Swensen Sentral

MONDAY Today is my dad's birthday. Happy Birthday dad! Traditionally, we give presents to the birthday boy, but today I got 2 great presents. 1) My dad let my mom come down to be with me and help me during this time and 2) Chase got to come home from the hospital today! So, it has been a great day. Thanks for having a birthday dad. Chase woke up last night about 4am pulling at his oxygen tube again. He hates wearing it and it was starting to rub his upper lip raw. Rick tried to convince him to keep it in, but the nurse came in and rescued Chase (for once she was on his side). "Well let's try taking it off then," she said. Chase was happy about that. Finally he was getting his way about something. At first his oxygen level went down, but slowly it climbed back up and he was able to go without it for the rest of the day! Another positive was his blood test came back today and showed that his antibiotics were working and his infection was dying down. And si...

Procede with caution. This is the detailed version. I've been meaning to write it down so I don't forget, but keep putting it off. Here it goes. My poor little Chase. He is in the hospital again. I hate to see him there. In the 4 years of his life, he's taken more trips to the hospital than I have in my 27 years (and that's including having 2 babies). Last year it was 3 times for Intussusception. Now he's back with complications from Swine Flu, that nasty bug that is spreading through the nation, which I thought would NEVER hit our house. Well, sure enough it did. Rick had a nasty case of it last week (starting Mon 12th), but eventually got over it after about 8 days. The day Amelie showed signs of it (Thur 15th), I took her right in and got Tamiflu, which made her sickness no worse than a mild cold. I got Chase vaccinated for H1N1 the same day. Unfortunately, it takes 2 weeks for the vaccine to be fully effective so we still weren't in the clear. (...

Poor Chase. Our sweet little 4 year old has caught a bad case of the Swine Flu and is now being hospitalized. We have been so worried about him, so please pray for us. We initially took him in because he was not breathing well (very quick and shallow breaths) and also because his fever was so high he started getting delusional (which really scared me). They admitted him Friday night, and he is still there. They have him breathing oxygen to help his lungs, and after an x-ray they detected pneumonia as well (which is common for the swine flu for people to get secondary infections). This poor little guy has seen enough of hospitals and keeps asking to go home. We're praying for his swift recovery. He's been so miserable. The cutest thing ever: Friday while he was still at home, he was feeling so miserable. He was laying down and I heard him mumbling something. The only words I caught were, "Heavenly Father....help me to get better....Amen". He felt so miserab...

This blog use to be a place for our family to keep in touch with us while we lived out in Boston. Now that we live closer to them, and have started a family website of our own, this blog is primarily for YOU (all of our friends still in Boston, and others scattered in various places). I will try to update you on the past 4 months of our lives the best that I can. First, WE DID IT! We made the big move from Boston to Provo. Rick spent 4 days driving a big truck full of our stuff, and by the time he arrived he was SOOOO happy to be out of that vehicle. Way to go babe! A bunch of friends and family helped us unload on Aug 15th, and it took about 2 weeks to get most everything unpacked and put away. You know how I can't stand living in chaos. We love our new house, it has twice the space and is less rent than our Boston place and the kids have already found the "track" in the house to run circles around. A few pics of the house. My favorite thing about being back in P...

My family came to visit for a week, and these are some of the things we did. Boston Public Garden Lexington & Concord Walden Pond

Amelie and Chase were eating lunch next to each other at the table. They were fighting a bit and Amelie hit Chase on the head, but she kind of missed and poked him in the eye. Chase wasn't too happy about that, and I tried to explain to Amelie that she hurt Chase and needed to say sorry. She turned to Chase and said in a very sweet apologetic voice, "Chase, I poke your eye? Oh, I sorry, I meant to hit your head." Hahahaha! I was reading a book to Chase the other day and it was about animal predators. I tried to explain to him what a predator was, an animal that hunts and eats other animals. I think he understood, until I asked him a trick question, "So, are humans predators?" He quickly replied "no" while shaking his head. I proceeded to tell him that actually we are predators because we eat animals. A look of unbelief came across his face. "No we don't. I don't eat animals." I told him that we eat chicken. He said, ...

We surprised the kids by taking them to Disney on Ice. It was so fun! There's not a better feeling in the world (in my opinion) than seeing the look of excitement on your child's face when they see imagination coming to life. One of Chase's favorites, The Lion King. Chase wanted to dress up as Simba for the show, and Amelie was a fairy. She likes Tinkerbell.