Owen's Got Heart

YAY for this past week being over with! We came out to Utah a couple weeks before Christmas so that Owen could get a VSD (Ventrical Septal Defect) fixed. What does that mean? Owen had a hole in his heart that needed a patch so we flew in to Utah and headed to Primary Children's for a little open heart surgery.
When we found out about Owen needing the surgery Tyler and I talked about our biggest fears concerning the surgery. Obviously, the fact that it was an open heart was our biggest fear but, beyond that... My biggest fear was when they were going to take him away to get him prepped for surgery. I imagined he and I both bawling as they wheeled him away and then him waking up for surgery and me not being in the room. Tyler's biggest fear was just about the scar Owen was going to have live with for the rest of his life and how it would affect him. Isn't it crazy the different things mom's and dad's think about? Tyler kept assuring me that even when I wasn't going to be in the room that Owen would be in good hands and I kept assuring Tyler that Owen would definitely be able to pull a big scar off. I'm convinced it won't bother him when he's older.
The morning of the surgery came and instead of Owen being ripped out of my arms bawling, this is what he looked like:

Happy as could be. He couldn't wait to drive away in the car. Those people at Primary Children's really know what they are doing.
We went to see him after surgery and he was pretty out of it because he was being so fiesty that they had to sedate him. Poor little guy. It was not a fun couple of days for him or for us.
When he finally did wake up, he saw some trains they had brought to him, grabbed on to them and went right back to sleep. Comfort choo choo's. I guess they do the trick.

Just a little video for your viewing pleasure. This is one day after surgery. Sad... nevermind about the video. Apparently I have issues uploading videos. It hardly ever works for me...

After a couple of days in the ICU, we were able to move to a regular room. You can not believe the differene a couple of days make for a little kid. This is him two days after surgery:

Singing songs to me and reading me an Elmo book

Playing with the suds from the sponge bath

 

Skoping out the play room



Loving the fun the hospital provides

Couldn't get enough of Toy Story

We ended up being in the hospital five days and were sent on our way. I'm going to quickly pre-empt this picture by saying that we had been sleeping in the hospital for those five days and hair and makeup were not my first priority. Saying goodbye:

We're so grateful to have the surgery over with and our the little man on the mend. YAY for Primary Children's Hospital and all of the doctors and nurses who took such good care of Owen. They were seriously amazing there.

We had so many visitors, phone calls, texts, emails, etc. from people who love Owen. Thank you so much to all of you who had us in your thoughts and prayers! It means so much to know people were concerned for our little guy. We love you!

How to teach a one and half year old to unlock a door?

I really think that without the Rhodes Family to save, the Landon and Melanie John family would have nothing to do here in Ft. Lauderdale (oh wait, besides Landon working full time and going to school and Mel taking care of her own little guy). But really, we keep them pretty busy.

Yesterday Mel was at our place at 7:30 in the morning taking Tyler to the airport because both of our cars were dead. Then she was at our place later that day jumping the car so I could get around town. Did I mention that Tyler accidently took our house keys and car keys with him to Puerto Rico? Luckily Mel has an extra house key so saved our day with that as well. Anyway, that was yesterday. Today is a new day, with a fresh new start. It actually started out looking like we wouldn't need to bother the John's with any of our little family problems today but that didn't last too long.

I had a presidency meeting this morning (did I mention that I have a new calling in the Ft. Lauderdale ward? I'm the new YW President... WOW, anyway, that deserves it's own post in itself... who ever would have thought it right?). So anyway, my first counselor and one of my advisors were at my house while the kiddos (Owen and a buddy) were playing in the back room. Owen't little friend walks out of the room, I hear a door close and then Owen calling for me. Owen doesn't quite know how to open doors yet so I went back to open the door and let him out only to discover that the door was locked. It's not a door we usually close and to be honest, I didn't even realize that the door had a lock on it. Needless to say, we do not have a key to that particular door. Here is a picture of the room he is locked in:

Not sure if you can tell or not but one door leads to the kitchen and the french doors lead out back. I figured I'd go out back and open the door and grab him and then realize that somehow the back door has gotten locked as well. No go on saving him that way. I'm sure you are asking yourselves why we don't have keys to our own doors? It's a valid question. We just don't. We have keys to the front door... we rent and the landlord lives in Washington and until now we haven't needed those keys. Guess I'll be calling him today to find out where those are located. Anyway, didn't get him out of the door by way of the backyard.

So, we tried to pick the lock (It's harder than it looks):

We tried taking the hinges off of the door (too tight to get out):

We tried going through the window (windows were locked).
We tried teaching Owen how to unlock the door for us (he thought it was a game and just kept jiggling the door handle, didn't quite get the whole unlocking part of the game).
So, we tried breaking one of the glass panes (tempered windows, not happening):
Then, we tried calling re-inforcements (Mel and her bobby-pin), when that didn't work, we called her reinforcement (Landon)

After an hour and a half, while I was on the phone with a locksmith, one of those reinforcements got the door open... with the old credit card and butter knife trick.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Thanks Landon! Oh and everyone else who tried to break in the other ways... it's greatly appreciated!

Kent and Chris Rhodes Came to Visit... YAY!

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays so I was super bummed when we weren't going to be home with family to celebrate.  You can imagine my excitement when I found out thet Kent and Chris (Tyler's parents) were going to be visiting us for a week over Thanksgiving. We had such an amazing time with them and Owen couldn't get enough of mama (grandma) and drampa (grandpa). He's been asking about them every day since they left. Some of the highlights from the trip are pictured below...

Hanging at the beach (yes... it was warm enough, it's still like mid-80's here). Definitely does not feel like Thanksgiving time of year.

Making my first Thanksgiving dinner. As you can see, I was not impressed with the innards of the turkey, especially when my father-in-law was going to eat them. Yuck...

Tyler cutting his first turkey... Doesn't he look manly?

The set up...

The feast and the company... mmmm, yummy. Thanks to all of my mother-in-law's expert advice and help(thanks Chris!) It would not have been the same without her.

And, what would a Florida trip be without seeing the alligators while visiting here?

Oh and guess what? Even though it's still summer weather here, they still celebrate Christmas! There was a little light it up party on the Riverwalk by our place so we decided to check it out while they were here...
Owen got to see "Danda" (Santa). BTW... don't kids catch on to the Christmas concept so quick? Seeing Father Christmas once and Owen is smitten with Santa. Can't get enough.

The train ride (Owen's favorite part of the night)

Santa was supposed to be sitting in this chair but I guess we missed that part of the evening. Instead we just stuck Owen in the chair with a sucker for a cute photo op.

The whole point of  "Light it up" night was supposed to be lighting up this big tree in the park, we got there a little late so we walked down to see the tree and guess what? Not lit up. We were sorely disappointed.

Since it was on the Riverwalk we decided to sit down, relax and watch the "boap" (boats).

We actually showed Tyler's parents around on our little boat (still to be named) and I didn't get ANY pictures. Why didn't I take any pictures? Oh well, next time. Chris, if you read this and have some pics from the boat ride, maybe you could send them over... 

We had such a fantastic time with the Kent and Chris Rhodes Family! Owen hasn't stopped asking for Grandma or Grandpa since they left last week and he is constantly saying "choo choo mama"... referring to going on the choo choo with Grandma (I think). Anyway, thanks so much for the visit you guys! We can't wait to see you again in just a few weeks!

Hanging with the Travis and Emily Cushing Family- Part Two

So since Owen was born, Tyler and I have had probably three dates without him present. Em and the kids offered to take Owen all day Thursday so that Tyler and I could have some "alone time" in the city together. It was such a fantastic day. We got into London a little later than we had originally planned because that's how Tyler and I do things so we knew we were only going to be able to see a couple of things before they closed for the day (everything closes for tours at like 3:30 or 4:00 in the afternoon). We decided to hit up the Tower of London first things first. It was amazing...

This nice guy showed us around the place

We were there for about two or three hours and wished we could have stayed  longer because there was so much to see . We probably only saw like half of what we could have seen but we also wanted to hit up St. Paul's Cathedral so we knew we had to get out of there. We decided to walk, which took a little longer than expected but it was so fun to walk around the city.  We did end up getting to St. Paul's Cathedral just before they closed for the day and got to take a tour. It is an amazing place.

View from the top... isn't it gorgeous?

From there we decided to go see WICKED!!! YAY! I was so excited. I read the book years ago and have wanted to see the play for years but we've never really had the opportunity. We figured this was our chance. We headed to a nice Italian dinner and then to the show!

It was so much better than I ever even thought it would be. It was so fantastic and so fun to have a day alone with my handsome hubby.
THANKS Em and kids for hanging with Owen all day!

Friday we got up and headed to the Oracle (a shopping center near Em and Trav's place) and hit up H&M for some new clothes... YAY for H&M! Love that place.
We had planned on getting an early start and getting to this place called Avebury early in the day but of course, because it's how we do things, we got there much later than planned and were so bummed when we got there and realized how amazing it was. I had never even heard of Avebury until we got to England but Em and Trav told us about it and had never been there so we decided to check it out.  It's this really cool place with huge stones like Stonehenge but you can actually walk up to and touch the stones, not just look at them.

So sad I didn't get a pic of Owen's favorite part of Avebury... there were sheep just grazing in the field with us. He was so excited about them.
After we left the stones we headed to a nice little French dinner. Yummy.

Don't judge me for the mess on Owen's face. I honestly don't remember it being that big of a mess when we were at dinner or I promise I would have wiped him up before taking pictures.
Anyway, such a fun day.
Friday we got up and headed to Stonehenge first thing in the morning. Really cool to see it in person for sure.

Owen was so interested in the Audio tour Tyler was getting







As you can see, Owen didn't care as much about the stones as he did about rolling around in the grass around the stones.

After Stonehenge we headed to Bath. This was one our favorite places that we visted the whole trip.

Tyler was really excited to check our the Roman Baths while we were there. I'm so glad we did. It was such an amazing place.

I would highly suggest it if you find yourself in the area.

Sunday was just a super relaxing day spent at church and with some way nice friends of Em and Trav's that invited us to dinner. So nice of them.

Even though we spent every day seeing amazing things, Owen's favorite pastime was hanging with cousins and playing "choo choo's" whenever we found ourselves at home. Even two weeks later he is asking for Ty and Car and choo choo's. So cute.

We had such a fantastic time and are so grateful for Trav, Em and kids hosting us for ten days. Thanks for showing us such a good time!