The Perfect Date

I just realized that Jenny and Josh picked the PERFECT date to get married on! Too bad it still rained :/

My New Favorite Thing

In case you don't know, my new favorite thing is to ride the Cetennial bike bath in Ogden. It starts at Rainbow Gardens up 12th Street, and it goes and goes past Riverdale. It is so scenic and beautiful and follows the Ogden River the whole time. LOVE IT!!! You could probably do the whole trail down and back in 2 1/2 hours - if you don't detour, and, of course, Julie and I ALWAYS have to detour!!!

21st St. Pond

Scenery much prettier than here captured

New Recipes

I tried a couple of new recipes this week. I liked them both. I added them to our recipe dropbox. But here they are as well...

Chicken Dorito Casserole

1 bag nacho cheese Doritos, divided (or use your favorite flavor)

3 cups cooked chicken, cubed

3 cups shredded Mexican cheese blend, divided

1 cup sour cream

1 pkg cream cheese, room temp

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 can fire-roasted diced tomatoes (I used salsa. Rotelle tomatoes would be good)

1 can corn, rinsed and drained

1 can green chiles

Preheat oven to 350 and lightly grease a 9x13 baking dish.

Crush 1/2 of Doritos into small pieces and pour them into greased baking dish.

In separate bowl, mix together cream cheese & sour cream until combined, then stir in chicken, 1 cup cheese, chicken soup, diced tomatoes, corn and green chiles.

Pour mixture over doritos. Top with remaining cheese. Bake until hot and bubbly - 25-30 min. Serve with Doritos for more crunch.

Orange Creamsicle Cookies Recipe:

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons orange zest (for me that was the zest of 2 oranges)
2 cups white chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and creamy. Beat in egg and vanilla until smooth. Gradually add flour mixture until combined. Stir in orange zest and white chocolate chips.Drop rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Do not flatten cookies; it will make them dry. Bake 8 – 10 minutes or until golden brown around edges. Do not overcook! Cookies will be plump. Cool for several minutes on cookie sheets before transferring to rack to cool completely. Store in airtight container. 

Wait, Let Me Take A Selfie

Guys, I'm so happy. I just found the mother load of Vera selfies on my old Ipod.

Those LIPS though! I am dying.

Clara Lynn's Miracles

I want to share with you the miracles that we witnessed in Clara's first week of life. I hope it will grow your faith in a loving Heavenly Father and Savior. 

After the miracle of Clara’s birth we saw many more miracles. Never did I expect that a transport to the hospital would happen after the baby was born. I considered the possibility of needing to transport during labor if there were complications, but not after the birth. I had looked forward to the sweet moments after birth when Josh and I could hold and cuddle our precious new baby skin to skin. They call it “the golden hour”. I didn’t understand why she wasn’t OK—why they had to take her away. The midwives called emergency medical response not long after Clara was born because she really began to struggle breathing and her oxygen saturation was declining. It only took a minute and a half before they had a team at the birth center and they did their best to stabilize her breathing before transporting her to the hospital. Meanwhile I am extremely weak, lying in bed resting and talking to Clara. They said she would recognize my voice and it might help. Josh gave her a priesthood blessing and I was just praying and praying. I know God blessed me with peace because I just felt assured that she was in His hands and that everything was going to be ok. Josh went to the hospital with Clara while I stayed at the birth center to rest and get my strength back. I started drinking fluids like crazy—I was SO thirsty—and trying to eat. They warmed up some chicken noodle soup and fed some of that to me. I was amazed that I wasn’t feeling more anxiety, fear or worry. I was mostly feeling cheated because I barely got to meet this new person and then she had to be taken away from me.  But I felt no worry over her. I was reassured that she was in good hands. His hands.

At the hospital, they found that Clara had extra fluid in her lungs when she was born and we don’t know why. This caused the difficulty breathing and low oxygen saturation. After they got the fluid out of her lungs, she was breathing and maintaining good oxygen levels on her own within just a few hours. She had good color and was also maintaining her own body temperature. However, because of her low oxygen levels at birth, she had some serious acidosis and the doctors were very concerned about how her brain was affected. The neonatologist said that a head ultrasound showed swelling in Clara’s brain, so they wanted to do an MRI. They had to wait at least four days from birth to get a more accurate scan. I wasn’t worried about it. I just kept feeling that peace that she was OK and that she would be home with us soon.

The doc reported that her neurological test looked normal to her. They said as soon as she started eating on her own, they could wean her off the IV and she could come home. This news was so encouraging! I thought we would have her out of the NICU by Wednesday or Thursday at latest.

Then Tuesday and Wednesday she wouldn’t eat. It was like she didn’t know how or that she even needed food. This started to worry me. I began to pray with all of my heart that she would not have any long-term disabilities from the trauma at her birth. I prayed God’s will be done and I told him again of my desires to raise strong Disciples of Christ that would stand for truth and righteousness and help to prepare the world for His coming.

Wednesday night she latched at my breast for the first time! She nursed for a full ten minutes and then three hours later did the same thing. Joshua and I offered a prayer of sincere gratitude for this miraculous turn-around. That night she also took 20ml from a bottle with the Nurse. This was one of many miracles that I experienced that week. From that time on she has been a GREAT eater.

They were finally able to do the MRI on Friday- which showed that everything was normal. Another miracle. The nurse later told us that medically speaking—the level of acidosis in Clara’s body meant that she would have brain damage. She said there is no way that she couldn’t have deficits, based on the pH levels they saw. This I know—God healed our baby’s brain. I know that is true. He healed her. I am in awe of His love, mercy and grace.

Friday afternoon I thought I would finally be taking my Clara Lynn home. But for some unknown reason, Clara’s oxygen levels had started to dip into the high 80 percentages. Usually it would dip down only for a few seconds, and then pop back up to normal limits. This was happening frequently enough that it caused the doctor concern and she decided to do a 12-hour study to see if the baby needed to come home on oxygen. They also did their “car seat” test, which Clara failed (meaning her oxygen levels were too low while she was in the car seat). This was frustrating news for Josh and I. She had been doing fine—why this, now? We were so close to getting her out! Again, I prayed that she would breathe normally on her own, that she would maintain normal oxygen levels in her body. I prayed that she would pass all of these tests so that we could bring her home and leave all of the IVs and cords and monitors in the hospital.

Well the morning came and they determined from their tests that she needed to go home on oxygen. My initial response was disappointment, frustration, and resentment towards hospital protocols and overly cautious physicians. I tried to fight it. I tried to find any way I could around it. And eventually, I gave it up. A line of scripture came to my mind, “willing to submit to all things which the father seeth fit to inflict upon him”. Tears came to my eyes and my heart filled with gratitude for a Heavenly Father who, in His wisdom, does not always give me what I want. I must learn to be willing to submit to His will. And after all the miracles that He had brought about that week, I began to feel very sorry for being so ungrateful and expecting everything to go my way. It was a humbling moment. I am so grateful for this answer to my prayer.

I love watching Josh with her. It is the most adorable thing I have ever seen. He is a going to be an amazing father. I am so excited to grow with him as we experience parenthood together.

How many ways can you say puke?

Sunday morning started out fairly normal. We slept in a bit later than we should have and then spent the morning in a panic trying to get to church on time. Maybe next week we will succeed.... After church is when things started to get fun. Cooper, who had been acting quite normal in the morning, started to act quite sick. He was congested, and didn't have an appetite. His breathing was also irregular which I attributed to his nose being stuffed up. When he turned down a show to just sit with dad in the rocking chair, I knew he was definitely not feeling well; and so we sat together, and I tried to take a little nap.

The next thing I knew, Cooper was vomiting A LOT. The barf was all over me, Cooper, and the chair. Katie came to the rescue and helped clean Cooper up while I took care of myself and the recliner. The regurgitate was quite the mess. Unfortunately most of the spew went down into the corner of our leather recliner. so it became quite the project trying to get all the chunder back out. In fact, I found that some of the hurl had made it all the way through the chair and onto the carpet. GROSS!

In cleaning Cooper up, Katie noticed that his ears were quite red and he had some red spots on his body. It wasn't long before Katie began putting the pieces together. Cooper and Bennett had had a substitute in sunbeams that day and she wondered what treats might have been given out. Soon, texts were made, and we found out that Reeses Puffs had been eaten. We were relieved to find out that Cooper was not getting sick again, and was just going through an allergic reaction where the immune system starts fighting off a harmless substance as though it were trying to attack the body. Wait.... which one is supposed to be worse?

Anyhow, Bennett seemed fine the whole day, and Cooper's recovery was miraculous after the upchuck was done with. We marked this one up as a parent FAIL for not telling the substitute teacher about the twins peanut allergy, and went about the rest of our day throw up free.

Ayla's Video

For those of you who missed the long-awaited presentation of Ayla's birthday video... you can check it out on the DeLong family blog over here.

Buh-bye Horsies!

Vera is our outdoorsy girl. She always has to wear her shoes and socks and is CONSTANTLY asking to go outside. "Ow-side? Please? Pleeeeeease? *insert angelic smile with head tilt* Yes?" ...I am so glad the weather's getting nice. Today we walked to the fence to see the animals next door and when we left she turned back, waved and exclaimed "buh-bye horsies! I love you!" :)

Ayla is 3!