Time with Family

Last week we were so blessed to have my cousin and her three adorable kids stay with us.  We have a little mother in law suite at the end of our house so they were able to stay there, although the kids were together with mine almost 24/7.  They all seemed to have a great time and it was so good to reconnect.  The last time we were together was three years ago and the boys were little babies.  My cousin is six years younger than I am and I used to just adore her.  She was so sweet and had this beautiful long blonde hair.  I called her my "little LaNae." Then as she got older she moved to the same town we lived in, and she was actually at Sierra and Danika's birth.  So it was so good to spend a week together and it seemed as if we picked up were we left off.  Her little girls share that same sweet spirit and that beautiful long hair, and her little boy is absolutely adorable and a bottle of energy.  Aidric was so thrilled to have someone his size and a boy at that, to play with.

We had to make things a little exciting for them.  They got to see the good, bad, and ugly of our family.  The good being fun times and everyone working together, the bad, tired over stimulated children, and the ugly, Isabella had a seizure.  David had headed out of town for the weekend, which signaled Isabella that she should have a trip to the hospital.  We tease her that it is her way of making it so Daddy never wants to leave.  Sunday morning, she woke up with signs of a seizure and acted very out of it.  She would try to stand but would fall down, she lay there and get drooling, she would start to jerk, but seemed to be fighting it off, and her eyes were having a hard time staying alert.  After about 1 1/2 hours of this Sierra and I took her to the hospital, I figured she was about to have a seizure and had probably had a couple small ones, but I just wanted a doctor to check her out.  As we were checking her in at the er, she went into a full blown grand mall seizure.  The stupid seizure reared it's ugly head and they got us to a room quickly where there was a flurry of people working on her, connecting her to monitors, struggling to hold her arms still to start an IV, and trying to give her medicine to stop the seizure. I was so thankful of how LaNae took care of things at home, and was even able to get the rest of the kiddos to church on time.  When we got home for the hospital, LaNae and Danika had everyone happy and taken care of.  Isabella slept until evening, but was still pretty tipsy.  She would try to walk but couldn't walk straight and would walk into the wall, where we quickly intervened and laid her back down.  No fun.  But today she is better and mostly back to normal.  So the very good, the somewhat bad, and the quite ugly, but that is life and God is here with us through it all.  We thank God for the good, pray for guidance through the bad, and hold on tight to him through the ugly.  God is good.  Have a blessed day.
Alicia

The kids at a local park

The kids at the zoo, picking a penguin

going down the giraffe slide

feeding goats

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a local shopping center

little Isabella after seizure, wiped out for most of the rest of the day.
The other kids were running around her having a great time and she was out cold

Headed out on the next leg of their trip.