Julia turned Nine Yesterday!!

Isn't she so beautiful???

My sweet little girl turned nine yesterday, and I can hardly believe it. It's gone by so fast.

For anyone who doesn't know, Julia was born 8 weeks premature and almost didn't make it. My water broke and sometime during the ambulance ride to a different hospital with a NICU (neonatal intensive care unit), something happened. The doctors think her cord got pinched because there wasn't enough fluid to support it. Anyway, by the time we got to the hospital, her heartrate had dropped to 40 beats a minute (contrast that to the normal 150). They did an emergency C-section, and I do mean emergency. It wasn't five minutes after they heard the heartbeat that I was put under general anesthesia and Julia was out a minute later.

She wasn't breathing, and her heart rate had dropped even further. They immediately put her on a ventilator and did CPR for like 15 minutes before her heart started beating on its own. She was on the ventilator for an entire week. Almost all her other organs had shut down: kidney, liver, etc. But the scariest thing in those first 45 minutes is that her blood acid level was way, way too high. Eventually even that stabilized but one of the nurses told us later that she'd never seen a baby survive with blood acid levels that high. It was truly a miracle.

So now we have our beautiful nine-year-old Julia. Except for some brain damage that causes all her motor skills to be behind (speech, oral, and fine), and a few seizures (she had one when she was three and then started having them a few years ago), she's perfectly normal. She gets really good grades at school (we're so blessed that her intellect wasn't impaired), and she's just about the sweetest thing in the whole world (despite the little attitude she's gotten lately, oh well, that's what comes of being a girl).

We love her so much and feel that she's our little personal miracle.

New Computer!!!!!

We finally got a new computer after 5 1/2 years. Here's the old one. (It wasn't set up on the kids table when we used it, but it went there while we transferred everything to the new computer.)


And here's the new one. Isn't it pretty? The screen's almost as big as the wall. Ok, not really, but still, what a difference. Now we just need a pretty desk to go with it. This is the same one I used all through college and it's UGLY.

Laser Tag

Yes, we are total nerds. A few weeks ago we played laser tag in the backyard (and the front yard for that matter) with our friends the Clarks. It was way fun, even though I was completely terrible. Oh, well. Here's a funny picture.

Ward Campout

I know, I know, this was a while ago, but we were in the process of getting a new computer and the transfer of pictures, etc. took me a while. (My old computer was so slow it actually took a long time to download them all to a DVD). Anyway, the ward campout was fun, albeit rather windy, and afterwards we took the kids to Bridalveil Falls and let them play in the water. Here's a few pictures. Julia didn't really like the cold water too much, but the boys loved every minute of it.