hurried on over and spent the next few evenings doing homework from our hospital room. Besides Logan's improving health, we were super blessed to have so much love and support coming from friends and family. There were so many acts of service and prayers being said on Logan's behalf, and I'm convinced that those prayers and the his wonderful doctors lead to his amazing recovery. Doctors and nurses who'd worked the early shift and looked after Logan when he was first admitted couldn't believe he was the same kid when they came back on shift Tuesday morning. By Tuesday he had regained a lot of his energy and appetite, which was wonderful but made his inability to run around or leave his metal crib quite frustrating. All those monitors attached to him made it difficult for him to even move around in his crib without disconnecting one or two. I can't even count the times he tried to rip out his oxygen supply and his IV. By Wednesday I was going stir crazy from not leaving the room, and we were all ready to be discharged. The final diagnosis was that Logan had asthma triggered by a virus, and was potentially starting to get pneumonia. We were discharged around 3:00P, and after leaving Walgreens with a portable pharmacy we made it home at last. Logan's still on a pretty strict schedule as far as medications go but he's doing much MUCH better. With only some bruising left over from being pricked so many times, it's kind of surreal to think that it even happened at all. Here are a few pictures we took of Logan in his little hospital gown.