December News

Ok, so the title is kind of misleading. There really isn't any news so far. We are having company for dinner tomorrow and again on Sunday. we are practicing for the Christmas Pageant at church on 12/14 and looking forward to going away for the holidays. I can say that with all confidence - our shopping is DONE! We aren't going overboard this year. A few carefully selected things for each child is plenty. Heaven knows that they have enough toys already! Jeff and I have promised each other a date, with no children at In-n-Out Burger while we are in Phoenix. That's our gift to each other - and a yummy one at that. I suspect that we will be dining there more then once!!

Fire! Fire! Fire!

Becky had a little issue with a grease fire today in the kitchen. I've attached a picture of the oven mitts that she put the flaming pan on.

Luckily none of the children were injured. She said she has some blisters on her arms, so she may be going to the doctor when I get home.

Can you believe she's to stuborn to go?! I'm working late tonight for 'month-end', so we'll see how bad it is when I get home...

OK, OK, it's been a while

Ok, ok, I know it's been a while since I wrote but with 3 little girls at home I don't always have as much free time as I would like. But I really wouldn't want it any other way.

I know the homepage says that my Mom is visiting but she has since come and gone. We had a nice visit but it figures that someone had to get sick. All of us did. We haven't had a solid night's sleep since 10/31! We've run the gamut of colds and flu, croup and congunctivitis, impetigo and strep throat. And that was all in the past 25 days! We're about due for some healthy days. I think that we are all on the mend now. Something to be thankful for this holiday season.

We are looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with our Pastor and his family. I wasn't going cook this year. I just didn't feel like it and when Gabrielle heard about that, they invited us over. So I am making the turkey & stuffing, but they're doing all the other stuff. Seems like a fair trade to me.

Can you believe that it is only 30 days until Christmas! That means that we leave in only 25 days. We are going to Phoenix for the holidays. We will be spending it with Jeff's family. We are ALL looking forward to going and spending this special time with them. The girls have already been to see Santa at the mall and make their requests. Lily has her heart set on a cupcake maker (we already got it for her) and Callie really wants a Jack-in-the-Box, which we don't have for her yet. We haven't decided yet if we are going to ship the gifts we are giving them out to Phoenix only to ship them back, or give them to the girls before we leave. Ashley hasn't made any requests for Christmas yet this year. I think she'll be happy with the empty boxes and wrapping paper. :)

Check back in a few days as I hope to be better about my blogging.

Caylor family at Pilgrim Pines for Pumpkinfest 2008

We had a great time at Pilgrim Pines. We went up for Pumpkinfest in Keene, and although we had a good time at Pumpkinfest we had an even better time hanging out at the Pilgrim Pines facility. I think this will be a place our family will become very familiar with in the years to come.

We even 'crashed' a Praise service that a NY group was putting on. The girls enjoyed it, but were really to tired to hang-out very long and enjoy it. Lily and Callie watched a Disney movie downstairs with some of the other children. Ashley and I hung out a bit longer and listened and sang to some of the music.

Carol Bommhardt is working up there for the next year and we got to spend some quality time with her as well. We hope to see her there much more over the next year. Our church is also going to 'adopt' one of the cabins at Pilgrim Pines. The men's group has asked me to work on the coordination for this, which I will be happy to do.

Carol and Lily's Pumpkinfest Pumpkin

Well, it was really all Carol, but the two of them had a lot of fun working on this one. It was a lot of work, but was awesome when we lit it up with the candle at home.

Carol hard at work with the girls and the pumpkin

Carol and Callie

Carol and Callie posing on the rocks.

This is all the kids that went Trick-or-Treating with the Caylor girls.

All dressed up for Halloween

We went to Kim and Karl's house to hang out and go Trick-or-Treating. I acutally had to work late that night, but was able to hang out when they got back from getting all their candy. Everyone had a great time.

Colorado Update

It has been too long since my last blog. Sorry - life happens. Praise God life happens!! My Mom has come off of life support and is breathing on her own. She has been moved out of ICU to a regular room and is getting better. She has a long road ahead of her and has to relearn a lot of things, like talking on a phone. But we are holding out hope that she can still come here to visit at the end of October. It's a great motivator for her too I think.

Thanks to all of you who stood by us and prayed for her. It is truely a miracle and gift from God that she is alive. We are SO THANKFUL. I've learned alot about faith in the past 3 weeks.

Colorado Update

I haven't been as good as I wanted to be about updating this blog. But there has been ALOT going on. My Mom remains in ICU on life support. She had a few incidents yesterday where she thrashed and her numbers became elevated. The doctors decided to do a CAT scan. It was determined that she had fluid in her chest cavity that had collapsed her right lung. With the aid of another CAT scan, a surgeon was able to insert a chest tube and remove 20oz of fluid and reinflate the lung. They are still waiting to find out if the fluid contains bacteria, but I was told it looked pretty clear.

The doctors have reduced the use of the ventilator so that Mom is doing more of the breathing on her own. They will continue to reduce the amount of work that the ventilator does and therefore increase what Mom is doing. If all goes as planned, they will turn off the ventilator at some point tomorrow and see if she can breathe on her own. If after 1 or 2 hours, she is doing OK, then they will remove the tube. We are praying for this!!

I need my Mom. I was starting to give up hope until this news today. I'm still afraid but I am daring to hope again that she is going to recover. I feel like God had us find Community Covenant Church and establish relationships with so many wonderful people there back in May as ameans of supporting us now. Our other friends have been wonderfully supportive too. I don't think I would have kept it together this long if not for them. :) Of course Jeff is the first person I lean on, but sometimes I've just needed someone who's a little more sensitive, you know how us girls are. Part of me felt like we found this church as support, then Mom got to visit my brother Doug and his family in mid-August and then our visit at the end of August and into September might have been God's way of us having us see her and spend time with her before he took her home. I know she could still pass away and that terrifies me. I'm just using this blog to share how I feel.

Keep praying for a miracle!!!

Colorado Update

As I write this, my Mother lays in a medically induced coma in the ICU on a ventilator, hands in restraints and fighting a serious case of bacterial pneumonia. She will also be getting a feeding tube as soon as she is stable.

How did this happen you ask. So suddenly is my answer. Friday night, she came down with a fever that shot up to 104 in just a matter of hours. Saturday morning she was feeling better, had a shower and a light breakfast. By 11:30am, it was clear to me that she needed to be in the ER. She was shivering, it hurt to lay on her right side and she complained that she couldn't take a deep breath. I told her that she had pneumonia. She didn't agree but was really in no condition to argue. So my Father took her to the urgent care clinic. They evaluated her and sent her by ambulance to the ER. She was quickly admitted to the ICU. She has continued to deteriorate rapidly. Every time the phone rings and it's the hospital it is more bad news.

One bright spot is that the Doctors and Nurses are wonderful. They have been giving wonderful care to her and have been so kind and taken the time to talk to us at length and answer all of our questions. So thank you!

Right now it is more of wait-n-see. I'm not so good at that. Please continue to pray for Mom, for my Dad, and for me. I am here visiting still with our kids. They, mostly Lily, are having a difficult time processing what is going on. They all understand that Nana & Papa aren't here and Lily has been told more of what is going on. I think she understands how serious this is.

Uncle Mark came to see us tonight. He was a wonderful distraction and it was good for all of us to get to spend some more time visiting with him. Thanks Mark!!

I am still going home on Thursday as planned per my Father's request. There is really nothing more I can do here and I think he needs some time to himself to process in his own was what is going on and how to deal with it.

Colorado Update

Well it's been about a week since I updated this blog. The kids and I are still enjoying Colorado and our time with Nana & Papa.

We had a grand adventure yesterday, Monday. We went to the rec. center in Lone Tree. They have a FANTASTIC indoor pool with a water slide, whale spouts that shoot up from the floor making a water umbrella that you can run and play and splash under, a lazy river and spray posts that make you feel like you are playing in a car wash. There was also a little kiddie slide in the zero entry section of the pool that Lily and Callie really enjoyed. Ashley is still a little young to be shooting down water slides by herself and the big one was way to big for any of the kids, except me. And I have to admit that once I climbed all the way to the top and looked at how high I was and how fast the water was shooting out, I had second thoughts. Having 2 of your 3 children watching you from below is a powerful motivator for sucking it up, facing your fears and going for it. So I did it. Lily and Callie cheered for me when I hit the water below. I did however think that once was enough. Ashley enjoyed sitting with Nana in the shallow end and watching what was going on. I took her out a little deeper (like 3 feet deep) and let her kick her little legs and feel the weightlessness of the water supporting her. She enjoyed that a lot too I think. If I had a waterproof camera, I would have brought it with me.

We are planning a trip to the mountains tomorrow and to the zoo on Thursday so watch for more updates.

Vacation Update

Well it's been a few days since I wrote so I wanted to update you on all the fun things we are doing here with Nana & Papa.

Over the weekend we spent some time with Uncle Mark. He took Lily, Callie and me (Rebekah) to dinner at a really fun restaurant called Casa Bonita. You go for the fun, not the food. The girls loved it. They got to see a "gorilla" get loose, it tricked someone into jumping off a high cliff into the water below. Then they got to see a cliff diver make 3 dives each one higher than the one before. We skipped the sheriff and bad-guy shoot out, but they also got to see some kids take turns with a pinata. Everyone got 2 tootsie rolls. It was a lot of fun.

Sunday night we had gyoza and chocolate surprise to celebrate my birthday. I'm going with 32 again this year... ;) Then on Monday, which was really my birthday we went out to dinner and I discovered that Lily and Ashley really LOVE cornbread. Who knew?! Lily ate all of the leftovers that we brought home with us - with the honey butter too.

We went and had their pictures taken at Kiddie Kandids, went clothes shopping for me for my birthday and bought material so we can make new dolls for Lily and Callie.

So as not to leave Ashley out, she has mastered sitting and is RAPIDLY moving on to standing and walking. She still does the "army man crawl" most of the time but has figured out the hands and knees too. She doesn't want to be left out or left behind and is already trying to pull herself into a standing position. She might be only 7 1/2 months but she is WAY ahead of schedule developmentally. It's funny too, Nana & Papa have a light that is activated by touch and Ashley has figured out how to turn it on and turn it up. She also thinks that all of their floor lamps work the same way. She crawls over to each of them and hits their bases trying to get them to turn on. Quite ingenious and quite alert!

We have lots of things planned in the next several days so check back soon for more updates.

We Made It!

We made it to Colorado. I am so impressed with our little girls. They have to be the BEST travellers EVER!!! It was a very long day that started at 4:30 am in Boston, and ended at 8:30 pm in Denver. That means it was an 18 hour day for the kids and they only slept about an hour total! They were excellent on the planes and just as wonderful in the airport. As soon as they saw Nana & Papa at the baggage claim in DIA, they went bezerk. They have been moving non-stop ever since.

Today, Saturday, we hope to see Uncle Mark. He's supposed to come see us and go out to dinner with us. We've already had a full day. We went shopping at Sam's Club, went swimming and have had baths. Lily & Callie are napping now but Ashley isn't interested in sleep at this point. She even went swimming.

On Friday, we took Callie to the mall to go shopping for some birthday clothes. She had a wonderful time picking out some stylish outfits at Macy's, (kid's got taste!). Lily was having a hard time watching Callie get gifts so she stayed home with Papa and got some 1:1 time with him. They went to a park, then had lunch at McDonald's. Lily was quick to tell me when she got home that she climbed too high in the playground at McDonald's that she got scared and got stuck and couldn't get down. A couple of bigger girls helped her find her way out and back to Papa. She isn't too likely to try that again!

Girls trip to Denver

Well, the girls are off to Denver. It was very sad to see them go. I don't think Lily actually realized, until she was walking away from me at the ticket counter to the airplane, that her Daddy was not coming with her. We told her several times, but I don't think she quite comprehended what was happening. I'm sure she was fine as soon as she got on the plane. I can't wait to hear how it goes in New York for them!

Here we go...

Well Mommy & the kids are ready to head out on vacation. We leave in the morning for a 3 week visit to Nana & Papa's home. We are also lucky enough to get to see Uncle Mark too. Watch for more posts about our grand adventures...

First Entry

Starting our blog here at www.blogger.com - and so far seems pretty easy! We've had all sorts of issues with fatcow, and are in the process of moving to www.1and1.com - and it also is the easiest Web Hosting site I have found. The girls leave early for Colorado to leave Daddy all alone for 3 weeks. They should have a gear time, but wish Mommy luck with all three alone in the airport.