Boy am I behind :/

I have so many things to blog about! Its been a busy summer and I haven't had time to blog so im playing catch up. It might get kind of get long…………… sorry.

Tuacahn
This summer us girls went to Tuacahn in June. We seen Grease and The Little Mermaid. This is something we have been doing for the last few years and I hope its something we continue to do for a very long time. My girls look forward to it all year long!!!
My girls, me and my sister Alesha all rode in my car. When we first got to St. George we thought it would be fun to take the girls to the temple grounds. We didn’t stay to long but we did walk around and take a few pictures.




It was so pretty and green. I love all of the flowers everywhere. After we got to our hotel we had pizza and then got everyone ready for Grease!! Now im sure most of you know that Grease is one of my VERY favorite movies ever. I couldn’t wait to see the play!

Taylor and her cousin Paige. They do not get to see each other very often so it is so fun when they get together!!

Brooklyn with my sister Nicole.

This was Shaylees favorite place to hang out. She loved sitting by the water!

Payton and Brooklyn finally together!!!

We didn’t have pictures taken with the Grease cast because the kids were very ready to get back to the hotel and go to bed and to be honest so was I! It was a very cute play I wasn't disappointed at all! The next day we got up and went swimming had lunch and swam some more!!! When it was getting time for dinner we all got ready again and went to dinner and then off we went to see the Little Mermaid! This is the one my girls could not wait to see and ill tell ya what it was amazing!!!! I wish I could go see it again.

It was a fun vacation. Its always kind of hard taking the kids with out Mike but I love going and making memories with just us girls!!!!


July 4th!!!!
Every year we go to my grandma and grandpas for the fourth of July. We have the parade, a yummy lunch, slip n slid, and fire works!!!! Here are a few pictures of the day.

Shaylee thought the fan felt great to set in front of, I had to have a picture!

Shaylee playing in the pool with all of her little cousins!

I love the look on her face

Shaylee was having a water fight with her cousin Nicholas and every time he would throw water on her face she would come show me.

Mike feel asleep while we were outside visiting and the girls thought it would be funny to throw water on him to wake him up,

Needless to say he wasn’t as asleep as we thought and I think the girls lost the water fight!!

She loves her daddy

Brooklyn was taking good care of Ethan fanning him off so he wasn’t to hot

Just chilling out with family!

Lamb Day

Lamb day for us is more like Lamb week now that the girls show sheep in the sheep show.  All summer long the girls walked their sheep to get them ready for the show. The day before the show they get to wash the sheep so they are all clean for the big day. Here are some pictures of them cleaning their sheep.

Fun times………………..

This is the first year Taylor has been old enough to compete in the show. She was very excited. She did very good she took 4th place her sheep's weight class and 11th over all. We were very proud of her!!

This is the judge asking her questions about her sheep making sure she knows all of the things she is suppose to know about her sheep.

Brooklyn and Shaylee aren't old enough to compete in the show but they have the little kids show their sheep and then they all get a ribbon for participating.

I didn’t get any good pictures of the girls because their backs were always to me but here is what I have.

The judge asking Brooklyn what she named her sheep.

The judge asked Shaylee her sheep's name but she wouldn’t tell him so Brooklyn had to. It was so cute the way Brooklyn took care of her little sister!

I tried really hard to get a picture of Shaylee with her sheep but as you can see it wasn’t going to happen, this is what I got. I guess its better than nothing!

The day after the sheep show (Lamb Day) is when they auction of the sheep. Taylors sheep went for $450.00!! Talk about a happy little girl! Here she is auctioning off her sheep.

Now for the Lamb Day parade. Taylor and Brooklyn rode through with their softball team on the fire truck.

My grandpa Burke has been hauling sheep for over 50 years!! He retired this year but a guy in town (Jess Bailey) wanted to do a tribute to him for all of the years he has hauled sheep. He loaded up a lot of sheep in a truck and pulled them through he parade as a tribute to grandpa. It was really neat!!




We had a very fun Lamb Day! We got to see Mikes family for a few days while they were here and that’s always tonz of fun!! We’ve been having an awesome summer, im not at all ready for school to start again. Sorry this post was forever long ill try to do better at updating one thing at a time!

She is so BRAVE!!

Taylor has been growing up so much lately. I am so proud of her. She has started making her own “milk” each morning. She is so carful to make sure she gets everything weighted out just right and she is also so carful at trying to not make a mess while she is making it which I LOVE!!!! This morning (7-09-11) it was time to do both her and Shaylee’s blood work and she told me she wanted to do her own……….. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it and to be honest I really didn’t think when it came down to it she would dare. Well boy was I wrong!!!! She was very scared and she almost talked herself out of it a few times but every time I would say just let me do it today and you can try again next time she would look and me and say NO I want to do it! Well guess what, she did it and not just the poke but the preparation, the poke and putting the blood on the filter paper the “right” way!! She was so carful and so brave. I am so proud of her and who she becoming as she grows each day.

She cleaned her fingers with a cleansing cloth, warmed up the heat pad and is now warming her finger tips. They need to get four big drops of blood on the filter paper and so the warming of the fingers help the fingers to bleed better!

This is the part she was scared about. It took a few try's of being brave enough to push as hard as she needed to to get a good slice of her finger but she did it!!!

She is making sure that each circle is filled up with only one big drop of blood instead of a bunch of little drops of blood just like she is suppose too! If you use a bunch of little drops of blood instead of one big drop the test is not very accurate. 

She is such a special girl and I hope she knows how much I love her!!

Brooklyn’s Birthday!!!!

I can’t believe my little girl is 5!!!! She has been waiting patiently for her birthday and it finally came. Brooklyn is so sweet, I love her SO SO much. She is such a big help to me everyday I don’t know what I would do without her! For her birthday she wanted to do the same thing Taylor did for her birthday, of course, she wants to be just like her big sister and I love that about her. So we had cake and ice cream at home and opened gifts and then we headed up to Jumpin Jacks!!

She got so many fun things for her birthday! We got her a new blue bike and a sparkly blue wallet. She loves the color blue!

Aren’t they cute!!!

It was a very fun birthday party!!! We love you tonz Brooklyn!!!

A DAY in our life with PKU

It has taken me a REALLY long time to get back to updating on PKU. The last few months have been very busy!!! So this post is pretty much going to explain how a day runs for the girls as far their food goes. I hope it makes sense, I am not good at explaining how it works…….. sorry :/

So first thing in the morning, every morning we make “special milk” for the girls, or that’s what we call it anyway. Its actually an amino acid replacer. It comes as a powder and then we weigh out the prescribed amount and mix it with the right amount of water and there you have it…… “special milk”! Sadly the girls don’t particularly care for their milk and some days it’s a struggle to say the least getting them to drink it. I came across another pku blog and a mother was talking about the “special milk” and she couldn’t have said better how I feel. Her words were, “It’s a strange feeling to be extremely bitter and profoundly grateful for something all at once.”  I am SO SO grateful we have this medicine for the girls but I often find myself being upset about it. I wish so badly it was like most other medications and you could just take a pill instead of having to drink it ALL day long!! Anyway……. this is why their amino acid replacer is so important. They will take this medication for the rest of their lives, it provides them with over half of the protein they need to grow and develop each day but it has been modified so there bodies can metabolize it.

To illustrate, the minimum protein requirement for most toddlers is 16 grams of protein per day. My girls can have no more then 6 grams of protein per day and the rest has to come from their amino acid replacer. As Taylor and Shaylee grow they will still not be allowed more than 6 grams of protein per day, even though daily requirements for most people increase to the 50+ grams of protein per day into adult hood. People with PKU literally plan their day around what's on the menu.

Ok, I had a lot of people ask me after reading my last post about PKU why my math skills were so important when dealing with PKU………. now its time to explain that but first I need to introduce you to two of my best friends!!!!

A gram scale and the Low Protein Food List for PKU. Not a day goes by that we don’t use these. We would be VERY lost without them!

 

So this is how meal time works. The girls are each allowed so many milligrams of phenylalanine each day. Sadly their PHE (phenylalanine)tolerance is not the same. We can track their PHE intake two ways. One way is by keeping track of how many milligrams of PHE they eat, or the other way is by counting the PHE in exchanges. 15 milligrams of PHE = 1 exchange. We count in exchanges at our house because it seems to be easier teaching foods to the girls by the number of exchanges it holds rather than all of the milligrams of PHE it contains. So like I said the girls have a prescribed amount of PHE per day, they need to eat all of the prescribed amount each day but they can not go over the prescribed amount. Am I making any sense????? I sure hope so!!

So these is where the book, the scale and the math come into play. The book has everything put into different sections for me so its usually pretty easy to find what im looking for. When I find the food item im looking for I go to the column “Mg Phe/Gm. food” this is the information I really need to know. It tells me how much PHE is in 1 gram of food. Now I weight my food on my handy dandy scale and the I reach for my lovely calculator. Its time to figure out how big of a serving I want to give the girls depending on how much PHE I want them to have at that particular time. If the girls don’t eat everything I dished up for them I reweight the food and recalculate what they actually ate.  It would look a little something like this……

Let say for breakfast they wanted a banana and I gave them 80 grams but they only ate 54 grams this is what I would do

     80gm banana       =       54gm banana    

     30.4 mg Phe                              X

Multiply 54 times 30.4, then divide by 80 to get the amount of PHE consumed, then divide 20.25 (X) by 15 to get the exchange amount!!!! Now when its one piece of food they are eating its pretty simple to figure out but when you are making meals where different foods are added together like a casserole it can get kind of tricky. You would figure out the “Mg Phe/Gm. food” the same as like the banana for all of the foods going into the casserole get a total weight of the casserole, divide that by the amount of phe it contains and then divide that by 15. The number you would get would tell you how many grams of casserole = 1 food exchange……….. are you with me????? Like I said its confusing and I cant explain well!

So as you can see math has EVERYTHING to do with handling PKU. As far as how meal time works, we try to plan a head so we know how many exchanges we want to use that given day for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks!!! It doesn’t always go as planned because unexpected things like birthday treats at school, or the girls just needing a snack that wasn’t planned into the day always come up but we make it work!!!

I hope I explained good enough that you understand a little about how PKU is dealt with on a day to day bases. And I apologize for how long the post is!!

Taylors Baptism

On June 4th, 2011 Taylor was baptized and confirmed a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! It was such a special day for us and it couldn’t have been better. Taylor had so many people come to be with her on her special day. It meant so much to her having everybody there. She has been waiting for so long for this day to come. Taylor got spoiled with gifts from everyone!!!!! She got her very own set of scriptures, a case for her scriptures, some very pretty jewelry to remind her of her special day and the promises she made, a blanket, a journal, a baptism book, book of Mormon bingo, money, im not even sure that’s all of it!! Everyone’s love and support just made this day more amazing. We are so blessed to have Taylor and are so proud of the choice she has made to be baptized!

Doesn’t she look so pretty!! A special thanks to grandma Gilgen for fixing the jacket on her dress, it couldn’t have been better!

Don’t you love the cat in our family picture!

I LOVE this picture!! Mike did such a good job!! I love him so much.

Taylor with grandma and grandpa Gilgen

Taylor with her sisters, cousin Amy and grandma and grandpa Howell

Water Party

PTA water party!!! The kids earned a water by reading. The PTA set a goal a while back telling the kids if they logged the minutes they read on a ksl reading tracker that they would throw them a water party if they reached a certain amount of minutes and THEY DID IT!!! The PTA asked some parents if they could help out with the party. It was a lot of fun (even in the cold)! I wasn’t sure if they were going to be able to do the party or not because it keep raining and raining but we were able to get it done and it was a lot of fun!






One other thing that I have to mention…….. I am SO SO pound of Taylor! She was awarded a Math Olympics award in her class. That means she was at the top of her class in timed math facts! I didn’t know that she was getting an award so I wasn’t at the assembly when she got her trophy but my friend Tori took some pictures for me.

This is a picture of Keldon, Taylor and Bailee. All three of them got awards, we are very proud mamas!

Preschool Graduation!!!!

Brooklyn graduated preschool!!! I cant believe the year is already over. She has just loved school and wasn’t to excited about it being over. She had such an awesome teacher and made some really cute friends. I am so proud of her she has grown up so much over the year.

This is Brooklyn’s teacher Cassie. She is such a good teacher and so cute with the little kids!

In the program each of the kids got to sing a part of a song, Brooklyn’s part was how to draw the number 3! She did so good.